• Clark@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Why are big companies like Google and Microsoft supportive for leftists if leftists in the USA want to destroy capitalism? It’s weird.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      These companies aren’t supporting the end of capitalism. They subsume and coopt socially progressive movements to better support their own profits. Capital does this with anything, it doesn’t care about what the message or movement is, which is why many companies are tuning back progressive messaging in the current social climate.

    • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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      1 day ago

      They support liberalism, not leftism.

      They like making a big deal out of their tokenistic support of LGBT/BIPOC/etc, to distract from them trampling over workers rights.

      • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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        They support liberalism

        No they don’t. They only support making money and cornering markets for themselves. They’ll take corporate socialism and using the law to crush opinions. The idea that they “support” anything ideological is utterly wrong.

        Anticipating somebody’s response:

        Exactly. You just described liberalism.

        No I didn’t. Corporations have no ideology. It’s pure warfare and there are no rules or values beyond making money for themselves, not on any larger societal scale. They’re just algorithms for increasing profit.

        to distract from them trampling over workers rights.

        100% yes

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          “Corporate socialism” does not exist. Corporations push liberalism as a part of cultural hegemony, as does the state. Capital does not care about anything but profit, but cultural hegemony is the means to protect property relations.

          • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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            Corporate socialism is when the government gives them our tax dollars to totalize top-down control. That’s not liberalism, that’s just power. They’ll trample “liberalism” to make a dollar.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              That’s not what socialism is to begin with, that’s just the state within capitalism affirming corporate power, which is a part of liberalism. “Liberalism” has always generally been that which affirms capitalism, ideologically, it isn’t a moral code.

              Using taxes for things isn’t socialism, socialism is a mode of production where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy.

              • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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                That’s not what socialism is to begin with

                But that’s what corporate socialism is

                “Liberalism” has always generally been that which affirms capitalism

                That’s one function of it (in context) but that’s not the definition. That’s not “what it is.” Also, these corporations would trample capitalism itself to gain more power.

                socialism is a mode of production where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy.

                I’m not talking about socialism, I’m talking about corporate socialism, which is not a form of socialism. It’s a term which demonstrates how anti-liberal and anti-meritocratic and even anti-capitalist the top-down government-corporate control network is.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  “Corporate socialism” does not exist. It isn’t socialist in any way. What it is is thoroughly capitalist, and is an example of the state under capitalism affirming corporate interests. A closer descriptor would be “state capitalism.”

                  Corporations cannot “trample capitalism itself for more power.” The only power corporations hold within capitalism comes from their ability to reproduce on an expanded scale in capital circulation. If corporations trampled on capitalism, they would erase themselves.

                  What you describe as “anti-liberal,” “anti-meritocratic,” and “anti-capitalist” is the peak of liberalism and capitalism itself. The late stage capitalism has not transcended capitalism, and is not denoted as “corporate socialism.” That’s just word salad.

                  • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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                    It isn’t socialist in any way

                    Doesn’t matter. All my descriptions match reality. And these are the terms we use to refer to these aspects of reality. Corporate socialism is very real, even if it isn’t socialism. Get used to it because it’s a fixture of our society.

                    If corporations trampled on capitalism, they would erase themselves.

                    Nobody in any board room will ever care about that large-scale erasure. They will each act in support of their career and their shareholders’ profits. Destroying the environment may ultimately erase all corporations. They don’t care. They cannot care. They are an algorithm for increasing profits. Larger ideological values are irrelevant. So-called capitalism (to the extent that it even exists) is a product of all this high-concept greedy animal behavior, not the cause.

        • Sleepless One@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          The “socialism for the rich” talking point and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

    • FranklyIGiveADarn@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 day ago

      Man could you imagine if we had Google/MS bucks behind us? Instead it’s like 30 people with $2 between us.

      Google and Microsoft do not support the left at all.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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          Eh… The PSL is less of a political party and more of a political “think tank” funded by Neville Singham. The entire party is basically just the host of BreakThrough News.

          Which I don’t really mind the left having a think tank funded by a billionaire, I just wish they did more than self promote such a small pool of people and didn’t represent themselves as an actual political party.

          Despite claiming that they have representation in over 50 cities, they lack any kind of physical fingerprint outside of NYC. And despite being based out of NYC but have been completely silent on the mayoral race.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            Local branches get up to a lot more than what happens at the national level, plus a lot of the work is done behind the scenes. There’s more than just NYC, the local chapters do good work.

            • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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              I’m guessing there’s a bit of a difference between chapters? The closest one to me doesn’t seem to do much but sporadically organize protests.

              There’s also been a lot of accusations of coverups of sexual assault and anti trans biase over the years. I mean at least bad enough to have its own section in the prolewiki.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                There’s decent variance. The ones I have experience with have all been pro-trans, with queer membership. Allegations do exist, but it doesn’t appear to be beyond a local level. Talk to your local directly.

      • Clark@lemmy.ml
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        With all that money against leftists, leftists couldn’t race head to head with the right wing in the USA. So I don’t think they are against you either.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          Leftists are not racing head to head with the right wing in the US Empire. The DNC and GOP are both right-wing, leftism is largely found in smaller parties like PSL.

    • ScreamoBMO [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      In addition to people differentiating between leftism and liberalism:

      Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead…

      Communists are allowed to post on YouTube because YouTube gets ad revenue off of their content without meaningfully changing our ability to actually affect change, at least from YouTube’s perspective.

      • Clark@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Because they all support diversity, equity, woke etc, which are leftist movements in the USA. They advertise for positions always stating these movements. Why do you think they support the right wing?

        • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
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          That’s just a surface level analysis. The moment LGBT people started being accepted, not because of people’s benevolence but because of much fighting and struggle to be accepted and recognized, capitalism realized that we could be marketed to, that we were just another profit source, so it started reacting accordingly, that’s why terms like Rainbow Capitalism exists.

          You can easily see this every pride month were companies will change their logos to pride themed ones, unless it’s in a country where being LGBT is illegal. We are only a concern as long as we are profitable.

          Furthermore it is not that companies are inherently right wing, but rather that they are a part of capitalism which is in itself a right wing system.

    • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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      They support identity politics to keep people at each others’ throats (divide and conquer by identity) while cloaking themselves in empty rhetoric (nominal “support”) that makes them look moral but accomplishes nothing beyond identity-division.

      • Clark@lemmy.ml
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        That makes sense but I have always related them with the USA leftists as they support LGBT, woke, Palestine supporters. Just one time Microsoft supported Israel for a very short period but other than that… But what you say wasn’t something I considered. I will keep it in mind

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      They aren’t. Your question has no valid answer because the assumption it presupposes is false.

    • DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      They aren’t it’s just many programmers are nonbinary because that tends to go with intelligence. Not that being intelligent makes you nonbinary just that being intelligent makes it hard to be stupid and pretend like you are something other than yourself. Before the desert monoreligions took over nonbinary and queer identities were very prevalent in society. People were always gay and genderweird, but religion and authoritarianism and slave ethics made people think we are the weird ones when really they are the weird ones living a lie. They accuse us of “gender ideology” even though we barely even believe in gender and they are obsessed with it and gender roles. They accuse us of “gay ideology” even though we mostly keep it to ourselves and they build their entire identity on being “normal”, and constantly badmouth us, which ironically they aren’t even. They are repressed and confused and virtually lobotomized. They are motivated primarily by fear and acceptance. They are jealous and envious that someone else can be brave and be themselves when they are miserable little assholes who can never even stand up for themselves or even know a single true thing about themselves outside of the dark corner of their mind they reserve for masturbation.

      They can never allow us fairness because if they did we would just completely dominate them and their entire culture. Most of us are not only intelligent but strong and honest. We are survivors. We are brave. We are principled. That’s how we ended up becoming human in this ridiculous world of exploitation and gaslighting. We are beautiful because we actually care and take an interest in ourselves. We have good character because anyone will use any excuse, no matter how small to try to exclude us or get rid of us. They can’t compete with us so they have to lie and other us as much as possible.

      Yet if there is one thing that’s going well in this world, people are at least learning to be and know themselves. People are quickly embracing their queerness and natural genders instead of this stupid nonsense from the past in the religious world. Modern humans are starting to become like the greeks and Romans and Persians and Egyptian again. Finally starting to be happy, and progress as a species, and we are finally starting to get back to that level of civilization after a near 2000 year dark age.