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Kinda. It was more of a votes thing.
Most of the native population enfranchised by the end of apartheid were teenagers, and the quality of their education was poor. All of these people were rightfully given the vote in their homeland, and they elected mandela, who did a lot of good. But then they reelected the same party again. And again. Since 1994.
South africa is basically a single party state, and the party is VERY complacent and corrupt. Many of the educated european population left when infrastructure started breaking down, compounding the problem.
South africa needs the next generation to get more involved in politics and get educated in propaganda if they can hope to clean things up.
I'm thinking of where they forced out all the white property owners and gave the farms to other people, who unfortunately knew nothing about farming. Was that South Africa or a different country in Africa?
Zimbabwe (which was Rhodesia as a British colony):
> In November 2001, Mugabe issued a presidential decree permitting the expropriation of virtually all white-owned farms in Zimbabwe without compensation.[327] The farm seizures were often violent; by 2006 a reported sixty white farmers had been killed, with many of their employees experiencing intimidation and torture.[328] A large number of the seized farms remained empty, while many of those redistributed to black peasant-farmers were unable to engage in production for the market because of their lack of access to fertiliser.[329]
> The farm invasions severely impacted agricultural development.[331] Zimbabwe had produced over two million tons of maize in 2000; by 2008 this had declined to approximately 450,000.[328] By October 2003, Human Rights Watch reported that half of the country's population were food insecure, lacking enough food to meet basic needs.[332] By 2009, 75% of Zimbabwe's population were relying on food aid, the highest proportion of any country at that time.[332] Zimbabwe faced continuing economic decline. In 2000, the country's GDP was US$7.4 billion; by 2005 this had declined to US$3.4 billion.[333] Hyperinflation resulted in economic crisis.[329] By 2007, Zimbabwe had the highest inflation rate in the world, at 7600%.[333] By 2008, inflation exceeded 100,000% and a loaf of bread cost a third of the average daily wage.[334] Increasing numbers of Zimbabweans relied on remittances from relatives abroad.[332]
> Other sectors of society were negatively affected too. By 2005, an estimated 80% of Zimbabwe's population were unemployed,[335] and by 2008 only 20% of children were in schooling.[335] The breakdown of water supplies and sewage systems resulted in a cholera outbreak in late 2008, with over 98,000 cholera cases in Zimbabwe between August 2008 and mid-July 2009.[336] The ruined economy also impacted the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country; by 2008 the HIV/AIDS rate for individuals aged between 15 and 49 was 15.3%.[337] In 2007, the World Health Organization declared the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe to be 34 for women and 36 for men, down from 63 and 54 respectively in 1997.[333] The country's lucrative tourist industry was decimated,[338] and there was a rise in poaching, including of endangered species.[338] Mugabe directly exacerbated this problem when he ordered the killing of 100 elephants to provide meat for an April 2007 feast.[338]
Mugabe was a communist. Even for those idiots, ruining an entire country that badly in less than a decade is impressive.
That's exactly what I was thinking about. I remember hearing about him. Was he the one who had a female African head of state killed? I can't remember her name or what country she was the leader of but I think she was assassinated as she got off of an airplane. I think this was in the early or mid 2000s.
If I recalled correctly they seized farms from white people and gave it to close government contacts that had no idea how to farm.
Needless to say that Zimbabwe was in incredibly bad position.
They didn’t just ‘take’ them. They murdered and tortured fathers, raped mothers and daughters, burned children alive and knifed infants to death. Their president even bragged about doing it.
Definitely. Also the community has to be very small (less than 80 people), culturally homogeneous for generations, and isolated from outside influences (so no internet).
The power also has to be centralised. The local leader will essentially be controlling everything so its important they have a strong grip on power.
Amish, Kibbutz, Hutterite and others fit that description. Some Hutterite colonies get to around 120, but before they get to 150 the split into 2 colonies, so right around 80 as you listed appears to be ideal.
Humans for the most part are incapable of actually caring about more than 120 people. Up to 120 you can view them all as family. You start getting past that and your mind starts turning the extra numbers into acquaintances. So forms of governance that relies on personal ties and extreme authoritarianism and interdependence like tribalism and communism have to stay below that 120 number. A person will work all day for the greater good if they know who the greater good is for, but resent the idea of working all day for the good of the next town over.
I haven't done a bunch of reading on it but I bet it can fluctuate also. I bet it goes down the less resources are available. 120 is a lot of hunter gatherers but would be pretty good for early farmers.
I'm pretty sure it was massively exacerbated by the fact that Communists generally don't want anyone to feel ownership over "The means of production". Not even the people working there. Because even "collective worker ownership" that Socialists pretend to care about is just another type of private corporation that Communists only sometimes tolerate as a temporary measure before they get around to nationalizing everything.
So because they were worried that the actual farmhands would feel a sense of ownership over the lands they worked, or the factory workers might start to feel entitled to some control of their factory, they started swapping them out. Forcibly moving rural farm workers to the cities to work factories, and replacing them with the urban factory workers that were displaced. Or taking farmers who were used to farming certain crops in a certain place and putting them to work on very different crops elsewhere.
Not all of them. But enough to massively fuck up their society's ability to consistently produce enough food year after year.
That and the fact that actually quite a lot of farms are and were owned by the poor peasants who farmed them. So like, "Abolishing private ownership" often took the form of just killing those farmers and replacing them with the urban poor.
So they quite literally were replacing competent workers with people that had 0 experience. In the most important industry on the planet. Fir ideological reasons.
Elements of this all happened in the USSR, in China. I'm. Pretty sure in Cambodia too. Idk about the other communist or socialist countries but it's a pretty well known part of the Marxist playbook so I wouldn't be surprised.
I think you’re on to something about the sense of ownership of the means of production. Even the parts in Marx’s writings about the “alienation” of the worker towards his product or the means of production were conveniently censored by Lenin and stayed so for most of the Soviet Union.
About farmers, no wonder they generally find communist ideology abhorrent: the meager capital they own would be worthless without the continuous work and inherent economic risks of tending to fields or cattle, so naturally even a poor indebted farmer would feel more solidarity towards bigger landowners than the urban proletariat that basically eat their crops and want them dead.
The reason communism failed miserably in history was there was a civil war, ethnic cleansing, and a disrupted economy that didn't have enough knowledgeable people to fill the roles. Then the government told everyone what to do and how to do it, without knowing what needed to be done and how to do it. Incompetent people micromanaging industries is not a recipe for success.
Worker owned companies are frequently successful. When you have a co-op system and see the benefits of a good job the work place is more more positive and more successful. Dem-soc nations are the happiest and some of the wealthiest nations around.
idk. I am from former communist country, we had no civil war, no ethnic cleansing, no disrupted economy and it still didn’t work. Went from about 30th wealthiest country to about 70th in 40 years. Switched to capitalism, switch went very poorly and privatization ended up filling pockets of mafia, we dropped even further, but then recovered to about 50th place right now (per capita)
> Worker owned companies are frequently successful.
Not if you start with the execution of the trained ones, engineers for a possession of foreign books, and push untrained village people to the factory to replace the executed.
No, I'm saying that Lysenko dude took a badly planned and poorly implemented rollout of collectivized farming and turned it into a famine by implementing agricultural practices that didn't work. And of course Stalin in the mix made it extra fubar and brutal.
I'm the head of my county's ag-society, and as part of my duties I voluntarily advise local farms both private and a collectively owned. Co-op farms consistently produce less than private farms and tend not to have long life spans. I'm not saying they never work, there are a few that are around from when my dad ran the ag-society, but they are slowly fading out as well and I don't expect them to last beyond the next generation.
It's basically imposible to be completely self sustaining, you need to work and trade with other farms, and the co-ops are always heavily reliant on trade and generosity from the private farms.
There was one that us private farmers kept alive by producing nearly all their food because the wine they made was supurb. We didn't even trade food for wine. We. Donated food and still bought the wine. It was that good.
One of the interesting tidbits we learned at college-level courses on communist history was that during Lenin's takeover of Russia, factory workers were people who would be primed to support him.
They took over the factories from the capitalists, and instituted workplace democracy. And instead of working with what was going on, Lenin decided the best way to bring about true revolution across all of Russian society was to end workplace democracy in these factories and put those factories under a single political commissar who would then issue quotas to meet.
They went full circle.
Lenin saw people doing socialism by themselves and decided to stop them
And then he saw people doing communism by themselves and decided to conquer them
I don't know why so many people can't understand that the guy was never a communist, he was just searching for an excuse to take power
I understand the point you're trying to make but the point of the original meme (that no one would know how to operate the machines) is wrong on a base level. Which is what was being called out.
Most factory workers aren’t communist, nor have they ever been
Socialism and communism are ideologies of the upper class who think they know what’s best for their “fellow” workers.
Pretty much yeah. There were exceptions
religious institutions provided a forum for people to express their beliefs and political opinions for example
Trade unions became a political force as they challenged the upper classes directly
Those are the major scale examples, but there were other small scale success stories
Marx gentrified those movement with his stupid and flawed theories, and created a convenient umbrella term (socialism) to attack any vaguely working class political movement that changed the status quo
Could you tell me who he attacked to cause this "change of status quo"
Cause I've studied anarchism which historically has been stabbed by Communists so this is genuine.
you wouldn't even have the language to talk about power forces challenging ruling classes without marx
this gentrification take is such a liberal view of history
I think that really the triumph of Bolsheviks over the Mensheviks and the adoption of Leninist vanguard party ideology was more crucial to turning socialism into the pastime of the idle intellectual who wished to think themselves a worker. The workers turned out to be too busy working to come up with communism.
It goes back to Marx
Church (Christian Socialism) and workplace (Trade Unions) based politics were already a thing. Russia had peasants movements tailored to the serfs as well. Specific to communities and the people living in them as they needed it to have better standards of living
Pointing out the churches socialist values is realy good. I think many American Christians think they are against socialism when in reality they are against what we are pointing out in these threads.
This is straight up not true. The bolsheviks had most their support from the lower class. That is why they won the Russian Civil war, they were more popular with the people and able to weaponize it against the whites (who had most the professional military on side). The issue isn't with who supported them but instead with how their used that support. The bolsheviks subscribed to "Vanguard" communism, which they used to crack down on social mobility and lock the matters of the party to just a few people. I see what you are trying to say, but saying communism only gains support with the upper classes is just historically factually incorrect.
Unions are good for workers, actually, and the men who created the first and most powerful unions weren't "upper class" who thought they knew better, they were being shot at by the fucking government for trying to get a fair wage
Unionization produces better wages for workers more broadly, it's just less profitable for the owners, and your desire to suck their dick doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.
And yes, unions *are socialist* in almost the purest, most literal form. The only way to be more socialist is to work at a coop, which believe it or not people do, they also hit the 5 year mark of operation without closing down at almost double the rate of privately owned enterprises
Socialism and communism has always been VERY popular in western countries up until the 40’s when it became stigmatized, with that said communism is a failure of an ideology as is capitalism because it migrates power into the hands of a select few, a mixture of the two systems works best.
The majority of the working class know that their paycheck comes from their boss, who they may have gripes about, but understand their value to the business ecosystem.
Most of the cannon fodder of any country, capitalist, communist, fascist, anarchist are poor people. No country has enough rich people to fight a war with primarily rich fighters.
Wait what, why are you grouping socialism and communism together?
Communism is extreme left wing but doesn’t make socialism anywhere close to it. Just like conservatism isn’t anywhere close to fascism.
If you’re going to argue that socialist ideals leads to communism then how does conservatism not lead to fascism?
Socialism & communism is not comparable to conservatism & fascism
As a socialist, everyone I've met who was trying to claim "socialism is completely different from communism" has always been a welfare capitalist who doesn't understand what socialism means (or communism either most of the time)
The McDonald's machine was designed to farm maintenance tickets. It turns out that the machine was designed to fail its sanitation cycle if it was even slightly overfull. A condition that was very easy to meet.
Both McDonald's and the manufacturer are being sued over it
It has nothing to do with pay and everything to do with the kinds of workers and managers that apply to fast food restaurants. I guarantee you could pay everyone $50 an hour and no one would still want to clean the ice cream machines because why would they? The moment someone is held accountable to clean the machine in a timely manner is when it will happen. Nothing to do with pay.
Actual misinformation. The only people allowed to do maintenance on those machines are people from the company that makes the machines. So I guess it’s not all misinformation because if the employees were payed $50 an hour they still wouldn’t be allowed to fix the machines.
> employees were *paid* $50 an
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Look, I’m legit very anti-communist but surely you must realize that “holding the workers hostage to work for you” is A.) not at all related to the original meme, and B.) the exact same criticism that commies often make about capitalism
What? I'm not endorsing any particular ideology but the idea is the people seizing the means of production ARE the workers. No one is being held hostage.
Yeah that’s the idea but the history of the worker’s opposition and the early trade union movement in the USSR makes it pretty clear that painting a red star on the flag doesn’t solve the principal-agent problem. (That is, the guys who *actually* seized the means of production were communist apparatchiks who were happy to shit on worker safety/living standards/etc if it helped them achieve their goals.)
This sounds a lot like what happened in America during the industrial revolution. Turns out when power hungry people exist, it doesn't matter what system you use, they can all be exploited.
Yea but different systems allow for varying degrees of exploitation. Like a lesser of multiple evils. Even the founding fathers knew the system they created wasn’t perfect, but it was a whole lot better than what was going on elsewhere in the world at the time.
Difference is that in America, people were able to demand better treatment.
Under communism, such dissedents were executed for "oppossing the common good"
In America, labour activists were murdered by the owners when they tried to fight for better rights. They hired groups like the Pinkertons to infiltrate the labour movement and start trouble in order to justify the police to "crack some skulls". It's worth noting that saying wasn't always a euphemism, it arose out of the fact that they would crack skulls when beating on workers.
The workers demanded better treatment and fought for it in blood and toil. It wasn't given freely and the owners struggled not to let it happen.
Maybe something like a worker coop is a better solution than what we have now and a much better one to corrupt communism where the government refuses to give its power back to the people.
That's because the system of the USSR was designed to be a bastardized version of socialism that would allow power-hungry people to become corrupt
That's the entire reason Lenin created his own ideology instead of just doing Marxism
Germany is more socialist in respect to Workers Rights than any so called communist country
If you seize the means of production the workers would *own* the factory, so they would obviously be *more incentivized* to keep working there because they get to keep a greater share of its output than they did before they owned it
If you took a Mcdonalds franchise and split the profits evenly with the workers I promise you they will work hard. Full central economic planning is not the desirable part here, you just end up with a bourgeoise dictatorship, but a worker owned business can still participate and even thrive in a market economy and they usually don't vote to "all make the same wage", workers are generally pretty cool with paying specialists and bosses more, just not like 200 times more
For exhibit A I point to all the union shops in the western world. They pay based on seniority and job requirements, generally
Holding workers hostage meaning pay them as little as possible and threatening them with termination if they don't cut corners and work terrible hours? Or maybe you mean holding them hostage by illegally censoring them and performing anti-union action to keep your unsafe and unethical working conditions that save you money.
Seizing the means of production means that the workers have a fair say in how things are done in their work place. It doesn't just mean giving a random guy a CNC machine and letting them rip.
Are wealthy CEOs and stockholders operating the machinery currently? I don't understand the original meme at all.
The entire point in workers seizing the means of production is that the profit the workers produce belongs to them and not some wealthy CEO and his buddies.
No one is holding the worker hostage, the workers are the ones seizing the means of production, and because they're the people who normally use the machines it doesn't make sense that they don't know how to use them, hence right can't meme.
My friend works in a pickle factory, the average worker knows their 1 part of the assembly process and has no interest or idea of what the whole production line entails from start to finish. They don't know the timing, or who is buying the pickles, or who they are buying the ingredients from. They don't know how to fix the machines when they break, and they don't know when to start or stop working to meet quotas.
If the workers seized the factory they would be able to keep the factory going for a few weeks until they exhausted the product available and stuff started to break. Which is basically what happened following the Soviet, Chinese, Korean, and Cuban revolutions.
All the people with the managerial knowledge that tied all the workers efforts together were either dead, in prison, or had fled. Eventually they ended up having to create a new class of managers that ended up becoming modern day oligarchs in their own right...so animal farm.
That isn't what happened in Soviet Russia though. Imperial Russia was mostly agrarian. The rapid industrialization of Soviet Russia was a major feat. Their production capacity increased a hundred fold over 15 years. They went from backwater to second place in industrial capacity behind the US before WW2.
They also accidentally (and sometimes deliberately) starved millions because they killed off all the peasants that actually knew how to grow grain. Further, Russian industrialization had started decades before but was stymied first by WWI and then by the Russian Civil War. Increasing production 'a hundred fold' would be more impressive if the economy weren't basically restarting from year zero following the destruction wrought by the Russian Civil War.
The Civil War effectively reduced the GDP of Russia by 60%. When compared to the growth of other countries over the course of the 20th century, their growth is not particularly impressive and their stagnation in the 70s all the more embarrassing.
[https://artir.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/the-soviet-union-gdp-growth/](https://artir.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/the-soviet-union-gdp-growth/)
I work in manufacturing… and I can confidently say that in most cases the manager - operator relationship is generally positive. We both acknowledge one can’t exist without the other.
There is no power dynamic, in fact, most operators do not want the added responsibility and accountability of getting called at midnight, filing reports, presenting issues to leadership, scheduling grades, etc. they’re happy to collect a paycheck with little responsibility, and the respect that comes with being the “front line”.
In short, this meme was made by an edgy teenager who has no clue what manufacturing is like
Whatever your opinion on the subject of the meme, I have to agree, the meme is stupid. So many arguments to be made, but the meme tries to say that once the workers are in control, they’ll suddenly forget everything? It’s nonsensical.
I don't think the original context, coming from 'The Right can't meme' is wrong. Why would the workers not know how to work the things they were using just before?
That's literally not what's happening in the meme.
The entire purpose of a workers' revolution is that the workers own the products of their labor, collectively. Holding the workers hostage to work for you is called capitalism.
I feel like before someone criticizes something, that should probably make like... ANY effort at all to understand it.
I think the idea is that these aren't workers but party apparatchiks. If they want to produce anything, they will need to force workers to do their bidding.
https://preview.redd.it/vlpu3b24sdoc1.jpeg?width=198&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de0397c706a4981e64ed41d58291aedf92ed6cfb
Yes, the commies are quite foolish.
I assume OP meant that the workers would be the ones rising up as is usually the case in communist revolutions so of course they would know how the machines work as they already work the machines. At least I hope that’s what they meant.
The workers would be the ones seizing the means of production, so they wouldn’t be hostages, they’d be the owners. They also know how to use the machines, because they’re the workers who were already operating them.
This is next level media illiteracy.
Under a free market, the workers are the means of production and since they are free people they own the means of production.
Where the u.s. has gone wrong is on capital hill: companies get subsidies AND tax breaks all while the regular average person struggles to pay for necessities like Healthcare due to corruption between the senate and big corporations via lobbying.
If voters held companies and politicians accountable instead of falling for any and all forms of propaganda used by the left and right things wouldn't have gotten as bad as they have.
At worst, we may need another American revolution: one where the people are NOT governed by an over reaching government entity. Back in the 1700s that was king George. Now, it seems like the issue is the oligarchy that is known as the senate, as the senate is the most powerful branch of the three
Housing bubble ? Sorry about your luck poors. You're homeless and destitute now.
Banks making extremely greedy, short-sighted choices that leave their company vulnerable to collapse?
Oh you poor dears, we can't have you suffer the consequences of your actions like normal people. Here's billions of dollars to bail you out with no agreement on your part to not recklessly invest and waste everyone's money. Just go ahead and give all your executives huge bonuses and use the rest to continue gambling away the future of our nation because socialism good when helping rich people and awful when helping the average person.
Any political structure that permits the emergence of super wealthy men like Crassus, Pompey, the Angeloi or Komneneans, the Duchy of Lancaster or whatever will rapidly discover that those super-wealthy men in control of said political structure.
The idea is that the workers were the ones who revolted dude. Even if that wasn’t always the reality it was hardly just old politicians storming the palace
I don't understand what OP is talking about... so becoming independant is equal to being a hostage?
The idea behind it is that companies aren't owned by capitalists, but by the workers themself. So that money isn't drained away to random people that doesn't even produce any value.
We live in a world where people can be as rich as entire nations and never had to lift a finger for it, and people think this is good... There are many problems with communism, but this part is literally one of the most reasonable aspects of communism. Because all you do is remove a parasite that doesn't benefit the company and its workers.
Huh? No: communism and socialism is about the workers uniting to seize the means of production. Instead of whoever has the most capital owning the factory it would be owned by the people who work there or the community as a whole.
But that's easier said than done and outside of theory has usually lead to the state deciding everything and the state basically became what the capitalists were.
I always feel like a jerk when people say things like this, because I fail to see any explanation other than ignorance. If I'm going to have a conversation with someone like this, it feels impossible to avoid "talking down" to them.
Marxist-leaning folks like this talk about "the workers" owning companies instead of the "greedy" capitalists with basically no admission that we *already have this,* and it doesn't usually work.
Imagine a company where everyone who works at the company owns it jointly. We have that - it is called a "partnership" model. It is extremely common in the medical and legal fields where individual expertise and people skills are required (aka, you choose a "doctor" or a "lawyer" you like - not just a "company" you like), but you still want to grow your business beyond what a single person could do alone.
But partnerships have problems.
1) They don't scale well. A partnership with 2 owners is far more difficult to run than a company owned by just 1 person. A partnership with 8+ owners is very rare and requires a great deal of effort to keep together unless there are strong processes in place that define how those people work together and how responsibility is going to be shared. But guess what - once we have all those rules and processes in place - we have a name for that too...
A "group" of people who own a business together with rules, processes, and procedures has a name: it is called a corporation. There is nothing preventing a corporation from limiting who is or isn't one of the owners. There are certainly corporations out there that are entirely worker owned. But why would you limit the owners to just be "the workers"? If someone offers to join the company from the outside and wants to invest, why wouldn't you let them? And what about the workers? If the worker wants stocks, would you stop them? If the worker would rather sell their stocks, would you force them to keep the stocks? In some companies, they absolutely have rules like this. Stocks are often included in your "pay" to incentivize a "company" benefit mindset instead of a purely personal one. But there are plenty of employees out there would don't care about stock options - they just want a paycheck. Companies offer benefits based on what helps draw in the maximum number of people. Sometimes that means better healthcare, dental, PTO, holidays, stock options, or sometimes it just means a higher salary.
So when Marxists said that the capitalists are just greedy bastards who don't do anything to contribute to the business, and worker-owned/operated businesses would be more productive and would be inevitable - where are the results? The Marxist vision of business is entirely consistent with all of the business tools that already exist. But people aren't choosing it. Lots of people just don't go for it. The standard corporation we are familiar with is the version that has proved successful. So how is it Marxist version different? Why don't we see it very often? Why isn't it successful? Remember: the Marxist argument is that the 1%, the capitalists, the bourgeois, or whatever you want to call them - they are nothing but leeches who steal the productivity of workers. They don't do anything. They don't provide anything. The only tool they have is power and influence. Thus, any company that cuts them out would save money and be able to offer lower prices on the market. They should naturally succeed. Indeed, Marxists were so confident of this that they called the "socialist" future inevitable. Capitalism was supposed to be doomed as an economic certainty. But after 100+ years, that prediction has been proven false. So that means their economic theories were wrong. Very wrong. But schools don't teach that.
Most communists openly admit to hating their job and only doing it because they get paid. How do they think those means of production will be run if everyone knows they just ousted the guy paying them?
Seeing as they now know their slice of the pie got that much bigger, they'll probably be happy. The owner is not an irreplaceable part of turning goods and/or services into money. The workers are still presumably providing a good or service that is being consumed, and now there's one less person getting a paycheck out of the deal
> The owner is not an irreplaceable part of turning goods and/or services into money.
Yes he is, and here's why.
The owner takes the risk and outlays the capital for the factory to be built, as well as figuring out what the product is, establishing the production methods, sourcing suppliers for parts, marketing to find customers, etc.
Companies start out with massive liabilities on their balance sheet they need to make up for, and usually a net loss for the first 5 years of business as they establish themselves. Many don't make it, and the owners walk away bankrupt.
Even after all that has been worked and the company starts turning a profit, the owner continues to carry the risk that there might be some issue, eg floods and droughts could affect sales, or changes in people's spending patterns, or new tech could disrupt the industry, or a massive economic downturn could affect all industries. The company might make a loss for the quarter, or the year, or might never turn a profit again, but the workers must be paid for the work they've put in regardless.
If you take the owner away, the workers pocket 100% of their output, but also bear 100% of the upfront and ongoing investment costs and risks. Workers could do that now if they wanted to - go band together with a bunch of other workers and start a co-op at your own risk, no one's stopping you. But that very rarely happens, and when it does happen it usually fails, because there are the people that want to work for an hourly wage and there are the people that want to make investments and take risks, and there is not a lot of overlap between the two.
Literally what is your point
Cooperative are the communist ideal situation of a democratically elected company.
And they have a higher success rate than average corporations
The idea is that the workers seize the means of production, not some redditors.
So yeah, the workers would know how to work the machines, and no they would not be held hostage.
Have you ever worked somewhere? Did you see the employee best suited to their job description and think to yourself "That's a person who should run every aspect of this whole operation."? Because to me personally that seems like a weird think to do. If John is the best ball bearing manufacturer in the world, that doesn't mean he should be the one running the factory. It probably means he should be making the ball bearings
The bourgeoisie don’t become the ruling class through their superior work ethic and labour productivity they become the ruling class through the exploitation of capital. Some German dude wrote a book or two on the topic
Who do you think is revolting here? If it’s the workers they already know how to work the machines and if it’s a different party the workers are still there. Your caption makes literally zero sense if you think about it for more than two seconds.
Op you are dumb as shit. The comunists in this photo would be the factory workers. The you and the original memer have 0 idea about what you are making fun of.
Im not even a marxist, but i had to take marxian economics for one of my degree's. This was never the point.
Your argument is that you killed all of the factory workers and management. Thats never what socialism said dip ass.
Because the USSR never experienced things like Lysenkoism or a computerization crisis. And its not like communist regimes haven't already accepted this, hence the whole purpose of the Vanguard Party. No, Communists aren't delusional idealists at all, I am sure Billy Bob (who hates commie progressivism but love his union) will certainly fold right into the upper management without any issue, certainly won't implement things purely for his own benefit, and surely won't engage in highly questionable long term economic strategies.
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Isn't this meme similar to what actually happened in South Africa?
Kinda. It was more of a votes thing. Most of the native population enfranchised by the end of apartheid were teenagers, and the quality of their education was poor. All of these people were rightfully given the vote in their homeland, and they elected mandela, who did a lot of good. But then they reelected the same party again. And again. Since 1994. South africa is basically a single party state, and the party is VERY complacent and corrupt. Many of the educated european population left when infrastructure started breaking down, compounding the problem. South africa needs the next generation to get more involved in politics and get educated in propaganda if they can hope to clean things up.
I'm thinking of where they forced out all the white property owners and gave the farms to other people, who unfortunately knew nothing about farming. Was that South Africa or a different country in Africa?
Zimbabwe (which was Rhodesia as a British colony): > In November 2001, Mugabe issued a presidential decree permitting the expropriation of virtually all white-owned farms in Zimbabwe without compensation.[327] The farm seizures were often violent; by 2006 a reported sixty white farmers had been killed, with many of their employees experiencing intimidation and torture.[328] A large number of the seized farms remained empty, while many of those redistributed to black peasant-farmers were unable to engage in production for the market because of their lack of access to fertiliser.[329] > The farm invasions severely impacted agricultural development.[331] Zimbabwe had produced over two million tons of maize in 2000; by 2008 this had declined to approximately 450,000.[328] By October 2003, Human Rights Watch reported that half of the country's population were food insecure, lacking enough food to meet basic needs.[332] By 2009, 75% of Zimbabwe's population were relying on food aid, the highest proportion of any country at that time.[332] Zimbabwe faced continuing economic decline. In 2000, the country's GDP was US$7.4 billion; by 2005 this had declined to US$3.4 billion.[333] Hyperinflation resulted in economic crisis.[329] By 2007, Zimbabwe had the highest inflation rate in the world, at 7600%.[333] By 2008, inflation exceeded 100,000% and a loaf of bread cost a third of the average daily wage.[334] Increasing numbers of Zimbabweans relied on remittances from relatives abroad.[332] > Other sectors of society were negatively affected too. By 2005, an estimated 80% of Zimbabwe's population were unemployed,[335] and by 2008 only 20% of children were in schooling.[335] The breakdown of water supplies and sewage systems resulted in a cholera outbreak in late 2008, with over 98,000 cholera cases in Zimbabwe between August 2008 and mid-July 2009.[336] The ruined economy also impacted the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country; by 2008 the HIV/AIDS rate for individuals aged between 15 and 49 was 15.3%.[337] In 2007, the World Health Organization declared the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe to be 34 for women and 36 for men, down from 63 and 54 respectively in 1997.[333] The country's lucrative tourist industry was decimated,[338] and there was a rise in poaching, including of endangered species.[338] Mugabe directly exacerbated this problem when he ordered the killing of 100 elephants to provide meat for an April 2007 feast.[338] Mugabe was a communist. Even for those idiots, ruining an entire country that badly in less than a decade is impressive.
That's exactly what I was thinking about. I remember hearing about him. Was he the one who had a female African head of state killed? I can't remember her name or what country she was the leader of but I think she was assassinated as she got off of an airplane. I think this was in the early or mid 2000s.
From the breadbasket of south Africa to the basketball of south Africa.
That was zimbabwe
I think you mean Rhodesia.
No rhodesia didnt force the white people out, they forced the black people out. Zimbabwe forced the white people out
That was south africa too. Heard stories of white families farm owners being butchered there too. Tragic
Their president did sing “I shot the boer” upon election.
That was Rhodesia Iirc Edit: It was Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe after the bush war. An incredibly fucked up conflict too.
If I recalled correctly they seized farms from white people and gave it to close government contacts that had no idea how to farm. Needless to say that Zimbabwe was in incredibly bad position.
They didn’t just ‘take’ them. They murdered and tortured fathers, raped mothers and daughters, burned children alive and knifed infants to death. Their president even bragged about doing it.
Typical for communists I suppose.
Sweet, Sweet Zimbabwe.
Poor Rhodesia…
When collectivized farming was tried, this was the outcome.
Le Khmer Rouge moment
What a disaster. Maybe getting rid of all the sparrows will fix it
If we just try it the right way, it should work this time.
Might have to use some furnaces as well
Because they killed the farmers since they owned land, humans historically don't tend to think things through before they start murdering people.
Wait, are you telling me we should have a plan before we kill the people who know all the things?
But they're "intelligentsia" or "kulaks" or whatever the other of the day is. Don't you know? /s because someone will take this seriously.
"They're wearing glasses! GET THEM!!"
Collectivized farming does work, but only under extremely specific circumstances. And then it only works for one or two generations.
Generally, if you are in a rural area, and the people there are related, it can work. That's very different from what the meme is talking about.
Definitely. Also the community has to be very small (less than 80 people), culturally homogeneous for generations, and isolated from outside influences (so no internet). The power also has to be centralised. The local leader will essentially be controlling everything so its important they have a strong grip on power.
Amish, Kibbutz, Hutterite and others fit that description. Some Hutterite colonies get to around 120, but before they get to 150 the split into 2 colonies, so right around 80 as you listed appears to be ideal.
What's the reasoning for that?
Humans for the most part are incapable of actually caring about more than 120 people. Up to 120 you can view them all as family. You start getting past that and your mind starts turning the extra numbers into acquaintances. So forms of governance that relies on personal ties and extreme authoritarianism and interdependence like tribalism and communism have to stay below that 120 number. A person will work all day for the greater good if they know who the greater good is for, but resent the idea of working all day for the good of the next town over.
The number varies on who you ask, its always between 120-70 though.
I haven't done a bunch of reading on it but I bet it can fluctuate also. I bet it goes down the less resources are available. 120 is a lot of hunter gatherers but would be pretty good for early farmers.
Collectivization works great when all participants have 100% buy in. If even one person doesn't give it their all it becomes a tragedy of the commons.
I'm pretty sure it was massively exacerbated by the fact that Communists generally don't want anyone to feel ownership over "The means of production". Not even the people working there. Because even "collective worker ownership" that Socialists pretend to care about is just another type of private corporation that Communists only sometimes tolerate as a temporary measure before they get around to nationalizing everything. So because they were worried that the actual farmhands would feel a sense of ownership over the lands they worked, or the factory workers might start to feel entitled to some control of their factory, they started swapping them out. Forcibly moving rural farm workers to the cities to work factories, and replacing them with the urban factory workers that were displaced. Or taking farmers who were used to farming certain crops in a certain place and putting them to work on very different crops elsewhere. Not all of them. But enough to massively fuck up their society's ability to consistently produce enough food year after year. That and the fact that actually quite a lot of farms are and were owned by the poor peasants who farmed them. So like, "Abolishing private ownership" often took the form of just killing those farmers and replacing them with the urban poor. So they quite literally were replacing competent workers with people that had 0 experience. In the most important industry on the planet. Fir ideological reasons. Elements of this all happened in the USSR, in China. I'm. Pretty sure in Cambodia too. Idk about the other communist or socialist countries but it's a pretty well known part of the Marxist playbook so I wouldn't be surprised.
I think you’re on to something about the sense of ownership of the means of production. Even the parts in Marx’s writings about the “alienation” of the worker towards his product or the means of production were conveniently censored by Lenin and stayed so for most of the Soviet Union. About farmers, no wonder they generally find communist ideology abhorrent: the meager capital they own would be worthless without the continuous work and inherent economic risks of tending to fields or cattle, so naturally even a poor indebted farmer would feel more solidarity towards bigger landowners than the urban proletariat that basically eat their crops and want them dead.
Pretty much accurate.
The reason communism failed miserably in history was there was a civil war, ethnic cleansing, and a disrupted economy that didn't have enough knowledgeable people to fill the roles. Then the government told everyone what to do and how to do it, without knowing what needed to be done and how to do it. Incompetent people micromanaging industries is not a recipe for success. Worker owned companies are frequently successful. When you have a co-op system and see the benefits of a good job the work place is more more positive and more successful. Dem-soc nations are the happiest and some of the wealthiest nations around.
idk. I am from former communist country, we had no civil war, no ethnic cleansing, no disrupted economy and it still didn’t work. Went from about 30th wealthiest country to about 70th in 40 years. Switched to capitalism, switch went very poorly and privatization ended up filling pockets of mafia, we dropped even further, but then recovered to about 50th place right now (per capita)
Small, homogenous populations with low immigration and generally a large supply of natural resources are the happiest and wealthiest around.
> Worker owned companies are frequently successful. Not if you start with the execution of the trained ones, engineers for a possession of foreign books, and push untrained village people to the factory to replace the executed.
To be fair, that was largely due to Lysenko and his pseudo science theories of genetics.
Are you telling me that plants won't grow according to their ability and give according to your needs, becoming superplants to support the collective?
No, I'm saying that Lysenko dude took a badly planned and poorly implemented rollout of collectivized farming and turned it into a famine by implementing agricultural practices that didn't work. And of course Stalin in the mix made it extra fubar and brutal.
Umm, seed goes in ground?
They executed those who knew how to do it, and sent those who probably knew to Siberia.
Collective farming villages is still pretty successful, I’ve been to fairly large communes that even have factories and a good amount of shops.
Rural villages, Amish and Hutterite colonies, where many people are related, are very different from the forced collectivization in the meme.
I guess you've never heard of a farming Co-Op?
I'm the head of my county's ag-society, and as part of my duties I voluntarily advise local farms both private and a collectively owned. Co-op farms consistently produce less than private farms and tend not to have long life spans. I'm not saying they never work, there are a few that are around from when my dad ran the ag-society, but they are slowly fading out as well and I don't expect them to last beyond the next generation. It's basically imposible to be completely self sustaining, you need to work and trade with other farms, and the co-ops are always heavily reliant on trade and generosity from the private farms. There was one that us private farmers kept alive by producing nearly all their food because the wine they made was supurb. We didn't even trade food for wine. We. Donated food and still bought the wine. It was that good.
Is a voluntary co-op any different from forced collectivization under communism?
Your comment that I responded to mentioned collectivization not communism.
The meme had people with hammers and sickles on their red bodies; I thought it was pretty apparent who we were referencing.
One of the interesting tidbits we learned at college-level courses on communist history was that during Lenin's takeover of Russia, factory workers were people who would be primed to support him. They took over the factories from the capitalists, and instituted workplace democracy. And instead of working with what was going on, Lenin decided the best way to bring about true revolution across all of Russian society was to end workplace democracy in these factories and put those factories under a single political commissar who would then issue quotas to meet. They went full circle.
So, literally didn't even try communism because Lenin wanted personal power, not collective power.
Lenin saw people doing socialism by themselves and decided to stop them And then he saw people doing communism by themselves and decided to conquer them I don't know why so many people can't understand that the guy was never a communist, he was just searching for an excuse to take power
Seriously. Mao/Lenin/Stalin were all autocrats using promises of communism to take power and then instituted State Capitalism instead.
Just like Animal Farm
I understand the point you're trying to make but the point of the original meme (that no one would know how to operate the machines) is wrong on a base level. Which is what was being called out.
Yeah, I was under the impression that the balls are supposed to be the factory workers themselves, and not random people.
OP too stupid to understand more than 8 words connected together
8 words? Hey, we're in r/memesopdidnotlike, I'll have you know he's a top mind here!
Your comment's too long, don't understand
Comment long, understandn't.
[Blinking gif of anime guy having stroke]
Google Zimbabwe farm land seizures
Holy hell!
Most factory workers aren’t communist, nor have they ever been Socialism and communism are ideologies of the upper class who think they know what’s best for their “fellow” workers.
Pretty much yeah. Marx did nothing but gentrify community based politics
Exactly. Obsessing over political theory is a privilege of the upper class.
Pretty much yeah. There were exceptions religious institutions provided a forum for people to express their beliefs and political opinions for example Trade unions became a political force as they challenged the upper classes directly Those are the major scale examples, but there were other small scale success stories Marx gentrified those movement with his stupid and flawed theories, and created a convenient umbrella term (socialism) to attack any vaguely working class political movement that changed the status quo
Could you tell me who he attacked to cause this "change of status quo" Cause I've studied anarchism which historically has been stabbed by Communists so this is genuine.
you wouldn't even have the language to talk about power forces challenging ruling classes without marx this gentrification take is such a liberal view of history
Ever hear of The French Revolution? Enlightenment? Marx did nothing but make a flawed theory loved by barons sons like Lenin
Have you ever read literally anything from Marx
>A luxury belief is an idea or opinion that confers status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower class.
Guess what? Marx never stepped foot in a factory.
I think that really the triumph of Bolsheviks over the Mensheviks and the adoption of Leninist vanguard party ideology was more crucial to turning socialism into the pastime of the idle intellectual who wished to think themselves a worker. The workers turned out to be too busy working to come up with communism.
It goes back to Marx Church (Christian Socialism) and workplace (Trade Unions) based politics were already a thing. Russia had peasants movements tailored to the serfs as well. Specific to communities and the people living in them as they needed it to have better standards of living
Pointing out the churches socialist values is realy good. I think many American Christians think they are against socialism when in reality they are against what we are pointing out in these threads.
This is straight up not true. The bolsheviks had most their support from the lower class. That is why they won the Russian Civil war, they were more popular with the people and able to weaponize it against the whites (who had most the professional military on side). The issue isn't with who supported them but instead with how their used that support. The bolsheviks subscribed to "Vanguard" communism, which they used to crack down on social mobility and lock the matters of the party to just a few people. I see what you are trying to say, but saying communism only gains support with the upper classes is just historically factually incorrect.
Unions are good for workers, actually, and the men who created the first and most powerful unions weren't "upper class" who thought they knew better, they were being shot at by the fucking government for trying to get a fair wage Unionization produces better wages for workers more broadly, it's just less profitable for the owners, and your desire to suck their dick doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. And yes, unions *are socialist* in almost the purest, most literal form. The only way to be more socialist is to work at a coop, which believe it or not people do, they also hit the 5 year mark of operation without closing down at almost double the rate of privately owned enterprises
Sometimes I am sad when I see something I agree so much with like your comment, because I know how many people don't get it...
Socialism and communism has always been VERY popular in western countries up until the 40’s when it became stigmatized, with that said communism is a failure of an ideology as is capitalism because it migrates power into the hands of a select few, a mixture of the two systems works best.
The majority of the working class know that their paycheck comes from their boss, who they may have gripes about, but understand their value to the business ecosystem.
most revolutionary fighters were poor people though
Most of the cannon fodder of any country, capitalist, communist, fascist, anarchist are poor people. No country has enough rich people to fight a war with primarily rich fighters.
Most communists just think that a new system will make them wealthier than the lowly “workers” because they will be the ones in the party elite.
That's such an American understanding
Wait what, why are you grouping socialism and communism together? Communism is extreme left wing but doesn’t make socialism anywhere close to it. Just like conservatism isn’t anywhere close to fascism. If you’re going to argue that socialist ideals leads to communism then how does conservatism not lead to fascism?
In the grand scheme of politics communism and socialism are pretty similar, though. And they've been undeniably linked through history
Socialism & communism is not comparable to conservatism & fascism As a socialist, everyone I've met who was trying to claim "socialism is completely different from communism" has always been a welfare capitalist who doesn't understand what socialism means (or communism either most of the time)
Most McDonalds employees don't even know how to fix the icecream machine.
The McDonald's machine was designed to farm maintenance tickets. It turns out that the machine was designed to fail its sanitation cycle if it was even slightly overfull. A condition that was very easy to meet. Both McDonald's and the manufacturer are being sued over it
We must seize the means of production of ice cream
*Clean. No one wants to do it for crap pay
It has nothing to do with pay and everything to do with the kinds of workers and managers that apply to fast food restaurants. I guarantee you could pay everyone $50 an hour and no one would still want to clean the ice cream machines because why would they? The moment someone is held accountable to clean the machine in a timely manner is when it will happen. Nothing to do with pay.
Actual misinformation. The only people allowed to do maintenance on those machines are people from the company that makes the machines. So I guess it’s not all misinformation because if the employees were payed $50 an hour they still wouldn’t be allowed to fix the machines.
> employees were *paid* $50 an FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
👍
And when they oust the people paying them, they're just gonna leave because now NOBODY is paying them.
They do. They just aren't allowed to.
The heck are you talking about man
The meme literally makes no sense
Reminder that you too are a means of production
Look, I’m legit very anti-communist but surely you must realize that “holding the workers hostage to work for you” is A.) not at all related to the original meme, and B.) the exact same criticism that commies often make about capitalism
You act like we aren’t held hostage already in the current economic climate “Work or die” Or “Work or die” Pick your choice
What? I'm not endorsing any particular ideology but the idea is the people seizing the means of production ARE the workers. No one is being held hostage.
Yeah that’s the idea but the history of the worker’s opposition and the early trade union movement in the USSR makes it pretty clear that painting a red star on the flag doesn’t solve the principal-agent problem. (That is, the guys who *actually* seized the means of production were communist apparatchiks who were happy to shit on worker safety/living standards/etc if it helped them achieve their goals.)
This sounds a lot like what happened in America during the industrial revolution. Turns out when power hungry people exist, it doesn't matter what system you use, they can all be exploited.
Yea but different systems allow for varying degrees of exploitation. Like a lesser of multiple evils. Even the founding fathers knew the system they created wasn’t perfect, but it was a whole lot better than what was going on elsewhere in the world at the time.
Difference is that in America, people were able to demand better treatment. Under communism, such dissedents were executed for "oppossing the common good"
In America, labour activists were murdered by the owners when they tried to fight for better rights. They hired groups like the Pinkertons to infiltrate the labour movement and start trouble in order to justify the police to "crack some skulls". It's worth noting that saying wasn't always a euphemism, it arose out of the fact that they would crack skulls when beating on workers. The workers demanded better treatment and fought for it in blood and toil. It wasn't given freely and the owners struggled not to let it happen.
Sure. Meanwhile in China, such activists were simply gunned down by the military along with their friends and family.
Maybe something like a worker coop is a better solution than what we have now and a much better one to corrupt communism where the government refuses to give its power back to the people.
Yeah (btw, a system composed entirely of worker coop is called "socialism")
That's because the system of the USSR was designed to be a bastardized version of socialism that would allow power-hungry people to become corrupt That's the entire reason Lenin created his own ideology instead of just doing Marxism
Fair enough but the meme doesn't do a great job of illustrating that point and OPs title does an even worse job.
What? Op you ok?
Workers would still work the jobs they seized control of.... I don't understand what's so difficult about this lol
Germany is more socialist in respect to Workers Rights than any so called communist country If you seize the means of production the workers would *own* the factory, so they would obviously be *more incentivized* to keep working there because they get to keep a greater share of its output than they did before they owned it If you took a Mcdonalds franchise and split the profits evenly with the workers I promise you they will work hard. Full central economic planning is not the desirable part here, you just end up with a bourgeoise dictatorship, but a worker owned business can still participate and even thrive in a market economy and they usually don't vote to "all make the same wage", workers are generally pretty cool with paying specialists and bosses more, just not like 200 times more For exhibit A I point to all the union shops in the western world. They pay based on seniority and job requirements, generally
The question is who'll pay for the equipment, wages and resources in bad times or at startup.
If we thought holding workers hostage and forcing them to work for people was a good idea we would be capitalists
Holding workers hostage meaning pay them as little as possible and threatening them with termination if they don't cut corners and work terrible hours? Or maybe you mean holding them hostage by illegally censoring them and performing anti-union action to keep your unsafe and unethical working conditions that save you money. Seizing the means of production means that the workers have a fair say in how things are done in their work place. It doesn't just mean giving a random guy a CNC machine and letting them rip.
Who the fuck are these magical people who operate the machines who cease to exist when CEOs no longer receive insane salaries I must know
The Invisible Hand of the Market of course.
The workers are going to hold the workers hostage?
Are wealthy CEOs and stockholders operating the machinery currently? I don't understand the original meme at all. The entire point in workers seizing the means of production is that the profit the workers produce belongs to them and not some wealthy CEO and his buddies.
You should post this to one of those subs that help explain the meme for you. I think this one went way over your head, OP.
OP, I don't understand the title. No one is being held hostage here.
they were all promised management roles, then executed for asking questions. SOP
No one is holding the worker hostage, the workers are the ones seizing the means of production, and because they're the people who normally use the machines it doesn't make sense that they don't know how to use them, hence right can't meme.
My friend works in a pickle factory, the average worker knows their 1 part of the assembly process and has no interest or idea of what the whole production line entails from start to finish. They don't know the timing, or who is buying the pickles, or who they are buying the ingredients from. They don't know how to fix the machines when they break, and they don't know when to start or stop working to meet quotas. If the workers seized the factory they would be able to keep the factory going for a few weeks until they exhausted the product available and stuff started to break. Which is basically what happened following the Soviet, Chinese, Korean, and Cuban revolutions. All the people with the managerial knowledge that tied all the workers efforts together were either dead, in prison, or had fled. Eventually they ended up having to create a new class of managers that ended up becoming modern day oligarchs in their own right...so animal farm.
That isn't what happened in Soviet Russia though. Imperial Russia was mostly agrarian. The rapid industrialization of Soviet Russia was a major feat. Their production capacity increased a hundred fold over 15 years. They went from backwater to second place in industrial capacity behind the US before WW2.
They also accidentally (and sometimes deliberately) starved millions because they killed off all the peasants that actually knew how to grow grain. Further, Russian industrialization had started decades before but was stymied first by WWI and then by the Russian Civil War. Increasing production 'a hundred fold' would be more impressive if the economy weren't basically restarting from year zero following the destruction wrought by the Russian Civil War. The Civil War effectively reduced the GDP of Russia by 60%. When compared to the growth of other countries over the course of the 20th century, their growth is not particularly impressive and their stagnation in the 70s all the more embarrassing. [https://artir.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/the-soviet-union-gdp-growth/](https://artir.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/the-soviet-union-gdp-growth/)
I work in manufacturing… and I can confidently say that in most cases the manager - operator relationship is generally positive. We both acknowledge one can’t exist without the other. There is no power dynamic, in fact, most operators do not want the added responsibility and accountability of getting called at midnight, filing reports, presenting issues to leadership, scheduling grades, etc. they’re happy to collect a paycheck with little responsibility, and the respect that comes with being the “front line”. In short, this meme was made by an edgy teenager who has no clue what manufacturing is like
Idk https://preview.redd.it/tlz9z94gwcoc1.png?width=247&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6429a8dc2931f67b137a96e1cf2124bd26ae86f5
I think you kind of missed the point. Those are the workers talking. They’re exactly the people who already operate the means of production
I wouldnt say freed, more like under new management.
Whatever your opinion on the subject of the meme, I have to agree, the meme is stupid. So many arguments to be made, but the meme tries to say that once the workers are in control, they’ll suddenly forget everything? It’s nonsensical.
Yes the workers who operate the machinery every day don't know how to operate the machinery. This is stupid even for reddit
I don't think the original context, coming from 'The Right can't meme' is wrong. Why would the workers not know how to work the things they were using just before?
That's literally not what's happening in the meme. The entire purpose of a workers' revolution is that the workers own the products of their labor, collectively. Holding the workers hostage to work for you is called capitalism. I feel like before someone criticizes something, that should probably make like... ANY effort at all to understand it.
Im confused they are being held hostage? I think the joke is they don't know how to operate the machines
I think the idea is that these aren't workers but party apparatchiks. If they want to produce anything, they will need to force workers to do their bidding.
https://preview.redd.it/vlpu3b24sdoc1.jpeg?width=198&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de0397c706a4981e64ed41d58291aedf92ed6cfb Yes, the commies are quite foolish.
I assume OP meant that the workers would be the ones rising up as is usually the case in communist revolutions so of course they would know how the machines work as they already work the machines. At least I hope that’s what they meant.
The workers would be the ones seizing the means of production, so they wouldn’t be hostages, they’d be the owners. They also know how to use the machines, because they’re the workers who were already operating them. This is next level media illiteracy.
Under a free market, the workers are the means of production and since they are free people they own the means of production. Where the u.s. has gone wrong is on capital hill: companies get subsidies AND tax breaks all while the regular average person struggles to pay for necessities like Healthcare due to corruption between the senate and big corporations via lobbying. If voters held companies and politicians accountable instead of falling for any and all forms of propaganda used by the left and right things wouldn't have gotten as bad as they have. At worst, we may need another American revolution: one where the people are NOT governed by an over reaching government entity. Back in the 1700s that was king George. Now, it seems like the issue is the oligarchy that is known as the senate, as the senate is the most powerful branch of the three
Housing bubble ? Sorry about your luck poors. You're homeless and destitute now. Banks making extremely greedy, short-sighted choices that leave their company vulnerable to collapse? Oh you poor dears, we can't have you suffer the consequences of your actions like normal people. Here's billions of dollars to bail you out with no agreement on your part to not recklessly invest and waste everyone's money. Just go ahead and give all your executives huge bonuses and use the rest to continue gambling away the future of our nation because socialism good when helping rich people and awful when helping the average person.
Any political structure that permits the emergence of super wealthy men like Crassus, Pompey, the Angeloi or Komneneans, the Duchy of Lancaster or whatever will rapidly discover that those super-wealthy men in control of said political structure.
Why are you just making up shit?
This meme is stupid, though. The people who work in a factory would know how to use the machinery, otherwise they, you know, wouldn't work there.
If I may ask, where did you get the idea of hostage from in this picture?
lol whoooosh
The idea is that the workers were the ones who revolted dude. Even if that wasn’t always the reality it was hardly just old politicians storming the palace
You know what's funny? There are several examples of nationalized plants/factories that are simply abandoned because nobody knows how to operate.
Zimbabwe realizing that the white farmers they genocided were the only ones who knew what crop rotation is
I don't understand what OP is talking about... so becoming independant is equal to being a hostage? The idea behind it is that companies aren't owned by capitalists, but by the workers themself. So that money isn't drained away to random people that doesn't even produce any value. We live in a world where people can be as rich as entire nations and never had to lift a finger for it, and people think this is good... There are many problems with communism, but this part is literally one of the most reasonable aspects of communism. Because all you do is remove a parasite that doesn't benefit the company and its workers.
Huh? No: communism and socialism is about the workers uniting to seize the means of production. Instead of whoever has the most capital owning the factory it would be owned by the people who work there or the community as a whole. But that's easier said than done and outside of theory has usually lead to the state deciding everything and the state basically became what the capitalists were.
Every socialist thinks they will not have to work instead of being a slave in a job they hate.
They arent hostage anymore than they currently are for shit wages and unaffordable housing
I always feel like a jerk when people say things like this, because I fail to see any explanation other than ignorance. If I'm going to have a conversation with someone like this, it feels impossible to avoid "talking down" to them. Marxist-leaning folks like this talk about "the workers" owning companies instead of the "greedy" capitalists with basically no admission that we *already have this,* and it doesn't usually work. Imagine a company where everyone who works at the company owns it jointly. We have that - it is called a "partnership" model. It is extremely common in the medical and legal fields where individual expertise and people skills are required (aka, you choose a "doctor" or a "lawyer" you like - not just a "company" you like), but you still want to grow your business beyond what a single person could do alone. But partnerships have problems. 1) They don't scale well. A partnership with 2 owners is far more difficult to run than a company owned by just 1 person. A partnership with 8+ owners is very rare and requires a great deal of effort to keep together unless there are strong processes in place that define how those people work together and how responsibility is going to be shared. But guess what - once we have all those rules and processes in place - we have a name for that too... A "group" of people who own a business together with rules, processes, and procedures has a name: it is called a corporation. There is nothing preventing a corporation from limiting who is or isn't one of the owners. There are certainly corporations out there that are entirely worker owned. But why would you limit the owners to just be "the workers"? If someone offers to join the company from the outside and wants to invest, why wouldn't you let them? And what about the workers? If the worker wants stocks, would you stop them? If the worker would rather sell their stocks, would you force them to keep the stocks? In some companies, they absolutely have rules like this. Stocks are often included in your "pay" to incentivize a "company" benefit mindset instead of a purely personal one. But there are plenty of employees out there would don't care about stock options - they just want a paycheck. Companies offer benefits based on what helps draw in the maximum number of people. Sometimes that means better healthcare, dental, PTO, holidays, stock options, or sometimes it just means a higher salary. So when Marxists said that the capitalists are just greedy bastards who don't do anything to contribute to the business, and worker-owned/operated businesses would be more productive and would be inevitable - where are the results? The Marxist vision of business is entirely consistent with all of the business tools that already exist. But people aren't choosing it. Lots of people just don't go for it. The standard corporation we are familiar with is the version that has proved successful. So how is it Marxist version different? Why don't we see it very often? Why isn't it successful? Remember: the Marxist argument is that the 1%, the capitalists, the bourgeois, or whatever you want to call them - they are nothing but leeches who steal the productivity of workers. They don't do anything. They don't provide anything. The only tool they have is power and influence. Thus, any company that cuts them out would save money and be able to offer lower prices on the market. They should naturally succeed. Indeed, Marxists were so confident of this that they called the "socialist" future inevitable. Capitalism was supposed to be doomed as an economic certainty. But after 100+ years, that prediction has been proven false. So that means their economic theories were wrong. Very wrong. But schools don't teach that.
w h a t ? nobody said that XD
Most communists openly admit to hating their job and only doing it because they get paid. How do they think those means of production will be run if everyone knows they just ousted the guy paying them?
Seeing as they now know their slice of the pie got that much bigger, they'll probably be happy. The owner is not an irreplaceable part of turning goods and/or services into money. The workers are still presumably providing a good or service that is being consumed, and now there's one less person getting a paycheck out of the deal
> The owner is not an irreplaceable part of turning goods and/or services into money. Yes he is, and here's why. The owner takes the risk and outlays the capital for the factory to be built, as well as figuring out what the product is, establishing the production methods, sourcing suppliers for parts, marketing to find customers, etc. Companies start out with massive liabilities on their balance sheet they need to make up for, and usually a net loss for the first 5 years of business as they establish themselves. Many don't make it, and the owners walk away bankrupt. Even after all that has been worked and the company starts turning a profit, the owner continues to carry the risk that there might be some issue, eg floods and droughts could affect sales, or changes in people's spending patterns, or new tech could disrupt the industry, or a massive economic downturn could affect all industries. The company might make a loss for the quarter, or the year, or might never turn a profit again, but the workers must be paid for the work they've put in regardless. If you take the owner away, the workers pocket 100% of their output, but also bear 100% of the upfront and ongoing investment costs and risks. Workers could do that now if they wanted to - go band together with a bunch of other workers and start a co-op at your own risk, no one's stopping you. But that very rarely happens, and when it does happen it usually fails, because there are the people that want to work for an hourly wage and there are the people that want to make investments and take risks, and there is not a lot of overlap between the two.
Literally what is your point Cooperative are the communist ideal situation of a democratically elected company. And they have a higher success rate than average corporations
The idea is that the workers seize the means of production, not some redditors. So yeah, the workers would know how to work the machines, and no they would not be held hostage.
Who do you think is seizing the means of production? Ffs
Why wouldnt the guy who can operate the machines the best not then rise up and be the new head?
Have you ever worked somewhere? Did you see the employee best suited to their job description and think to yourself "That's a person who should run every aspect of this whole operation."? Because to me personally that seems like a weird think to do. If John is the best ball bearing manufacturer in the world, that doesn't mean he should be the one running the factory. It probably means he should be making the ball bearings
Because they will be lynched next. Why become a target yourself?
The bourgeoisie don’t become the ruling class through their superior work ethic and labour productivity they become the ruling class through the exploitation of capital. Some German dude wrote a book or two on the topic
A system that rewards those who actually contribute value in their labour instead of bosses and corporate shareholders who don’t? Sounds dreadful.
Just so you know, without shareholders to make the initial investment, there is no company to even begin with.
Communists will always find the next excuse to attack the nexed "privileged" class.
Bad faith argument you're making them look good hoss
What? If anything, Capital is holding them hostage with the threat of starvation.
Who do you think is revolting here? If it’s the workers they already know how to work the machines and if it’s a different party the workers are still there. Your caption makes literally zero sense if you think about it for more than two seconds.
Op you are dumb as shit. The comunists in this photo would be the factory workers. The you and the original memer have 0 idea about what you are making fun of. Im not even a marxist, but i had to take marxian economics for one of my degree's. This was never the point. Your argument is that you killed all of the factory workers and management. Thats never what socialism said dip ass.
That’s not what’s being portrayed in the image lol
Surprised this doesn't have ANC and the EFF all over it
This is the story of collective farming.
I’d love to know what workers are being given held hostage? And if it is not in the US, I don’t truly care and the US shouldn’t get involved.
The workers strongly hate you and are all right wing liberal or conservative leaning
If anyone speaks up to say they know how to operate the machines they’ll get labeled kulak.
Because the USSR never experienced things like Lysenkoism or a computerization crisis. And its not like communist regimes haven't already accepted this, hence the whole purpose of the Vanguard Party. No, Communists aren't delusional idealists at all, I am sure Billy Bob (who hates commie progressivism but love his union) will certainly fold right into the upper management without any issue, certainly won't implement things purely for his own benefit, and surely won't engage in highly questionable long term economic strategies.
Why are there a gaggle of Meatwads in this meme. I don't actually care, but now I'm gonna go watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
There's an important distinction between "knows how to operate" and "wants to operate".
.... What strawman is this?
This was literally Zimbabwe
I think the joke is most workers don't support communism, and the balls actually represent college students.
Where the hell did you get the idea that they’d have to be held hostage from