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Who tf pissed on this image?
More people need to read Marx. I recommend reading Wage Labor and Capital and following it up with Value, Price and Profit if you have a couple hours to spare.
Counter offer …tell people the basic concepts to ask ChatGPT to explain/summarise, so they can escape “false consciousness”?
Maybe start with how the division of labour during the industrial revolution caused a loss of community and craftsmanship?
…I assume, value adding labour theory should be explained…
…surplus value being converted to profit rather than wages …
Alienated labour
The means of production, and how a dictatorship of the prolitariate are achieved?
What the petite bouigouis and lumlenprolitariate are?
Culture and how it reifies workers and their interests… ?
Stuff like that… Maybe even lead into Marcuse’s theory of the 1 dimensional man?
Why involve ChatGPT, rather than actually starting with the basics of Marx’s critique of Capitalism, especially the two I linked? I specifically mentioned WLaC and VPaP because they are already summaries and simplifications of Capital.
Going beyond those two works into more complicated class dynamics like the petite bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, and so forth, concepts like the Base and Superstructure, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and so forth can be explored later.
“I’m trying to introduce people who are maybe just average people without a whole lot of time into my preferred political ideas”
“I’ll link two large volumes with complex ideas, surely that will work”
Are you trying to sell ideas and concepts, a worldview, or are you trying to set political science homework…
… anyways good luck appealing to people who already agree with you, and people who have already heard of these ideas and rejected them.
Marxist are just plain shit at selling their ideas. That’s your ideologies entire problem.
WLaC and VPaP are both pamphlets, Capital is a collection of large Volumes. The ideas presented in WLaC and VPaP are simple, straightforward, and deliberately written for the common worker, unlike Capital, which was directed towards academics.
I hear and understand your point, but unfortunately in my experience trying to distill these ideas even further in Lemmy comments, and feed people individually piece by piece, results in far more questions and time investment than simply reading the texts.
… anyways good luck appealing to people who already agree with you, and people who have already heard of these ideas and rejected them.
I’m appealing to people who recognize that Capitalism isn’t working, but don’t yet fully understand the mechanics of why.
Marxist are just plain shit at selling their ideas. That’s your ideologies entire problem.
It is indeed a struggle to teach Marxist concepts within society dominated by Liberalism, yes. That doesn’t make the struggle pointless. If Marxism is indeed a correct method of analysis, like I believe it is, then it will continue to prove itself as such without care for the ideas held by society.
Really they should just read the book. You can’t read half a book.
It’s 2024, I’m not sitting around reading Marxist tracts. No.
The premise of the comment that normies are going to jump on the chance to read boring political tracts is idiotic. I was just trying to help, but I see you guys have another century of failing to appeal to a mass audience ahead of you.
So ignore my advice and just go on with your book list plan.
I’m sure in 2024, people will choose to read these two books rather than a book of their own choosing, or a video game, or a youtube video…nah nah not at all. People are just out there like “I’m really hankering to read long form political monologues”.hahahaha
Forget not working. It’s not even that I want to not work. I just want to not struggle to survive. I don’t want to have to work a gruelling 40 hours every goddamn week. I want to have the time to pursue other means of work, to contribute to society as a whole, not just to one, single company! Yeah, being able to have more time off would be great, but I don’t want to not work, I want to be able to contribute in my own ways too. And I can’t do that when I’m working 40 hours and still living fucking paycheck to paycheck.
I want to both upvote and downvote this at the same time. So I will do neither, I will just state my opinion…
This is not a shitpost, this is fact.
It’s literally not a fact. Net worth is a price tag, not an amount of cash.
Here. Take a booby prize
Van accelerator?
Van gas
P.s. I’m not American.
I dunno who the face is on the accelerator pedal, but it looks like someone loved riding their clutch…
…but I’m guessing you know who spongebob is?
Isn’t he that dude that wears square pants?
Fuck I dunno, I smoked too many sponges today…
Van Clutch
Van Stop
Van Gogh (famous 19th century artist)
Agreed.
Billionaires should pay everyone for stolen time, potential contributions to better world living. They currently pay only toxicity, diminish quality of life on Earth.
Billionaires should not exist at all. I saw a post saying that once you earn $999.999.999 dollars you get a trophy saying “I won capitalism” and everything else you earn goes to taxes. We should absolutely do that
This except we should expand it by saying something like $1b net worth, $100m cash, or $10m income—whichever comes first.
Conspiracy theory: The reason we have the Chicken Tax is to keep the Hilux out of the US because it’s too effective a weapon against the military
It is so smaller more competitively priced and actually usable trucks stay out of your country
That’s too credible for me to believe
Top gear put a Hilux up against a 1984 chevy half 4x4 they found on craigslist. The old chevy won, only vehicle running at the end.
[citation needed]
That’s Top Gear America, which is very much not Top Gear. Plus they didn’t run the Hilux head-to-head. I bet none of those guys have even driven a Hilux.
I’m not opposed to being rich, or really even being filthy rich, I think the fair chance of being able to live lavishly is a great motivator for folks to shoot for their best ideas.
What I am opposed to is being so obscenely rich that it would take several generations of chronic mismanagement for your descendants to manage to blow through the funds within a time limit of “by the end of the 22nd century.”
Most generational wealth has reduced to being a small supplement for the recipient to supplement still having to work for their living with by the time the original person who built it up’s grandkids have had their turn with it, maybe the great grandkids if the family makes it a point of staying grounded and using the wealth wisely.
That’s not even from blowing through it like madmen, it’s from how many people it’s getting divided among by then and how likely any one of those individuals are to just decide they don’t need to work anymore on getting access to it.
As long as nobody lives in poverty idgaf how rich people get. That’s not how it is unfortunately.
I’m fine with people having money, but there should be a hard cap.
Billionaires do not need to exist.
Agreed, but just saying “you can only have this much money” will get fought tooth and nail, IMO the way to do it is through basing the rates in tax brackets on the percentage of wealth controlled by people in those brackets.
It’s not a “hard” cap, but it does pit the rich against each other to have more than the other rich assholes while not having so much that they’re all paying an above 100% tax rate.
Might not be as delicious as frying them for ourselves, but watching the rich eat each other will be far more entertaining, and is shown to be far more effective. Take it from the once Shah of the Sasanian Empire Kavad, if any one noble is getting too powerful, the best tools to use in bringing them down is other nobles jealous of their ascendency.
But then we still live under the same corrupt system and nothing fundamentally changes except us offsetting our issues onto future generations. Continuing to find ways to prop up Capitalism and make it liveable doesn’t actually fix a ton, it just shifts the burden from us onto our children. That’s why we’re in the shit as much as we are globally right now, and our kids will be drowning in it if we don’t act.
I literally just made the owning class start a battle royale against each other and you want to argue nothing fundamentally changes? What are you worried it’s gonna be a .io game and we’re gonna end with a big fat superowner who ate everyone else?
thats just gonna create a different owning class and continue the cycle. change would be removing the idea of class altogether.
How does it just create a different owning class if they’re all at war with eachother?
You’re coming across as very "nothing but ‘just do revolution bro’ is real change!" right now ma dude.
There doesn’t even need to be any kind of cap, they just need to pay more taxes and be prohibited from buying politicians.
At some point people do not actually become happier from additional wealth. If you create a system where people are allowed more than that you are just giving them power over vast quantities of resources for no particular reason. It becomes an incentive only for those whose lust for more cannot be satiated and is anti democratic by it’s very nature.
That’s actually not entirely true, although what is true is arguably even worse.
See money does keep buying you happiness…just in diminishing returns.
So basically, the ultra wealthy are drug addicts forever chasing the satisfaction they once knew when they got their first big hit having achieved an independent standard of living, but every dose is less and less effective even as they keep upping it, eventually they die strung out and paranoid of everyone around them.
Fucking yes. We need to be having economic conversations on the basis of time.
I don’t mind working when it’s either something I enjoy doing and would do without it being a job, or if I can see it tangibly improving something or someone by providing something other people (or myself) need.
If all I see is the boss getting richer while I am doing something I literally would only do because I am being paid to do it, fuck that job.
Joke’s on you; I haven’t worked since covid! Ha!
Thanks for you taxes! lol! I buy weed with food stamps!
Don’t ask me how I pay rent (I don’t—you do! Ha!)
I mean, that’s a sweet position if the safety nets actually helped. Just kinda lame you have the same attitude as a 1%-er about it which just points to trolling. Would rather my taxes go to housing someone than war manufacturing or price gouging by corporate companies.
I was happy to pay my taxes before I needed it, and I’ll be happy to pay my taxes after I need it. This is temporary, and it’s important that people get the help they need when they need it.
Problem is that the cost vastly surpasses the taxes you paid and will pay. And since the really rich always have the means to weasle out of the system, the middle class is bleeding until it can’t any more. Countries like Germany are squished by the cost of their welfare system.
the funds sholdn’t come from the working class, but instead the rich. increase taxes on the highest earners to fund welfare.
I think for this to work you need an agreement between wealthy countries to all apply this kind of tax. This would be an attempt to stop all the accounts from just living offshore.
Not sure if the EU can apply this as a bloc style rule. I doubt the US powers that be would want to, and then other large powers I’d argue have even more questionable ruling classes anyway, but I’m open to bring wrong on that last statement.
I could be wrong on my first statement too. I haven’t thought it out that much.
Or tax businesses based on where they make their profit, if they refuse to show their numbers and comply close them.
no, you’re right. The wealthy would do everything they can in order to avoid those taxes, up to and including moving to a new country with lax tax laws.
That is the fun stuff. They don’t. That is the lie.
If the USA and EU decides that the rich has the pay taxes then where do the rich go? They go to XYZ country, you might think but they don’t. Their business is in the US and the EU and their wealth is. They can slowly move their business and wealth… But they can’t move their market, which is where? USA and EU.
Also e.g. The old money in Germany will never leave Germany. Due to privacy laws and the safety that they live in, they remember the RAF and they are thankful for the privacy and safety.
It is a lie that they tell you. They don’t leave.
They don’t because they don’t have to - they are not very highly taxed (in Germany business profit is taxed at 30%, private capital gains at 26% and salaries by up to 45% - and the rich don’t have salaries).
Once you start a policy that is exclusively paid for by the actual rich, they’ll either prevent it or find a way to net profit via their contacts in legislation, or they will just change their main residence to one of their vacation homes. Plenty of German rich folks have done so already.
Pretty big assumption here that they won’t pay more taxes than what they get from the government. I paid $20k in tax in the first year of my first non-retail job. If they paid taxes for 7-8 years before covid they probably already paid for themselves.
Your calculation would make sense - if all of your taxes went into the welfare system. In Germany the contribution rate is only 2.6% though (paid on top of your taxes) and with that your whole career might not be enough to pay for a single year of unemployment.
Also, the payment that arrives on your account hardly is the whole cost. There are up to whole ministries of government to pay for with thousands of tax-paid employees. Every pay-as-you-go system only works if the vast majority pays and only a few get paid.
If you can work and you choose to live from benefits, you are a leech.
We had almost full automation for 60 years in factories, where did that money go? There are leeches in society, but OP is not among the relevant ones.
Two wrongs don’t make it right. The fact that rich people are often leeches does not change the fact that poor people can also be leeches.
Billionaires leech literally millions of times what a poor person leeches, and yet you’re here complaining about the poor person (who has likely already paid more in taxes than they have leeched).
I am not “complaining” about anything. I am calling leech “a leech” because he is a leech.
You’re still missing the point lmao. Who gives a fuck about a tiny drop of water when there’s a tidal wave coming for them.
Yeah, who gives a fuck about a guy stealing car if there is a another one just robbing a bank. Sound thinking, Sherlock 🙄
Brother. This is childish thinking. The exploitation of the rich is killing the planet, literally making it uninhabitable for all things living. One guy living off welfare is not on the same level, not by a long shot. Get a grip
What the fuck are you even talking about? Justifying a leech sucking welfare system when he is fully capable of working just because there are other wealthy leeches is like justifying a thief stealing a car, because he didn’t rob a bank.
People consentually drawing from the public safety net to meet their needs are entirely different from a Class based on accumulating vast amounts of wealth and power off the backs of Workers via wage slavery.
It’s more like a thief stealing a pebble from the garden in front of the bank.
i think anyone should be allowed to choose whether they want to work, and if they choose not to, they should at a minimum be provided housing, food, running potable water and clothing.
On what basis? Are you asking me to support financially someone fully capable of working? Fuck that, I have my own children to support. If he can work, he should work.
Unless you are talking about universal basic income - but this is completely different idea to benefits and should be paid instead of all the other state payouts, including state pension. I am not opposed to that, that’s just basic wealth sharing.
On what basis?
On the basis that they are alive and if they didn’t get those basic amenities they wouldn’t be anymore. You know, like we do with healthcare in actually civilized countries.
Oh, but they will be alive. Alive and working like they should.
i’m not asking you to do anything, unless of course you’re a member of the super wealthy who don’t pay a fair share in taxes. The burden should be on the wealthiest individuals who profit off our backs and keep us in this perpetual capitalist hell.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the wealthy should pay much, much more than they do. They also should work for their money rather than spending time on golf courses or wanking themselves on twitter.
That does not alleviate the basic duty of every single person, capable of working, to be able to earn his own maintenance.There is plenty of people unable to do so (or temporary unable to do so) and these should be helped.
You should read OP’s edit, cause you sound like an ass. An why the hell do you want to be a slave to work so damn bad, and think others should be forced into that mentality? You do you, but I garauntee if you were in the position of a billionaire, you would be doing the same. No one wants to work. No one needs to work 40hrs. If everyone could make enough from a 20hr work week, im willing to bet their would be a hell of a lot less “leeches” as you so unemphathetically call them.
Guess what, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think I sound like 🙄
The good news is that Capitalism cannot be perpetual, so the Hellscape will end at somepoint.
It’s good that you are getting support. I do think your jokes here are a bit in bad taste though. It isn’t likely to make anyone feel good about supporting others, or about being supported.
The point of helping others isn’t to make yourself feel better
That definitely is not what I was saying. What I’m saying is that mocking and taunting people does not help social cohesion. It can cause reluctance and spite. We just don’t need that.
BUT THINK OF THE BILLIONAIRES COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER TO BUILD BIGGER MEGA YACHTS. THINK OF THE YACHTS.
I think they compete in Space cock
They won’t sell the Hilux in the US because it’s too easy to turn into a technical. Nobody out here with a Tacoma technical
Bunch of yeehawdists rolling around in Hiluxes would be sub-optimal
Nobody seems to have mentioned the very oddly placed highlight
You see how that would be bad for the economy, right? Good for individual workers, but bad for consumers since there’s no longer a person doing some service, like I don’t know, medical care. I fell off the bike in Canada and spent 7 hours covered in blood before a nurse saw me and bandaged me up.
As an American I also had to pay $1000 USD for this (insurance will eventually refund this to me, hopefully)
I’m Canadian, and I dont mind our healthcare system one bit. You only had to pay because you were American.
It’s far from a perfect system, but at least I’m not riddled in medical debt, or have to financially plan to have my wife deliver a kid.
Employers steal the entire fruits of your labor as well. The fruits of workers’ labor consist of the liabilities for the used-up inputs combined with the property rights to the produced output. Both of these are entirely held by the employer. This assignment violates the ethical principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. You and your fellow workers are jointly de facto responsible for producing the product, but the employer has sole legal responsibility for it
@lemmyshitpost
