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“liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.' Mikhail Bakunin
The bottom text comes originally from the new testament and Lenin was aiming the sentiment at upper class people who had passive incomes. He was saying that everyone would have to contribute meaningfully to society instead of just leeching off it like landlords do. He wasn't talking about the disabled, children, or elderly
But if you don't take the quote out of context, it doesn't support the narrative they're imagining up!
The first one: "Work and starve."
Nah you give what you are able and recieve what you need.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
Who decides what a person needs?
On the face, I think the idea "from each according to their needs, to each according to their ability" sounds reasonable. But if you have ever done any logistics work, then you know it is a childishly simplistic fantasy.
There is no way you could possibly keep track of the many resources and services that are needed in a modern, complex society and distribute them usefully before the people who need them die of old age (or starvation). As you try to centralize tracking of everything the administrative problems grow exponentially, and never mind building the actual distribution network. No government-managed system could ever keep up with the needs of a growing, changing society.
Just the highly centralised power structure and the single party consisting entirely of nepotism.
Yes, but you see, this is true freedom. You can only have real economic freedom, political choice and self-determination in a system where there's only one party and they control aspects of your life you didn't need controlling, such as how much food you're allowed to buy.
To be fair, yes, there were times in the soviet union were rationing of specific foods was a good idea, because there just wasn't enough for everyone otherwise. But still the thought that a single party can unilaterally decide how much you can eat is pretty damn scary.
Yeah, there's no person or group of people on this planet I would trust to equitably distribute resources like food and water, or decide what medical services count as needs for me or my family.
Yeah, but ðere are people who cannot give at all, and ð quote from ð Stalinists makes no allowance for ð mentally or physically incapable of labor.
A society is only as good as how it treats its least able to treat for ðemselves.
I think your keyboard is broken
ωнคт đΘ уσน мєคи?
Nah, it's just set to Old Norse
The current productive apparatus already produces much more than is necessary to take care of everybody's needs. Which means we could do degrowth, egalitarianism, and improve standard of living for everybody at a fraction of our current output. The free market is a kind of planning, its an inefficient one that delivers profits to owners and corporations and stockholders. While creating monumental amounts of waste.
The means of production are ripe, maybe beyond ripe, but the class of workers has to seize them for mutual benefit.
i too make broad generalizations based off of misunderstandings and false assumptions
To be fair. Everyone who is able to work should do its proportional part of work needed for the sustain and improvement of the society they live in.
Keywords:
Able to: as its truest meaning with the understanding that the vast majority of the population can work, one way or the other.
Proportionality in the work should not mean proportionality on the perceived benefits, but it should feel fair for everyone. Including the option to chose different ways of living that may mean different levels of work/benefits, all within reason.
Improvement of society: notice how society is not spelled "billonaire" or "bussiness" or "investors".
In other words From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, one of the most basic tenets of communism (and anarchism).
I'd like to add that if someone does something to improve society so everyone can work less, we should respect that. Instead what happens is that people take those labour-hours and instead of refunding it to the worker, ask for more since you're so much more productive now.
Good time to mention [email protected]
a.k.a intelligent communism
Or really just internally consistent communism.
Not pictured here: people who study history, political and social history, organizes IRL, cares about democracy, tries to understand and communicate with others the need for revolutionary political, social, democratic, and economic changes while acknowledging the challenges of that necessity
Lenin is pictured, what are you on about?
It appears you've discovered the flaw in my post
But since its a misrepresentation of Lenin I'm still right
Oh yeah, he cared about democracy very much, not in a way we would thought.
I agree with the meme, but correct me if I'm wrong: didn't Bakunin himself argue in favour of a work voucher system?
I don’t think so. I never saw it mentioned in his work.
edit: hmmm I faintly remeber something about “labour notes” as compensation. His does argue strongly for mutual aid and solidarity. Though I do tend to side more with Kropotkin than Bakunin. (Ignoring the fact their ideologies are 99% similar).
I faintly remember Bakunin's utopian vision from the revolutions podcast and I thought that he didn't really have an answer to the "what-if-someone-doesn't-work-conondrum".
Yeah, Kropotkin is a little bit more refined and based on science.
Kropotkin's rebuttal in Conquest of Bread is in chapter 12: objections. He expands on it quite a bit in section 12.3, but his conclusion is:
Take, for example, an association stipulating that each of its members should carry out the following contract: “We undertake to give you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work recognized as necessary to existence. Choose yourself the producing groups which you wish to join, or organize a new group, provided that it will undertake to produce necessaries. And as for the remainder of your time, combine together with whomsoever you like, for recreation, art, or science, according to the bent of your taste.
“Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a year, in one of the groups producing food, clothes, or houses, or employed in public sanitation, transport, and so on, is all we ask of you. For this amount of work we guarantee to you the free use of all that these groups produce, or will produce. But if not one, of the thousands of groups of our federation, will receive you, whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then live like an isolated man or like an invalid. If we are rich enough to give you the necessaries of life we shall be delighted to give them to you. You are a man, and you have the right to live. But as you wish to live under special conditions, and leave the ranks, it is more than probable that you will suffer for it in your daily relations with other citizens. You will be looked upon as a ghost of bourgeois society, unless some friends of yours, discovering you to be a talent, kindly free you from all moral obligation towards society by doing all the necessary work for you.
“And finally, if it does not please you, go and look for other conditions elsewhere in the wide world, or else seek adherents and organize with them on novel principles. We prefer our own.”
This is what could be done in a communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they became too numerous.
i meant Bakunin's vision, sorry. 🙈
Ah, no worries! I haven't read Bakunin yet, so I'm not sure what his stance was either 😅
When you’re in front of the MAGA firing squad, take comfort before your last breath that you’re not a “TANKIE.”
If I get executed by an authoritarian state. You bet you I will be proud I stood up to authoritarians during my life.
The idea of work under socialism is very different to the idea under capitalism. Work becomes a social activities, you do it for your community and you do a lot less as we are working only to support our community and not to net a few billion for the greedy few.
The idea of work under soviet regime so much beloved by tankies, however, is "do useless and inefficient work that you didn't chose and you don't have any say in, or be thrown in jail" which hits way different
In the political context of where I live, this reminds me of those in the socialist party that are against a Universal Basic Income.