In general, I’d argue the correct way to look at this would be from class interest perspective. What it really comes down to is whether your labor is the primary source of your income or whether it is your capital. If you’re in the former category then you’re a worker and you have common interest with other workers. If you’re in the latter then your interests are directly opposed to those of the working class.
I would also like to offer a slight clarification: not “oligarchs,” but the bourgeoisie; not “workers,” but the proletariat. That is, if we are following Lenin.
Do not forget that, under a capitalist system, the proletariat consists not only of workers and peasants but also of the intelligentsia—doctors, teachers, researchers, engineers, and the like.
The middle class, too, is for the most part part of the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, enriches itself through “surplus value.” Were it not for this surplus value, then—firstly—all goods would be twice a scheaper, and—secondly—all global financial institutions would be abolished as unnecessary.
I told you recently that the understanding of socialism in the West—and my own understanding of it—are two different poles.
That guy is very smart and well-read, but what he says… really surprises me.
When I read his first post, I didn’t even understand which camp he belonged to… because a person cannot defend oligarchs while being a socialist. To me, that is nonsense!
To be honest, I read through a massive amount of text there—it’s all so impeccably written, yet the essence of it keeps slipping through my fingers… It reminds me a lot of an LSD trip… ))) “The truth is out there”—just like in The X-Files… )))
Mind you, I don’t mean to offend anyone; I am, after all, just an ignoramus… complete with a beard, felt boots, and a balalaika… reeking of stale vodka.
This is not a very usable understanding. How do you make sense of people whose labour is the primary source of their income and who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people. Material interests aren’t as simple as “workers for workers, owners for owners,” it describes the intersecting and even contradictory ways in which people navigate this system to achieve or maintain their own level of material security. Similarly, the kind of class analysis you just described is bereft of any explanations for how race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, or ability intersect in class dynamics; there is a reason we don’t do it this way.
whose labour is the primary source of their income and who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people.
Private property in the socialist context doesn’t refer to home ownership (unless its being used for landlording). It means ownership of means of the production, exploiting labor power. You can consider it synonymous with “absentee property”.
There are certainly some workers who earn some from their labour, and some from exploitation of others labor, but one is usually dominant. And of course in the long term, the trend of centralization of production means that these small-scale exploiters (petit-bourgeios) are eventually pushed out by bigger fish, and have to become workers themselves (called proletarianization).
How do you make sense of people whose labour is the primary source of their income and who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people.
As I understand it—judging by the name of this community—we are discussing socialism.
Under socialism, there is no middle class. In the USSR, a manual laborer earned a higher salary than an engineer or a doctor—unless, of course, the latter was a professor.
If a worker performed their job well, they received an apartment free of charge.
As for what you are writing about socialism—viewing it through the prism of capitalist terminology—it strikes me as, at the very least, both strange and incomprehensible.
This isn’t a LARP community, theory and practice mutually reinforce each other. You cannot effectively practice without theory, and theory without practice loses its grasp on reality.
Pragmatic action is not possible without socialist scholarship. You can’t take effective action without understanding how systems of power form in the first place, and how to organize effectively to combat them. Understanding class interests is at the core of that. How anybody could think they could skip understanding the problems before solving them is beyond me. The results in western organizing really do speak for themselves though.
who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people.
Vladimir Lenin regarded private ownership of the means of production—land, factories, and plants—as the primary source of exploitation and social inequality. He was convinced that it had to be abolished and transferred into the hands of the state (as public ownership) in order to build a classless socialist society.
Why is Lukács relevant? Why not Lenin? Further, Lenin was Slavic, and very much not considered white at the time of writing (and still not today, depending on who you ask). Also not sure why you are so condescending towards others, that’s not any kind of way to teach someone something (regardless of merit or lack thereof).
In my view, this is largely utopian—which is probably why Lenin abolished the party. That said, I do like Kropotkin’s ideas; in a certain sense, they resonate with the principles of socialism.
Lenin and not Lukács if they’re so into Leninism? Have you ever asked yourself that?
Google just came to my rescue—I had absolutely no idea who Lukács was.
“György (Georg) Lukács was not studied in the USSR as an independent thinker due to his affiliation with ‘Western Marxism,’ his departure from the dogmas of Soviet historical materialism, and his open criticism of Stalinism. His ideas were considered dangerous to the established Soviet ideological doctrine.”
Do you understand now that socialism in the West and socialism in the USSR are two entirely different things?
On that note, I’d recommend that you not take the writing of a white man from over 100 years ago as your only understanding of socialist
I know you won’t read my reply, but I’ll answer anyway: it’s very simple. Lenin is the only person in history who successfully implemented socialism in practice—there is no one else like him. Stalin was Lenin’s successor.
Lenin and not Lukács
I studied Lenin in school.
I haven’t read Lukács. He wasn’t popular here. Back then, people here were still studying Marx and Engels.
The existence of inheritance makes people think of housing as a nest egg and investment vehicle, to be dispensed before or after death as a profit making instrument to their children. This is why large swathes of home-owners are interested in house prices always climbing, to the detriment of the non-homeowning portion of the working class.
If I remember correctly, housing costs were allowed to balloon like they have for precisely this reason, to make workers willing to accept the disappearance of pensions as an expected benefit.
This is my first time engaging with this community (I think) and it is surprising to see comments like this. Home-ownership was used here because it references real, commodified material resources (land, shelter, etc.) which is only able to be owned by someone through specific social and property relations. While a 401k might be another example of private (I’m not sure what distinction you’re referencing, but it certainly isn’t materialist) property, as in a material thing that individuals claim exclusive access to, its dependency on financialization and abstraction from material value makes it a bad example for how property ownership specifically functions in relation to material resources and social/political systems.
It seemed very simple under true socialism: in exchange for your conscientious labor, you received an apartment for free. You could live in it—and after you, your grandchildren could live there, and so on—but you could not sell the apartment, because it was state property.
“True” socialism isn’t a thing, a system is either socialist or it is not, and socialism has many various characteristics depending on the material conditions the society building socialism is found in.
I would put it differently: there should be only one true form of socialism, but the methods for achieving it may vary.
As for my own experience: my father—who held a Ph.D.—earned a lower salary than the father of one of my classmates, who was a highly skilled fitter.
And I understand perfectly well that you cannot even begin to imagine that such a thing is possible. Yes, salaries were relatively modest—the idea being not to let money corrupt people. But you had free healthcare, free education, and a free apartment; and the utility bill for a 70-square-meter apartment—like the one I had—came to… $3 a month. Plus, a free one-month summer vacation at a sanatorium somewhere in Crimea.
Places where the oligarchs’ massive mansions had been confiscated and converted into holiday retreats for the people.
Now you understand what kind of socialism I am talking about. I know of no other kind—and I have no desire to know of any other!
I understand and support the Soviets, the fall of the USSR was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the latter 20th century. However, calling whatever the soviets did “true socialism” implies the ways Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Laoitians are practicing socialism are “false socialism.” Socialism is generally a form of society where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. The various characteristics of each socialist country are informed by their own unique material conditions and background.
However, calling whatever the soviets did “true socialism”
Here, again, is a small caveat: we are not discussing the process—but rather the result—of building developed socialism. And we aren’t even considering the economic aspect here. The USSR faced immense difficulties back then, particularly when the U.S. sought to drain its resources using various hoaxes—the Moon landing, and other such nonsense. Incidentally—in case you weren’t aware—it turned out that the U.S. actually lacked the rockets needed to fly into space; once the Space Shuttle program failed, they were forced to pay $80 million per astronaut for transport provided by Russia to the ISS. And it begs the question: what on earth happened to the Apollo program? The ISS is only 400 kilometers away, yet the Moon is 400,000…
But I digress. That was the USSR’s path toward socialism—a path that was incredibly thorny and arduous. Whether before World War II or after it, the USSR was under siege from all sides.
Be that as it may, socialism was successfully built in the USSR—in what amounted to its roughly final form. It may have lacked glitz and glamour, but it was, undeniably, socialism.
As for the Cubans, Koreans, and Vietnamese—their situation is far more challenging, as their nations lack the self-sufficiency that the USSR possessed. The USSR had the industrial capacity, the natural resources—everything required to withstand isolation and continue forging ahead. However, in light of recent events—specifically the ongoing realignment of the global order—these nations now appear to hold immense promise for future development. But building developed socialism requires a lot of money.
China, for its part, built its brand of socialism using Western capital. It constructed a form of socialism that suited the West’s interests… at least until very recently, that is. China proved to be far more complex than the West had anticipated—and ultimately outmaneuvered the West! Yet, fundamentally, that does not alter the nature of the matter.
My hope is that China will, in the end, achieve its true objective. As things stand, what currently exists there doesn’t quite measure up… I’m not sure if one can accurately apply the term you placed in quotation marks to it—so I won’t venture to say.
In general, I’d argue the correct way to look at this would be from class interest perspective. What it really comes down to is whether your labor is the primary source of your income or whether it is your capital. If you’re in the former category then you’re a worker and you have common interest with other workers. If you’re in the latter then your interests are directly opposed to those of the working class.
Greetings, Comrade!
I would also like to offer a slight clarification: not “oligarchs,” but the bourgeoisie; not “workers,” but the proletariat. That is, if we are following Lenin.
Do not forget that, under a capitalist system, the proletariat consists not only of workers and peasants but also of the intelligentsia—doctors, teachers, researchers, engineers, and the like.
The middle class, too, is for the most part part of the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, enriches itself through “surplus value.” Were it not for this surplus value, then—firstly—all goods would be twice a scheaper, and—secondly—all global financial institutions would be abolished as unnecessary.
Greetings, and agreed on all points.
I told you recently that the understanding of socialism in the West—and my own understanding of it—are two different poles.
That guy is very smart and well-read, but what he says… really surprises me.
When I read his first post, I didn’t even understand which camp he belonged to… because a person cannot defend oligarchs while being a socialist. To me, that is nonsense!
What you’ll find is that understanding of socialism in the west is largely shaped by the CIA, meaning that there is no actual understanding.
Why was that guy removed?
It doesn’t seem like he said anything outrageous.
I’m talking about that guy up above who got offended and doesn’t want to reply.
oh you can check the modlog, lemmy is pretty transparent about it unlike reddit https://lemmy.ml/modlog/14681?page=1&actionType=All&userId=23129142
Thanks, Comrade—I’ll check it out!
Once I get a little more settled in here and get to know the locals better, we can pick up our fascinating conversation… )))
To be honest, I read through a massive amount of text there—it’s all so impeccably written, yet the essence of it keeps slipping through my fingers… It reminds me a lot of an LSD trip… ))) “The truth is out there”—just like in The X-Files… )))
Mind you, I don’t mean to offend anyone; I am, after all, just an ignoramus… complete with a beard, felt boots, and a balalaika… reeking of stale vodka.
Please, don’t judge me too harshly! )))
This is not a very usable understanding. How do you make sense of people whose labour is the primary source of their income and who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people. Material interests aren’t as simple as “workers for workers, owners for owners,” it describes the intersecting and even contradictory ways in which people navigate this system to achieve or maintain their own level of material security. Similarly, the kind of class analysis you just described is bereft of any explanations for how race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, or ability intersect in class dynamics; there is a reason we don’t do it this way.
Those who have labor as their primary source of income, but own capital and thus desire a maintenance of capitalism, are petite bourgeoisie.
Private property in the socialist context doesn’t refer to home ownership (unless its being used for landlording). It means ownership of means of the production, exploiting labor power. You can consider it synonymous with “absentee property”.
There are certainly some workers who earn some from their labour, and some from exploitation of others labor, but one is usually dominant. And of course in the long term, the trend of centralization of production means that these small-scale exploiters (petit-bourgeios) are eventually pushed out by bigger fish, and have to become workers themselves (called proletarianization).
As I understand it—judging by the name of this community—we are discussing socialism.
Under socialism, there is no middle class. In the USSR, a manual laborer earned a higher salary than an engineer or a doctor—unless, of course, the latter was a professor.
If a worker performed their job well, they received an apartment free of charge.
As for what you are writing about socialism—viewing it through the prism of capitalist terminology—it strikes me as, at the very least, both strange and incomprehensible.
Removed by mod
This isn’t a LARP community, theory and practice mutually reinforce each other. You cannot effectively practice without theory, and theory without practice loses its grasp on reality.
How’s this pragmatic action been working out for y’all. Last I looked western countries are speedrunning fascism at this point.
Removed by mod
Pragmatic action is not possible without socialist scholarship. You can’t take effective action without understanding how systems of power form in the first place, and how to organize effectively to combat them. Understanding class interests is at the core of that. How anybody could think they could skip understanding the problems before solving them is beyond me. The results in western organizing really do speak for themselves though.
who also have a material interest in the maintenance of private property, such as home-owning middle-class people.
Vladimir Lenin regarded private ownership of the means of production—land, factories, and plants—as the primary source of exploitation and social inequality. He was convinced that it had to be abolished and transferred into the hands of the state (as public ownership) in order to build a classless socialist society.
Removed by mod
Why is Lukács relevant? Why not Lenin? Further, Lenin was Slavic, and very much not considered white at the time of writing (and still not today, depending on who you ask). Also not sure why you are so condescending towards others, that’s not any kind of way to teach someone something (regardless of merit or lack thereof).
In my view, this is largely utopian—which is probably why Lenin abolished the party. That said, I do like Kropotkin’s ideas; in a certain sense, they resonate with the principles of socialism.
Google just came to my rescue—I had absolutely no idea who Lukács was.
“György (Georg) Lukács was not studied in the USSR as an independent thinker due to his affiliation with ‘Western Marxism,’ his departure from the dogmas of Soviet historical materialism, and his open criticism of Stalinism. His ideas were considered dangerous to the established Soviet ideological doctrine.”
Do you understand now that socialism in the West and socialism in the USSR are two entirely different things?
I know you won’t read my reply, but I’ll answer anyway: it’s very simple. Lenin is the only person in history who successfully implemented socialism in practice—there is no one else like him. Stalin was Lenin’s successor.
I studied Lenin in school.
I haven’t read Lukács. He wasn’t popular here. Back then, people here were still studying Marx and Engels.
Are they keen on thinking about private property and “the fundamental issue of private property from attention?”
Am I understanding you correctly?
Wouldn’t a home be personal property, not private? 401ks might be a better example?
The existence of inheritance makes people think of housing as a nest egg and investment vehicle, to be dispensed before or after death as a profit making instrument to their children. This is why large swathes of home-owners are interested in house prices always climbing, to the detriment of the non-homeowning portion of the working class.
If I remember correctly, housing costs were allowed to balloon like they have for precisely this reason, to make workers willing to accept the disappearance of pensions as an expected benefit.
This is my first time engaging with this community (I think) and it is surprising to see comments like this. Home-ownership was used here because it references real, commodified material resources (land, shelter, etc.) which is only able to be owned by someone through specific social and property relations. While a 401k might be another example of private (I’m not sure what distinction you’re referencing, but it certainly isn’t materialist) property, as in a material thing that individuals claim exclusive access to, its dependency on financialization and abstraction from material value makes it a bad example for how property ownership specifically functions in relation to material resources and social/political systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_vis-à-vis_private_property
haha you’re so annoying. Jesus… You know you can block entire instances on here right?
It seemed very simple under true socialism: in exchange for your conscientious labor, you received an apartment for free. You could live in it—and after you, your grandchildren could live there, and so on—but you could not sell the apartment, because it was state property.
“True” socialism isn’t a thing, a system is either socialist or it is not, and socialism has many various characteristics depending on the material conditions the society building socialism is found in.
I would put it differently: there should be only one true form of socialism, but the methods for achieving it may vary.
As for my own experience: my father—who held a Ph.D.—earned a lower salary than the father of one of my classmates, who was a highly skilled fitter.
And I understand perfectly well that you cannot even begin to imagine that such a thing is possible. Yes, salaries were relatively modest—the idea being not to let money corrupt people. But you had free healthcare, free education, and a free apartment; and the utility bill for a 70-square-meter apartment—like the one I had—came to… $3 a month. Plus, a free one-month summer vacation at a sanatorium somewhere in Crimea.
Places where the oligarchs’ massive mansions had been confiscated and converted into holiday retreats for the people.
Now you understand what kind of socialism I am talking about. I know of no other kind—and I have no desire to know of any other!
I understand and support the Soviets, the fall of the USSR was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the latter 20th century. However, calling whatever the soviets did “true socialism” implies the ways Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Laoitians are practicing socialism are “false socialism.” Socialism is generally a form of society where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. The various characteristics of each socialist country are informed by their own unique material conditions and background.
Here, again, is a small caveat: we are not discussing the process—but rather the result—of building developed socialism. And we aren’t even considering the economic aspect here. The USSR faced immense difficulties back then, particularly when the U.S. sought to drain its resources using various hoaxes—the Moon landing, and other such nonsense. Incidentally—in case you weren’t aware—it turned out that the U.S. actually lacked the rockets needed to fly into space; once the Space Shuttle program failed, they were forced to pay $80 million per astronaut for transport provided by Russia to the ISS. And it begs the question: what on earth happened to the Apollo program? The ISS is only 400 kilometers away, yet the Moon is 400,000…
But I digress. That was the USSR’s path toward socialism—a path that was incredibly thorny and arduous. Whether before World War II or after it, the USSR was under siege from all sides.
Be that as it may, socialism was successfully built in the USSR—in what amounted to its roughly final form. It may have lacked glitz and glamour, but it was, undeniably, socialism.
As for the Cubans, Koreans, and Vietnamese—their situation is far more challenging, as their nations lack the self-sufficiency that the USSR possessed. The USSR had the industrial capacity, the natural resources—everything required to withstand isolation and continue forging ahead. However, in light of recent events—specifically the ongoing realignment of the global order—these nations now appear to hold immense promise for future development. But building developed socialism requires a lot of money.
China, for its part, built its brand of socialism using Western capital. It constructed a form of socialism that suited the West’s interests… at least until very recently, that is. China proved to be far more complex than the West had anticipated—and ultimately outmaneuvered the West! Yet, fundamentally, that does not alter the nature of the matter.
My hope is that China will, in the end, achieve its true objective. As things stand, what currently exists there doesn’t quite measure up… I’m not sure if one can accurately apply the term you placed in quotation marks to it—so I won’t venture to say.