this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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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.
You are either taking the piss or you are completely and utterly sheltered in your middle class bubble.
4.2million children live in poverty, out of 12.7million total. This amounts to one third of children in poverty. The NHS is literally falling apart at the seams, my family works in the NHS, it has been strangled to death. A lot of it has been stealthily privatised and the rest is just being intentionally ruined. It's on its last legs and is barely providing essential care.
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. Low income voters were convinced that voting for brexit would improve their conditions (they were lied to successfully) and incorrectly voting against their best interests. This however is now returning to left, although with Starmer at the helm and people outside of the politically engage the vast majority of the country has no idea what a slime he truly is. Backed by the media who want to see the real left fucked over as well, he'll likely do alright.
Where exactly? Show me the successful anarchists?
Unskilled labour is a myth used to suppress wages. I honestly can't believe you're spouting this while claiming to be left wing at all.
Furlough was an economic necessity. Eat out to help out is literally just a business promotion and has fuck all to do with helping the population it's about business owners, literally their target audience.
While much of the world is making buses 100% free.
And once again, this has nothing to do with helping people and is actually about helping businesses.
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.
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.
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.
Nah you should stop perpetuating far right anti-worker shit. Nobody is saying that.
Then stop saying the bullshit used to cause it.
So the people that can afford university education. You are sheltered and live in a bubble. I on the other hand grew up in squats.
Sound like a tory mate. Tell this to the 3million people in the country suffering from malnutrition. I genuinely can't fucking believe you are saying this shit, today there are 3million people using foodbanks, 15 years ago this figure was 30,000 or so. Are you fucking dense? Blind? Literally oblivious to the cliff we have fallen off of?
Rent in the soviet union was 5% of your total income.
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.
It used to be 100% free. When the country had less money than it does today. Oh and the railways we publicly owned. And the post office. And significantly more of the NHS. And the gas and water. And the rest. All at the same time. With less money.
I would not call it "amazing". 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.
Lol landlords are petite-bourgeoisie, not proles. The petite-bourgeoisie are in between workers and the bourgeoisie in that they both exploit and do some work because they are not yet exploiting enough to completely cease function as a worker. They're also the biggest parasites on the planet.
I don't know where you've got the impression that I think everyone should be paid equally. In my personal opinion wages should be based on how necessary to society they are. Essential workers would be paid vastly more while the vast quantity of bullshit jobs(read theory) would be paid the bullshit rates they deserve.
The region was prone to famines every 10 years for a thousand years. The soviets ended that permanently. Unfortunately mistakes were made with not having a secondary level of oversight, they over-trusted the reported numbers of grain given by the kulaks who were hording it for profit and it caused a famine that could have been avoided and later was once secondary checks were implemented.
Things will get worse before the revolution, not after it. Revolutions do not happen without a cause. Things get considerably better after them. What you're missing is that things are getting worse NOW, they have been getting worse since 2008, they are continuing to get worse, there is absolutely nothing on the horizon that will make them better. Things are going to get worse. We will continue down this path until the conditions get bad enough for things to get very interesting. We are working to build renters union orgs up like Acorn that we believe will be fundamental to the future resistance as renters will outnumber homeowners in the near future, on top of the usual trade unionism, and the other stuff you simply can't discuss online.
I can't believe you actually think bullshit jobs are the fault of the workers. The whole point of bullshit jobs is that they are created by the inefficiencies of capitalism - not workers.
At no point was that ever said.
So why do you want to punish the workers with lower wages if it's not their fault?
Where did I say that? Please quote me.
Denial isn't going to get you anywhere
Ah I see what you're getting at now. The point is to move the workforce from these roles to roles that are actually useful to society. As I mentioned before this is a process of development, not a magic button. It is not something that you necessarily have to do to existing workers, instead you apply it to future iterations of those roles and simply phase out the old ones.
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.
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?
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.
This is not scientific, this is utopian. Creating socialism isn't a magic button we press, it is a process of development. You don't have the proletariat take over control of the state and then magically press a button that makes everything bad go away and reorganise the country along perfect socialist lines. A process of building the productive forces is necessary while fitting in with the global system to avoid isolation (like cuba, dprk, etc have been). They will get eventually eliminated but not immediately.
Because why? Because you don't like being called out as the middle class utopian champagne socialist from a petite-bourgeois background that you are? As the larper that pretends to be socialist while consistently taking right wing anti-worker talking points? You've defended LOANS over providing free education for fuck's sake. What exactly has been said here that makes you want me nowhere near anything? The fact that I oppose student loans, oppose poverty and oppose shit poverty wages that you've defended as being fine because "unskilled labour" ? Such horrific positions! Christ.
Everything you're saying in argument with me is basically a tory talking point, which is entirely unsurprising for someone whose parents are landlord parasites. They'd be swimming to france post-revolution and saying the same shit about the new socialist briatin that the gusanos in florida currently say about Cuba.
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.
Liberal definitions.
How do you define if then?
With the marxist definitions. Class is determined by your relationship to the mode of production, they are extremely specific because that is literally a requirement of doing anything scientific with them. A simple explanation is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/wiki/class/
I personally wrote the first iteration of that page when I was a moderator there.
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.
I called you a champagne socialist for being obviously full of shit, spending your time doing anti-communism with this "tankie" bollocks instead of actually trying to make the world better in any meaningful way. Not because some workers are high earners.
All this shit does is amount to actively punching left. All punching left does is move the political dial rightwards.
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.
You are demonstrating precisely why we say that class determines politics rather than anything else. You lean decidedly right, not left. Because of your class background.
I'm quite bored with this conversation. You will grow into a libdem or a tory. It is a waste of my time.
That's rich coming from someone who will likely kill other communists if a revolution is successful. That's what MLs always do. Time and time again.
Also Lenin was born upper middle class. So clearly what you are saying is false if you actually follow Lenin.
Grow the fuck up
No. If you have to resort to that it shows you lost. How old even are you to be telling me to grow up? You're edgy enough still to support a dictators that killed real leftists. That's why everyone calls you tankies. You can't deal with the fact that your leaders come from middle class backgrounds either.
I've actually had enough of this now. Thanks for reminding me why people hate tankies.
I'm close to twice your age. When you've actually joined a union, grown up and realised real life isn't like this terminally online shit hit me up again.
You don't even know my age. I could be older than you for all you know.
Gives me plenty.