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For those of you wondering, this is why JT needs more money to keep running his channel
(lemmygrad.ml)
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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The Deprogram Podcast
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International Anti-Capitalist podcast run by an American, Slav and an Arab.
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I’ll never understand “communists” that start private capitalist companies. Seriously, why not put their money where their mouth is and start a coop? It makes no sense to me for JT to do everything he does just to end up a capitalist lmao
Coops aren't necessarily bastions of workers' rights you know. Coops exist within the same framework of capitalism and are guided by the same rules, they're also businesses, they just have distributed ownership (or don't, in the case of the one coop I worked with).
JT's not a party leader or a revolutionary, he runs a youtube channel where he wants to make videos. I guess that best works as a private business in his situation. Running a business as a communist sounds normal to me honestly, especially if they're in a capitalist country already.
if you wanna get into theory then I've always been down with Mao's prescription of how domestic, regional bourgeoisie do not necessarily have an antagonistic relationship with the proletariat in every situation
I don’t think Mao meant that communists should become capitalists… he meant it makes sense to align with nationalist bourgeoisie to fight off a common enemy, like international and imperialist capital.
I wholeheartedly disagree that the best way to run anything under this system to be a private company. Unless “the best way” means the most profitable. Sure exploiting the labor of others is always gonna be more profitable. Even if you pay your workers well and give them nice benefits. But you’re still exploiting them, for profit.
I don’t understand how you can’t see how antithetical to what being a communist is. Unless you accept JT is just selling the product of communism and anti-capitalism, that he is just the expression of capitalism commodifying everything including the fight and resistance against itself… and like it? I don’t understand how this is fine and acceptable.
Shouldn’t we hold ourselves to higher standards..? It’s a thing being born into privilege and using that to help the communist cause. It’s another to climb the ladders of capitalist exploitation using the mantle of revolutionary thought.
If he's managing to provide a living for 4 people and those people are in a situation where they don't feel exploited, I don't really see how what he's doing is why different than say Pravda pre-revolution, or any number of other communist newspapers/periodicals over the years that until the revolution had to support their workers through wages and sales of a product.
I mean, Marx was only able to write Capital because Engles had money from profiting off the labor of others. How is this any worse than that?
Quit being a lib. Those 5 people are providing the living. If he is extracting profits from them then they are exploited. Full stop.
I support secondthought i can also understand why its not perfect. This is the critical support.
But if you're doing the work, its not profit, its pay right?
it's 5 people's work, if JT receives a greater share of the surplus due to being the owner than he would if they were all equal partners then he is exploiting the other workers. It's the relationship of him as the owner and them as the employees that matters here.
Those people are providing a living for themselves, all I'm saying is that working with someone on a project where they're very involved and you're all passionate about it and you don't have to balance that with another full time job is nice.
Until the workers come out and say that they feel that JT is exploiting them or using them this whole relationship seems to be fine compared to the alternative of working for a company that directly seeks to exploit you to the maximum extent.
I'm sure cooperative ownership isn't out of the question for this project, but there isn't really much money in communist propaganda so it's amazing that they're able to support 4 salaries doing it.
Feeling exploited is not the issue… or do you think if every worker had the same conditions of Facebook employees everything would be fine? If that’s the case you are not a communist, but a social democrat.
Also hilarious for a leftist to say an employer is PROVIDING a living to their workers. When all value is produced by the workers. JT is not giving anyone the privilege of a job, he is exploiting the labor of others. That is a technical idea within capitalism, not a moral one. Exploitation is not “evil” is just how capitalism works.
And paying salaries and selling a product are not “capitalism”. It’s the structure of the business, the owners and laborers.
And like I said, if you are born to privilege, giving it up for “the cause” is stupid. It’s better to use the privilege to forward the cause. Like Engels. But striving and fighting to BECOME part of the owner class as a communist is nonsensical, unless being a communist is just a grift for you.