this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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I don't hate competition for the sake of competition. The goal of FOSS is cooperation until something becomes less than desirable, as the goal is a good product. With Capitalism, the goal is profit, and as such destabilization and competition are required. With FOSS, a new fork is only done for a better product, not for profit-seeking.
Commercial exploitation of an anti-Capitalist option does not mean the option is not anti-Capitalist. FOSS is a rejection of IP a la Capitalism, and a rejection of the profit motive.
I understand that trying to argue with sound logic is difficult for you, after all, nothing you've said has logically followed. Enough of being cheeky, though. The USSR was a specific model of Marxist-Leninist Socialism, they never reached Communism as Communism is a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. They did many things right, like giving workers far more control, and providing free Healthcare and education. They also had many huge problems, like massive corruption at the Politburo level, and atrocities committed by government officials like the Katyn Massacre and Stalin's Purges. As such, I believe the USSR provides a wealth of information on what aspects did work, and what aspects were terrible. I do not want to recreate the USSR, nor use it as a template. I want to learn from it and create something far better.
You're confusing market competition for Capitalism. Capitalism requires competition and rejects cooperation, Socialism has both when it needs to. Capitalism cannot function without competition.
I understand that leftist theory can be hard to understand if you aren't at all familiar. I suggest reading leftist theory before trying to talk about it on social media as though you're saying something profound. It only comes off as profoundly ignorant.
Except it's not, because it could do an even better job at rejecting the profit motive if it explicitly forbade commercial exploitation. But it does not. It's really more of a soft rejection — it makes the profit motive secondary, but does not get rid of it entirely.
Interesting, because earlier you said that reddit was capitalist. But it's really more of a dictatorship, isn't it. The entire platform is under their control, and everyone who doesn't like how they run it can just buzz off.
Now if capitalism requires competition in order to work, and Lemmy is giving them competition, are they in fact enabling capitalism (or at least participating in it) by doing so?
It doesn't forbid Capitalists from abusing it because to do so is to take the Capitalist stance of protecting Property Rights. By absolutely rejecting the idea of any ownership of FOSS software, it is an explicit stance against ownership of IP.
Reddit is Capitalist, yes, as they are a privately owned and operated site with dictatorial control, ie Capitalist. The problems with Reddit are precisely due to its Capitalist nature. Reddit competes with Meta, X, and other social media sites for ad revenue.
A Socialist entity competing with a Capitalist entity does encourage the Capitalist entity to be better, but does not mean the Socialist entity is participating in Capitalism in any way. Competition is not Capitalism.
What exactly is difficult for you to understand? What do you think Capitalism and Socialism are?
It's not abuse if it's explicitly allowed, as long as they abide by the rest of the terms and provide access to the their modified source code for free. Which they generally are, because the FSF vs. Cisco lawsuit has determined that the license holds up in court.
But the GPL is not an absolute rejection of ownership, neither are the BSD licenses. Only putting your code in the public domain does that.
Okay so let me summarize then:
Have I got that right?
What exactly do YOU think that they are? I'm still trying to figure that out. It sounds like communism is basically just capitalism WITH cooperation, which would mean capitalism is communism but without cooperation. Because they seem to share all the same features apart from that.
Capitalism is abuse, regardless of being allowed. It was cheeky, but that's what I was saying.
Yes, Capitalism requires competition yet competition is not Capitalism. Thumbs are fingers, but fingers aren't thumbs.
Communism is a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society achieved via collective ownership of the Means of Production. Capitalism is private, individual ownership of the Means of Production, with competing entities in a market-based system. Plain and simple.
Okay but in the Fediverse, there's at least three classes: instance owners (admins), moderators, and users. Four if you count developers. Each have a different level of privilege and responsibilities:
Users own nothing, except perhaps the right to their content (meaning they can delete or edit their posts or comments whenever they want to), and their privileges extend to where they are allowed to post and can be revoked at any time by an admin or moderator.
Moderators have a limited privilege to delete user's content without their consent, and the responsibility to keep their assigned communities clean.
Admins have the additional privilege of appointing moderators, and deciding who gets to have an account on their instance and under what conditions. In turn they also have a responsibility to keep their instance up and running, and maintain an adequate (to their users) level of federation.
Developers are the most privileged of all because they get to make decisions about how the entire thing works, what features will be added, etc., but of course that also comes with the most responsibility. If they fuck up, a lot of people might be upset.
So how is this a classless system?
The only thing that can be said to be owned collectively here is the source code, because anyone can fork it at any time if they want to. The servers belong to the individual instance owners, the users don't have any ownership claims on them. That's literal private property right there.
Whether it's stateless is at least debatable, since the developers could be considered a de-facto government, as they can make strategic decisions on a level none of the other classes can.
Sounds to me like this is more of a hybrid between the two, but I also cannot imagine how it could work if there were no classes at all. Perhaps a peer-to-peer system of some kind that doesn't require any servers, but that would still leave two classes, users and developers.
See what I'm getting at?
Users own the ability to make an instance on their own, you're confusing moderation with ownership of Lemmy. It's not like a Capitalist tool, or IP, it's freely open source code.
I see what you're getting at, it's just nonsense.
Oh, so it's the theoretical ability that counts, not the actual physical ownership, is it?
Well, by that definition, everyone in capitalism is a business owner, because everyone has the ability to start one in theory. The knowledge on how to do that is open source as well, you can just go to a library and read a book or better yet, ask someone who owns a business, they'll tell you enough to get started.
I literally just explained why digital FOSS is completely different than a Capitalist instance of IP or physical tools, and thus FOSS has no barrier to entry beyond skill, rather than monetary goods, and you completely skipped over that.
You really can't answer anything honestly, can you?
Servers aren’t free, you know. Just ask your instance owner. And even if you can get manage to somehow get your hands on free hardware you still have to pay for electricity and an Internet connection.
You’re making it sound like starting a business requires a minimum capital of a million dollars or something, when the actual barrier of entry is likely far lower than that.
You're continuing to abstract further and further away. For Lemmy, there is no IP, the structure is free to use. For Reddit, it isn't. Property Rights are a Capitalist notion, rejecting it is Socialist.
You have nothing of value to add, just dodging.
On the contrary, I’m trying to make it more practical in order to show you that “real” communism doesn’t exist anywhere except in theory.
In the real world, you almost always end up with a mixture of both socialism and free market capitalism. In fact, FOSS has done a great job showing that commercial success is possible without putting the profit motive first, even in a primarily capitalist environment.
FOSS is a rejection of Capitalism, the success of FOSS is the success of leftism.
Real Communism of course hasn't existed yet, even if a Socialist state existed at the time of Marx, Communism still likely wouldn't exist. It can only exist globally, and after far more industrialization and automation has occurred. Socialism, ie democratization of production via worker ownership, is absolutely feasible.
You've done nothing but prove everyone else here correct, you don't actually know what you're talking about and reflexively take a contrarion position to anything leftist, without actually thinking it through.
Okay, I get it, you're just going to keep spouting propaganda material no matter what I say.
Okay, I get it, you're just going to keep dodging and refusing to make an actual point no matter what I say.