this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
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Workers take plenty of risk to change jobs, homes, and even countries for a new job. The risks they take are comparatively much more significant than a venture of a millionaire or billionaire capitalist. That risk is somehow not rewarded under capitalism. Not to mention that the capitalist "risk" is nothing more than a scare tactic
That aside, someone "putting in money" doesn't mean they were useful and deserve any credit. It just means that you have an unjust system where the actual innovators have to agree to be exploited to survive.
It's extremely difficult to get started. I suppose I could live in a van down by the river and dumpster dive until I can make money from a product or service. However, many products and services require multiple workers to accomplish. If course businesses exploit workers and prevent competition. Those things should be addressed. However, it becomes extremely difficult to add a layer of fairness because some people will say that they deserve more than another person. Some people will get jobs based on who they know and who likes them. Does everyone get paid equally? Do you measure performance on some way? That creates competing interests and competition among workers. I worked in a shop under a "flat rate" system. It was constant bullshit with some guys doing anything they could to steal work from other guys. People would lie to get more work or bill customers for extra labor. It was a shit show.
Anarchist chad: Yes.
So, you've chosen violence
Nonsense
It's extremely difficult to get started.
But it would be easier to start if you got a fair amount for your labor and everyone you're going to work with pooled in.
The current system isn't fair either. Ultimately your boss decides what you get paid. They could be a benevolent dictator but they could also try to stiff you, you will never know. Now, we might not make it fair but we can definitely make it fairer. One way is democratization of the work place. Essentially everyone gets a say, say in how the revenue is split, say in who gets hired, say in whether there should be preformance metrics and if there should then also what those metrics should be.
And that's not some only theoretical idea, cooperatives are real life examples of this working. They aren't point by point as the examples I gave, but they do follow the concept of implementing democracy in the work place.