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.
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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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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.)
You're basically arguing that this process had nothing to do with capitalism. Like Apple isn't capitalist, it's just workers working. Like what is the logic here. Those workers didn't do it to create the iPhone... they did it because the capitalist who wanted to create the iPhone was paying them. So that his privately owned firm could compete against other similar firms in the market.
Yes and workers in the Soviet Union also made telephones. But only for the party leaders who didn't see there was a need for ordinary people to have phones.
Yes, workers make phones in any system. But who decides how many to make and what price to charge for them?
Also, many of the technologies that comprise the iphone were developed in universities
For profit universities. In the states at least. Where students go into lifetime debt and their work is profited from. Occasionally they get a prize and pat on the head.
Then they spend their lives working for companies that make massive profits off their ideas. If they're very very lucky, some people might learn their names and what they did before they die, but that almost never happens.
It's worse. Public universities that by definition are not for profit. And then all the other things you mentioned.
I find it hard to believe that a university of any kind in America is not motivated monetarily
This is based on a widespread misconception that non-profit organizations are not also pursuing money. They don’t get to take home the profits but they still want to maximize revenue and minimize costs to grow and sustain themselves. So while they don’t behave exactly the same as privately owned orgs, there is a lot of overlap.
All modern devices are made using one form of slave labor or another.
https://ethical.net/technology/the-slavery-supported-the-device-in-your-pocket/
I think that's what they must when they say "built by capitalism."
I mean, any other usage would be utterly ridiculous. So, that must be what they mean.
It literally is. The idea I’ve seen around is that these things couldn’t be built without someone getting the short end of the stick. They also believe that no one would innovate without a profit motive. These people genuinely believe that the only other option is flipping entirely over to that garbage attempt the soviets made at communism. They fundamentally cannot comprehend the idea of nuance and so “capitalism is the only idea that works”.
We know that CEO wages are insane and that the reason we can’t afford stuff is our stagnant pay. We know that people innovate for their own curiousity all the time. We know that capitalism actually hates innovation because it means retooling and spending money on R&D and we’ve seen it fight progress basically at every turn or watched it buy up competition so it wouldn’t have to any real work.
So yea, you’re right.
well yeah most of its operating software was derived from opensource projects, but capitalists exploited those opensource project without giving the tinest bit back, so...
For a while there, the Darwin OS was open source.
"It's better to be a pirate than join the navy" - Steve Jobs
If you want to talk about Apple specifically, then consider this. When they began making popular tech like MacBooks and Ipods, they justified the prices by giving free warranties. They would replace or repair any device at no extra cost of the consumer. Well, they stopped doing that and then wanted you to pay an annual fee to get the same service. Then they did away with that and now it's pay per repair or replacement and the prices went up instead of down. My theory is that was their business target in the first place. Get their products wide spread, and then pull rug out from under the consumer. To me, Apple is the best example of capitalism
AppleCare still exists. So this is misinformation.
And just as an anecdote, I have not felt like Apple has ever “pulled the rug out” on me and I’m an Apple product consumer. Are you?
I was
That’s simply not true. Apple still has the same one year limited warranty they had when iPods were released. Steve Jobs justified the higher premium because you were getting “the store in the box,” referring to the in-store troubleshooting and educational support at no extra cost.
Source: worked for Apple for over a decade
What the hell is a store in a box?? Without cool aid it doesn't make sense
Steve Jobs' name for a help desk at no marginal cost
Well, it’s always “humans made this”.
I think it’s trivial to argue that without capitalism we would not have iPhones, they are the product of the desire to please a market to make a lot of money.
If the driver was "I want to build something useful for my fellow humans" that wouldn’t likely trend toward an elitist redundant unsustainable device built on the exploitation of cheap labor.
If not for capitalism, we’d be missing out on internet ads, online dating and for-profit healthcare!
Okay, sure, I'll play devil's advocate. The engineering that goes into a single iPhone is unfathomable. It would take an entire lifetime of study to even try to produce something close.
But Apple pays about a jillion engineers about a jillion dollars each, and so they're able to create new iPhones every year or so. That was 100% powered by capitalism.
Yeah, workers physically put the pieces together. Do you think any of them could design an iPhone without any help or reference? Or a single body to tie it all together?
Engineers are workers. Well paid yes, but you're going against the wrong people, they're not capitalists and don't make the decisions that matter.
Then, why do you think an a economy post capitalist wouldn't be able to develop smart phones? Do you think we'd return to feudalism and the world would devolve into dark ages and all the scientific knowledge would disappear?
Do you think people cannot collaborate without capitalism?
People do all the time in academia and science.