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!
0. Only post socialist memes
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)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
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.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
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).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
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)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
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.
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.
Yes there are. You can be a trained retail worker in a few hours in most cases. Same with many farming jobs. Same with working the line at fast food. They still work hard and it doesn't mean they don't deserve a living wage.
There is more to it than that. You may be able to be trained in a few hours, but mastery and efficiency come with time. Someone who works in retail or farming can output more productivity in a shorter amount of time than an average person. It's not about how long it takes to train someone to start the job, it's the mastery you learn over time. As you do a job longer, your productivity increases, as you move deeper and develop more skill at the job.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor.
Of course people tend to get better with experience. But the retail worker who gets trained in 2 days can be reasonably good at the job within a few weeks and an expert in a few months.
Compare that to the years of training required prior to the first day on the job for an engineer or a doctor, who also get better with experience.
The thing is, “unskilled” jobs have a huge worker pool. Just about anyone can do it. Perhaps not that well, but it doesn’t matter much how well you do it for most of these jobs. Take a cashier. At best you might be twice as effective as the “normal worker”. Then compare that to what people call “skilled jobs”. Say a civil engineer. Here, your “normal worker” straight up can’t do it without years of training, and failure costs lives. For this reason, “skilled jobs” have a tiny worker pool and of those, only a few are adequate. It’s only natural that these few would ask for and receive a much larger pay. That’s not to say that “unskilled workers” shouldn’t be paid a living wage, but in a capitalist world, they will always be paid less.
From my experience in both the workforce and reading the news, I feel like CEO is a strong candidate for "unskilled job". I mean, when someone can simultaneously be the CEO for a major car company, a major rocket company, a brain implant company, and an infrastructure company, and be the owner, CTO and Executive Chairman of a major social media company, while still having time to spend all day xitting out their unhinged thoughts to the world, CEO has to be the easiest job in all of humanity.
Add 'landlord' to the list of unskilled jobs
It's not easy. You have to be completely dead inside and ready to fire all your coworkers at a moment's notice!
Some jobs require more skill, and some workers are more skilled. You can't get around that fact. That doesn't mean anyone should be making poverty wages. I think it's fair though that workers are paid more for learning skills. That can be either though paying them more at work, or paying them while they are in education. Note I don't just mean free education, I mean actually giving them money to study. That's the only way to make paying skilled and unskilled workers the same a fair system.
If you can learn your job well enough after a week or so to do it satisfactorily, it's an unskilled job.
There are definitely unskilled jobs. When I was a cart attendant at Target, I was in an unskilled job. If someone with less than two weeks training were left to do one of the jobs I have now, people would literally die.
So like a CEO?
Implying CEOs learn anything
Unskilled jobs? You mean CEOs and politicians?
Only skill required for that is lying with a smile
Exactly. Every job has it's own skills, whether that be mental, physical, or both.
There's not a single job on Earth that you could plop someone into with no practuce and have them instantly be good at it - if someone tells you otherwise they're either incompetent or they're lying (like stated in the above meme)
Yes. Society needs to show more appreciation for every worker.
"Burger flippers wanting more than a insert other job here, ridiculous" crowd when everybody else's wages also go up
First, I don't think "unskilled jobs" is used correctly most of the time and agree with you 99%. My quibble is that people often say "unskilled jobs" to mean "jobs that can be learned to do adequately without prior experience." Some, not most, of the jobs you show fit that category. I wish we had a corrolary to this meme to express the benefit employers get from employees who become skilled at these roles. Purely economically, if I am a manager who can hire someone who has gained great experience and can hit the job running day 1 at an "unskilled" job instead of having to train and performance manage a truly "unskilled" candidate, it would easily justify a 50-100% pay increase as it reduces the cost of management by more than that.
I think Superstore says it best:
Amy: They're not really gonna replace us! What are they gonna do, find someone who stocks go-backs like Mateo or who works the cash register like Elias?
Myrtle: Yes. Those are both very easy things to do.
The problem is that people generally look down on these types of jobs. Blue collar vs white collar.
Everyone deserves a ~~living~~ thriving wage. You know what's impressive? A cashier who has memorized every produce code whereas I struggle to remember the syntax of a foreach loop and I have to look it up each time. Wtf is a map type?! When did that become a thing?!
Ever seen someone doing their "unskilled job" all their life?
Why yes, yes I have.
We should remember who is parroting the “unskilled jobs” thing over and over. It’s always capitalists that benefit from paying these folks poverty wages like the meme states. So while the category can be called “unskilled” to differentiate from jobs that require months/years of formal (or informal) training, capitalists use it as an excuse to exploit. Both things can be true at the same time for different reasons.
I learned how to drive a forklift in a day for a stock room. Capitalists would still call it an “unskilled” job because I didn’t put myself into massive debt with a student loan, spending time I don’t have in a classroom. When does that job suddenly become “skilled”? Is there some imaginary threshold capitalists will accept?
Anyone that is contributing to the pool of labor is using a skill of some sort. Whether you think your job is easier than another or not doesn’t matter. All of the voids are filled with people willing to do a skill. CEOs and landlords, on the other hand, are contributing nothing to the labor pool. Simply owning a thing is not skilled work, but they will tell you otherwise, just like they set the standards for what is “skilled” vs “unskilled.” It’s all skewed to benefit the ruling class and give them an excuse to not pay a living wage.
For context, I’m a programmer that has been in the field for 18 years. Until the working class undoes this conditioning and equally supports each other, nothing will change for the better.
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.
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 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
Thank you for making feel I matter when I was stuck in a “unskilled job”
You do. The most infuriating thing is that there's people out there who would love to do some of these "unskilled jobs" and are very very good at it. But nobody does it out of choice when they would have to endure massive exploitation, not to mention humiliation.
You matter.
And honest work is honest work. That deserves respect regardless of how much education or paperwork or luck it takes to start.
Only "talking back if experienced" is the reason for poverty wages. If they are willing to let us starve for profit, why can't we burn down their homes for bargaining power? Why let them put their value on us in the first place and accept what we are given?
The only idiots that repeat this, are unskilled workers who have no idea what skilled workers do. Just assume they sit in a cubicle and browse Facebook all day for big money.
As others have said, your job is unskilled if you don't need to be trained for many years to do it. A retail worker, in any position, can be trained very easily. Go from McDonald's to Starbucks to Target. Same shit, different company. But from working the till at McDonald's to being a neurosurgeon? Just a surgeon? A doctor of any kind? Yeah, no. That takes training and skill.