• pirate2377@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    You’re right. At least under feudalism we had job security. We should return to tradition /j

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      11 hours ago

      Motherfucker, people were already commenting on how ACTUAL labor relations for LITERAL SERFS weren’t ACTUALLY as bad as wage labor (a form of slavery if you’re not too brainwashed to realize what it means to have to work for a wage TO SURVIVE) in the motherfuckong 1800s

      This isn’t the own you think it is, it’s just an admission of your vast and all encompassing ignorance

      We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger.

      The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.

      Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

      Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it’s some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.

      But the wage laborer only “chooses” to work because they’ll starve in the streets otherwise. The employer only has the privilege of benefiting from their work by owning the means by which they can do profitable work. They EXPLOIT THE WORKERS’ SURVIVAL NEEDS and in doing so reap shares of profit from their labor that would make the cruelest medieval lord envious.

      And now, you dumb motherfuckers sit here, reading all this, and think, oh, so you want to return to feudalism? like that in any way makes sense

      How about ending the exploitation of labor entirely? That’s what socialism seeks to do. But you dumb motherfuckers are out here acting like your fucking landlords do you any favors (while somehow pretending to yourselves they’re any different from the evil feudal lords capitalism supposedly saved you from)

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        2 hours ago

        Let me tl;dr that for you: literal fucking peasants would give up a quarter of their crop, and this was seen as barbarous. The wage laborer GIVES UP THE ENTIRETY OF THE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOR. In exchange, he recieves A FRACTION OF ITS VALUE IN WAGE. The relative exploitation here is obscene, and yet people like you, ignorant, think it’s some sort of voluntary contract that benefits us all.

        Beautiful.

      • pirate2377@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        Why are you assuming I’m pro-capitalism? It was joke (thus the /j) because I found the framing of OP’s argument strange because (at least to me) it seemed more like an argument for fuedalism than socialism.

        I do now realize that I am incorrect with my initial assumption and thus I get why my joke wasn’t very well received. I probably shouldn’t have made it. Though I am confused as to why you made so many assumptions about my beliefs just from a dumb joke I probably shouldn’t have made. If anything, I’m more anti-capitalism than pro-capitalism.

      • pirate2377@lemmy.zip
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        21 hours ago

        I mean, tbf Feudalism and Capitalism isn’t all that different from one another. The only difference is that Feudalism has the hierarchy embedded into government via the monarchy whilst Capitalism’s hierarchy is enforced by corporations controlled by a different select few people.

        Whether Socialism actually does replace Capitalism we have yet to see, I’d definitely prefer it over Capitalism.

        • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          11 hours ago

          Feudalism doesn’t necessitate endless growth on a finite planet. It had other terrible contradictions, which were solved by capitalism by introducing new contradictions wich lead to crisis faster, more often and with more devastating effects.Of course, I wouldn’t want to go back to having Lords own all the land, but wait, we still have those, they’re called landlords.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          21 hours ago

          No, they are quite different. Both are class societies, but feudalism was tied to agrarian production, while capitalism is driven by industrial production. It’s less about hierarchy and more about class. As for socialism, it’s already usurping capitalism, the PRC is the world’s largest and most important economy and it’s in the developing stages of socialism.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          21 hours ago

          Usually the way Marxists analyze the difference between systems like Feudalism and Capitalism, the focus is on how production is carried out, and what kinds of property exist. Under capitalism, generally, industrial capitalists who own private factories transform money into commodities (capital and labor, where labor imparts its value on the capital) which are sold back for more money than the capitalist paid (the surplus coming from labor, which isn’t fully compensated). Feudalism is characterized because instead of the principal mode of production being industrial, it’s agrarian and relies on serfs working on their lord’s land for some period of time, then being allowed to work on their own lands.

          The fact that the structure of who owns what kind of property is different is very important. In a lot of ways, this change in how production is carried out (what is called the material base) is more relevant in deciding the direction society is headed than how the government is organized (society’s superstructure). The superstructure is shaped by the social relations in the base, but it can only maintain the base.