Cowbee

On what grounds do you think that it's worse for Workers to democratically control production, rather than a class of owners?

Do you think crops care about who shares ownership of them, and kill themselves if they are shared, rather than owned by 1 dude that employs other people to harvest it?

Lemmy is a decentralized, FOSS platform built by a Communist explicitly as an answer to Reddit. The people on Lemmy trend leftward, obviously, but that's because the very foundation is a rejection of Capitalism. If you want Capitalist Lemmy, there's Reddit.

FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.

Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastadon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.

Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.

Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.

No, in a real free market the banks would lobby to be bailed out. Removing even more regulation from it would result in more lobbying. Even with anti-corruption measures, without worker ownership or massive Unionization, eventually these protections will slide back once someone more opportunistic takes office.

Worker Ownerhship and decentralization are the correct path, rather than antidemocratic Capitalist production.

Because the Workers aren't competing, they don't give a shit. The Capitalists are competing for an even larger share of the pie. Instead of everyone cooperating, you fragment everyone into companies, which are like little factions.

Some factions doing well enough to create new kings like Bezos or Musk is also not a feature, given that there's no democratic control.

Really not sure what you're getting at. Why are you even on a platform rejecting Capitslism, rather than Reddit, if you're so sure that leftism is a bad thing?

Political systems don't determine quality of life nearly as much as development.

Your second point isn't correct, anyone could be voted on. They couldn't vote on the next level, only their representative could. I'm not sure where you get this new idea from.

If you're talking about the Politburo, yes, and that's part of my problem with it. But, at the local level, you voted on whoever you wanted, then your rep votes on who they want, and so forth. There were lots of shady deals that solidified power higher up, yes, but the process was Democratic in nature, even if highly flawed.

... what do you think Communism is? It's a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society achieved via abolition of Private Property. That doesn't mean everyone suddenly becomes hippies working in communes or tribes.

Capitalism certainly can have cooperation, it just happens to encourage competition, monopoly, and exploitation of Workers for the sake of profit.

What's your point, exactly?

The Germans working under codetermination also have it far better than Germans under the Kaiser. Comparing a 21st century first world developed nation with a 20th century developing country sure is a win, I guess?

Secondly, although the beurocracy was incredibly corrupt, the Soviet Democracy by which local Soviets reported to higher Soviets that reported to higher Soviets was fundamentally democratic, even if flawed.

I don't really think you've said much of anything. The Soviet form of Democracy was indeed flawed, but it was still Democratic, and I think it's obvious to anyone that living in a modern developed country would be better than living in a developing country from last century.

1. Kind of. The market can have Capitalist entities and Socialist entities, but the market itself isn't Capitalist.

2. Not necessarily. Co-operatives are more difficult to start in a predominantly Capitalist system, and Capitalist entities usually can exploit their workers more in order to gain temporary competitive advantage. I don't believe this is sufficient reasoning to value Capitalism over Socialist entities.

I'm not a Market Socialist, for clarification, as I do think there are issues. However, Capitalism isn't markets.

The Soviet Union was anti-trade union, and pro-Soviet, ie worker councils. The Soviet Union had numerous problems, especially with beaurocracy, but fundamentally it was a Worker state, owned and run by the Soviets, and thus can be considered Socialist (regardless of my personal issues with it).

There are several attempts at replicating some form of Worker Democracy in Capitalist countries, but ultimately short of ownership none of this functionally makes a massive difference. Definitely a step in the right direction, but without worker ownership it is more to appease workers and uphold Capitalism, than actually giving workers control.

Don't misunderstand this comment to say that codetermination is bad, it's good, just not as good as it could be.

Ownership of Capital. Capitalism has markets, but not all market systems are Capitalist.

Market Socialism, for example, has competing worker-owned entities like Co-operatives in a market system, with no Capitalists.

Capitalism is a relatively new phenomena in the grand scheme of things.

For one, I wouldn't recommend a clown that supports removing the minimum wage, or argues that colonization was a good thing. Recommending a far-right Chicago economist, who is far-right even by Chicago school standards, is laughably absurd.

I have many positions of my own. Decentralization is key, as is democratization, and this extends to production. I think protecting worker power is key, and I think Imperialism and colonization are terrible. As such, I can't agree with recommending Sowell.

All of those are reasons why I'm a leftist and am on Lemmy, rather than a Capitalist site like Reddit.

Yep, that's why decentralization is so important, and why leftist organizational structure ie decentralization and democratization of production is going to be so critical moving forward.