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Steinbeck said it best when he said all Americans thought of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Good old American dream.
Worker and citizen maybe… consumer is more appropriate for the billionaire class as well.
Eh, I would describe the average student of today as consumers as well… I am one of em, and I do lit my consumption, but some of my friends are all day gamers, energy drinkers and Netflix hogs…
The word you’re looking for is citizen. Consumer has replaced it to take away political agency and replace it with capitalism.
I like consumer in this context because commodification and consumption are how people achieve this false solidarity with billionaires, as well as being a ground for exploitation. Even notions of personal identity are achieved through consumption of the associated products (and displaying you consume them).
Citizen is just a subject of a state, the entire class structure is composed of citizens of different positions in the political economy with competing interests. The worker and employer are both citizens but the relationship between them isn’t captured by that term.
I see your perspective and that you’ve thought through it. Makes sense to me!
Citizen definitely works for distinctions between state and it’s subjects
(before I begin my ramble, I understand this is pedantic as hell and nitpicky af. Please know that I’m not calling this meme bad, I’m only looking for someone who is willing to be pedantic about definitions with me for a few rounds or so.)
What exactly does “false solidarity” mean? What exactly is this particular understanding of solidarity either? To my knowledge (aka, I googled it to ensure my vibe check of what solidarity meant was about right), solidarity is something you feel and are essentially motivated to solidarity actions by. To feel it is to experience it, which means, by my understanding of what solidarity is, the term “false solidarity” seems nonsensical.
Like I know what you’re saying, I agree, the effect is that the worker works against his own interest for the betterment of the upper classes, but this phrasing seems… I don’t know exactly how to put it, but like inexact in a way that can probably be and should probably be fixed.
I would just call it poisonous solidarity (intentionally avoiding virus/illness words though) or something that simultaneously implies that it’s externally put there by an external actor, it’s bad for you, it can hurt things and people around you, but it still is legitimate solidarity. Those actions those workers are taking, those votes that they’re casting, those are all real actions caused by real feelings. Implying the feelings themselves are false seems to me to be lazy and irrational at this point… If this were the late 1800s, that probably would be the best phrasing we had for this at the time, but language evolves and I don’t think this language is illustrative/metaphorical enough to accurately portray the mechanics that our current culture allows us to portray about subjects like this.
But again, I’m not the arbiter of what’s true, correct, or what actually should happen, so what do you people think?
Gritty/Fetterman 2024.
Yeah now that the presidency is largely a symbolic nod to the “soul of the nation,” it’s time for a Gritty run.
Whats stopping you from forming your own kibbutz type community in your country? Real question
No water or other infrastructure where the land is available, which is possible to overcome but takes a lot of resources. Where it has been tried in my country (US) it gets violently evicted by the police if they aren’t paying taxes or don’t officially own the land.
Land?
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Using money to buy commodities is a currency system. (As opposed to a barter system, where commodites are directly exchanged for other commodities.)
Capitalism is where there is an ownership class and a labor class, and the ownership class operates businesses for profit. The profit which flows to these owners comes from value which labor adds and is not compensated for; that compensation is diverted to the owners, who receive a (much) greater amount of compensation than the value they add.
Otherwise related, when the currency is not backed by a commodity (most commonly a rare metal like gold), that’s fiat money. It’s value is affected by the faith in the government which supplies it, as well as the total supply of said currency. When the price of products and services is determined by consumer demand, that’s a free market economy.
Capitalism is so good. Would you rather be insert nation exploited by capitalists?
“They’re not underdeveloped, they’re overexploited.”
Praaaaise
Buying goods is not even slightly the same thing as investing in the business selling them, of course.
I’m gonna assume you realized how dumb that claim was just after posting it, and I’d just like to say I appreciate your integrity for removing your default self-upvote.
Ah, yes, the good old sumerian capitalists buying bronze ore then complaining by clay tablets to their suppliers that quality has gone to shit because of how capitalist they are.
I can confirm this. I’m the last living sumerian king and this is all true.
spoiler
Look up the word for king in sumerian. I don’t expect many people to understand the joke without help, otherwise I wouldn’t explain the joke.
Traditionally, the term “capitalist” means “person with capital” in contrast to workers who only have their workforce to sell. The term “capitalism” is a later development linguistically.
If you have been to other countries, you saw what the capitalist world systems does. It’s not that some countries are capitalist and others are not, it’s that some are exploiting others in the capitalist world system. That you can buy the newest iphone means that someone made it.
I say we have it pretty damn good to be part of a capitalist society
This community is for posting anti-capitalist memes
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If you went to a sub for a hobby just to say you dislike it then you’d expect a similar reaction. Just saying this place exists to spread anti-capitalist memes so you shouldn’t be surprised that people disagree with pro-capitalist opinions, if anything it’s the one thing you should expect, and if you don’t like it just don’t engage, easy. Doesn’t mean you can’t comment as long as you’re in line with the same rules as everyone else.
I don’t think my point of view is intuitive because I didn’t come to it easily, but it’s not like you know my point of view anyway you’re just expressing a prejudice. I’m surrounded by a society that is fueled by a suicide pact with the planet and fundamentally disagrees with my point of view, a random angry internet commenter doesn’t even register on this scale.
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Expressing a contrarian opinion for the sake of getting people to disagree so you can call them dumb basically, on a meme page, then being self-aggrandizing about it. Assuming that people who disagree with you simply haven’t considered your point of view is a touch grass moment.
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Well if you want to see anything that supports capitalism you can go to millions of other places, it’s exhausting hearing the same tired comebacks over and over again so people that support true leftism tend to like spaces that are more specific for that. This is a community called “Lefty Memes”, I’m sure most people that follow this follow other communities as well that are less specific. Though I think it can be good for less left or pro-capitalists to discuss their views in these sorts of places.
They are a supporter of capitalism but in the terminology of socialist critique they are not a capitalist, as in a member of the capitalist class who owns the capital and therefore does not need to use their labor to earn money. This is in contrast to the proletariat or worker class who must use their labor to earn a living.
Many people in the world are impoverished, but what causes that? Was that caused by the lack of capitalism there? I assure you most people in poverty in the world are living under a capitalist system.
One factor in the impoverishment of the global South is due to people manipulating markets because of their ownership of the means of production. They are able to shift manufacturing to where they can get the most profit, while governments benefit from their business at the detriment of their citizens who are pushed into poverty by the corporations and governments who reduce regulations to benefit the capitalist class.
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