|
punk rebel ecks posted:Managers keep track of production and have employees report to them on their progress and any issues they have. A better word for them would be "directors" of whatever department they are in. Even in a fully socialized world you would have managers, only they may be elected their subordinates (much like in higher education). Again, the idea of workers' self-management exists primarily to address workplace issues that the management would normally tend to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 12:17 |
|
|
Judakel posted:Again, the idea of workers' self-management exists primarily to address workplace issues that the management would normally tend to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management In a perfect world that would be great! Having met and worked with a lot of people we are far far far far from that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:42
|
|
|
Judakel posted:It isn't based on axiomatic priors. Managers just add nothing of value in terms of labor performed, much like capitalists. if it was once more my first day on the job at a metalworking plant and someone was like "we have no managers, they add nothing of value" i would walk off into the sunset, avoiding the ridiculously early opportunity to die to a lockout tagout override by some dumb impatient rear end in a top hat guaranteed no greater or lesser oversight capacity than any other laborer what fantastical notions we're confronting here
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:43
|
|
|
I can’t imagine what a hospital would look like with no managers. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:46
|
|
|
MarcusSA posted:In a perfect world that would be great! I bet you think you're the smartest guy in most rooms you're in. Staluigi posted:if it was once more my first day on the job at a metalworking plant and someone was like "we have no managers, they add nothing of value" i would walk off into the sunset, avoiding the ridiculously early opportunity to die to a lockout tagout override by some dumb impatient rear end in a top hat guaranteed no greater or lesser oversight capacity than any other laborer I am not surprised that a manager think this way about the workers they supervise. I'd wager a key part of being a middleman is believing the world would stop without you there. MarcusSA posted:I can’t imagine what a hospital would look like with no managers. Probably affordable. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:47
|
|
|
Judakel posted:I bet you think you're the smartest guy in most rooms you're in. Na pretty sure that’s you.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:48
|
|
|
Actual existing socialist states have always had managers, since assigning that task to certain qualified workers is much easier than to practice direct workplace democracy while on the job. It's just more practical to delegate power than to constantly be voting on every little decision during the workday. e: For the record, China practices workplace democracy with the staff and workers representative congresses (SWRCs) that exist at most firms, public and private.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:52
|
|
|
Judakel posted:I am not surprised that a manager think this way about the workers they supervise. I'd wager a key part of being a middleman is believing the world would stop without you there. buddy i don't care if the manager believed or cared the world would stop without them there, because i wasn't them, i was the dumb motherfucker keeping the line clean and occasionally squirming around in the Death Gears. what i cared about is that there was qualified experts with training given a supervisory role to maintain workplace safety regulations and oversee tagout to ensure people like myself did not find themselves turned into tread hamburger because of some other dumb motherfucker nowhere in the entire world, not even in the most heavily marxist attempts at anything, were there things like vehicle manufacturing or metalworking or specialized equipment plants successfully run without managerial oversight. y'all could probably wander into a north korean produce processing plant and marvel at how they unsurprisingly have managers like everywhere else on earth trying to do anything involving highly specialized trade or dangerous equipment
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:54
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:buddy i don't care if the manager believed or cared the world would stop without them there, because i wasn't them, i was the dumb motherfucker keeping the line clean and occasionally squirming around in the Death Gears. what i cared about is that there was qualified experts with training given a supervisory role to maintain workplace safety regulations and oversee tagout to ensure people like myself did not find themselves turned into tread hamburger because of some other dumb motherfucker You'd be hard-pressed to find any marxist vehicle manufacturing anywhere, so you're technically right. China certainly isn't, and North Korea isn't, either.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 07:58
|
|
|
well you just let me know how magical cooperative non-hierarchical manufacturing plants fare without any sort of managerial structure once we reach whatever fantasy n-th level of marxism that's supposed to be and the conditions for their existence could ever, ever, ever conceivably come about i will elect to never work in one so as not to be hard-pressed in a less fun way, cheers
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:02
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:well you just let me know how magical cooperative non-hierarchical manufacturing plants fare without any sort of managerial structure once we reach whatever fantasy n-th level of marxism that's supposed to be and the conditions for their existence could ever, ever, ever conceivably come about As I've said, co-ops have a managerial structure in the form of workers' self-management, but those that would be managers would not ONLY be managers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:06
|
|
|
Judakel posted:As I've said, co-ops have a managerial structure in the form of workers' self-management, but those that would be managers would not ONLY be managers. excellent, yes, i was starting to wonder when the tortured caveats would come in, and i am not disappointed "carl, i know you're supposed to be managing plant safety for your entire shift, and i know that's really hard work you received specialist education for and needed years of qualifying experience, but now that means you're not a worker and you provide nothing of value anymore. in order to satisfy the Judakel Standard Of Being A Manager But Its Ok Because You're Not Being A Manager Like That, you need to go wander away from your safety oversight duties and do a minimum standard of providing something non-managerial ... like sweep a floor or something for at least an hour. just do that and your vital oversight concept is now no longer incompatible with the revolution."
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:17
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:excellent, yes, i was starting to wonder when the tortured caveats would come in, and i am not disappointed If you can't tell the difference between a professional managerial class (with a "specialist" education) and a worker who performs the essential duties currently given to the "specialist" manager while also doing other work, then I don't know what to tell you. That isn't a tortured caveat and the work required isn't that specialized. There is a genuine difference that exists between the two.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:27
|
|
|
Today I learned that, under Marxism, paperwork no longer exists. Legal and OSHA obligations also evaporate into the ӕther of pure ideology. And having specialists trained to do a specific job, and do it safely and well, is something which is no longer needed. That person who spent years learning electrical engineering? Have them stop the work they dedicated half of their life to so they can, I dunno, draft a schedule for the delivery drivers for the next week. Certainly sounds like a solid basis of a successful, workable economy to me 
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:32
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:if it was once more my first day on the job at a metalworking plant and someone was like "we have no managers, they add nothing of value" i would walk off into the sunset, avoiding the ridiculously early opportunity to die to a lockout tagout override by some dumb impatient rear end in a top hat guaranteed no greater or lesser oversight capacity than any other laborer This whole branch of the conversation is really funny because yeah, having worked in environments like this, doing things like blending hazardous chemicals or filling flammables for international shipping without someone who a) oversees and directs the process and b) is trained to be aware of health hazards that may arise from mistakes is both a recipe for lawsuits and a recipe for on-site deaths. And as anyone who's worked in a white collar environment knows, meaningless titles like Junior Executive for Sales Development or Market Research Co-Ordinator are often given out in lieu of raises to placate employees who know their pay needs to rise at least in line with inflation, and are starting to grumble about it, but who might be mollified by a fancy new title they can put on their resumé.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:35
|
|
|
Megillah Gorilla posted:Today I learned that, under Marxism, paperwork no longer exists. Legal and OSHA obligations also evaporate into the ӕther of pure ideology. The specialist job of filling a schedule, with the proper training to do it safely.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:36
|
|
|
Judakel posted:If you can't tell the difference between a professional managerial class (with a "specialist" education) and a worker who performs the essential duties currently given to the "specialist" manager while also doing other work, then I don't know what to tell you. i cannot in good conscience carry this on much longer to deposit in the hands of weary thread moderators tomorrow, but we at least chanced at precisely what makes it so tortured: there are essential managers who just do managerial work, and you're trying to walk the fact. that's it. cpt_obvious just doesn't know what he's talking about, and it turned into this. you will have effectively essential managerial oversight positions in any specialized industrial scenario that categorically require managerial positions held by people who provide vital oversight - even if they work entirely in a managerial capacity and do nothing else. you can tell me "well there's a type of managerial class which IS useless" and i won't disagree, but neither will i find it remotely relevant. in any battle to undo capitalist hegemony over things like industrial production and bring egalitarian conditions to workers in general, this condition will not be bypassed and i don't want to gently caress with attempts to idealistically move past it. i already know the game at this point, which will involve this turning into a semantic dispute about when what you can call 'a manager' is a different essential category and actually that kind of 'management' is obviously okay, but i don't see any need to participate in it so that's that i guess Android Blues posted:And as anyone who's worked in a white collar environment knows, meaningless titles like Junior Executive for Sales Development or Market Research Co-Ordinator are often given out in lieu of raises to placate employees who know their pay needs to rise at least in line with inflation, and are starting to grumble about it, but who might be mollified by a fancy new title they can put on their resumé. i did this once and am still shocked and appalled that my being a worker ended that day, in spite of all the ... you know, work i was also foolish enough to have been mollified
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:46
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:i cannot in good conscience carry this on much longer to deposit in the hands of weary thread moderators tomorrow, but we at least chanced at precisely what makes it so tortured: there are essential managers who just do managerial work, and you're trying to walk the fact. that's it. cpt_obvious just doesn't know what he's talking about, and it turned into this. you will have effectively essential managerial oversight positions in any specialized industrial scenario that categorically require managerial positions held by people who provide vital oversight - even if they work entirely in a managerial capacity and do nothing else. you can tell me "well there's a type of managerial class which IS useless" and i won't disagree, but neither will i find it remotely relevant. in any battle to undo capitalist hegemony over things like industrial production and bring egalitarian conditions to workers in general, this condition will not be bypassed and i don't want to gently caress with attempts to idealistically move past it. There is essential work that managers partake in, and that can be done without creating a managerial class. I am not trying to "walk the fact" by stating this and there is no game. Capitalists do work, too. That doesn't make them workers, because that is a class.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 08:56
|
|
|
Staluigi posted:i did this once and am still shocked and appalled that my being a worker ended that day, in spite of all the ... you know, work Yeah, even when you know the game and you shouldn't be mollified it's still a really effective carrot. The boss recognised your hard work (nb., actually just recognised that you're necessary to the smooth operation of the business, but they also don't feel like paying you very much)! You can tell your friends and family you got promoted! And maybe if you interview somewhere else they'll see that your job title changed and assume you actually got promoted and therefore deserve to be paid more money!
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:02
|
|
|
Judakel posted:There is essential work that managers partake in, and that can be done without creating a managerial class. I am not trying to "walk the fact" by stating this and there is no game. It's a standard that isn't really consonant with any historical implementation of Marxism. You seem to be saying that all systems of work should be utterly non-hierarchical even on a basis of strict practicality, and that anyone who has any kind of oversight responsibility should also do manual labour to keep themselves humble. I can see how this could happen in certain work environments, but in others it seems deeply impractical. "The workers own the means of production and make decisions about how they are employed" doesn't necessitate "the management of the means of production must occur without centralisation", which is essentially the role of production managers, either on the micro scale of the shop floor or the macro scale of nationwide policy development.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:10
|
|
|
If management in the private sphere adds no value and is unnecessary, then presumably management in the public sphere adds no value and is unnecessary. And that implies... that all of government is unwelcome and Ayn Rand describes the marxist workers paradise? e: I mean 40 years on this is still Gorbachev's dilemma we are talking about. It turns out effective management is really important and adds crucial value, and centralised socialist economies have not established a mechanism or a theory of a mechanism to ensure effective management. e2; \/ no it's not consistent with marxist analysis, it's just consistent with the garbled understanding of marxist analysis that posters above have. Also as per the above edit I don't think there is a coherent marxist answer to this problem which is one of the reasons why it hasn't been seen as a valuable economic theory in 100 years Alchenar fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:13
|
|
|
Android Blues posted:It's a standard that isn't really consonant with any historical implementation of Marxism. You seem to be saying that all systems of work should be utterly non-hierarchical even on a basis of strict practicality, and that anyone who has any kind of oversight responsibility should also do manual labour to keep themselves humble. I can see how this could happen in certain work environments, but in others it seems deeply impractical. I am not saying that on the basis of strict practically, there should be no hierarchy. On the contrary, I think you can acknowledge the need for minor hierarchical structures without creating class divisions around it. Although the idea of needing to account for hierarchical national structures in some final stage of marxism seems utterly bizarre given Marx's views on the nation state.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:16
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:If management in the private sphere adds no value and is unnecessary, then presumably management in the public sphere adds no value and is unnecessary. And that implies... that all of government is unwelcome and Ayn Rand describes the marxist workers paradise? do you really think any of this is consistent with marxist analysis? do you have anything to back that up or is this just nonsense garbage based on nothing at all?
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:26
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:e2; \/ no it's not consistent with marxist analysis, it's just consistent with the garbled understanding of marxist analysis that posters above have. Also as per the above edit I don't think there is a coherent marxist answer to this problem which is one of the reasons why it hasn't been seen as a valuable economic theory in 100 years there is a coherent marxist analysis to it. marx talks about productive vs unproductive labor pretty clearly, and those aren’t really moral terms. and do you have any source that it hasn’t been seen as a valuable economic theory in 100 years? it seems like the opposite to me. i mean, we are in the china thread after all. basically all applications of marxist theory have happened in the last 100 years.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:36
|
|
|
fart simpson posted:there is a coherent marxist analysis to it. marx talks about productive vs unproductive labor pretty clearly, and those aren’t really moral terms. Okay I really don't want to dive into this too deeply because a) China thread, not marxism thread and b) people are going to get absolutely furious at me and I'm not really up for that but: 'Length of time marxism has been refuted in the mainstream' varies depending on if you are looking at it economically, sociologically or politically, but the main critiques of the labour theory of value and marx's understanding of the function of unemployment were made over 100 years ago and in mainstream economics nobody has felt the need to really look back. Capitalism vs Socialism is not an argument that is ongoing in university economics departments, people are getting on with doing useful work in understanding how markets work. The reason this is/isn't relevant to the China thread is that China has opted for a system of industry management that is explicitly capitalistic at the business level, with the state intervening to produce redistributive outcomes/strategic guidance at a very high level. Ie. they aren't doing marxism at all, they're doing welfare state (crony) capitalism through a one-party state model. e: and to be clear, I do appreciate that marxist thinkers have attempted to respond to those refutations and that within Marxist circles there has and continues to be a fair bit of thought and writing going on. It doesn't change the fact that that community is firmly outside of the mainstream and their responses have not been considered effective. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 09:58
|
|
|
To bring it back to China, under any interpretation of Marxism it feels ridiculous to assert that it's good practise that white collar workers who don't own controlling stakes in the companies they work at should not benefit from labour protections.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 10:41
|
|
|
Judakel posted:The specialist job of filling a schedule, with the proper training to do it safely. lol, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? Ask anyone who's ever had to do scheduling for a large workforce with thousands of competing needs how easy it is and you'd find out just how difficult it is. And if the scheduling also includes allowing time for staff safety training and maintenance, then yes, it is a safety matter you dunce. Ideology isn't a magic wand you can wave at the world and make reality cease to exist.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 10:55
|
|
|
I think the core problem of management is it's essentially 2 roles combined. There's no intrinsic need for your manager to be your boss. They are smashed together because the bosses need someone on site to coerce the workers to stay on task, and the tasks themselves require someone to manage them. The role of being a boss does not itself require all of your time, so you can just lump it into the manager roll. And really it helps the bosses if the person managing the workers is on the boss side of the class divide. For some examples of "managers" that are not bosses: Lets say I'm a high level executive and my assistant says "you can't do that you have an appointment at 2" they're helping to manage my time, but they are not my boss. Some workplaces in games development have a producer role that essentially works more like an assistant to the workers than it does a traditional manager, even though they fulfill the rest of the role in coordinating everybody and ensuring people are doing the tasks the company needs them to be doing. In programming you'll sometimes have sections of a program "owned" by a programmer. So if I was working in someone else's section I'd have to pass any changes by them, and if they were working in mine they'd have to pass changes by me. But we don't simultaneously become each other's boss because we have the final word on a specific section of our work. Workshops will sometimes have people in charge of stations, if you go to someone's station they're in charge of making sure you use it safely and deciding who gets to use it when, but that doesn't mean they're your boss in any other capacity. And you can easily make decisions both democratically and decisively by giving someone the power to make decisions in the moment and then democratically determine if it was the correct decision later. A person can be given the temporary power to tell me what to do such that if they see me doing something unsafe they can tell me to stop and I have to. But they only have that power over me, and only for that shift. After the shift I can complain about it and have it reviewed, and they don't have any more power than me. Even if they get it back every shift, the power is embedded in the job ON the job, not in the person. The key difference is they are a worker whose job it is to make sure I work safely and to do that job they need to be able to tell me what to do. Rather than the alternative of they inhabit the role of having power over me, and telling me to Basically, there's no reason why a manager has to be a different class than a worker. And I think people are arguing different sides of what management means currently. One is the a job that needs to be done for the task to succeed, the other is a class dynamic that serves the bosses. Yes you need managers. No you don't need managers. But we don't have a good way of differentiating because our language doesn't support that. fake edit: ^^ There is no reason why scheduling has to be a management position at all. Especially because it's hard. A person can be in charge of the schedule without having any other power/responsibilities. And if they have extra time there's no reason that time has to be spent managing people instead of say, sweeping the floor. If you're tempted to think the person who makes the schedule should be above sweeping floors then that is the core problem of having a managerial class. Nobody's job should place them above any other job, even if their job is to assign work to other people.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 11:57
|
|
|
Phigs posted:fake edit: ^^ There is no reason why scheduling has to be a management position at all. Especially because it's hard. A person can be in charge of the schedule without having any other power/responsibilities. And if they have extra time there's no reason that time has to be spent managing people instead of say, sweeping the floor. If you're tempted to think the person who makes the schedule should be above sweeping floors then that is the core problem of having a managerial class. Nobody's job should place them above any other job, even if their job is to assign work to other people. Absolutely. Being a paper pusher is in no way inherently superior to being a welder, or a driver, or anything else. Nor should we consider it to be. But this whole discussion started specifically because one goon didn't think there was any need for specialists under a Marxist system, which is patently absurd.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 13:21
|
|
|
While certain brilliant posters in this thread hand wring themselves whether the poor slog making starvation wages is worthy of being considered “human” because they have the unfortunate ad luck to have “manager” in their title. Which again in a lot of industries is meaningless The executives and CEOs continue laugh, watching with glee as once again leftism self consumes itself while they get off scott free making billions of dollars and working their workers to death for poverty wages - whether they have a “managers” title or not. If Judakel or Cpt Oblivous, et al, don’t consider certain workers worthy of protections because of a loving title then I for one don’t want live in their nightmare world and I doubt many others would as well. Also once again Jesus loving Christ it really does seem like some people in this thread have never worked in a goddamn white collar field and their understanding of “work” is a early 20th century steel factory which easy to identify floor workers, managers, and a single “owner” but work is just not like that anymore. *edit* In a white collar world “managers, project leaders, development directors, etc” for the most part, don’t dictate personnel or financial decisions. They’re only responsible for divvying up work. It’s the people in C-suite (who you are never allowed to talk to directly or otherwise interact with) who make all those decisions and their pay is in the millions. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 13:26
|
|
|
Unrelated: I know many folks ITT liked the America against America thread, so this translation posted today of a 2012 essay by Wang Huning may be interesting: https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wang-huning-the-culture-revolution-and-reform-of-chinas-political-system.html an excerpt: quote:I would like to raise a question: Who leads the Party Committee? Some people say the Party Secretary. If this strikes you as ostentatiously American, it's probably not a coincidence. quote:Soviet Russia’s anti-constitutional practices endured for more than seventy years, but have finally met with universal anger and resentment. Finally, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by former Soviet Vice President Gennady Yanayev (1937-2010) and other high-ranking officials, staged a coup d'état on August 19, 1991, in an attempt to save the critical situation. However, the people, fearing a return to the horrors of one-party dictatorship, the scorn for human life, the rigged elections, and the stifling of press freedom, did not support the August 19 coup, which failed within three days. calling out a certain brand of Chinese thinker. Also, warning that the world's second-largest mass party obviously contains a lot of people not all that attached to the party's enduring existence The constitutional notion is quite specific. What Huning is advocating here is: - the party should have separation of powers, checks and balances, free internal debate, all that stuff - so that the party remains effective - the national legislatures and executives however should be subject to 'openness' (公开化, glasnost, which is not mentioned in the Party context; conversely, checks and balances, free debate, etc. is not mentioned in the national context. Note that openness in contemporary China is interpreted in a more FOIA sense, not the freedom-of-speech sense in Gorbachev-period USSR; it's for civil-social groups with a constructive relationship with the Party to be able to file amicus curiae, so to speak, whilst still entitling the party to discipline activists with a more combative or adversarial outlook) ronya fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 13:47
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:While certain brilliant posters in this thread hand wring themselves whether the poor slog making starvation wages is worthy of being considered “human” because they have the unfortunate ad luck to have “manager” in their title. Which again in a lot of industries is meaningless I don't think you and I watched the same video, because these are the overworked people that the video was talking to:   poo poo, that first lady who is very blatantly an executive is covered for a good quarter or third of the video. She is the one who is "laughing with glee". Even if she is not a business owner, she is very clearly not a worker, and her pay most definitely reflects that. Unlike workers, her executive pay allows her the option to quit and live off her savings. So the idea that there is any parallel to some poor retail managers being worked to the bone are absolutely absurd because the video is directly referencing the plight of the executive and middle management. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 16:04
|
|
|
the video is one among many about the issue the issue is working having to do 9 hours a day 6 days a week this routine just destroy people, many end on ICU http://996.icu
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:I don't think you and I watched the same video, because these are the overworked people that the video was talking to: "Very blatantly an executive" is...it bears repeating but I really think your understanding of white collar workplaces not just in China, but anywhere in the world, is limited if you think that the 29 year old who works 72 hour weeks and returns each night to her tiny apartment to eat cup ramen is somehow the bourgeoisie because of her job title. "Executive" is a strictly arbitrary title the meaning of which is going to vary by workplace. It definitely does not imply a high salary as a given of the role. In a lot of companies, if you're going factory to factory with a briefcase trying to sell people whatever your boss's company manufactures and earning a tiny base salary plus commission, your title is going to be Sales Executive. This does not imply any level of actual executive control; it's just something to put on your e-mail signature. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 17:03
|
|
|
I feel like you can tell that Cpt_Obvious and Judakel haven't really read theory or maybe have only really had it dispensed to them via youtubers or other online influencers with ulterior motives because the myopic focus on insisting people with "middle manager" sounding titles aren't I have some copies of Capital I ordered recently that I want to use to start a "Liberals Read Marx" thread soon at some point because this sort of 'calm mao' argument would be more easily and readily refuted at its source and I think more people would be better served to point out the short comings in this sort of argument as according to Marxist principles and theory; such as the fact right there in the communist manifesto Marx points out the fact that an inherent behaviour of capitalism is eroding the social station and economic material conditions of the bourgoisie and placing them into the proleteriate; like how craftsmen had their jobs eliminated through industrialization forcing them to find a new economic evolutionary niche making products industrial principles couldn't mass produce at sufficient quantity or "die" and forced to work at a factory. Talking about PMC's basically stems from the same flawed thinking, it's a modern invention and without much bearing on marxist theory. I don't think I've seen "PMC" mentioned once anywhere in Capital and yet you wouldn't be able to know this from listening to the sort of online commentator who treat it as fact. The fact is PMC's aren't the enemy, and people interpreted as being in opposition to workers rights and labour's interest is just incredibly patronizing and insulting; the truth is PMC's are capitalism's next inevitable victims and aren't just essential in any society but essential to any labour movement and no solidarity is complete without their inclusion. quote:The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself... It's right there. This seemingly deliberate effort to alienate PMC's from the working class just seems like some kind of op to limit the effectiveness and reach of leftists. Like the response to "these people are overworked and exploited by capitalism" shouldn't be to split hairs and argue they don't deserve to benefit from a worker's state, but should be to go "drat, I hope they can get benefits and representation to their issues soon" perhaps with a dab of "I hope they can find solidarity with the plight of others of the working class and join and support them in forming a union". This reminds me of the games industry of the conflict between programmers and voice actors in their respective efforts to unionize and leftist infighting like this only helps capital continue to exploit workers. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 17:48
|
|
|
I think its the product of a type of thinking where you start with "China is doing nothing wrong, and must be defended from criticism" and go forward from there. I don't know how somebody gets into that mindset to begin with, it doesn't seem very leftist to me, but it does seem to bear out.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 17:57
|
|
|
How are u posted:I think its the product of a type of thinking where you start with "China is doing nothing wrong, and must be defended from criticism" and go forward from there. I don't know how somebody gets into that mindset to begin with, it doesn't seem very leftist to me, but it does seem to bear out. What gets me is that the overwhelming majority of (the fortunately tiny number of) people who think this way have never lived in China, and the entirety of their shallow understanding of that country, its history, its culture and people, as well as failed ideologies like Marxism, is derived from popular books, online articles and Youtube videos. Imagine thinking that being the OP of a lovely forum thread about Marxism makes you some sort of expert and gives you the ability to authoritatively speak about the subject. These same people constantly denigrate and mock actual experts, but have no issues with LARPing as experts themselves.
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 18:24
|
|
|
Slow News Day posted:as well as failed ideologies like Marxism Might be tipping your hand a little early with this one
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 18:27
|
|
|
Slow News Day posted:What gets me is that the overwhelming majority of (the fortunately tiny number of) people who think this way have never lived in China, and the entirety of their shallow understanding of that country, its history, its culture and people, as well as failed ideologies like Marxism, is derived from popular books, online articles and Youtube videos. This isn't really the appropriate thread I feel to discuss marxism more generally but to be fair I feel like as a critique of capitalism or as a "theory as to how capitalism works to erode societies even if it did some good in ending feudalism" I think it does very well as I tend to in the space thread bring up marxist theory as to why even without clear profit motives capitalism will fund space ventures, maybe today I'll have that thread made and that it isn't really fair to describe marxist theory as "failed".
|
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 18:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 12:17 |
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I feel like you can tell that Cpt_Obvious and Judakel haven't really read theory or maybe have only really had it dispensed to them via youtubers or other online influencers with ulterior motives because the myopic focus on insisting people with "middle manager" sounding titles aren't I just want to say upfront that I am not a Marxist, but I really appreciate this post, and how it points out (rightly) the divide-and-conquer strategy capitalism has over workers. Thank you. We should feel solidarity with people being exploited by capitalism whether they are in China, America, or anywhere in the world. Not attacking them because they don’t meet some weird obtuse definition of what a “true” worker is. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Sep 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 2, 2021 18:55
|
|