• 0 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
  • If you know which jobs are bullshit then you don’t need to lower wages, you just eliminate the roles or at least stop hiring new people for them. None of this argument makes sense. I think you wanted to punish workers that did something you didn’t like and then got called out on it.

    Also changing wages to encourage people into certain jobs is a capitalist economic technique. My idea of paying people for harder work (physical or intellectual work) is much closer to the socialist statement of “to each according to their labour”. Studying is a form of labour performed for free or even at cost to the person doing the labour. Higher wages for the educated are partially there to reflect this.









  • Mate your from a regime that failed every single time it was tried. You’re existence makes the whole cause look bad and is why the left has recruiting problems.

    The best thing I could possibly do for socialism is get rid of Stalinists and Maoists. These leaders were about as bad as Churchil. There are plenty of anarchists that want rid of you too, who I am still considering joining. The anarchists were the ones that invented the term tankie to begin with!

    Nobody will take the far-left seriously until we come up with something that isn’t Marxist-Leninism. Even Trotskists have some clue about this problem, and Trotsky was more radical than Stalin by some accounts.

    Honestly I don’t know why I bother. As you have pointed out my parents are petty-burgeoise. I could probably become a petty-burgeoise or at least a high earning member of the proletariat if I put my mind to it. I have more chance of that happening than you guys actually causing a revolution and not have it collapse afterwards. I mean I already have a Master’s degree, it’s really not that difficult to move up in the world provided your not starving to begin with and you’re not an idiot.


  • Then why are you trying to call out “champagne socialists”? There are parts of the working class that have more than enough money to buy champagne and generally live a comfortable (or even affluent) lifestyle. There are even people who have made millions through labor alone, more rich than the petty-burgeoise. You’ve talked yourself into a contradiction.

    I’ve also literally made the arguement that you are now making about working class not being how much you earn. I had to do this when someone tried to claim that programmers and police officers are not working class cause they earn too much. The difference is I don’t go around accusing people who work full time of being “champagne socialists” whatever that term means.



  • Free education would be great. I am not saying I don’t want free education. All I actually did was challenge the notion that education is unattainable for the working class financially. Our student loan system in this country is much better than the system in the US which is downright predatory. Here even people from working class backgrounds can go to University provided they are smart enough. The vast majority of students loans in this country are never repaid in full or at all, it’s simply written off. Therefore it wouldn’t actually cost much more to give free tuition.

    Something else you should probably understand is that almost all money is debt. Over 90% of it. The rich create a lot of their wealth this way. Student loans are another type of loan you can exploit to become richer in the long run. The difference is even poorer people can exploit this type of loan for their benefit rather than it being detrimental and predatory like payday loans or US student loans.

    My parents don’t live in the UK anymore but I fully get what you are saying. They could indeed be called parasites and I have had a similar discussion with them about this. The thing you should probably understand though is they both came from poor single parent house holds where they struggled to afford proper food to eat (I remember my dad telling me about having blamonge on toast because they couldn’t afford anything else). Capitalism for all it’s flaws is a lot better in terms of social mobility than feudalism. Socialist models are actually worse in this department, though this need not be a bad thing if there is enough for everyone.

    I don’t want anyone to have poverty wages. You on the other hand seem to want that when you talk about bullshit jobs and the people who work them. It’s not the people who work these jobs fault that those jobs exist. They go to work just like anybody else. I treat lesser skilled jobs better than you treat bullshit jobs, even though bullshit jobs aren’t the fault of people who work those jobs, wheras anybody can work to increase their skill level.

    Edit: Also the middle class make up half or more of the working population according to some definitions. You’re saying that more than half workers shouldn’t be part of the socialist movement. Think about that before you answer.


  • And you’re completely delusional if you think that the existence of student loans makes university accessible. Many people can not afford living expenses to make it work without familial support, which I’m glad you had but it’s not what many people have. It’s privileged.

    That’s hilarious because I have literally seen people do it. You’re the one who’s delusional. I know people who get less support from their rich family than they would have gotten from the government had their family been poor. It’s actually a problem with sliding scale student loans based on family income. What happens when you’re family can’t be assed supporting you?

    Essential workers would be paid vastly more while the vast quantity of bullshit jobs(read theory) would be paid the bullshit rates they deserve.

    So you actually want more income quality than I do by the sounds of it. Yet you call my ideas far-right? You’re supposed to get rid of bullshit jobs entirely in a revolution. So that’s not even a consideration. Besides that I think paying people who are educated or do more physical work or more dangerous work is reasonable. Getting a degree is worse than free labour; you pay them to do work! That work is repaid later by higher wages. Even making University free wouldn’t be enough as you still are putting in labour during you’re time and university and not earning any money for that time.

    I really don’t want you anywhere near the leadership of a revolution. I think you’ve managed to clarify for me why I dislike Marxist-Leninists. You don’t actually think about anybody outside of the poorest in society and have no grasp on real life.


  • I grew up an area that’s recognized as one of the most deprived in England. It’s called Bridlington if you want to look it up. My family are not the worst off but we were never rich. My mum was a teaching assistant and/or teacher and my dad worked it hospitality as a manager. So not the worst jobs but also not the best. They both worked full time.

    It’s also a completely wrong that only middle class people go to University. We have this amazing thing called student loans that are only repayed above certain wages. You get bigger loans the less well off your parents are.

    I don’t know what you have to do to be classed as middle class because it’s not an easier defined term. It’s also not a term really used by marxism. They use the term petite bourgeois if my understanding is correct. I guess you could call my parents that as they were landlords. But at the same time they had to work full time at a normal job and all houses were mortgaged. So you could also say they are the proletariat. This is why the marixst class model dosen’t actually hold up always in real life. Real life is too complex as people can be in multiple classes at once.

    You’re also going to get nowhere by disparaging other workers just because they earn more than you. That’s what you seem to want to do.

    It’s also completely natural for some people to be paid more than others based on their labour. The Soviet Union had this exact policy for jobs that required more education or more physical work. That’s exactly how it should be outside of a post- scarcity society.

    It’s good that rent was that low in the Soviet Union but you also have more needs than housing. Food comes to mind where many people starved due to collectivisation efforts in the Soviet Union at the start. I understand they rectified this later but it is probable that the early stages of a socialist society will have problems like this. Things are likely to get worse in the beginning - not better.


  • I agree about the state of the NHS. The fact is though we still have an NHS, America never had one. Lots of countries don’t have healthcare either.

    How exactly is unskilled labour a myth? Maybe I should use the term less skilled or just easily replaceable since it’s not 100% unskilled? Either way the result is the same: some labour takes way more time and training than other forms of labour. I don’t think you can complain when a scientist or doctor that spent 7+ years at University while not getting paid gets a higher salary at the end. If you think this is a radical idea I really don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think anybody should be on poverty wages.

    This is factually incorrect. Low income votes go left while high income votes go right. There was a blip created by brexit where this was not the case because everything became the single issue of brexit.

    I am reporting what I have seen amoung students rather than the general population. The ones who have already been in work or are having to work hard to support themselves while studying are more centrist or right wing.

    4.2million children live in poverty, out of 12.7million total.

    By third world country standards they are probably rich. Poverty is very much relative. Some people make less in a day than minimum wage in this country for an hour. It’s still not a good thing by any means, but that’s sadly the reality. I don’t think a socialist revolution is going to guarantee everybody has enough food, clothes, and other resources. A lot of people would inevitably end up poorer than to start with, at least for the foreseeable future.


  • You realize things in the UK aren’t that bad, right? Like we have it way better than America. Nobody I know is seriously struggling. We luckily still have free healthcare and a social safety net. I hate to say it but you’re screaming over a much better situation than lots of countries are dealing with.

    Even those remotely close to struggling don’t blame capitalism and are actually right wing or centrists. At least this is what I have seen personally. It’s not like these people are transphobic or racist either.

    It’s people like you guys that scream endlessly that are part of the problem. You’re never going to convince anyone who doesn’t already support the cause like that.

    We also know the shit show that happened in Russia the failed ML revolution there, and basically everywhere else that tried it. Backing ML is getting you nowhere fast. Anarchists have more luck these days.

    I think it’s also worthwhile to point out that striking in the UK does almost nothing. This is partially because people don’t strike at the same time. If they did it would be utter chaos. Things might even change.

    It’s also true that lots of strikes are not skilled labour. We all know jobs like bus driver are not paid very much, yet people complain anyway, and I can’t help but think: you knew exactly what kind of job you were getting into. I sort of know better because bus drivers are an essential function regardless of what you think of them, so they should be paid fairly. Lots of people won’t think like this though. It’s also dead easy to replace unskilled labourers so scabs are always going to be a problem.

    Also even the conservatives come up with schemes to help the people that are public spending heavy. Examples include furlough, eat out to help out, and the £2 bus faires that are happening right now. They aren’t neoliberal at all. Schemes like that are not true right wing anymore than labour is true left wing in this country.


  • I have never heard if Tito or Tionism. How could I have argued about someone I have never heard of. Maybe I described his ideas without calling him by name?

    What SWCC? Any searches I ran came up with organisations not related to socialist politics.

    I think you might be right about socialist appeal. People have actually called them a cult before. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have turned people off marxism before. The issue is they are probably the best at recruiting young people, they were the only polticial organization to show up at my university for instance. They also have posters everywhere.

    Liberals? What do you mean by liberals? If you mean the American party then I don’t like them either, though they do beat the republicans. If you mean libertarian then all anarchists and even some marxists are libertarian. So are right wing capitalists and some people in between. It’s a very broad term that basically equates to freedom of speech and some other freedoms.

    I hope you don’t actually support Stalin though. From what I have been told what he wrote in his theory is somewhat reasonable, but dosen’t at all match what he actually did. The writing was mere propaganda. I have also spoken to people from ex-soviet countries, they basically all hate the USSR. It’s what caused a friend if mine to stop being a Marixst-Leninist.

    You are right that I haven’t read much theory. Theory is incredibly boring especially given it’s mostly in older English and hard to understand. Poltitics isn’t something I plan to do for a living - at least not any time soon.

    I have yet to see any evidence that marxism is a science. I also don’t believe modern capitalist economics is a science either. I have a very high bar for these things. When has marxism done controlled studies of different economic or polticial systems? If you have never done a controlled study then your not a science. Maybe there are some studies on this that I don’t know about. I would love if you could show me some.


  • I think anyone who supports Stalin and Stalinism is an idiot at best. If you don’t agree with me I really don’t know what to tell you. I can understand Jeremy Corbin saying that comparing him to hitler is unnecessary as they aren’t on the same level. Saying someone isn’t as bad as Hitler isn’t the same as saying you support them.

    Okay what do you think socialism is?

    As far as I am concerned it’s where the workers control the means of production. If the government controls the means of production that government needs to be controlled by the people or else it isn’t socialism!

    That’s why the USSR under Stalin can barley be called socialist, because Stalin had an outsized influence on the government. He could get you killed for disagreement with him.

    “Gravity is an old theory and we should accept that it is just something Newton came up with nearly 400 years ago and move on from it.” Clown shit.

    You’re really gonna argue physics with me?

    Newton had great ideas, just like Marx had great ideas. Newton’s equations though have largely been replaced by Einstein and his theory of relativity. It gives more precise understanding of the way forces and gravity work than Newton could dream of. Likewise Einstein was wrong about quantum physics and things like the behavior of light.

    In a science we don’t just sit on our laurels and blindly repeat past scientists. We constantly test, refine, improve, or reject old ideas.

    We should be treating Marx like we treat Newton or Einstein. Had some great ideas, some are still true, some are close but need further refinement, some are just straight up wrong. That’s the difference between an academic and a religious person.


  • What? I hate the right wing! The fuck is wrong with you?

    I want socialism, I just don’t support Leninists. I also think we need new ideas in the left wing rather than relying on people that died a 100 years ago. Reading Marx or Krapotkin is great but we can’t just rely on them, we need to accept that they are limited by the time they lived in. Plus who actually likes reading old English?

    I actually like the idea of market socialism and workplace democracy. It’s the closest thing to a real economic model for socialism I have seen. I believe anarcho-syndicalism is similar to this but I am not really sure, my understanding of anarchism is fairly limited.

    You really need to stop assuming that anyone who isn’t an ML is a right wing person. I also don’t get why you jump to random conclusions and misinterpret everything I say. It’s like you want me to fit in one of several boxes in your head because it’s easier to deal with that than actually talk to a real person.


  • It doesn’t increase the total amount of energy needed vs regular evs. It might lead to higher power drain at certain popular charging times though. It also gives us the technology to help with that in the form of better energy storage. It sounds like they have improved energy density of batteries considerably to fit that range into an EV. That’s something we will need in the energy grid going forward.

    It’s also possible to restrict charging rate during peak times to reduce load on the grid. There are other tricks that are possible as well including using connected vehicles not in use as additional energy storage for the grid.

    If you can get enough electricity for EVs in the first place then this technology would actually be helpful overall I think.