Cowbee

Engineers designing production lines absolutely get fucked over with horrible working conditions. Unions benefit every single position workers fill.

I guarantee you've never known an Engineer in manufacturing.

I like the bean dose containers! How are they to use? Do they keep your beans fresh?

My point wasn't that co-ops aren't allowed. Your point was that co-operative ownership struggles with instability, and therefore would inevitably result in starvation, which is 100% false as proven by me. Moving the goal post doesn't make you correct, it makes you wrong.

There are no leftist Capitalists, that's an oxymoron. Leftism is inherently anti-capitalist, and therefore what you likely are hinting at, Social Democracy, is a center-right ideology that is still riddled with issues. It's certainly better than American Capitalism, but it does away with none of the core issues with Capitalism, it only makes them slightly more tolerable. Socialists have been learning and adapting theory ever since Socialism was founded, it hasn't stagnated in any way.

I'm on a leftist platform created by a Communist as a direct leftist alternative to Reddit because I believe in the principles of leftist organizational structure, such as a rejection of the profit motive, collective ownership, and decentralization of control.

Why is co-operative farming inflexible to shocks and instability? Wouldn't it be more stable if the group can react democratically, rather than depend on several competing mini-dictators to not price-gouge and take advantage of instability for profit? I'm not just talking off of vibes, here, Worker Co-operatives, ie collective ownership of business, are shown to be far more resistant to economic shocks and more adaptable than Capitalist entities: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/building-and-sustaining-worker-cooperatives-in-the-us/

The USSR and Maoist China were developing countries just coming out of revolution, and both the Russian Federation and modern PRC remain developing countries. France was also highly unstable following the French Revolution, and became headed by Napolean, one of history's most famous dictators. Pretending decentralization is purely to blame, rather than instability leading to centralization, is a weak point to make.

Why do you believe that no Leftist has attempted to learn from the mistakes of previous Socialist systems? That's incredibly wrong, modern leftist discourse is oriented around how to achieve Worker Ownership in modern society, and avoid the problems that have plagued previous Socialist systems.

All in all, why are you on a leftist, decentralized site like Lemmy, if you hate Socialism so much? It's interesting to see such cognitive dissonance, if you like Capitalism, then there's Reddit.

I don't hate competition for the sake of competition. The goal of FOSS is cooperation until something becomes less than desirable, as the goal is a good product. With Capitalism, the goal is profit, and as such destabilization and competition are required. With FOSS, a new fork is only done for a better product, not for profit-seeking.

Commercial exploitation of an anti-Capitalist option does not mean the option is not anti-Capitalist. FOSS is a rejection of IP a la Capitalism, and a rejection of the profit motive.

I understand that trying to argue with sound logic is difficult for you, after all, nothing you've said has logically followed. Enough of being cheeky, though. The USSR was a specific model of Marxist-Leninist Socialism, they never reached Communism as Communism is a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. They did many things right, like giving workers far more control, and providing free Healthcare and education. They also had many huge problems, like massive corruption at the Politburo level, and atrocities committed by government officials like the Katyn Massacre and Stalin's Purges. As such, I believe the USSR provides a wealth of information on what aspects did work, and what aspects were terrible. I do not want to recreate the USSR, nor use it as a template. I want to learn from it and create something far better.

You're confusing market competition for Capitalism. Capitalism requires competition and rejects cooperation, Socialism has both when it needs to. Capitalism cannot function without competition.

I understand that leftist theory can be hard to understand if you aren't at all familiar. I suggest reading leftist theory before trying to talk about it on social media as though you're saying something profound. It only comes off as profoundly ignorant.

It's true that people would be paid more for their labor, it's false to equate that to underproducing food. You're attaching mysticism to your claim, as though it's inevitable that starvation would happen unless you have a Capitalist brutally exploiting workers and still having starvation despite food being literally thrown away. Co-operative farming exists and has existed in stable manners for the vast majority of human existence, and this is even easier as industrialization improves.

There are no "other options" for Socialism beyond Worker Ownership of the Means of Production. That is Socialism. If you mean there are other models than Marxism-Leninism, then of course, I'm not an ML myself. I'm anti-tendency and think each country has unique circumstances that will result in different paths to worker ownership, perhaps Syndicalism, or Market Socialism, or Council Communism, etc.

Whether the corporation is owned by a single Capitalist or several, the fact that the Workers have exactly no say and the Capitalists have all of the say remains the problem.

On what grounds do you think that it's worse for Workers to democratically control production, rather than a class of owners?

Do you think crops care about who shares ownership of them, and kill themselves if they are shared, rather than owned by 1 dude that employs other people to harvest it?

Lemmy is a decentralized, FOSS platform built by a Communist explicitly as an answer to Reddit. The people on Lemmy trend leftward, obviously, but that's because the very foundation is a rejection of Capitalism. If you want Capitalist Lemmy, there's Reddit.

FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.

Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastadon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.

Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.

Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.

The best part is that much of the reason houses are getting bigger and cars becoming more luxurious is because that's the only way to maintain higher profits. Because we have achieved abundance, the only way to stay on top is for Capitalists to make not participating in the endless consumerist cycle ridiculously difficult.

Case in point: dumb phones. I have felt like my phone addiction is too great, so I have been researching dumb phones. After all, I got by with just a flip phone for years, what's the harm in going back to something like a Light Phone? Turns out, modern society is built on the assumption that you have a smartphone to install a random app just to accomplish a goal like checking in for a flight, or reading a QR code for a menu, or otherwise.

The standards have "raised," but only in a way that maintains profit over what's actually good for humanity.

When has Clarence Thomas ever done the right thing? When do people think he will ever act properly under pressure?

Why friend shape if not friend?

There are legitimately people here arguing that just because you don't understand the language, you probably aren't a fascist for liking clearly fascist music that you have to work hard to find, especially if you don't natively speak the language.