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   HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:57:26 JST HeavenlyPossum

   I’m not a big fan of the rhetorical framing of “seizing the means of production” or redistributing wealth from capitalists, both because that’s not how these systems actually function and because it provides capitalists with an ideological boogeyman. “They’re going to steal your PlayStation!”

   No. We don’t have to seize a single thing. Nothing has to be stolen or taken. If you stopped paying your landlord rent, if the cops stopped enforcing the landlord’s claim, the landlord will have lost nothing but a rentier claim to your labor. You don’t “seize” your own home; your landlord has not lost something they weren’t even using in the first place.

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     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:00:45 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     • Dominik

     @chrastecky

     It’s true that capitalists and other parasitic elites often use violence when the people over whom they rule try to shake off that rule, I agree. For most of history, it was the oppressed rather than the oppressors who died in these situations, though.

     As Mark Twain pointed out in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,” we often bemoan the violence of revolution, but in reality there were two Reigns of Terrors in France—that of the fanatical elements of the French Revolution, but also centuries of constant, daily, grinding violence by the aristocracy against the peasantry that we somehow don’t look on with the same disgust.

     novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ repeated this.
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     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:00:53 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     Imagine a medieval feudal manor. The serfs farm it; the lord steals part of their harvest and their labor at sword-point.

     One day, the peasants get together and refuse to hand over any more grain or labor. They’re just going to continue farming it like they always have. The lord is free to join them as a peasant, farming the land alongside them, but can no longer live off their surplus.

     Nothing has been seized from the lord. Nothing was taken away. The lord can still live on and work at the manor, just like anyone else. No one has moved; no one’s access has been altered.

     All that changed was that the lord had to get a job.

   • Embed this notice
     Dominik (chrastecky@phpc.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:00:53 JST Dominik

     in reply to

     @HeavenlyPossum I quite agree with the sentiment, but let's be real: The former owner would be killed.

     You communists like to pretend how understanding and welcoming you are, but the fact remains that communism killed and impoverished more people than nazism.

     Note that the problem is not inherent to communism - it's inherent to people and it's gonna happen again if communists seize power.

     novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ repeated this.
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     HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:00:56 JST HeavenlyPossum

     in reply to

     • Dominik

     @chrastecky

     But yeah, if Soviet-style communism didn’t exist to serve the same role for capitalism that Satan played for the medieval Catholic Church, capitalism would have had to have invented it. The Soviets did not abolish capital, but simply became its new owners, replacing one propertied class with a new one. Of course that would be violent; all of capitalism is violent.