AlbigensianGhoul

Fair enough, I was confused about the differences between genzedong.xyz and genzedong.org before, but will try joining this weekend.

Good point. I read your reply there, but thought it more relevant to reply here. I was grasping a bit to try and understand that one. It is such a small and early section for such a large, varied and recent development in the larger economy. There were some forms of slaves getting their freedom individually though, and it was even somewhat common for slaves in Saint Domingue to not only get their freedom and become either peasants, craftspeople or even land/slaveowners themselves. And in other colonies with greater numbers of slaves, Maroons also formed parallel societies to that of the coloniser. The USA is a bit of a weird one for slave societies because they had a way higher amount of indentured servants or otherwise white workers compared to most Atlantic colonies, so they could enforce their racist laws with more effect.

I guess what I meant there was that slaves and their associated labour are individual property subjected to the whims of their single owner, while that of the proletarian is collectively dominated by the entire capitalist class of a society with no formal sale of workers between proletarians needed. I'm not sure if Engels meant that as I've not read much from him specifically on slavery, that was just my crackpot interpretation and I'll trust you there.

Edit: posted by accident, fixed now.

I don't think my analysis will fall into "What is good/bad" so I'll just do a point by point on what I find interesting. I was also not sure which one to reply to, so I went to the original cross-post. I think these could be posted on Wednesday night or very early in the morning depending on your timezone to keep the "Thursday" effect longer (though I understand the grad was down today).

1. What is Communism

Right off the get go, Marx throws a wrench into all future anarcholiberal definitions of communism as "the stateless classless society" to claim that "communism was never tried". If you just understand communism as that simple sentence instead, all "so and so isn't actually communist" arguments fall apart.

2-5. Proletariat and origins

The history is pretty spot on for the European proletariat at the time, and extends seamlessly into the development of the global proletariat later on in the timeline. It also does not account but apply to other services that are now the capitalist bread and butter, like delivery/warehouse services such as Amazon, but is still applicable for them.

6. Classes before industrial revolution

Here Marx shows his age and Europeanness, with generalist assumptions about ancient societies and barely even mention of the native non-European ones. Although they are today understood to be incorrect (i.e. slavery not being the only nor the majority working class in many civilisations he would describe as from antiquity), he is sadly not alive for us to correct him nowadays, and we need to understand this as a byproduct of his time and general European worldview. It seems like one quote that would be used for MarxistDebunkerxxx69.

7-10. Differences of the proletarian to other prominent working classes

He draws a compelling picture of how the modern proletarian as a class is unique from those that have existed in the past, and specially as the majority class for workers. From memory, I think at his time they weren't even actually the majority in most of Europe, but after mechanical agriculture and the rural exodus peasant populations hardly even reach 50% in most "developed" countries.

The issue with the slaves is an interesting one. His dry writing does give the impression that slaves "have it better" than proles, but what I think he was point at there is that the conflict of the slave is an individual one (that is from the slave to the master), while that of the proletarian is a class one. If a slave successfully flees from their master or kills them, they are immediately free until the state intervenes, and if no such intervention comes they can even sustain themselves with the same means of production and skills that they used as slaves. Abolishing slavery can end slavery, but single slaves can also individually have their individual slavery abolished by a variety of means. The reality of abolition without communism, as was demonstrated in Brazil later is that lots of them became rural proletarians just as he predicted. Although in theory their rights improved, "slavery by another name" continued for a very long time and is still considered to exist these days in some forms.

A proletarian on the other hand would not be freed by fleeing as they would not have either the skills nor the means to survive by themselves. Since they are not personally owned as individuals, they must submit themselves to (wage) slavery rather than the other way around and because of that can be readily replaced without the capitalist losing as much as a cent (in Marx's time there was no severance, nor is there in some states in the USA today). Slaves are captured and created, but proletarians must capture and create themselves. Obviously though, the vast majority of proletarians today have much better standards of living than the vast majority of slaves of his time, but that is in large part due to organised labour fights for those rights, and it doesn't necessarily cover positions historically occupied by slaves such as prison labour, manual sugar cutting or rural housekeeper.

11. Marx does some geopolitics

His pamphlets are usually very weird on geopolitics, specially future predictions. Ironically most successful revolutions that followed were instead on those same "semi-barbaric" countries for many conditions that were just not there in Europe. By his time Haiti had already expelled the French and ended slavery (which was an integral to the maintaining capitalism in Europe), and this wave of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutions outside of "The West" has never stopped to this day. It is easier to want to kill your oppressors when they are capitalists and Germanic.

12. Marx predicts the following 2 centuries

No comment necessary.

Ever since the beginning of this (19th) century, the condition of industry has constantly fluctuated between periods of prosperity and periods of crisis; nearly every five to seven years, a fresh crisis has intervened, always with the greatest hardship for workers, and always accompanied by general revolutionary stirrings and the direct peril to the whole existing order of things.

13. What follows from these periodic commercial crises?

Marx ever the hopeful. While I agree that capitalism keeps inventing things that can help end capitalism (like ~~automated machineguns~~ the internet), this also fails to predict how portions of the working class can and have been co-opted by capital specifically to prevent this abolishment. The capitalist are so incredibly wealthy that they can afford to pay a quarter of society double to keep the other three quarters down.

Overall a cool introductory text. I was going to ask why we we're doing only half of it, but the size of my reply answers that question.

same error for me, though I'm not on the gezedong space.

every day we stray further from "landlords are humans too".

Yes, from my understanding every single member of the WGA is striking even if they weren't working AMPTP (which includes giants like Disney, WBD, Universal, Paramount, ViacomCBS, FOX, Netflix, Amazon and a bunch of others). They are still allowed to work in areas that don't fall into the WGA's representation such as personal youtube channels, podcasts or other forms of non-writing work, but they are advised to consult with the guild if the line is blurry. For example, Adam Conover is a member of the board and negotiating committee, and he is still doing his podcast since it's mostly a self-employed interview podcast, but has directed it towards talking about the strike itself. I think they may even be allowed to direct given the DGA quick agreement, but I'm not sure how one would direct without a writer.

Edit: punishment can range between fines to outright expulsion, but it's rare for something like that to go through because you also get known as "that shitty scab" to all your coworkers and nobody wants to be both poor and hated.

There are also lots of cultures who had long rest breaks right after lunch, which have been getting eroded by global capitalism for a while now. But days off are much more valuable with the alienation from labour because now we spend most of our time selling labour force, and then have our free time dedicated to equally hard but unpaid household labour.

The biggest corporations form what is basically a "corporation union" called the AMPTP to take part in the collective bargaining. I'm not sure how exactly is their voting procedure, but the strike will go on so long as the WGA and AMPTP don't agree to a deal on a collective level. Now, after that contract is settled, I think (but am not sure) that members of the AMPTP and other USA corporations can provide even better contracts individually (like how a couple rail companies agreed to the sick day demands after Biden forced the bad deal through).

However they aren't allowed to make an individual contract that doesn't safeguard the demands agreed upon by the WGA, and they frequently issue "do not work" orders to union members about specific companies they have issues with.

I'm not from the United Stadia though, so I could be wrong about some of that.

Given that the actors' guild will probably start their own strike tomorrow, I think they might get a good bump in solidarity soon. Holywood corporations are willing to just let their workers starve rather than cede to their breadcrumb demands. This is no longer about "pay raise too high", it's about control because they know a victory here means momentum for the workers.

Even if you can't contribute to the Entertainment Community Fund (you likely can't), if you know people who like movies, series and stuff like that, you should probably remember them that this is going on. The media blackout on it is ridiculous.

It's funny but also a bit sad that somebody is stuck in such a weird pointless loop (that is, if he's not actually a fed or something). Hopefully he learns to become less of an insufferable arse some day.

Ownership of the means of production isn’t stopping people from whittling or kneeding dough…

Anecdotal yes, but people around me not having time to do that stuff is a big deterrent. If you have to work and study with all of your time and energy, you won't get much to chop veggies or bake bread and will have to order takeout or something of the sort.

Sure, some deprivation of time like that is possible under communism, but due to surplus labour you are naturally working more than one should under capitalism for that same return. Considering how most needs could be met with way less work in "developed" societies by abolishing property (fuck rent), people would be much freer to go chop soap, carve small sculptures or generally be messy with tactile and auditory senses without having to resort to a whole industry of other people doing that for you (those also doing that solely to pay their bills). ASMR and other such things are not problems of capitalism, but lacking solutions to solve capitalism's problems with capitalist tools.

Also it's important to point out that neurodiversity like Autism and ADHD aren't always considered "mental illnesses" and aren't inherently bad. Those would be more of the sort of Major Depressive Disorder which should definitely be treated as a problem.

I've been thinking along these lines for a while. I'm not diagnosed but it's heavily suspected I'm on the spectrum and I always noticed that while my tactile hypersensitivity leads me to hate things touching me, it brings me visceral joy to just do something fun with touch. Things like sculpting, carving or anything that involves lots of texture and . There had been some mentally "different" people on the rural side of the family in the past, and they seemed to be able to live a quite normal life tending to their plots, despite no access to medication. Now one has to get like 3 degrees to even get a job to afford mental health services, despite the best mental health service being not having to work like a ~~dog~~ urban human every day for the rest of one's life. A lot of neurodivergent and mentally ill issues stem not from the symptoms and traits but by how capitalist society is unwilling to do anything to accommodate those people because it's less profitable.

ASMR is just artificial crickets, bats and birds. That second video is fun because I cut my vegetables in that specific way and it brings be immense joy for a practice that has existed for as long as knives. Meanwhile we still allow those fucking car honks of hell.