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.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
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)
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
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.
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
Ever seen someone doing their "unskilled job" all their life? It's just fucking magic!
The truth is that capitalists hate skilled workers, because those workers have bargaining power. This is why they love the sort of automation which completely removes workers or thought from the equation, even if the ultimate solution is multiple times more expensive or less competent than before.
Nothing is more infuriating to a boss, than a worker that can talk back with experience.
Could someone tell me why it wouldnt work if we all got the same pay ? Like we are equally important to each other, non of us could survive without that someone else did something different than what you do for a living.
Wouldnt it be more sustainable if people choose an occupation out of passion than whats most profitable ? There wouldnt be any labour shortages.
This is a bridge too far for most people, but you could have an equal society just by setting a limit to salary differential. If the highest salary was capped at 5 times the lowest, that would be fine. The largest socialist organizations in the world (militaries) have this kind of system.
You could just open an LLC that researches if having lunch everyday kills you and each day report, "Not yet." For this to work you'd have to prove the value of anything you'd want to do for work to the government and what happens if the government is bad at knowing what has potential. You know, hypothetically.
There's a popular myth that, without the motivation of money, nothing would ever get done.
Im in IT just for the cash and being able to work from home, the older I get I understand how much I hate it and is totally unmotivated and do a shitty job. Id rather do something semi-physically work in mechanics or machining that gets more appreciated. But I stay and lurk along.....
Why beat around the bush. Just remove the concept of money altogether
I get what you mean but I cant really see how that would work. There must be some kind of score keeping.
god damn right
Its probably an unpopular opinion considering the comments here, but I think it should be said that maybe it comes easy for alot of people, but being a cook at a fast food joint like Dairy Queen or Culver's absolutely takes a certain amount of skill. Skill not every person has, or can learn.
When a place is busy, takes a certain process of thought patterns and organization to keep track of all the different ingredients on the griddle, what stage they're at while cooking, while ensuring everything is cooked in a timely manner.
Sure, many people can succeed at learning these skills, not everyone can. It is a skill, and honestly, it's slightly upsetting to see people think it's as easy as breathing, when it's just not for some people. If it were actually that simple, you'd never have to check the bag to make sure they got the order right before you drive off and there wouldn't be videos of fast food workers being mistreated for giving some jerk fries instead of onion rings. Ever.
Imo, although there is overlap, both jobs require some skills that different than the other. Typically, surgeons perform, at most, a handful of types of surgery (per surgery), on 1 or 2 people at a time. They know what surgery will be preformed ahead of time, so they can prepare, and there's a typically a set procedure for the deviations or complications that may arise. Successfully improvising is what sets a great surgeon apart. And, if all is going well, they have teams that can stabilize the patient for an extended amount of time. Fast food workers are assembling multiple orders with multiple foods in minutes. It may take a surgeon years to learn proper surgery, but it doesn't mean they have the skill or mindset that is required to flip burgers.
It's* probably an unpopular opinion
Even if the work itself is easy, dealing with customers is a skill set too. Too many of my friends couldn't hold customer facing jobs because they just couldn't deal with people (understandably).
I'm in that camp too. Customer facing jobs took a huge toll on my mental health that I'm still recovering from, even if I was eventually rather good at it.
I would disagree. We all need a living wage even for doing the most unskilled labor. Picking up dog poop or shoveling cow poop from one truck to another. There are jobs that require skills,
But everyone deserves a living wage absolutely.
The problem is capitalism, not the fact that our society has unskilled labor jobs
Yeah, a jobs a job, it should pay a living wage at a minimum. I guess the difference is supply and demand. Anyone can stock shelves at a supermarket, making the employee pool large, meaning they can lower the wage and still get someone desperate.
The government needs to step in and force companies to make that "lower wage" at least liveable.
Although to be honest that may speed up the implementation of robot shelf stockers, which creates another set of problems.
If certain jobs aren't valuable enough to pay a living wage, then maybe they should be done by robots instead of humans.
The problem is there is a race to the bottom.
E.g. in my field of work, there is a limited supply of skilled workers. If a company won't pay my rates, I work for one that will, and the first is left short staffed. This creates a back pressure that helps keep wages reasonable.
In "unskilled" jobs. The pool is far larger. Even if a job is worth a living wage, there is the risk of being undercut. 3/4 of a living wage is still better than nothing. This leads to a race to the bottom, that larger companies exploit ruthlessly.
There are 2 viable solutions. You either manage a minimum (a "minimum wage") , or you decouple survival from working by providing a baseline income ("universal basic income"). The first is simpler, but distorts the market in unhelpful ways. The second is harder, but let's market forces actually work properly, and push wages up, where appropriate.
Yeah, the way we do this in Sweden is pretty decent. There's no minimum wage, but if you are unemployed you (A) have access to unemployment for a few months via your unions income insurance, and (B) if unemployed for a long time & do not have the means to otherwise support yourself will qualify for a basic subsistence support from your municipality along with housing benefits - on the condition that you keep looking for a job (if you aren't disabled).
Agreed, but I don't think the world's ready for that. We'll probably let masses of people starve to death/resort to crime before we start paying people a UBI or an alternate arrangement that allows people to feed themselves when they are unable to find work.
Replace unskilled jobs with UBI jobs.
There is no such thing as "unskilled jobs", but there absolutely is such a thing as "unskilled labor". I have seen complete morons trying to sweep a floor, and failing to accomplish anything, despite being trained and coached several times on how to do a simple task. Even then, the shittiest worker I've ever worked with would have been more productive had manglement just fucked off and not existed.
Heavy weapons guy is an unskilled job.
You think you're smarter? Maybe... Maybe...however I'd like to see you outsmart bullets!
Out of interest, what do you all think a ceo does?
Make up excuses, ruin other people's work, take credit for that same work when it survives their meddling, bang hookers and hit ketamine all day, and lie constantly.
Don't forget forging connection with another company so they can leap right off when the company they're currently leeching is sinking.
And be narcissistic
though some of your points encompass that