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dex_sda posted:the funny thing about that is that because it's just 'free' without any ideology attached to it, there is a tendency for people to draw the wrong conclusions. There's a reason IT people are often either libertarian or radical left - either they've seen only the superficial 'freedom', or they've realised the way the IT community operates like a mutual aid/sharing community. No, it does have an ideology attached to it, ideology lies precisely in the systematic wrong conclusions. IT people lean libertarian because open source does not operate like a mutual aid community at all, it operates very much like the libertarian ideal of charity. (I include left-libertarians who can't tell the difference in the libertarian ideologue category.) Capital makes money, swoops in to set up some charities, people freely pitch in to whoever they like with no desire to learn to know them or their needs, and everything seemingly works out great: people who can't buy things have an abundance of free substitutes to work with. People have these pet projects they'd like to do and get some pats on the back for doing it, so they start contributing to them and toss the results on the internet. They are 100% alienated from the recipients of the product and highly alienated from the other contributors. They have little idea how useful what they're making is in the big picture, and they don't care, because they're doing it to engage themselves intellectually and/or toot their own horn. Most of the people who don't go unnoticed end up serving capital, because corporations understand the dynamics of the ecosystem and chip in strategically so that as much of the socially recognised open source work as possible is tied to serving their ecosystems at the expense of everyone else. The free software people are less ideological and more aware of the realities. They understand that a mutual aid system only works if people who take from it are forced to contribute back to it, and they try to organize collectively to serve some kind of real person with real tasks. The neglected desktop side of the Linux ecosystem is a good example: people try to coordinate so that stuff people need that doesn't exist yet gets made. They overcome alienation by engaging each other as users of these programs as well as the developers, and manage to engage in actual mutual aid. But the desktop side suffers from extreme neglect compared to the capital-serving server side Linux, which reflects how the mutual aid/sharing economy in general is very small compared to the extension of capitalist economy, and just keeps shrinking comparatively.
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Nov 25, 2020 14:42
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uncop posted:No, it does have an ideology attached to it, ideology lies precisely in the systematic wrong conclusions. IT people lean libertarian because open source does not operate like a mutual aid community at all, it operates very much like the libertarian ideal of charity. (I include left-libertarians who can't tell the difference in the libertarian ideologue category.) Capital makes money, swoops in to set up some charities, people freely pitch in to whoever they like with no desire to learn to know them or their needs, and everything seemingly works out great: people who can't buy things have an abundance of free substitutes to work with. This analysis is mostly sound, but you are neglecting stack overflow and other forms of information sharing that are decidedly less rooted in capital, and more in direct collaboration with others. This is not to say capital dislikes stack overflow, but in general those kinds of platforms thrive thanks to aid users extend towards one another. It is also the thing that most IT people interact with most regularly.
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Nov 25, 2020 19:57
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dex_sda posted:This analysis is mostly sound, but you are neglecting stack overflow and other forms of information sharing that are decidedly less rooted in capital, and more in direct collaboration with others. This is not to say capital dislikes stack overflow, but in general those kinds of platforms thrive thanks to aid users extend towards one another. It is also the thing that most IT people interact with most regularly. This is a good point, however we can't ignore that capital has coopted these communal efforts: many of these IT people are collaborating over code related to their jobs, after all.
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Nov 25, 2020 20:15
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Cpt_Obvious posted:This is a good point, however we can't ignore that capital has coopted these communal efforts: many of these IT people are collaborating over code related to their jobs, after all. Of course; it is in capital's interest for IT workers at their job to be effective, and stack overflow does lead to proletarialisation of this specialist skill, which in time will lead to diminished pay. That does not change the underlying fact that these things are a loose mutual aid network of mostly volunteers, and IT workers see the effectiveness of that system during their work.
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Nov 26, 2020 02:08
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Cpt_Obvious posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1m1MMDj1g This loving fraud lmao, what he is describing already exists in several places, most notablt Shared Capital which is a lending co-op that finances co-ops. Its been around for decades. It makes me INSANE that Wolff regurgitates research from Democracy at Work Institute and then tells people to contact Democracy @ Work for help. I straight up think this guy is a grifter (although his 'socialism 101' schtick is fine) because if he was AT ALL serious he would talk about the other already existing organizations like the Federation of Worker co-ops (who can also help you find capital) rather than directing people to stay within his hemeneutic D@W bubble and don't forget to donate. He also didn't mention preferred shares, non-voting stock with a first position basicaly. If you are trying to start a co-op and need help finding financing contact the nearest co-op development center to get pointed in the right direction. ICA Group and Shared Capital are both wanting to fund conversions right now. The SBA was mandated by the Trump admin to start lending to co-ops and they just didn't. Extremely frustrating.
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Nov 26, 2020 02:09
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Basically the answer is: the same way those people would raise money to start any other kind of business. A good project for you would be lobbying your city to create a co-op dev and loan fund like Madisom WI and New York NY and Berkeley, CA. Theres a bunch of empirical data that shows the 'impact' of co-op dev is like 5 to 10 times greater than capitalist biz dev on the local economy, Im working on putting it all together in a position paper or whayever and making a website people can copy so they can push for it in their town/city/state as well.
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Nov 26, 2020 02:13
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Hes right that in order to meaningfully cooperatize the economy you need co-op Banks (theybfigured this out in Spain 70-80 years ago...) and not just credit-unions, getting co-ops networked into solidarity efforts like starting one has been hard but is getting easier.
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Nov 26, 2020 02:15
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Crumbskull posted:Hes right that in order to meaningfully cooperatize the economy you need co-op Banks (theybfigured this out in Spain 70-80 years ago...) and not just credit-unions, getting co-ops networked into solidarity efforts like starting one has been hard but is getting easier. What exactly is the difference between a credit union and a coop bank?
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Nov 26, 2020 04:46
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Crumbskull posted:Theres a bunch of empirical data that shows the 'impact' of co-op dev is like 5 to 10 times greater than capitalist biz dev on the local economy, Im working on putting it all together in a position paper or whayever and making a website people can copy so they can push for it in their town/city/state as well. It would be good if you could share that when it’s done. I’d be interested in seeing the sources too as in the interim those can be shared with others.
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Nov 26, 2020 06:27
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:This is a dumb question, probably for Crumbskull in particular. I know I could just The big three of the socialist co-operative movement were Robert Owen, Pierre Proudhon and William Morris, they all went in different directions but the initial source for the first co-operatives come from pooling the resources of the members, this gave Owen a massive head start since he was already a successful industrialist and William Morris and his circle of friends were also quite wealthy. For the workers of Paris though they often had to take shortcuts like just taking over workshops that had closed down and force the authorities to grant them ownership. For Proudhon believed that once the first worker enterprises were established they could then federate and assist other workers to get started and so on, but in order to transform an entire economy at some point it would be necessary to compel the government to establish a People's bank paid for by taxation of the remaining establishments owned by the capitalists. This would require an incredibly strong and motivated labour movement, he made the proposal during the 1848 revolution in France when the workers were armed and had successfully brought down a monarchy and looked like they could topple the conservative republic. There's an interesting and very thorough analysis of is economic ideas online, chapter V onward deal more directly with his ideas on banking and credit. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/proudhon/dana.html
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Nov 26, 2020 06:56
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Somfin posted:The best decision ever made re: copyright was that code, as in the actual code that is written, cannot be subject to copyright. It can still be owned, sold, and licensed, but if you reverse engineer a proprietary system, your reverse engineered system is fine and legal. Code can be copyrighted; that is what the concept of code "ownership" is. Reverse engineering is, however, permitted - but replicating the system from your reverse engineered results may be illegal if there are software patents on it. Or if Oracle wins their lawsuit against Google.
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Nov 26, 2020 06:59
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e-dt posted:Code can be copyrighted; that is what the concept of code "ownership" is. Reverse engineering is, however, permitted - but replicating the system from your reverse engineered results may be illegal if there are software patents on it. Or if Oracle wins their lawsuit against Google. I took a bit of a look into this, and you're right- but, there's a fascinating separation between code as creative expression and code as utilitarian necessity and while the former can be copyrighted, the latter cannot be. So, while you can copyright something like Enterprise FizzBuzz in its entirety because the parodic overly-structured nature of it is a creative expression, each individual part of that creative expression is basically fair game because Enterprise FizzBuzz is made up of tiny utilitarian parts that are all doing things in a very standard "enterprise code" way. So, while code that is in itself a legitimate expression of creativity is protected in its whole form as a literary work, code snippets, functional examples that show how to do something, and doing something with the intent of having it function the same way as an existing product but starting from scratch and figuring out solutions to the problems that crop up as you go, are all not protected. Software copyright and patenting are complete garbage nonsense because they actually do stifle innovation, because usually the remit of the protection is far, far larger than was intended in the idea of patent law- see Namco's patent on mini-games during load times in games, which has finally loving expired.
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Nov 26, 2020 23:23
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I guess this is the best place to put this but if it's not I apologize. I was looking up some stuff about wages and I ended up in a few reddit threads pre covid talking about hourly vs salary and people bragging about working 60 hour weeks because they get overtime. A lot of the bragging came from salaried workers and they wished they were hourly just for the overtime. It confused me that some people would rather work that much just for overtime rather than being paid more for the work they do and/or having extended deadlines so they wouldn't have to work that long. Maybe it's a way to rationalize that changes aren't likely to happen, maybe covid might have changed their outlook or maybe they're just lying but it's so weird to me to be that defined by a job. I just had to get that off my chest.
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Nov 26, 2020 23:44
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Open source as we know it enabled the tech giants of today. It is a bad thing. If it had any of the leftist potential that people proscribe it it would be illegal.
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Nov 27, 2020 11:30
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Gaunab posted:I guess this is the best place to put this but if it's not I apologize. I was looking up some stuff about wages and I ended up in a few reddit threads pre covid talking about hourly vs salary and people bragging about working 60 hour weeks because they get overtime. A lot of the bragging came from salaried workers and they wished they were hourly just for the overtime. It confused me that some people would rather work that much just for overtime rather than being paid more for the work they do and/or having extended deadlines so they wouldn't have to work that long. Maybe it's a way to rationalize that changes aren't likely to happen, maybe covid might have changed their outlook or maybe they're just lying but it's so weird to me to be that defined by a job. I just had to get that off my chest. Yeah I'm kind of the opposite opinion: with a salary I can stop working when I'm done working and not feel like I'm not monetizing enough of my time by working overtime. I guess it's different when you're living in economic precarity and you want the option to do an extra shift to get some extra cash for that unforeseen expense that needs to be taken care of immediately... but that's really a symptom of people living in economic precarity in the first place, and letting people destroy their bodies just a little bit faster is fundamentally unjust.
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Nov 27, 2020 11:40
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thotsky posted:Open source as we know it enabled the tech giants of today. It is a bad thing. If it had any of the leftist potential that people proscribe it it would be illegal. Can you elaborate on this? In my dumb mind, open source software is a resource available to everyone and therefore intrinsically more useful than privately owned code.
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Nov 27, 2020 11:47
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thotsky posted:Open source as we know it enabled the tech giants of today. It is a bad thing. If it had any of the leftist potential that people proscribe it it would be illegal. The worst thing you can actually say about the open source movement is that they favours guild-like structures over union-like structures. And even that is better then the status quo in many location.
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Nov 27, 2020 14:00
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Beefeater1980 posted:Can you elaborate on this? In my dumb mind, open source software is a resource available to everyone and therefore intrinsically more useful than privately owned code. A lot of the big tech companies relied on the discoveries of open source and free software in one way or another as either free R&D or as the foundation for their own proprietary alternatives. The problem with Thotsky's logic is that without open source and free software we'd still be stuck with giant tech companies since they were setup by government funding, or by capital firms expanding into new fields. And to be honest recuperation by capital is a feature that has effected everything under the sun so we may as well pack up and go home with that attitude.
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Nov 27, 2020 19:12
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The sun certainly has counterrevolutionary tendencies, being as it is the primary energy supplier for many important parts of capitalism.
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Nov 27, 2020 19:15
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dex_sda posted:This analysis is mostly sound, but you are neglecting stack overflow and other forms of information sharing that are decidedly less rooted in capital, and more in direct collaboration with others. This is not to say capital dislikes stack overflow, but in general those kinds of platforms thrive thanks to aid users extend towards one another. It is also the thing that most IT people interact with most regularly. I think a better way to think about these kinds of platforms and casual teaching/advice interactions is to recognize how much capitalism requires uncompensated labor performed out of passion to function. Imagine how much surplus value would be lost if parents had to be paid to raise the generation of workers, or teachers had to be fairly compensated for the essential work they do. Even among all jobs, among the most mercenary of workers, I think there's a desire to do well at things that comes out even when not compensated (and has to be deliberately suppressed if you want to do something like a work-to-rule or slowdown). I think a better explanation for the politics of first world tech workers is that they tend to be detached from the normal institutions of cultural consent manufacturing, so they end up with more unorthodox politics based on where they socialize online instead of the standard US liberal-conservative and liberal-progressive.
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Nov 27, 2020 20:00
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Speaking of software being evil or good I'm watching this video by Sub.Media about hacking and the internet that covers how the internet is used by governments and corporations and how its being used to subvert them. https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/f0c80ab8-aa46-49d4-b662-5c7b6060a2d4
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Nov 27, 2020 20:03
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Are the Amish an example of a successful anarchist or possibly communist community? I don't know enough about anarchism, communism, or the Amish to know for sure whish one it would be. They live independently from the state, have their own set of rules that everyone in the community agrees to abide by, and have created a functioning society that has lasted hundreds of years. I'm sorry if this is already a well known thing and I'm just showing my own ignorance here.
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Nov 28, 2020 01:31
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Cpt_Obvious posted:What exactly is the difference between a credit union and a coop bank? Its a regulatory distinction and doesn't hold in every nation/state but: A credit union is a 'savings bank', its specifically to allow normal working people to have savings accounts but in most regulatory contexts is not allowed to do stuff like make business loans or do other capital genersting activity like that that doesn't directly benefit the consumer members. A co-op bank is a fully fledged bank that, crucially, ia regulated in auch a way thay it CAN amass capital like a normal bank, it just then uses that capital to develop the solidarity economy. .https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_Laboral is a good example of a co-op bank like I'm talking about (ignore that they call themselves a credit union) which was formed expressly to grow the amount of capital and to make loans within the Mondragon solidarity economy.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:27
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Baka-nin posted:The big three of the socialist co-operative movement were Robert Owen, Pierre Proudhon and William Morris, they all went in different directions but the initial source for the first co-operatives come from pooling the resources of the members, this gave Owen a massive head start since he was already a successful industrialist and William Morris and his circle of friends were also quite wealthy. For the workers of Paris though they often had to take shortcuts like just taking over workshops that had closed down and force the authorities to grant them ownership. Its really a damm shame that rich nonce Robert Owen gets the nod and the working man John King who actually promulgated and popularized the ideas that Robert Owen was actively harming through his moronic and patronizing experiments is ignored. The Rochdale Pioneers included some Owenites but the project had way more to do with the practical and iterative approach of King than Owen's utopianism.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:34
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Are the Amish an example of a successful anarchist or possibly communist community? I don't know enough about anarchism, communism, or the Amish to know for sure whish one it would be. No, op, they are a good example of cults that do wood working.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:36
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Crumbskull posted:No, op, they are a good example of cults that do wood working. Oh, I clearly don't know enough about whatever the Amish are doing.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:51
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Oh, I clearly don't know enough about whatever the Amish are doing. My understanding is that most Amish communities are functionally authoritarian patriarchal cults, but I'm not an expert.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:52
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Oh, I clearly don't know enough about whatever the Amish are doing. I think the general gist of anarchy is in opposition to all forms of hierarchy. That typically includes political rulers (obviously), economic (gently caress capitalism because you should hate your boss), and religions.
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Nov 28, 2020 02:53
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I think the general gist of anarchy is in opposition to all forms of hierarchy. That typically includes political rulers (obviously), economic (gently caress capitalism because you should hate your boss), and religions. Ah, I was under the impression that different communities of anarchist could just mutually decide what rules they wanted to follow and which rules they didn't want. So if a community decided "yeah, we want religion" they could just go ahead and have it.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:04
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Ah, I was under the impression that different communities of anarchist could just mutually decide what rules they wanted to follow and which rules they didn't want. So if a community decided "yeah, we want religion" they could just go ahead and have it. I'm not the expert on anarchist theory, but I know that Marxism generally views religion as a way to control and placate a population. Marx famously called it "The opiate of the masses" in the medical sense, meaning that believing that Jesus loves you makes life under the crushing fist of capitalism a little more bearable. And like all overarching structures, it exists purely to support the hierarchy that already exists. The most obvious example is the old concept of Divine Right, which answered the obvious question of "Hey, why does Richard get to be king and I don't?" with "Because God says so." Obviously, God doesn't decide who's king, the dude with the most swords is just king by default. The king's position of power is attained through violence, but he justifies it with religion.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:17
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm not the expert on anarchist theory, but I know that Marxism generally views religion as a way to control and placate a population. Marx famously called it "The opiate of the masses" in the medical sense, meaning that believing that Jesus loves you makes life under the crushing fist of capitalism a little more bearable. I gotta be honest, I'm not sure I agree with all of that. Like, that theory only works if every religion is identical to a very specific form of Christianity and they very much aren't. Also, many tyrants have historically justified their reigns through other means than religion. The thing Marx is describing is a real problem that exists, but it's not necessarily something that's always true in every case.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:26
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:I gotta be honest, I'm not sure I agree with all of that. Like, that theory only works if every religion is identical to a very specific form of Christianity and they very much aren't. Also, many tyrants have historically justified their reigns through other means than religion. Well, think of it this way: Divine Right was in no way unique to Christians. People all over the world claim power from divine sources. Hierarchies are fairly universal in all religions, even ostensibly egalitarian ones. Most importantly, don't confuse the original text for the material implementation of that text. For example, Christian texts preached charity and universal love, but Christian leaders used religion as an excuse for war and conquest.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:33
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Well, think of it this way: Divine Right was in no way unique to Christians. People all over the world claim power from divine sources. Hierarchies are fairly universal in all religions, even ostensibly egalitarian ones. This is kind of what I was trying to say, but I'm not quite able to articulate it correctly. Religion itself isn't the problem, the problem was people using religion as an excuse to justify their own terrible actions and abuse of power, and I don't think a lack of religion stops people from finding ways to justify their own positions of privilege. Like, under capitalism lots of people use "I have a lot of money" to justify their power, and "I'm white" or "I'm male" or "I'm cis" has been used in similar ways to justify superiority over others. I just don't think having or not having religion would fix what Marx is talking about, it's a problem that runs deeper than that. Like I said, it's hard to articulate what I'm trying to say, it makes sense in my head but I'm having trouble expressing it.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:50
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:This is kind of what I was trying to say, but I'm not quite able to articulate it correctly. Without shoving words in your mouth, I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you mean that the religion itself isn't an "evil", but it's the way that humans warp it to conserve power. And Marx and others might agree. However, they would point out that at a certain point, what the text says doesn't really matter. It's an old book written by ancient dead people. What actually matters is how current living members of society use those words, and they universally use religion to form oppressive hierarchies.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:55
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Are the Amish an example of a successful anarchist or possibly communist community? I don't know enough about anarchism, communism, or the Amish to know for sure whish one it would be. No, they're a patriarchal cult and do not live independently of the state at all in reality. They're so closely enmeshed into the US that banks setup near their villages actually have special drive ways built for the buggies that come to deposit their earnings. They have a very strong community ethic and their rejection of technology isn't as simplistic as its often lampooned, but its also dominated by the older men of the community. They also unlike many other Christian alternative life style movements still vote in state and federal elections, they were big Trump supporters in Pennsylvania.
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Nov 28, 2020 03:58
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Without shoving words in your mouth, I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you mean that the religion itself isn't an "evil", but it's the way that humans warp it to conserve power. And Marx and others might agree. However, they would point out that at a certain point, what the text says doesn't really matter. It's an old book written by ancient dead people. What actually matters is how current living members of society use those words, and they universally use religion to form oppressive hierarchies. Nah, that's not putting words in my mouth, you pretty much got what I was trying to say. And while I can see where Marx is coming from better now, I still don't agree. But there's no way to objectively prove or disprove my way of thinking. Baka-nin posted:No, they're a patriarchal cult and do not live independently of the state at all in reality. They're so closely enmeshed into the US that banks setup near their villages actually have special drive ways built for the buggies that come to deposit their earnings. They have a very strong community ethic and their rejection of technology isn't as simplistic as its often lampooned, but its also dominated by the older men of the community. They also unlike many other Christian alternative life style movements still vote in state and federal elections, they were big Trump supporters in Pennsylvania. I clearly need to watch a documentary or something on the Amish over the holidays because my idea of what their lifestyle is like was way off. I knew I was ignorant on the subject, but the depths of my ignorance are much deeper than I realized.
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Nov 28, 2020 04:33
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You could have anarchy with a religion but you would have trouble having it with a lot of current religions. I mean some early proto-anarchists like the Diggers were explicitly religiously motivated, but you would have to have a religion that basically was anarchist, or that at least presented no conflict with the idea that arbitrary hierarchies (which, I think, 99% of anarchists would describe the church or likely any religious practice that creates some sort of priest to overse it, as being) are bad and lead to bad things. You could conceivably have some sort of communal religious practice that rejects organizing people into hierarchies based on perceived religious authority, but that's not how most of our currently prevalent religions work. I don't necessarily think it is an inherent feature of religious practice any more than I think that any form of hierarchy is inherent to humanity, but like with many aspects of our society the hierarchical organizations are a lot better at spreading and subjugating other ways of doing things. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 06:44
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm not the expert on anarchist theory, but I know that Marxism generally views religion as a way to control and placate a population. Marx famously called it "The opiate of the masses" in the medical sense, meaning that believing that Jesus loves you makes life under the crushing fist of capitalism a little more bearable. Did Marx acknowledge the history of religion pre-dating capitalism? I assume he would say that religion has the same ultimate control/placating effect across a spectrum of exploitative socieconomic arrangements, and isn’t unique to capitalism? Cpt_Obvious posted:Without shoving words in your mouth, I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you mean that the religion itself isn't an "evil", but it's the way that humans warp it to conserve power. And Marx and others might agree. However, they would point out that at a certain point, what the text says doesn't really matter. It's an old book written by ancient dead people. What actually matters is how current living members of society use those words, and they universally use religion to form oppressive hierarchies. Isn’t this confusing materialism as a historical dialectic with materialism as a basis for values/ethics? Seems like a classic is-to-ought naturalistic fallacy; historical materialism tells us why things are what they are better than idealism, but it alone doesn’t tell us how things should be. Where I’m going is that I do believe having some sort of shared faith and rituals is hugely important to solidifying communities, in a way that to me seems integral to the socialist and/or communist project. I suspect there have been tomes written on this by people much smarter than me, so all I’ll say is that in a better society, hard science would be more important as the medium for shared faith and rituals than it would be as the engine of industrial progress.
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Nov 28, 2020 07:14
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Did Marx acknowledge the history of religion pre-dating capitalism? I assume he would say that religion has the same ultimate control/placating effect across a spectrum of exploitative socieconomic arrangements, and isn’t unique to capitalism? Yes. The use of religion as a means of societal control was acknowledged as something that isn't unique to capitalism. Sharks Eat Bear posted:Where I’m going is that I do believe having some sort of shared faith and rituals is hugely important to solidifying communities, in a way that to me seems integral to the socialist and/or communist project. I suspect there have been tomes written on this by people much smarter than me, so all I’ll say is that in a better society, hard science would be more important as the medium for shared faith and rituals than it would be as the engine of industrial progress. It was Bakunin that had an especially atheistic bent in his socialism, while Marx's "opiate of the people" remark can be taken to mean less that it needs to be abolished outright, and more that people clinging to religion is a natural outgrowth of them seeking reprieve from their feelings of oppression. That most socialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had some atheistic leanings to one degree or another comes from how the Church was a much more powerful influence than it used to be, and "progressive" movements within the Church were not nearly as prevalent. Of course, nowadays, we do tend to recognize the "utility" of religiosity within socialist projects.
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Nov 28, 2020 08:03
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I was never very religious, but in the period leading up to getting married my then fiancée and I went to prep sessions with a priest because we had for various reasons to have an Anglican wedding. Going to church every Sunday for a few months, having previously not done it, was a strange experience. There was a genuine sense of community in how people came together in worship that is intrinsically valuable to a socialist society. You could get to the same place without religion in theory but it takes an element of social compulsion. You were definitely made to feel guilty if you didn’t show up one week.
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Nov 28, 2020 11:49
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