Atlas667

Capitalism is known to have killed multiple billions world-wide.

Nearly all of the poor countries on earth are capitalist. World war 1 was a war of capitalist reorganization, Fascism was a capitalist economic system, therefore WW2 was initiated by capitalist nations. Nearly all wars being fought today are all fought by capitalists on both sides of the conflict. The poorest countries on earth are capitalists. Drug cartels are organization of drug manufacturing and transporting capitalists. Capitalist nations are proven to be the most corrupt countries on earth.

Capitalism has a vested interest in making nations poor for the sake of maximizing profits in resource extraction. Capitalism has waged more war and caused more destruction than any system before it and its only been around for ~400 years.

You really want me to believe that the system that makes money from doing heinous shit is good?

Look into the primary sources behind the things you believe to be true about communism. Many, many are very shaky and were just "cold" war propaganda pieces. I've done exactly that to come to my conclusions.

What I know to be communism, through research, and reading of primary sources, is just the natural conclusion of the democratization of society. People controlling the production they need through councils that they themselves organize into a peoples state.

You are displaying your ignorance with pride.

Just because you don't know what capitalism is, doesn't mean other people do not know.

Just because you only read sources from capitalist media platforms doesn't mean there isn't a lot of "how" or "why" capitalism doesn't work.

My main message was about the profit motive incentivizing the creation of addictions for the profit of tech companies. The invisible hand may expand the development of tech, but the visible hand needs to make people addicted and unhappy.

Think a little before you speak, please. Or read a little more.

Nah, you're trying to misconstrue people.

Corporatism is not a thing. Capitalists hold fundamental power over society, they collectively are the state.

They own the things the rest of the people need to survive. Assuming you are a worker/proletariat: Can you survive right now, today, without interacting with a capitalist entity?

Can you make your living as in food, money, housing, etc, right now, solely from your own property? Statistically not. Capitalists own most of what you require.

"Corporatism" is just capitalism. Capitalists use their media platforms to say the government oppresses them equally to us. When it is proven time and time and time again that they have almost total control and influence over the government.

And you buy the narrative.

There is no "pure capitalism", bro. Capitalism will ALWAYS evolve into this. It's baked into the rules. This is very plain to see.

Go to any main news platform, of any country, on the side of any political wing, of any other capitalist nation on earth and type "corruption" in the corresponding language. You'll be met with a flood of articles.

I am against private property of production, because I know the people who need said production can also democratically run it.

You didn't say anything.

People do have this power right now, they are called capitalists, they are a part of the tech/info/policing industry.

You don't have this control, I don't have this control. It's not humans in general, it's literally the capitalists. Right now, today. Try and "timelessly universalize" that.

It's the people who make money from this who want it.

I would rather that no one particular person or group of people have that much power, and I would rather help organize society to collectively and democratically decide what goes on with this tech but I guess that proudly makes me a communist.

The definition of capitalism is the private ownership of production and its use to generate profits.

I think a coerced assumption you may have of capitalism is that corruption is an unintended side effect, but it actually follows from its principles.

How is a society to maintain unmarred democratic institutions when its elements are fundamentally unequal? Put more clearly: How can people have the same amount of political power when one class (capitalist) OWNS the production of what the other class (workers) need?

The mythology of capitalist society paints both them as equals and the state as neutral. This is a tactic to preserve the appearance of a democratic backbone. They afford this mythology because capitalists own the air waves and they have, and can have, the most influence in the state. In fact, due to this fundamental inequality capitalists are, for all practical purposes, capitalists are the state.

Capitalist societies put political power up for auction; Corruption has its highest manifestation within capitalist societies.

Now to your point. Greed will never "magically melt away". Greed can only be controlled through democratic control of what permits greed in the first place.

Communism/socialism isn't about magically doing or undoing anything, it's the science of creating firm and unalienable working class power. It must start with democratic control of production and local peoples councils. Greed will not magically melt away, greed must be constantly cut out by everyone by everyone HAVING the political power to cut it out. This means peoples councils will be convened at the neighborhood level, peoples courts will be manned, not by professional judges, but by rotating locally elected citizens. Council delegates will be bound by law to only, and exclusively, be messengers at higher level councils, etc. This is just a small picture of what democracy is. It is not me to say specifically how, of course, but communism does not involve blindly and powerlessly trusting political candidates, like capitalist society requires.

There is a reason communism is demonized by the people who control our society.

To me this is simply a consequence of the capitalist mode of production.

Just another instance of companies participating in the creation of the police state.

These companies do not do this under external pressure from the state, they do this because it benefits and consolidates their power as well.

It's bricks for their castle wall.

Corporations should not be considered a separate entity from the state. Corporations form state power. This doesn't mean they are always in-line with the state, but that they lead the state as a block, as a class, defending their common interests.

Policing is one of them.

The interests of the people who own/control technology, and have the most influence over standards, will make sure you are forced to participate.

And they have always organized society to make sure this is the case. It's not a wacky conspiracy theory. These are just the interests of the people who create and have most influence over tech, and these interests are shared in common amongst most elements of that class. So, this class, the capitalist class, will just plan (conspire) to make it necessary for you to participate.

Viewing tech in this way makes one see that the historic development of tech is not happenstance occurrence, just tech skipping along, unconsciously, into authoritarianism, but as tech being influenced by the interests of the people who have the most influence on its development: those who own it, who are often the same people who determine standards.

The internet was never a free form idea upon which everybody could sway, its a technology owned, controlled and influenced by those who produce it.

They WILL absolutely try to place social/state/labor functions behind this wall of authoritarianism. As they already have, and are currently doing with the growing ban on VPN usage, anti phone rooting measures, anti-"side loading", etc.

It should not be absurd to suggest that the people in power have used, are using, and will use power in their favor.

This is a non-discussion.

You have to know enough about underlying and higher level systems to do YOUR job well. And AI cannot fully replace human review.

An explanation to your analysis:

"War begins to be presented as the heroic alternative, the last hope, the “way out” from the unending nightmare of economic crisis, misery and unemployment. Fascism, the most complete expression of modern capitalism, glorifies war. The filthy sophism “War means Work” begins to be circulated by the poison agencies of imperialism, and filters down to the masses. ... War is only the continuation and working out of the crisis of capitalism and of the present policies of capitalism. It is inseparable from these, and cannot be treated in isolation. All the policies of capitalist reorganisation, all the policies of Fascism, can only hasten the advance to war. This is equally true of the line of a Roosevelt, a MacDonald or a Hitler. War is no sudden eruption of a new factor from outside, a vaguely future menace to be exorcised by special machinery, but is already in essence implicit in the existing factors, in the existing driving forces and policies of capitalism."

- R.P. Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, 1935

It's the ratcheting mechanism of bipartisanship.

One party develops, the other party cracks down on potential economic wins for the working class.

Both parties make sure the capitalist class stay in power.

This has been part of US plans for decades.

Sanctions are warcrimes and the US has been punishing civilians and causing their death and suffering since the 60s.

"...every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."

Secretary of State, USA, 1960.

Source: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06...

By chance I was reading about this yesterday, only in the context of unemployment.

In Das Kapital, Section 5: The Strife Between Workman and Machine, Marx talks about how the automatic looms caused some of the very first waves of mass unemployment under nascent capitalism.

He tells how in some German states they banned the use of looms, burned them, some say even drowned or strangled their creators. Both the state and the textile workers did this in order to preserve order.

Later, states allowed them but the textile workers formed sabotage units in order to destroy machines and keep their jobs.

At the end it ends with this: "It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production (the machine), but against the mode in which they are used."

Very relevant in the face of progress, especially of AI.

Ps: and a quick reminder that communism is about developing production for human needs not profits. The ills of unemployment would be unnecessary with added efficiency.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm...

Just cause knowledge can be reduced to predictive capabilities and judgement calls does not mean systems are defined arbitrarily. Everything is defined as to its relative function in/to society and our material endeavors and the social forces that limit or expand on areas of these systems.

First we have to live. That has implications; it's the base for all knowledge.

Knowledge is developing all the time and can be uncertain, sure, but the foundations aren't arbitrary.

You are doing an idealism.

I wasn't using super exploitation as a specific term, just as intense exploitation.

Slavery was not profitable in the industrial north, just the agrarian south. In the North they used cheap free-labor from Irish and German proles.

If the morality argument holds why did systematic racism not end with abolition?

The fact is that wage labor is cheaper than slave labor. Slavery was no longer required in the Americas, it was a "way of life" for the south, but unnecessary for the country economically. Especially after a global system of trade had established itself, AKA imperialism, and had placed the US into competition with India with cotton and the rest of the Americas with sugar.

My reasoning is that abolitionism only became a widely accepted moral stance BECAUSE it was no longer "necessary" for the Americas' capitalists, but the weapon of racism didn't go anywhere.

What?

Industrialization killed slavery not morality.

The reason for abolishing slavery was that it was a backwards system that prevented the super exploitation that came naturally for the proletariat.

The abolition of slavery was the proletarization of slaves. It absolutely was economic in nature. There was no economic need for slavery anymore, it didnt end racism tho, which was the ideological weapon that permited slavery.

Racism was simply repurposed for the black (and other) proletariat.

Industrialization killed slavery not morality.

Where is the goodness?

You have an idealist conception of history.

How would this allow superexploitation?

When capitalism becomes more productive than the market can handle it just shuts down the factories or when it gets more efficient it just gets rid of workers. Try doing that with slaves.

Proletarization created a pool of unemployed and a labor makret that benefited capitalists.

There is a quote by Gandhi where he is talking about the Holocaust and he says: "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs..."

This is very idealist of him. And that, I find, is the fundamental problem of nonviolence. It depends on a notion of "good" existing, or that, at the very least, the people in power will care about the appearance of their policies and revert them for "goodness" sake.

This is a fundamental problem.

It is not that good cannot exist, it is that most evil is done for material reasons, and nonviolence does not take that into account. Try stopping a war, that are done for economic reasons, by appealing to "goodness". Try stopping racism, that has economic roots (profits), by appealing to "goodness". It won't take you very far.

The defining feature of this dilemma can be found right on the edge of where the definition of defense become offense.

These types of cultural analysis always fails to be substantial because they rely on "losing our way" argument consciously or even on a subliminal moral level.

I think this one is kind of better because it tries to place social transformations on a material base, but it still fails to do that properly with tech.

Tech or the internet isnt a freeform thing that just exists and obeys everyones psyches and wants. Tech is something made in factories from specific industries by specific companies and organizations to fit within certain monetizeable bounds.

The early internet obeys the grasp of the early industry. Very little was monetized then.

The development of the internet follows the development of the monetization of the internet, it follows the rules of capital.

I'm not gonna pretend I know about the specifics of DB, but tales of crappy public services are plenty around the world and a lot of the critique is aimed at enabling privatization.

My anecdotal evidence is that these public entities usually suffer from lack of funding or incompetence fueled by corruption, that usually takes a few forms: - the contracting of work to a third party with kickback (incentives to continously do sloppy work) - inaction due to lack of corrupting opportunities (leaders try but cant set up a good fraud scheme) - nepotism that leads to incompetence

And lack of funding can and has been weaponized to cause a shitty service to then set the pretext for privatization. Usually there are private interests behind this public policy decision.

The more menial reason for lack of funding is sometimes massive spending or subsidies for capitalists elsewhere which skews the budget.

And of course also the intense bureacracy needed due to lack of democratic control. Yes, im saying people dont actually have a say and they could have a say. IE delegate democracy.

These are just universal problems of modern capitalist economies and their bourgeois politics.

Quite possibly DB suffers from these more intensely than others.

Watch the neoliberals feed off of rigid bureaucratic incompetence to pander for privatization and create for-profit bureaucratic incompetence. All with massive subsidies that citizens will pay through taxes or cutting of public services elsewhere.

Gotta love the "free" market and "democracy".

Kind of a mixed bag, really.

I believe in historic Jesus and I think he was a revolutionary who succeeded in his peaceful politics and was thus put to death.

His movement was then made inert and magical in order to make it compatible with empires, like the Roman.

Classic capitalist state leeching tactics, I'm betting somebody got a favor somewhere.

Amazon probably weren't paying the politicians enough money so the politicians aren't gonna let them screw the consumer!

Ah, capitalism, with your endless power imbalance.

On a related note I HATE how when I go buy alcohol they have to scan my ID here.

Potentially having to participate in marketing schemes for a beer?? Its not worth it.

There should also be a read only ID method with more watermarking validation or something.

I dont trust them POS with my info.

Do you know how a lot of research is funded?

Needs about 50 more "Here's why I do _____ and why it works"

Understand the mind to then exploit it.

Why else would they put so much money into something if not to try and get more out of it?

Capitalists' morals are driven by their social position. To them this is right becauae its rewarding. To us its an akin abomination we create that destroys us

But the problem isnt inherently tech. Its how society is structured around it that allows it to be used against us.

"Pariah", they've had the longest embargo on earth (which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths), they had 90% of their whole countries infrastructure bombed by the US, and the Korean war has been called a genocide in the North by many scholars.

The world doesnt make sense if you ignore history.

They probably hack for the same reason the west does it: attack/defense and money.

Imagine collectively trying to recreate a human brain with semiconductors so capitalists can save money by not having to employ as many people