Tumgik
#collectivization
ohsalome · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
- Anne Applebaum. The Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine
21 notes · View notes
katchwreck · 1 year
Text
We vote 'For!' (the collective farm)
Tumblr media
1920s, USSR.
52 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
You may remember Xi Van Fleet. She's the Chinese immigrant who gave a speech to Loudoun County Public School warning about the teaching of concepts relating to Critical Race Theory and seeing alarming similarities to her experience with the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
--
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.
If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.  That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.
-- Thomas Sowell on the Fallacy of Redistribution
Tumblr media
==
Free stuff doesn't come from nowhere.
"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." -- Thomas Sowell
One of the big myths about Thanksgiving is that the starving pilgrims were saved by the natives teaching them to farm. That's untrue.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thanksgiving-lessons-about-the-failures-of-socialism-and-the-success-of-private-property-and-capitalism/
The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of abundance after a period of socialism and starvation. The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.
You probably will not be surprised to hear that the colonists starved. Men were unwilling to work to feed someone else’s children. Women were unwilling to cook for other women’s husbands. Fields lay largely untilled and unplanted.
Famine came as soon as they ate through their provisions. After famine came plague. Half the colony died. Unlike most socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land to tend to for themselves. The colonists threw off the statist intellectual fashions of their day.
The results were overwhelmingly beneficial. Men worked hard, even though before they had constantly pleaded illness. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. Colonists traded with the surrounding Indian nation and learned to plant maize, squash and pumpkin and to rotate these crops from year to year. The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving settlement.
Think about it. Imagine you're in a class, and the teacher says that every student will get the same grade, the average of all students. The low-performing students will be thrilled and won't do much. Why should they when they're going to score as high as the best students? The high-performing students will realize they're being dragged down by everyone else and not bother putting in the effort, because they're being exploited and carrying the weight for the whole class. The average will drop dramatically compared to the class total if each student had been able to keep their own score.
Equity means forcing everybody into poverty - whether that's academic poverty, intellectual poverty or literal poverty.
8 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
9 notes · View notes
jv · 2 years
Text
The collectivization debate scene in Ken Loach's Land and Freedom is every debate between different branches of left-wingers ever. We all have been debating the same shit since Marx and Bakunin.
(context of the scene: Spanish civil war, anarchist militias just liberated a village from the fascist army and the villagers meet to decide what to do with the lands who used to be owned by landowners)
youtube
58 notes · View notes
world-v-you-blog · 11 months
Text
The Uses of History, 28 – What Good Are Revolutions?, 3
The Russian Revolution of 1917 passed through two distinct iterations. The first was a precarious attempt at Social Democracy which was severely handicapped by the effort to keep Russia involved in World War I. Throughout this period, from March to November 1917, the Duma never achieved stable control. It faced constant challenge from the radical parties, but especially the Bolsheviks led by…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
1 note · View note
Text
There is no such thing as an individual, there are only collectives. No single being is capable of doing anything, & we only accomplish things because of all the help we get from others (most of which happens invisibly to us on the other side of the world).
Anything we can somehow accomplish alone is because we are collectives of organs, which are individually useless. Those organs only function because they are collectives of cells. Cells only function because they're collectives of organelles. Etc.
The world is collectives made of collectives made of collectives, & that is all there is. There are no individuals. This is why any individualistic ideology (like capitalism) is doomed to fail. Humanity only works as a collective, because collectives are all there are.
State? Collective. Corporation? Collective. Comune? Collective. Friend group? Collective. Household? Collective. Polycule? Collective. Union? Collective.
Leftism is the only way forward because only leftism embraces this truth. All other ideologies seek to fracture humanity & keep our collectives of collectives from forming 1 large collective to benefit us all.
The bigger a collective becomes, the more efficiently it is able to operate. Don't believe me? Run off into the woods & try to live solely off your own merit. Or rip your heart out & let it try to live its own life. Or just look up "economies of scale"
1 note · View note
riothrrrrley · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media
makes me insane
728 notes · View notes
thevirgodoll · 9 months
Text
to all of my dolls finding themselves:
originality is the "aesthetic" you are looking for. individuality is the "it factor" you are looking for. from your personality, pieces, hair, cadence of voice...even down to your favorite foods or special interests. you aren't supposed to change every aspect about yourself to be more palatable for everyone you meet. that actually makes you BORING!!!
"but so and so is doing this" "but what if people don't like it" ... so??? don't take people disliking your aesthetic as a sign that you need to do something different. like, of course they don't like it or have second thoughts - it's because THEY wouldn't do it themselves because it wouldn't go with THEIR given aesthetic. HELLOO??????
unless they are like minded, stop asking other people to weigh in on the things you CLEARLY like about yourself. especially if it's a core personality trait or interest. your LIFE isn't a group project. your LIFE is not a co-op game.
and yes... people will try to force you to assimilate and follow the crowd by speaking misfortune on your rebrand, your expression, your hobbies, your chosen path out of jealousy. however, that jealousy is lowkey unspoken respect for the fact you have the candor to go against homogeneity.
your authentic dedication to everything that makes you YOU is what will bring you the illustrious life you so fervently seek in the end...not some book a celebrity wrote or a youtube video. it's in YOUR DNA to be a star already in anything you want to do.
there isn't one tutorial on this world wide web that will help you if you don't realize you have the components within you first. there is NOTHING wrong with you!!! you are EVERYTHING that is right already!!!
NEVER conform to the way they think you should shine.
1K notes · View notes
annabelle--cane · 7 months
Text
say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.
893 notes · View notes
reportsofagrandfuture · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
594 notes · View notes
alpaca-clouds · 3 months
Text
Understanding Individualism vs Collectivism
Making that post about individualism and capitalism yesterday, I got some questions, that showed me the same problem as the person I was talking about had: A lot of people do actually not know what individualism and collectivism mean. So, let me try to explain.
I had kinda hoped that Abigail from Philosophy Tube might have made a video on this, but no such luck. So, I guess I have to try and explain it, even though I mostly know it from sociology, rather from the philosophic origins where it comes from.
Basically, both concepts originate with socialist philosophy in the early 19th century, which correctly identified the early capitalist society as individualist and saw the dangers coming with it. It argued that an individualist society will be harmful on a societal level, because the society at large would always focus on the self, rather than the other. Capitalist philosophy however picked this up was like: “Yeah, awesome, right?” And especially in the 20th century they really started to run with it, realizing that they could use it to make people into better consumers.
Now, individualism does not mean “a sense of self”. This is not connected to it. You will still have a sense of self in a collectivist society and nobody says that you shouldn’t have. Rather it means that the focus of everyone should be on the individual. Both themselves – but also the individual actors in society. It is as such not a surprise that the idea of “Great Man Theory” came up and started to thrive during early capitalism in the 19th century.
So, if individualism does not mean “a sense of self”, what does it mean?
I would argue there are two aspects to it. Once the aforementioned tendency to put the individual above the society and apart from it, but also to create and sell a personal philosophy that people are defined by their differences from others, rather than what they have in common. It tells people that they are all so very different from everyone else, which is a useful political tool for capitalism to fight collective actions such as unions, but also collective action for things like environmental protection. In the same vein it is used to keep people riled up against one another within society, as they focus on their differences, rather than what they have in common.
The most anarchistic professor I had at university put it very well: “If you as a worker talk to a factory worker from Bangladesh, you will find you have a lot in common. In fact you will always have more in common with this other worker rather than any billionaire there is.”
Which brings me to the other aspect that individualism is about: It sells you an individualistic dream. Which is why capitalism focuses so much on those rags to riches stories (that tend to be lies most of the time). “See, this millionaire started out his business in daddy’s garage. So you can also become a billionaire if you have the right idea.” Fellow leftist might know the saying: “You are just one bad day away from homelessness, but you will never be a billionaire.” Which is basically the counter argument to this.
See, capitalism tries to convince you, that “I am the better system, because in me you could become a billionaire,” to sell you not only on your own exploitation, but the exploitation of the masses.
And more than that, capitalism also has realized that it can use individualism to make you a better consumer. I alluded to this a bit further up. But the long and short of it is, that capitalism pushes this idea of “you are, what you consume”. Your individuality is defined by the things you spent money on. Maybe by you having the most expensive things, but also by you having maybe the weirdest things or something. You know, the “not like the other girls” girl will probably spend as much, if not more on the things that make her special, as “the other girls”.
This also goes into the whole idea of greenwashing, pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism. All this is about getting you to consume something to gain some sort of individual aspect from it. Basically, through buying the “green” stuff, you are a better consumer.
Ironically this also goes into the entire anti-shipping discourse, which basically also says that your goodness as a person is defined by the things you consume.
Capitalism is selling you your identity. Your individual identity.
But sadly this is an idea very, very deeply engrained into the heads of most who have grown up in capitalism. Because it is everywhere in media. Sure, there is some media that calls it out, but most of it actually peddles the idea of the individual.
Because this is the second aspect at the core of individualism: The myths that only individuals can change something, rather than a collective. Which is what I call out so often when I am talking about the entire punk-genre stuff.
Even though it is less punk, let me take Star Wars as an example, because it is an amazing example of this. Especially the original trilogy, in which the Rebellion battles the Empire. However, the evil Empire is not defeated because the Rebellion manages to somehow outwit or outmaneuvre the Empire. Or because maybe the collective of the workers in the Empire turn against it. Rather it gets defeated because Luke, the individual, turns Darth Vater, an individual, and defeats the Emperor, the individual. Which goes back to this idea of the “great man”. It is those unique individuals who will save the world, rather than collective action.
This idea of some individuals being the ones to save the world, rather than we – the people – as a group and ourselves, is used to keep the people pacified under capitalism. They are waiting for “a good billionaire” to solve climate change, homelessness and all the other problems for us, rather than getting active themselves. They keep telling themselves: “Hey, under capitalism everyone can be a billionaire, including myself, and also my life isn’t that bad right now. So who cares that under socialism/communism everyone could be lifted up?”
Look, folks. I am saying this lovingly. But you are not as much of an individual as you think. You are your own person, but you are not unique. In fact, if you talk to a random person on the street – no matter who they are – and you and them are not instantly judging each other for one reason or another, you will find that you have a lot more in common than you think. Capitalist individualism just taught you to not see this, because your empathy can be its undoing.
74 notes · View notes
wormonastringtheory · 3 months
Text
2024 the year you fall deep deep deep in love with the world despite everything you've ever been through
63 notes · View notes
bfpnola · 7 months
Text
i dont even have the capacity right now to make as robust of a post as i would like but i really think we all need to be aware of these updates regarding the stop cop city movement taking place in atlanta, georgia, united states of america. bold added for emphasis in the quotes below:
According to the state of Georgia, buying $11.91 worth of glue can land you on a RICO indictment, if the glue is used to protest the police. That’s exactly what it says in yesterday’s indictment against 61 people who have allegedly been protesting Atlanta’s potential Cop City. If you don’t know what Cop City is, it’s a plan to spend at least $90 million and destroy over 300 acres of forest to build a sprawling training center with a mock urban neighborhood to practice police tactics, specifically tactics of repression. Now, sweeping and overreaching charges claim that “militant anarchists” are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to stop this repression training center from being built. But, the indictment proceeds to lay out actions like handing out fliers, giving people food, and even running a bail fund to help arrested protesters as grounds for this case. The social media activity of people involved is referenced, simple acts of free speech are cited, and even ideas like solidarity and mutual aid are discussed as problems which somehow add to the necessity for this indictment.
...
U.S. police killed more people than ever last year and have not changed or reformed since the murder of George Floyd, and the people in Atlanta organizing against Cop City are very much aware of this. Yet instead of acknowledging the simple fact that cops should not kill, and that their power should not be endlessly expanded while they murder without consequence, the state of Georgia is instead choosing to grossly overreach. They’re instead trying to tie the movement to Stop Cop City to George Floyd and say that efforts to limit police violence are criminal rather than justified. Regardless of whether or not activists and organizers fighting the massive police repression training center were in the streets in 2020, they are informed by the knowledge that sparked the biggest protest movement this country has ever seen: police murder without consequence, and expanding police power, means more violence, more killing, and more repression of movements to improve society. We must be clear that anyone who opposes police murders and the expansion of the police state is fighting on the side of justice. The details listed in the RICO indictment, like small Venmo charges, an individual signing their name as ACAB, and people attending a concert show that the state is very much on the other side, the side of ruthless oppression. But maybe even more clarifying is the broad, sweeping condemnation of basic tenants of human goodness. The state lists, “mutual aid, collectivism, social solidarity” as tenants of anarchism that run rampant in the movement to stop Cop City. The charges condemn, word for word, “the notion of social solidarity,” which, “relies heavily on the idea of human altruism.” In a tale as old as time, the indictment of these activists and organizers, of these people, these residents of Atlanta, is more an indictment of the state than of the movement opposed to the state’s interests. The state is revealing itself to be the real villain.
...
The state has given the people of Atlanta, and everyone opposed to the eradication of democracy, no choice but to fight tooth and nail. They have gone for the nuclear option, and in doing so have exposed themselves. They have revealed the fascist underbelly they typically try to keep hidden. They have exposed that when people exercise every democratic avenue available, and are on the verge of success, they will resort to anti-democratic tactics to crush dissent. Beyond just this RICO case, the city of Atlanta is challenging the 100,000+ signatures gathered by grassroots organizers and volunteers working their asses off. Mayor Andre Dickens and his team are using the exact same regressive signature checking and discounting strategy he formerly opposed now that he wants to ram Cop City through against popular opinion and against the democratic process. Between the Mayor, the police, and the state, what choice do we have but to fight. When the government declares itself opposed to the very ideas of solidarity, mutual aid, and care for one another they seek to crush resistance. But instead they spark it. People everywhere are seeing the illegitimate nature of the institutions that kill, repress, and incarcerate anyone struggling for a better world. People everywhere see that institutions opposed to collectively looking out for each other, which seek to ban compassion and care with the threat of violence, have no legitimacy and must be opposed. They cannot be upheld or sustained. In a world where we need each other more than ever we can’t abide a repressive state that would rather police us into an early grave than grant us the resources we need to survive. And although it won’t be easy to overturn the system of capitalism and the violent police state that works to uphold it, we’ve been given no choice. We will Stop Cop City in Atlanta, and we will stop every attempt to build a Cop City anywhere. Officials in other Georgia counties, Baltimore, Ohio, and elsewhere are currently proposing their own Cop Cities, mimicking what they see in Georgia and attempting to build up their capacity to suppress dissent rather than building up their capacities to help people survive and thrive. We will out organize and out mobilize and out build the oppressive systems and institutions that seek to turn this country and the planet into one large police state. We have to. Be careful, but be determined. And get organized. Solidarity.
For over seven years, the fund—a nonprofit fiscally sponsored by the Network for Strong Communities—has provided legal defense and bail support for Atlanta. For aiding #StopCopCity protesters, the three fund organizers were arrested on charges of money laundering and charity fraud. Of what did this “fraud” consist? The warrants cited standard nonprofit reimbursements such as COVID tests and forest clean-ups in their rationale for the arrests. In the words of Kamau Franklin, an organizer with the Atlanta-based collective Community Movement Builders: “This is an arrest which is meant to, again, criminalize the movement, chill dissent, stop organizing, and stop activism from happening to stop ‘cop city’.” In so much as the work is radical, it will be under attack. Organizing that challenges capitalism, White supremacy, policing and prisons, and imperialism always carries risk. In the case of the bail fund, for example, what can movements do in the face of state repression? Potentially by shining a light on how mutual aid funding strategies are under siege, a clearer picture may emerge of ways to protect this valuable activity. Multiple people have noted that the Atlanta arrests represent yet another novel authoritarian and growingly fascist tactic to intimidate grassroots organizing and also draws on a long tradition of state repression against the Black freedom struggle. If successful, it could have far-reaching impacts on the swell of bail funds, abortion funds, transgender healthcare funds, and immigrant justice funds that have grown in recent years.
...
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund arrests did not occur in a vacuum. There is a long history of state repression against radical, grassroots power-building efforts—and those efforts continue today. Historian Say Burgin and political scientist Jeanne Theoharis aptly point out that across 1960 Southern sit-ins, 1961 Freedom Riders, and 1964 Freedom Summer, bail funds were a critical organizing effort for crystallizing and sustaining solidarity action. Where politically motivated captivity for civil rights activists loomed, bail funds responded. Mutual aid funding for these bail efforts were not just tactical, they were cultural. Mutual aid fundraising, in these contexts, gave everyday people a way to invest and engage in the very struggles they supported and needed. Mutual aid would provide yet another cultural outlet for radical, anti-repressive intent. This opportunity to mobilize people in radical efforts clarifies a threat to stakeholders in White supremacist institutions.
...
There are also increasing examples of state actors co-opting both the language and practices of mutual aid. In an interview with mutual aid organizer and writer Dean Spade, the Chicago Community Bail Fund highlighted examples of sheriffs welcoming the arrival of bail funds to support unaffordable bonds, city council-supported ordinances to protect bail funds “while continuing to take the money of Black and Brown community members paying bond for their loved ones,” and the city of New York’s own philanthropically backed bail fund created in 2017. As members of the Chicago Community Bail Fund reflected on New York’s system: “In effect, New York was funding the arrest, prosecution, and release of people caught in its criminal legal system instead of not arresting or prosecuting them in the first place.”
107 notes · View notes
Video
Tumblr media
Comrade duck sharing his food with his fishy friends
1K notes · View notes
jv · 1 year
Text
Dwarf fortress best fortress
Tumblr media Tumblr media
3K notes · View notes