Life lesson, kid
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Ah, Landlords aren't the evil capitalist class then. They're just a worker that owns the means of production and splits the profits evenly with themselves.
Maybe there's a terminology problem, but I thought each condo unit was individually owned? Like, if you've got a tower block, and everybody owns their own domicile within it, it's a condo, but if they're owned by a landlord and rented out, it's an apartment.
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Edit: there are some minor mistakes with the title and the text in the meme indicating that it's Lego, not duplo...
Don't be pedantic; that's what ruined Reddit in the first place.
Duplo is lego though.
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Wrong, idiot.
And here I thought this wasn't Reddit
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Maybe there's a terminology problem, but I thought each condo unit was individually owned? Like, if you've got a tower block, and everybody owns their own domicile within it, it's a condo, but if they're owned by a landlord and rented out, it's an apartment.
It was a tongue in cheek strawman or if you want to be fancy, a pedagogical tool.
If "providing housing" is a job/service/whatever produced by workers then I, as a theoretical landlord, own some means of production and split the profits with all of the workers: myself.
It seemed like a funny twist of words.
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Duplo is lego though.
Yeah, and a warm can od diet Sam's club soda is the same as a Pepsi
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I asked my dog about this, and she had some good points:
First of all, that's Duplo not Lego.
Second of all, "the means to my Lego"?
Third of all, theft is theft under both capitalism and socialism. If he didn't have an agreement with his dad that his dad could take half the tower, the dad is simply a thief. And theft is theft under both systems. And if his dad is supposed to represent "the government" or something, and taking half his stuff is supposed to be taxation, taxation happens under both capitalism and socialism.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That isn't just any duplo, it's specifically LEGO Duplo. That's like calling Word word instead of Microsoft Word or Chrome chrome instead of Google Chrome. What about Linux instead of ***/Linux?
Your dog should take extra lessons. How's it passing school not knowing this?
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What ruined Reddit is the enshitification.
As far as the people themselves go... A message board is a message board. People on Lemmy hate to hear it, but there is no difference between Reddit and Lemmy in that regard. Lemmy's population is just smaller.
A message board isn't just a message board. Its content and how it's designed and moderated determine what kinds of people use it. There's a big difference between a message board like 4chan and a message board like reddit.
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Yeah, and a warm can od diet Sam's club soda is the same as a Pepsi
No, they rebranded. Duplo really is LEGO nowadays.
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What does “means of production” even mean in 2025? It’s not like we all work in a shoe factory
I write software. The software that I write don't belong to me. The owner of the software I write makes money of it. It's "means of production" and the product itself simultaneously.
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Edit: there are some minor mistakes with the title and the text in the meme indicating that it's Lego, not duplo...
Don't be pedantic; that's what ruined Reddit in the first place.
wrote last edited by [email protected]My son did a thing, so I said "Good job". Then I punched him straight in the face. "This is a political metaphor!" I screamed into his sobbing bleeding broken nose.
Now my wife says she's filling for divorce and taking the kids. I've been fired from my job for punching a coworker while saying "This is a political metaphor!" as well.
Just goes to show the state of free speech in this country. I swear to God, it's the damned Communists in the schools. They ruined everything.
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What does “means of production” even mean in 2025? It’s not like we all work in a shoe factory
What does “means of production” even mean
In Marxist theory, the "means of production" refers to the physical inputs used to produce goods and services. This includes things like tools, machinery, land, raw materials, and factories. Essentially, it's everything needed to carry out the process of production, excluding human labo
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Edit: there are some minor mistakes with the title and the text in the meme indicating that it's Lego, not duplo...
Don't be pedantic; that's what ruined Reddit in the first place.
Life lesson = thieves will deflect criticism of the corporatist oligarchy supremacists by calling their theft socialism. Gimme your sandwich, commie.
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Ah, Landlords aren't the evil capitalist class then. They're just a worker that owns the means of production and splits the profits evenly with themselves.
They’re just a worker
"My landlord is a worker"
"How do you know?"
"He said if anything breaks in the unit, he'll fix it"
"Has he fixed anything yet?"
"No, but that's beside the point"
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And here I thought this wasn't Reddit
It's less "Not Reddit" every day, sadly
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Don't be pedantic; that's what ruined Reddit in the first place.
It seems like everybody has a different theory about wHaT rUiNeD ReDdIt
It was a number of things
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What ruined Reddit is the enshitification.
As far as the people themselves go... A message board is a message board. People on Lemmy hate to hear it, but there is no difference between Reddit and Lemmy in that regard. Lemmy's population is just smaller.
there is no difference between Reddit and Lemmy
There's a number of large differences, in fact
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Edit: there are some minor mistakes with the title and the text in the meme indicating that it's Lego, not duplo...
Don't be pedantic; that's what ruined Reddit in the first place.
wrote last edited by [email protected]For the pedants complaining that they called the Duplos Legos:
LEGO is also the company name, and they make Duplo. Therefore Duplo are LEGO. If you ask for some Lego and get duplo, that's on you for not requesting an itemized list of every single part you wanted by number. My pedentry knows no bounds. Bow down before me.
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No, they rebranded. Duplo really is LEGO nowadays.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah, but they are still separate products
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A message board isn't just a message board. Its content and how it's designed and moderated determine what kinds of people use it. There's a big difference between a message board like 4chan and a message board like reddit.
Because 4chan is like using the Internet by writing on papyrus.
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Yes, never said that was socialism, only that’s how a fair society can only operate.
Ok, well it's confusing how you worded it then because you start by saying "It’s not socialism", and then you describe communism. It made it sound as if you were saying that it was socialism.
It might not even be a transitionary period
Sure, and some societies already act as if the end goal is socialism. Even so I think it's valuable to try and work toward socialism because even if it doesn't ever fully transition to communism (or is extremely slow about it), that state of being is still preferable to Capitalism.
The market forces workers to exploit themselves, given how the primary way cost cutting happens is through decrease of wages
Sure, under Capitalism that's true- I doubt the first thing a collective of workers would think to do is cutting their wages. They would probably cut the CEO's and the Middle Managers pay to make the pay fair for everybody.
I just disagree with your definition of 'exploit'. Agreeing with your fellow workers to take home less pay to keep the factory viable is not exploitation. A CEO cutting workers pay so that hey can pay himself $40,000,000/yr IS exploitation. It's not the same thing at all imo.
Yes, but if they pay a portion of value of their labor, they don’t get the full value
Again, the definitely DO get the full value of their labor. A worker is a member of the community. A worker pay's taxes for things that benefit the community. As a member of the community, the taxes benefit the worker.
It’s an involuntary payment that is good and necessary
It's only 'involuntary' if you are stuck in a capitalist mode of thinking and aren't willingly pitching in to help the community. If socialism 'forces' such a person to help- that's only going to benefit the community. Under communism no one could force such a person to contribute.
the point is that getting full value is impossible under bourgeois state and commodity production society
I really don't think most socialists are as hung op on getting the 'full value' out of their labor as you are making it sound. It's not about squeezing every last penny of 'profit' from your labor as is humanly possible. It's about being fairly compensated for your time and effort- that's it. If we "have" to pay taxes- fine. If we "have" to accept a slightly lower compensation for a time fine.
CEO's cutting benefits and pay to pay themselves more money- not fine. Wage theft- not fine.
If we could snap our fingers and go straight from a Capitalist hellhole to a Communist utopia- I'd be snapping right along with you. We can't though and as you can tell it's hard enough to get people on board with socialism. There is no way most people will just accept jumping straight to Communism. They have to be shown that sharing resources is a viable strategy first- because they definitely don't believe that now.
Sorry if this might come as rude or elitist - not my intention as I've been there, but I'd really recommend reading some theory if you're interested in this kind of stuff. Even some shorter works of Marx & Engels will dispel A LOT of misconceptions a leftist might have about socialism/communism/what's actually the problem/etc that one might get just via osmosis of the popular discourse.
Now to respond to some of the points (though not all, too tired right now):
My point about workers not getting full value from their labor mostly targets the wording in the meme, it's pedantry. Whether you think it's fair to count taxes or not isn't really relevant, but the fact that you have a system where whether you like it or not the state will take away some of your earnings from your labor means that you cannot really receive the full value of your labor, something always will get deducted. Though there was a better example of this I should have used, directly related to labor that you end up making:
Agreeing with your fellow workers to take home less pay to keep the factory viable is not exploitation.
Taking less pay in order to compete in the market economy is literally what capitalists do on behalf of workers - take their surplus value to expand production and remain competitive (and ofc live off of this surplus value themselves individually). In a coop, this would also happen under a market economy as you yourself say, and this money will come from the value of the commodities they produce as in the fruits of their labor they're supposed to be getting "full value" of. See how it doesn't make sense?
Also, I admit I should have asked this previously, but what exactly is socialism defined by for you? Based on your comment, I gather that few things exist in this socialism, and those are:
- Commodity production and markets remains in place
- Surplus value is still being appropriated, but democratically
- Getting taxed by the state to help the community via public services
- Money remains in place as value form, meaning capital accumulation is still possible
- Something that can be achieved through reforms if enough people believe in it? (idk about this one but that's what i'm inferring)
Now I might be wrong about these and maybe you have a different definition in mind, but this is pretty much identical to a social democracy which is still fully capitalist. Coops exist within capitalism right this moment in some countries - individual companies where workers collectively own the means of production, but they still have to play within the rules of capitalist mode of production.
Sure, it might be better but socialist/communist goal isn't to make things better, but to change the current state of things entirely. This is why actual socialism, which is defined by figures like Lenin, Marx and other non-falsifier communist theorists has markets and commodity production already abolished. Before socialism after workers take power, there is a period of transition where commodity production at least partially remains in place as a way to distribute goods while productive forces (like factories and infrastructure) are still being developed so everyone's needs can actually be met during socialist stage.
Money gets abolished in favor of labor vouchers that get discarded after being used up (so there's no more accumulation of capital), things start being produced for use - there's still a long way to go towards communism at this stage, but this is how you actually stop being capitalist and create a separate mode of production instead of just making things a bit better but still fundamentally capitalist.
Anyway yap yap nobody reads this as seen from the amount of upvotes, still had to leave one as it would have felt rude if I didn't and just left you hanging there
