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This quote is from 1903. Times haven't changed that much: > Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labo

• xandrius 4mo ago
  Yep but the anti-socialism/communism world did wonders to make that feel like kryptonite whenever those words get brought up, even though anyone who is doesn't see themselves as "rich" in that sentence who fully agree. That's why even factory workers are anti-communism or anti-union which are literally the best way to fight back the imbalance of power.
  • adamtaylor_13 4mo ago
    You have to somehow separate the horrible evils that have been inflicted on the world by Communism before you can get people to consider words closely associated with it. Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.
    • bbor 4mo ago
      A) Well, it's you vs. the Pope and I! B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
      • adamtaylor_13 4mo ago
        Re: B my guess is probably not (human nature and all that), but I'm open to ideas! I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again".
        • keybored 4mo ago
          > I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again". What do you mean try again? Capitalism is still the way of the world.
      • megaman821 4mo ago
        A lot of the world is a free-market and labors can absolutely own the means of production. Is there some government regulation in particular that you think is preventing this?
      • losvedir 4mo ago
        > Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers? I have good news for you. As someone in my job's ESPP plan and with a 401k, it already is!
        • bbor 4mo ago
          I… ok. I can see that I engaged with a conversation that inevitably invites common political disagreements — apologies!
        • keybored 4mo ago
          401K is like “all animals are equal but some are more equal to others” with regards to laborers owning the means of production.
    • komali2 4mo ago
      What specific horrible evils do you mean? And how do you attribute them to, specifically, organizing an economy along communistic lines? I ask because if we can take a country with a communist economy, or striving for one, and blame all its evils on communism itself, I have a few things I'd like to point out as being the horrors of capitalism: 1. Atlantic slave trade - millions dead (many on the ships), millions enslaved 2. Settler colonialism and indigenous genocide - British empire, all over the world 3. Congo Free State, Leopold II - 1 to 5 million dead via colonial extraction regime 4. British India famines - 3 million dead 5. Irish Famine - 1 million dead 6. Opium wars - directly caused by British using the military to defend market access. 100k dead, devastating to Qing China for a century 7. Indonesian anti-communist massacres - 500k-1mil alleged "communists" killed after the USA, UK, and Australian intelligence agencies propagandized against them
      • Pay08 4mo ago
        > What specific horrible evils do you mean? The 1956 student massacres in Hungary, where my grandma was almost killed. The Holodomor, the various "Russianization" campaigns, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, The Great Leap Forward, etc.
        • komali2 4mo ago
          It sounds like Communism, Capitalism, and Fascism are all very bad, then. Maybe we can try something else? Do you have any ideas?
          • buildsjets 4mo ago
            No gods, No masters.
          • Pay08 4mo ago
            Just so I'm not misunderstanding you: are you saying that those are not as bad as your list?
            • komali2 4mo ago
    • nicholsonpk 4mo ago
      The problem, generally, with this view point is that it attributes all of a societies ills to Communism and none of (or few of) societies ills to Capitalism. For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who stand to gain the most wealth and influence from them.
      • redwall_hp 4mo ago
        The richest capitalist in the world unilaterally axed USAID at the behest of his cronies, and has directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children to date. Projections are 9-14 million overall deaths by starvation and disease by 2030. And that was just kicked off a few months ago. Musk and Trump are doing a Holodomor in front of the world's eyes.
        • gordian-mind 4mo ago
          Unless you donated all the money you earned this year to foreign children, you are equally to blame for this "Holodomor."
          • varnaud 4mo ago
            Are you against murder ? An innocent man was shot and killed this year in a foreign country. Unless you did everything in your power to stop that killing, you are equally to blame for his murder.
      • adamtaylor_13 4mo ago
        I did not excuse capitalism from critique. I'm not sure how you arrived there from my comment.
    • weakfish 4mo ago
      Copying and pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread that summarizes my thoughts here as well: I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my vague thoughts (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_) I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture. Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse. I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.
      • adamtaylor_13 4mo ago
        I believe capitalism is the least-bad system we've created so far. Perhaps there is a better one, but as I said elsewhere the failed experiment of communism isn't one we should keep attempting--the cost in human lives is far too high. But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically.
        • komali2 4mo ago
          > But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically. Historic evidence doesn't support this. It supports the idea that greedy people exist and sometimes succeed at accumulating power, and we often hear more about those people because systems are built to sustain and tell the legends of these people. It seems most people would rather be chill with each other, and the tendency to not rock the boat means the greedy people can grab more and more before people realize it's too late and the systems have been constructed to support these greedy people, and then people just try to get on with their lives best as they can, despite they themselves not being so greedy. Humans though aren't inherently greedy, we're inherently communal and social. Our key evolutionary advantage is sociability - so much so that we're the only living thing on earth that has complex language. We need to say more than "lion nearby" to thrive. Greed doesn't work well in social contexts, lots of anthropological studies show that in societies across history and across the world, there's a near universal appreciation of generosity, selflessness, and self sacrifice, and a near universal distaste for selfishness, greed, and resource hoarding. Check out David Graeber's "Dawn of Everything."
  • whodidntante 4mo ago
    The "imbalance of power" can only be "fought" by eliminating the concentrations of power. This is not a capitalist vs communist thing,it is, at least, a human thing, as humans need hierarchy, and power ends up being held by the few. The Romans, the Ottomans, the Persians, the Qing, and many, many other empires all have had the same "issues". I am sure this "problem" goes back to antiquity.
  • Findecanor 4mo ago
    I think we should not use the word "communism". It is imbued with a lot of different values depending on who you ask, and is therefore utterly useless. Marx and Engels had originally envisioned a liberal democratic society with lots of high ideals but they had allowed the transition to it to be tough. Every self-proclaimed "Communist" state never got through that transition: the people in charge never let it (often never intended to) and instead cemented their authoritarian dictatorships. So let's call those what they were.
• kspacewalk2 4mo ago
  The truly interesting question, and the crux of the matter, also hasn't changed much since 1903: How?
  • komali2 4mo ago
    There's been plenty of examples of workers seizing the means of production and establishing sustained non-capitalist organization (State or otherwise). We have any number of strategies to choose from: The PRC, Soviet Union, Syndicalized Spain (my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state), Vietnam, Cuba. The question thus isn't "how," but more specifically a couple other questions: "How do we prevent capitalist forces from liberalizing our movement (PRC, Soviet Union)," "How do we prevent fascists from killing us all (Syndicalized Spain)," "How do we prevent becoming a state-capitalist police state that halts the revolution (PRC, Soviet Union)"?
    • achierius 4mo ago
      While this is certainly the more interesting question, the unfortunate reality is that the ideological complex of capital (even if weakening, and no longer effectively reproducing itself) is still strong enough that most in the West can't even imagine a better world (other than "less bad capitalism"), much less think about how to get there. Consequently messages like the above are of great value in moving more people towards a point where questions like yours become relevant.
      • komali2 4mo ago
        Well, in that case, my "how" has always been along anarchistic lines: establishing parallel forms of resource distribution, establishing habits and communities of mutual aid, and in doing so, delegitimizing and rendering obsolete the State, capitalism, and systems of hierarchy. Fun techcentric utopian speculation about this: Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" and Ruthanna Emry's "A Half-Built Garden." Essentially, can we leverage our current post-scarcity society to expropriate everything people need in a sustainable way that cuts capitalism and the State out of the loop? For example, why would people buy food if they can get it for free from farming syndicates or similar? (see: Global Village Construction Kit, Food Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns) Why would people buy medicine if they can print it for free from pirated recipes? (see: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective) I see the Right to Repair and FOSS movements as a foundation to build upon for this. Anarchism (or at least, anti-capitalism) exists right under everyone's noses, in all the FOSS software installed on their computers. Existent example of people laboring without profit motive and contributing to the commons. My personal life goal is to figure out how to capture that same energy to tackle the bottom layers of Maslow's hierarchy.
• carlosjobim 4mo ago
  Hasn't AI been made available to millions of people? Or is this the old hacker news trope again that nothing except full on communism will ever be acceptable?