Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread!
P.S. Update on those stability improvements/enhancements I mentioned in my previous weekly thread: they’re finished. The matrix server uptime is now better. Suspiciously better, some might say. Anyway, enjoy the reliability >:3
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna’s Archive
Thoughts on this phrasing? “Capitalism is a system where society exists to serve commerce rather than commerce existing to serve society.”
As introductory rhetoric for criticizing capitalism in a somewhat less jargon heavy way, especially when talking to people who have pre-existing embedded anti-communism and so may be more reactive to obvious marxist critiques.
Then connecting it to examples: “In the capitalist US, society exists to serve commerce. In socialist China, commerce exists to serve society.”
This phrasing feels a bit cultural, I think? Like, couldn’t you also argue that Rome’s society existed mostly to generate slaves who worked to make products which were then sold on the market?
Fair. The phrase could probably be applied to exploitative systems predating capitalism and still make sense from a certain point of view. For that reason, it may be weaker as rhetoric than it could be.
Focusing on what makes capitalism unique may make it sharper, provided it doesn’t get lost in jargon. To that end, what does make capitalism unique even if in jargon form? On reflection, I’m not sure I could explain it simply, in a few words from recall. Something to do with private property and accumulation of capital, but that’s a bit vague. I think my internalized understanding of it is actually better than my verbalized one, if that makes sense; lived experience with it vs. theory language I guess.
Lenin defines Capitalism succinctly as
Capitalism is that stage in the development of commodity-production in which labour-power, too, becomes a commodity. (source)
The most important aspect of Capitalism is that the individual bourgeois exploits the entire proletariat class, rather than a group of people. This doesn’t happen in any other economic system.
Think of a slave-owner. They can exploit only the slaves they own. However, this means that they have the interest to take care of them since a loss of a slave means the loss of labor.
Meanwhile, a landlord doesn’t care who their tenants are or whether they have money for food after paying rent. There is always someone outside waiting for one apartment to get vacant.
The individual bourgeois has leverage over an entire class, so you have no leverage against them. The only leverage against the bourgeoisie is when the proletariat class gets organized. One individual is hopeless.
So, I think I would summarize it without jargon as “Capitalism is the system which you have to auction your precious time in the market to the lowest available wage to people who don’t care whether you eat well because there is an entire line of people ready to take your spot.”
It’s a bit wordy, but I think it does the job. Every worker has some fear of getting replaced.
I’ve been thinking about verbosity/garroulessness for several months, since I tend to swing from that to being terse to the point it seems rude. With declining literacy and reading comprehension rates in Western societies, it would behoove us to find a middle ground, since attention spans are also in serious decline, for many varied reasons, not the least of which is physical exhaustion and mental/emotional overwhelm.
I’m struggling with how to find a way towards tercity and unintended rudeness. I need to also work on patience, since impatience fuels intentional rudeness.
Most people are capable of reading long texts as long as they are interested in them. Maybe we can focus on “stepping stones” in order to build this interest.
Informative memes and pamphlets can be used to agitate workers with false consciousness. If they become advanced workers, then they will be able to read The Capital or something.
At the end of the day though, most workers won’t reach advanced levels.
Interesting, thanks for the breakdown.
So with that in mind, here’s an attempt to simplify it a bit more in a way similar to the phrase I started with: “In the capitalist US, the capitalists force you to sell your labor power to the market in exchange for temporary relief from starving. In socialist China, organized labor power allows the market to exist in exchange for its consistent contribution to thriving.”
Heavier than the original in terms of “big words”, but maybe a better halfway point between jargon and “losing important distinctions”. What do you think? Better? Worse? Both?
Yeah, that’s great. The only issue I would have is that if you are mentioning the US, then your audience is probably Amerikans, who are very Sinophobic.
But considering that China is getting a lot of good rep, then I think it’s fine to use it as an example.
If you want to drive the point home, why not ask a concrete question like “how did China go from a nation of starving farmers to a global powerhouse in a couple of generations if it wasn’t socialism?” after your definition of Capitalism.
Fair point, I’ll try to keep that in mind. Could probably apply to imperial core audiences in general, asking a rhetorical question like that. Or elsewhere if somebody is being Sinophobic.
I think the phrasing is also general enough about the principles we went over concerning capitalism that “In the capitalist US” could be replaced with “In capitalist Canada” or EU or whatever and still be accurate. It might not land as hard if someone is in an area where unions are stronger, but my impression is that although organized labor is stronger in some parts of the imperial core than others, it’s also been in decline for a while, owed largely to it only having achieved buffer status rather than controlling the state.
That’s a good point.
Adding to your point, in a place with strong unions, maybe it’s good to question why things keep getting worse even with union protection. Unions in Capitalism is just delaying the inevitable (the tendency for the rate of profit to fall).
The Nordic countries are seeing this happen in real time.
Marx’s mathematical manuscripts are very underrated. There’s this footnote which I think it’s pretty interesting despite being very vague:
Marx distinguishes in each equation two sides (where now we speak of two parts), the left hand and the right hand which do not always play symmetric roles. On the left-hand side of the equation he frequently places two different, equivalent expressions joined by the conjunction ‘or’. Marx distinguishes in each equation two sides (where now we speak of two parts), the left hand and the right hand which do not always play symmetric roles. On the left-hand side of the equation he frequently places two different, equivalent expressions joined by the conjunction ‘or’. (source)
So, for Marx, x = y is not the same as y = x (even though they mean the same thing in modern math).
Given the fact that AI decompilation has become so widespread today, I can confidently say we are in a new age of piracy.
so good luck on finding the One Piece, comrades.
I want to begin this comment by saying I am in no way perfect but holy shit the bar for dating men is low. Like, the stories I hear from women around me about people they meet either in rl or online are wild. It’s as if men are completely unable to function in a normal way.
Now I’m curious what you’re hearing in the specifics. Like bad hygiene? Strange views or attitudes? All of the above and more?
there was a dawning feeling yesterday of hatred and resentment i had for a friend and i was angry at myself for it. it was something to do with how i can interact with people and have Fun and yet also there’s such a dissonance between who i am and my values and politics and theirs, sometimes insurmountable. not really a matter of her position starting differently from mine mind you, it’s more i feel i can’t actually get through to her in deprogramming anticommunism
the sad part is i feel like i only have what i know through heuristics (i know fairly loosely about imperialism and how it works as a way to maximize profits to escape falling rate of profit, that the system eventually is eating its own tail and destroying us, and then i know about facets of history like imperialist wars and lies the america tells us, but then of course there’s the issue of trying to argue and convince others and actually explaining logic of everything. EDIT: i think what drives me mad is that for other friends i can give them evidence which undermines the capitalist indoctrination so they’re more open. but the friend will outright refuse to accept whatever evidence is contrary to what they already know.)
tldr: it makes me less angry having a friend that initially doesn’t even try to have a political education than one that sources all hers from tiktok and instagram subliminal ‘leftist’ (virulently anticommunist but posturing at anticapitalist) accounts or algorithm that then is extra resistant to actual skepticism around the commonly agreed anti-communist history
she is not a bad friend but every time i have to pretend i give a fuck about taiwan and think it’s in a state where it needs to be liberated from see see pee china i want to kill her
On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written, the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted
i have been incessantly thinking about this mao quote
To be a true franco-phile like me, you must hate the french
this is true and real actually
Feeling kinda sad that I hate pretty much the whole internet but lemmy as of lately. Sometimes I even fear this website will get swarmed by reactionaries and destroyed from within like it happened with leftypol.
Dead internet theory isn’t just a theory it is a reality. Cloudfare says 57% of all internet requests are from bots. israel is dumping 730 million american dollars into astroturfing this year and who knows how much the Fossil Fuel Industry, the cia and us Millitary industrial complex, the EU’s anti russia slop, and every other imperialist project out there, must be pumping into the same sort of PR campaigns.
These campaigns may eventually start hammering away at lemmy but I think overall the moderation and community structure will make it far harder to astroturf successfully.
I don’t think that’s gonna happen so easily given that Lemmygrad used to be swarmed by libs from other instances (looking at old posts). We have some good admins.
But yeah, the internet is pretty consolidated on the hands of the capitalists now.
I wonder if English is gonna become something like Latin in the future.
Practically everything in computing is written in the English language.
I think it English as we speak it now will resemble Latin in the future in how Latin is used today but that it spawn its own set of offshoots as Latin did with Romance languages.
Inevitably the various regional Englishes will become their own languages. American English will be incomprehensible to Australian English speakers. The “English” part of the names will likely flat out be dropped.
I would hope in the future it is would be Chinese.
I am going to really struggle to learn chinese. Or will it be like firefly?
I have not seen Firefly, so I don’t know.
where you only curse in Chinese?
You are only allowed to curse in Chinese
21 degrees halfway through October. It’s fine though.
“Its so nice outside!” “… It shouldn’t be…”
You can tell Kamala is back in the running becaus the KHive just woke up after 2 years of silence. Marching orders have come down from Blue MAGA
Is this the most important election of your lives yet again?
deleted by creator
hi i’m sorry i know this was deleted for a reason but i remember passing over it and reading it before and while i didn’t retain the meat of it, i’ve also seen some other posts by you and i really hope you are doing as well as you can.
while there is nothing meaningful i can do or promise, i hope you are all right, i’m sorry it’s so extremely miserable because of the Evil, i pray you can find relief in any form it comes and soon
I’m getting tired of seeing posts like “haha no more Russian bots now” on Reddit.
and a good chunk of those are langley bots
Saw a similar post on Facebook. Guy used a analytic tool from bluesky sorting for a single hashtag that only amounted to 1000 posts over a 4 day period. The number of Pro russian posts were 1/2 as common 3 and 4 days after the strike as they were 1 and 2 days after the strike and somehow that proves the pro Russian posts were Russian trolls? Like if they were Russian trolls wouldn’t the drop in posts happen the day of the attack?
Same, especially since the west uses bots to the same extent
To the same extent? No, nowhere near. The Russians are amateurs compared to the West when it comes to botting.
What’s the reason? (I haven’t visited that cesspool since I came here.)
Data center in Russia got hit by a Ukrainian drone. Some Polish journalist/official/whatever with a lot of twitter followers then posted a sourceless graph claiming the number of Right wing posts/posters went down across the board on every social media site.
This of course didn’t happen and bro never cited his sources and no one can find the OG source (because he made it all up) but liberals are gullible and it fits their cognitive bias so they’re all spreading this nonsense that it was a “Russian bot farm” that got hit despite overwhelming lack of evidence beyond “well it FEELS true!!!”
A yandex data center got hit by ukraine.
Is deepseek less censored when answering in Chinese? I asked a question about Li Jishen and Li Zongren seperately and it initially bugged and gave answers in Chinese, but when I asked for it in English it gave me “that’s beyond my scope.” Idk I just found it odd
I think it’s just different censor training/algorithms. I have had it answer something in Chinese, then when I asked it to translate the answer to English it gave me a censor block. Mind you, I’ve not actually gotten a censorship message when it is generating chinese responses… But I have to assume they exist (not providing instructions for violence, self harm, etc ).
I don’t remember exactly what it got stuck on, but I think it had something to do Xi Jinping or some basics of Marxism, but I was pretty sure it was a fairly mundane question. I pasted the chinese answer into Google translate, looking at the translating, and I remember thinking “that’s very normal, why did this get sensored in English”
Crazy week this week.
To make the context as short as possible, I was unable to continue my Master in AI/data. I never really liked it anyway so it’s not a big deal, except when it comes to money obviously.
After that I decided to do a different Master (cuz it’s practically mandatory to get a somewhat well paid job).On Monday I had no information on my application. Then on Tuesday afternoon I was told I was good to go but since school started Monday I had to be there Wednesday morning.
Now I’m in a weird limbo state where for some services I am a proper student but others haven’t catch up yet. For example I have to prove that I went to school this afternoon but the application for that doesn’t recognize me yet.Tomorrow it’s my first proper day of school this year and because I missed the first two it’s gonna be artistic.
I don’t know if I’m making any sense, English is still not my main language, the French school/grade system doesn’t neatly match any other and I’m also pretty sleepy.
But hey, I wanted to talk about it somewhere.The Congo to Cuba playlist by Putumayo has saved me from spiraling into a breakdown countless of times. Long live the Congolese and Cuban people.
