I had a journey
Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
Linux and open source in general completely blow apart capitalist arguments that profit motive is necessary for innovation and technological advancement. Open source ecosystem primarily run by volunteers has produces some of the most interesting and innovative technologies that we've seen. The reality is that people make interesting things because they're curious and they enjoy making stuff. Pretty much nobody makes anything interesting with profit being the primary motive.
Also without open source the capitalist tech sector would collapse
It wouldn't necessarily collapse (it wasn't exactly suffering before FOSS stuff "hit the shelves", so to speak) but the gatekeeping that comes with it would certainly cause a tremendous amount of stagnation
I work in software development. Almost all modern architecture would collapse without the open source ecosystem.
Isnt every important server run on linux?
Half the user-facing internet broke for a few hours when one guy withdrew a shitty one-liner piece of JavaScript (the whole leftpad thing) because someone somewhere added it as a dependency to a dependency to a dependency until it was pulled into an enormous frontend library. The internet relies more on random open source contributions than a lot of people are aware of.
Relevant XKCD
I do too. To be clear, I did NOT mean that we could go without it today. What I meant was that if we didn't have it to start with, things would've likely still developed albeit much more slowly.
I'll also preface this by saying I definitely slightly misread everything before and so my reply was kinda crappy
I dont think we will ever know, but Im not sure I agree. I dont know what the landscape would look like without relying on open source and patent theft. A lot of the stuff would probably not be financially viable.
I don't know who is arguing this because it's incredibly stupid. The greatest scientific minds of history, the mathematicians, the physicists, the inventors, were not capitalists, they're people with passion for their work.
If we move to a society that guarantees basic human needs and good education, we're only going to have more scientists and engineers that progress technology even faster.
And while we are at it... novelists, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, ...
Tragically, however, it may spell the end of the sandwich artist.
Capitalists argue this because it gives them the appearance of a moral high ground.
Enshittification shows how untrue this - capitalism by its very nature will always devolve into worse and worse offerings because it's reliant on squeezing out ever more profit.
Capitalism will only ever puh out the bare minimum of technological advancement. And keeping people in indentured labour (aka employees) to the capitalist system so that they either have no time to come up with innovations themselves or they own the intellectual property of any indentured workers means that the overwhelming majority of innovation is monopolised by capitalism too. Which also contributes to the appearance of pushing advancement.
The innovation argument is shaky at best many of the corporations innovations are brought or copied really. Is a story that became pretty common in the latest decades one guy come with a good idea some other mofo takes it and profits with it.
That's why it's important to use hard copyleft licenses like the GPLv3 instead of merely open-source MIT or BSD licenses wherever possible when you publish software.
Indeed, the corps did a whole campaign lobbying for permissive licenses precisely so they could plunder open source work. Hard copyleft should be used for any serious project.
Preach brother!
What's more is that corporate driven research is necessarily biased towards whatever is profitable which is often at odds with what's socially useful. For example, it's more profitable to research drugs that help maintain disease and can be sold over a long time than drugs that cure it. Profit motive here ends up being completely at odds with what's beneficial for people who get sick.
And of course, any research that doesn't have a clear path towards monetization isn't going to be pursued. This is precisely why pretty much all fundamental research comes out of the public sector.
This is true to some extent, but the best, most successful open source software is nowadays to a large extent made by for-profit businesses developing it for their own use but sharing it with the world.
There is a strong correlation between "is this kind of software mainly used by businesses vs. individuals" and "does this kind of software tend to be open source". Hardly anyone uses proprietary version control or web server software anymore. But (other extreme) in the area of video games, nearly all of them are still proprietary and probably will be for a long time. Software such as web browsers or office suites sits somewhere in between, both kinds exist there.
Biggest and most popular projects are attractive to companies as well as individuals for the same reasons. However, the original point was that companies are not needed for open source to exist or for innovation to happen.
I disagree somewhat.
A lot of high tech development comes with a greed motive, e.g. IPO, or getting bought out by a large company seeking to enter the space, e.g. Google buying Android, or Facebook buying Instagram and Oculus.
And conversely, a lot of open source software are copies of commercially successful products, albeit they only become widely adopted after the originals have entered the enshittified phase of their life.
Is there a Lemmy without Reddit? Is there a Mastodon without Twitter? Is there LibreOffice without Microsoft Office and decades of commercial word processors and spreadsheets before that? Or OpenOffice becoming enshittified for that matter? Is there qBittorrent without uTorrent enshittified? Is there postgreSQL without IBM's DB2?
The exception that I can see is social media and networked services that require active network and server resources, like Facebook YouTube, or even Dropbox and Evernote.
Okay, The WELL is still around and is arguably the granddaddy of all online services, and has avoided enshittification, but it isn't really open source.
The idea that these things wouldn't exist without commercial analogs is silly. You do realize that things like BBS boards and IRC existed long before commercial social media platforms right? In fact, we might've seen things like social media evolve in completely different directions if not for commercial platforms setting standards based on attracting clicks, and monetizing users.
all the for profit things we use are worse because they are for profit.
most of the time a site or service UI is made worse it's because AB testing found the worse UI wastes user's time and the metrics read that as engagement.
Exactly, most of the bloat on commercial sites isn't there for the benefit of the user, but rather in order to monetize them. It's ads, trackers, metrics, and all the other garbage that you don't actually want.
Context for those who are baffled (I was)
https://news.itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-woke-communists/
No Linus hasn't grabbed a red rag and isn't off to foment revolution
I liked the take by the utterly clueless Polish guy in the comment. I think his complete lack of understanding of any context is quite typical of online political conversation, especially when semantics come into play.
Also Linus did call for "Total world domination" (I have the tshirt).
Yes of course, who doesn't remember how woke Lenin created a woke revolution based on woke teachings of woke Marx and even woker Engels.
unfortunately I think this is just him saying he's a "woke communist" if being a woke communist is atheism, women's rights, and gun control. I don't think he's a marxist of any stripe it seems. However, I am willing to be corrected here. I've only seen this post regarding to him
Guy's Finnish. The chances of him being actually communist are pretty much zero.
This might be a dumb question: what do you mean? I know very little about Finland, so I'm just genuinely curious. Are the Finns in particular well-known for being anti-communist or is it more like a geopolitical thing since they share a border with Russia?
I don't know where this idea that all Finns are anti-communist comes from. Finland had one of the strongest communist movements in Western Europe during the cold war. At the height of their popularity about one in four Finns voted for communists in elections. Card carrying communists sat as ministers in multiple cabinets, up to the early 1980s. Like many young people of his generation, Linus Torvalds' father was a member of the Communist Party of Finland in the 1970s. And all this happened after Finland had fought against the Soviet Union in the 2nd world war.
His father was into the communist party
The Linux to trans anarchocommunist catgirl pipeline is very real. The moment you move to Arch it's already over.
I'm feeling called out
I just installed pop!_os am I safe?
that's how I started. nobody's safe.
Sorry, I don't speak nyah
Slippery slope my friend!
I think I could have backed off after moving to Arch. The point of no return was Rust
Oh and don't forget the autistic-to-linuxer pipeline
It didn't happen to me despite using Linux for 8 years. I guess I am a Windows user in disguise.
As someone who recently fell in love with EndeavorOS I don't wanna fall down the cat girl pipeline....
It's to late brother. It's to late.
uWu
:3 ^.^
Well, I'm probably fucked then. I even have Arch on my gaming PC with KDE and Arch on my school laptop with GNOME(Gnome for Laptops is insanely cool)
rant:
I have been using Linux since 2006, a lefty and against the super-rich and big corporations since I remember (to the point of avoiding their products like the plague), also never having understood or accepted gender roles and other stupid traditional concepts, yet never turned into a communist 🤷
It baffles me that so many people think that respecting gender equality, understanding the evil in big corporations and avoiding them, valuing community and being tolerant (except for intolerance) and against discrimination somehow equals communism... I say this because I've been called a communist by many people who know me, while I have always rejected it explicitly!
/rant
What economic model do you believe in?
I can't really say I believe in a specific model, but to my knowledge, and for the current version of our world, welfare states seem to be doing the least worse currently. But really, I think our world is kinda too fucked up right now to be able to have any good social-economic system (in terms of maximum equality and minimum suffering, I guess.)
Ideally, I'd prefer no state, only local communities managing themselves (something like city states, maybe?) and their relations to other communities... but I know it's just a dream, at least for the foreseeable future, considering the current realities and the ass-people in power. Because that would need many really peaceful, non-greedy and non-selfish people, which... well, never mind.
P.s. Sorry for the pessimism, and I might be wrong of course, which I really hope I am.
You're describing communalism, if you're interested.
Thanks. Maybe, kind of. My knowledge on the topic is limited, but I think communalism (or some version of it) could involve some form of loyalty to one's ethnic group or community, which absolutely disagree with.
Social responsibility: Yes. But loyalty, especially towards something ultimately meaningless such as ethnicity: No.
My values are respecting individual choices, rights and well-being of others (which also entails some responsibility).
I completely agree. However, as I understand, the tradition as it stems from Murray Bookchin explicitly condemns this arbitrary categorisation.
Your describing a Soviet you filthy commie.
But for real what your describing is communism as marx originally thought of it. The one example marx gave as a model for what communism would be was the Paris commune which adheres to a lot of what you said. Most leftist agree that that's the end goal it's just a matter of how to get there. Lenin originally pitched the Soviet Union as just that, a bunch of local councils(soviets) freely cooperating and making there own rules. He saw how the Paris commune's openness and military indecisiveness led to it being brutally suppressed though and wanted an interim top down dictatorship and rapid brutal industrialization to handle this threat. The threat never went away though, first with the Nazis almost annihilating them then the u.s. pointing nukes at them, so neither did the dictatorship.
Their end goal was still avowedly the same though, and communism, to me at least, is about that goal. Their are a bunch of different theoretical paths to it, and there's tonnes of infighting as to which ones the best, but all communists agree that the commune/Soviet/city state should have all the power.
Thanks for the explanation.
The problem is exactly the "how", as you described. And personally, I don't really have any idea, since all the possible ways seem to involve somehow contradicting that goal "temporarily" (by using violence, limiting individual liberties, etc.), which I don't like. I think maybe over time, (a very long time, perhaps?) the way of thinking of human societies will slowly (and through a painful process) shift to that direction (and maybe not! who knows!).
Either way, life is painful and world is cruel.
Reformism is the term for a path to socialism without the use of violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformism
Sounds a lot like me. That's not communism, that's just being a decent person. One that respects others and just wants everyone to live a good life without being the target of hate and harassment.
Linus Torvalds is a "full-blown woke communist"? Citation needed.
I have been a FOSS enthusiast since my preteen or early teenage years (mid-to-late 2000s), yet I am not in any sense a communist.
"full-blown woke communist" is US-speak for "Scandinavian socialist"
The term you want is social democrat, which isn't socialism but hey, it tries to like, stop people starving to death on the street, if only because it looks ugly.
Scandinavian corporatist-social-democrat*
https://news.itsfoss.com/linus-torvalds-woke-communists/
"I am one of those woke communists"
unfortunately I think this is just him saying he's a "woke communist" if being a woke communist is atheism, women's rights, and gun control. I don't think he's a marxist of any stripe it seems. However, I am willing to be corrected here. I've only seen this post regarding to him.
But Linux is
Ugh I should probably try reading things
if libs are comfortable calling themselves commie in any context that makes our job easier.
I don't think it has a meaningful effect. Libs call themselves socialists all the time. For every case you're able to argue for socialism and not have people's brains shut down, you get 10 "those tankies aren't real socialists! Socialism is when you
for food stamps and means-tested college subsidies"
I think his point is that people who call things "woke communism", in a negative way, have no idea what communism actually is. To those people, everything from the center to the left of politics is woke communism.
His dad was a straight up member of the Finnish Communist Party. He's still alive, and is even a member of the European Parliament, but seems more liberal/centrist these days.
Linus himself seems to be pretty mum on politics.
To me it always seemed like Linus Torvalds is mostly a pragmatist.
Richard M Stallman on the other hand...
I think the dates are more relevant than the software. COVID pandemic was probably more impactful here than Linux.
I too just turned into a Marxist after finding out about Linux and software freedom in 2020 lol
I think there might be more than a handful of us. Welcome, comrade.
🫡
sudo apt-get install anarchismhttps://packages.debian.org/stable/doc/anarchism
I now love Debian more than I previously thought possible.
brb installing Debian on all my hardware.
edit: there's a
fortune-anarchismtoo, amazing.AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/anarchism
(the pkgbuild is literally just extracting the deb and archiving it again to an arch package lol)
Fine, but dont defend tyranical regimes. They are bad no mather who they say they read. They could could claim to be following the teachings of fucking Mr Roggers but if they have concentration camps then thats not utopic or very humanitarian in my opinion, specially if ther is some mad dictator in power with everything no matter how manny extra steps are in between.
Whenever I hear the term "concentration camp", I always remember The Haircut.
Is that the Boy Boy vid? Hell yeah. They have a patreon exclusive where they watched Yeonmi Park interviews and she makes the most batshit claims about how post-apocalyptic DPRK is. They do a good job at cutting through the bs fearmongering without dickriding any specific regimes (DPRK or otherwise)
It is.
Sounds cool, gonna save it for a later watch.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Haircut
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
ITT: people who have no idea what communism is
That would be in every thread, from the most pro-communism to the most anti-communism threads.
People also misuse other *ism words, it is quite normal to make general stereotypes of *ism especially for jokes.
...I just didn't want windows advertising to me.
But that is sort of why it's the first step. You were using Windows and were bothered with ads. So you may have looked into an alternative you heard about called Linux. You are new to Linux and maybe ask some questions on forums and interact with people from all over the world that are taking time out of their day to help you, which gives you a sense of community. Then you learn that Linux is licensed as Open Source Software, and that people are working together to create something for the benefit of people, not for profits. Then you start to wonder, what else in my life that bothers me is a result of profit motivation?
You mean the picture is a windows ad ? [edit] typo
On Lemmy? Shock
Yeah, I love the FOSS philosophy and I would be a communist if I didn't know that in my country and in every other country where communism is/was, it became a dictatorship doing reallly horrible things. I simply don't have the trust in people to believe communism is possible without violation of human rights. It's sad.
There is not a single country that has achieved communism.
Sorry then, I should have written In every other country ruled by communists saying they are building communism, banning every other political party then the communist one, killing people in the name of communism. I see their unability to achieve communism even when they've had full control over country for decades as a proof of that it's not really possible.
Then what is it? A teapot in the sky?
If it's a viable plan which can be realized, then how to achieve it, without killing people and creating a dictatorship? Is it possible?
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that any effort to establish communism will eventually fail with a lot paid in vain, and many lives lost, as has happened so far.
If that viable plan needs time to be accepted more widely, then maybe we should simply wait and try to be decent people in the meantime, instead of trying now to establish a "temporary" dictatorship actively as a way of "transition". And if the plan can be acted upon right now, then again the question is how (without resorting to violence and tyranny, of course). That question remains open to me. And it's a big one.
In such countries there was/is socialism. They only tried/trying to build communism. This is a common misconception.
I don't know. But I doubt that the state will give up its powers without any fight.
My understanding is that these days people treat it more like an ideal to strive toward under current democratic systems. For instance, how would you feel about UBI being introduced under your current system of governance?
https://moneyinc.com/linus-torvalds-net-worth/
Well, that's one definition of being communist, I suppose. Myself, I think that it's fairly safe to say that Torvalds is okay with private ownership of industry.
People may have read this and got too excited. He just believes in socially left policy. He's probably not a communist.
I don't know about his political views, but I think Linus deserves every last penny he got from Red Hat.
There's a gaping and dangerous misunderstanding in there. Having money or being successful under capitalism doesn't mean you don't see its flaws. The idea that rich people can't be communists is like saying that only gay people can support gay rights.
Believing that the world would be a better place if we pooled our resources has nothing to do with whether you created an operating system that all of global computing relies on.
I'm no communist, but your argument is flawed.
Linus is not representative of the Linux community and I think the famous Stallman rant regarding GNU/Linux is actually relevant here.
The free software movement is certainly pretty left leaning, though I wouldn't call them communist.
OP's words.
Tell me you haven't read the Communist Manifesto without telling me you haven't read the Communist Manifesto.
I don't even think the meme is about communism as much as it is just venting about how corps turned free-software into the panopticon it is today.
But Idc if Torvalds is a Marxist bc I'm not either, but marx wrote about how the proletariat should own stocks, so that isn't even disqualifying tho.
And tbh I think most "marxists" just adopt that term because our political discourse is so corrupted that anyone who thinks that we shouldn't curb-stomp an Amazon employee for wanting a bathroom break is treated like they're Mao anyway.
I had to look up the panopticon reference, so I thought to share with others: 'A proposed prison of supervision, so arranged that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them: proposed by Jeremy Bentam.'
Fuck communist statist, foss is pure anarchism.
My
brother in ChristComrade in the revolution, Communism is a stateless, moneyless, classless society. Whatever self-proclaimed "Statist Communists" thare are, are no-more Communist than the National "Socialists" who sent our kind to the death camps.Anarchism does not necessarily exclude Communism! :)
Good Explanations: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/index.html for those interested
FLOSS is Voluntaryism - it only requires voluntary participation.
Part of how I got here involves reading an assload of textfiles from the '90s and growing disillusioned with the fruits of that optimistic '90s techno-libertarianism
I feel called out.
I'm not quite there yet but im definitly at the second to last block
If you'd like to discuss the subject, there are many comms on a handful of instances where people would be happy to!
What? These things are not related to each other by a good margin. In fact, since the FOSS is completely orderless, it goes against communism; which requires some sort of order just to be able to function. But either way, the parallel is not there or questionable at best, not to mention irrelevant.
Can we NOT drag useless politics into FOSS?
the marxism understander has logged on
Yeah I play civ 5
Ikr it's really more like anarcho-syndicalism
Lost of syndicalists see themselves as communists. Including myself. I've been on the board, on the administration team and the negotiatiok team for my syndicalist union. All communism isn't leninism.
I agree, FOSS not only appeals to communists but also to the most extreme libertarians.
Everyone acting in their own selfish interests, using the code they need and writing code to scratch their itch. Forking when they want.
The idea of a fork (I'm not happy, I'm going to do my own thing) is absolutely not a communist concept. Communism is usually centralized planification.
Shit this is too accurate
Literally same, even the years match up lol
Me too
Use the right tool for the job, I say.
I made a decent chunk of change with capitalism. I have a modest house and am well positioned for a middle-class retirement.
Now I work for the government in a field for which I find the capitalist options wanting.
I give away my programming guides for free online with no ads, but sell paper copies of the books for profit.
Could I make more money by charging for the online versions? Sure. But some things are worth more than money.
The quest for money doesn't ruin everything, but it sure ruins a lot of things.
Bell Labs of yore would be my dream company to work for.
Marxists don't argue for a deonotological disallowing of markets, but believe that those who own the markets should not thereby own the rest of society. I'm sure even you would agree that it would be better is everyone had the comfortable position that you do -- and indeed we should move in that direction, even though we cannot simply decide that everyone will be wealthy tomorrow -- but we all must work with the conditions we find ourselves in, including to transform those conditions over time.
What's your website?
https://beej.us/guide/
🤗 love your articles
Wow. Im pretty centerist on capitalism and I have been using linux since about 2000 or so.
https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/936f0e352f49bb1299376443ae9ecd6903cb6790/2015/01/26/bf82ae8b-446c-472b-8fd9-037661d25a68/microsoft-open-source-communist.jpg?auto=webp&width=768
(/s in case it wasn't clear)
I still find it funny that Steve Ballmer called Linux communism lmao
I think we may be the same person.
For me, it was around 2015ish when I first installed Linux after learning about it from someone that was detasselling in a corn field with me. Then around 2017-2020ish, I eventually became radicalized (2017 is when net neutrality was killed, even though around 80% of Americans supported it, which made me question our government and economy).
Isn't that what communism is? In an ELI5 level?
I am not sure if you meant to reply to the other person's comment or refer to them in mine, but I think this video does a pretty good job at explaining socialism/communism to people wanting to understand it: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4
I'll try to give my own explanations later.
Yeah sorry. I have replied to the wrong comment. Thanks for the video link BTW.
Second Thought is so good!
In my view Torvalds is more of a pragmatic stoicist.
Ironic as I went the other way. I was a Communist when I got into FOSS and as I got older I realized I could never defend the historical record of Communism.
This is what happens when everything you know is based on vibes instead of actually reading any theory or history from primary source historians instead of third.
You can support some of the ideas while disapproving the leaders whose greed made it fail... which is socialism in a way.
** record of authoritarians that called themself communist.
nOt rEaL cOmMunIsM
You do get that Bad People don't usually label themselves as such right? It would be like the Nazi party (unironically) labelling themselves as the Fascist Genocidal Aryan Elite Supremacists Party instead of National Socialist German Workers Party.
How many people do you think would support fascist, genocidal dictators if they outed themselves as such to begin with?
I agree on that, but that doesn't mean that those who outed themselves aren't communists. They were communists, and all of the attempts at a communist system has failed horrifically. I say this as a person who lives in a ex-communist country.
you don't have to defend the history of communism-aspiring countries to be in favor of communism ;)
So many kiddos arguing ridiculous politics here.
Yes, I agree, I am at stage 3 and stage 4 looks more enticing every single damn day.
relatable
Welcome comrade
🫡
Just wait for the next stage as a libertarian socialist, without a leading communist party, because we can take care of us ourselves - it's usually called anarchy (which doesn't mean no social norms, just self-organisation without leadership)
idk about you comrade but I don't read from thelibertariansocialistlibrary.org
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
I considered myself libsoc but not anarchist for a long time. Still kinda do. I believe in the ideal of a classless, oppressionless, non-hierarchical society, but I'm not out there living that ideal and doing praxis.
If all it takes to belong to any political movement is simply to claim you belong regardless of what your actions say, I don't care for nor want your meaningless, substanceless labels. On the other hand, if it takes participation, then spending my time arguing online about whose
fantasy football teampolitical philosophy is better sure ain't it either.Either way, I'm probably just another lib with lofty aspirations. My best hope is that someone reads this, goes "you know what? That jaded shitlib has a motherfucking point!" And then logs out to go be an anarchist instead of just throwing the term around.
Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software Eric Raymond, Communism and Free Software
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/69ZyX5sN2NA?si=Zc_eZsFid48qS-Um&t=39
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Just began using Linux, was already Marxist
I honestly don't even know what a Marxist is.
Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist. He wanted to understand class relations and social conflict, so he developed theories to explain why things are the way they are. A Marxist uses Marx's theories to understand why the world is the way it is.
Marx had a lot of theories, such as historical materialism - that all history was primarily motivated by socio-economic forces, not supernatural forces or grand conspiracy. Marx wrote that the dominate socio-economic system running the world in his time was capitalism/imperialism which fueled capital accumulation through exploitation and alienation, and used technology to further this process with imperialist wars for resources etc... He also focused on class struggle between those with the most resources, and those with the fewest resources - the bourgeoisie (capitalists) vs. the proletariat (workers/peasants).
Marx went further than trying to explain why the world is the way it is, he also theorized on how humanity could replace the dominate socio-economic system, and what a non-exploitative non-alienating socio-economic system might look like. "Marxist" refers to anyone who believes Marx's theories are valid and uses them to understand the way things are.
Dont worry about it, neither do the people who accuse you of it.
Marxism is the classical version of communism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As opposed to later ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
No, marxism is a lense through which to analyze capitalism. It isnt communist by itself, although marx was a communist.
It’s both, criticism of capitalism and the inevitability of the communist revolution were part of the same philosophy. I suppose you could make an argument that a non-communist dialectical materialist is also a Marxist, though I’ve never seen it used that way in practice.
That's my argument
Sometimes capitalists spout marxist shit and it is recorded. Marxist capitalists are the worst because they have an understanding of the contradictions their counterparts dont. More commonly there are non communist Marxists in philosophy.
I agree that almost all Marxists are communists, I just felt your initial response was a simplification that lost more meaning in the simplification than it necessarily needed to.
I only got my undergrad in philosophy so I’d certainly defer to someone with more experience in the field, but I’ve only ever heard the term with regards to his economic theories.
:gulp:
I have no formal training in philosophy maybe I need to read less philosophy if philosophy undergrads aren't being exposed to it
Nah, undergrads read almost zero Marxist literature, almost 100% from Marx and just a tiny bit from Engels. The rest is memory-holed from history.
I think Marxism is functionally but not technically inherently communist on the grounds that it avoids discussion of moral values and things like that.
It is not "the classical version of communism", that would be the Utopian or anarchist ideas and projects that preceded it. Marxism is a class of ideology that has historically and still does have the greatest weight in geopolitical importance, starting with "classical Marxism", a now-dead ideology, and its many successors, like you list.
you can read about that here if you've got a few minutes to spare
I encourage you to go over to c/askchapo on hexbear.net if you are curious.
I don't really see the link to communism though I can see the parallels to social democracy.
Private ownership of computer code should lead us to a hellscape where all code is owned by a handful of huge companies and wealthy elites. But instead of doing away with private ownership and making all code public domain we added regulation in the form of free and open source licensing that democratized private ownership and made it serve our community. Perhaps that is the real lesson, not communism.
Are things still sold for a profit in this hypothetical world?
Isn't that what communism is? In an ELI5 level?
You don't know what communism is.
In pointing out one's deficiencies, you should help them fill in those gaps. Otherwise, you're just being an asshole.
Explain what communism is. Comprehensive education in communism is not part of many places' standard curriculum
Yes! I like you :)
it be a slippery slope
So Steve Ballmer was right all along
Developers, developers?
~ Steve "Developers Developers Developers" Balmer
This meme shows completely my journey. I became a FOSS advocate in 2020 after realized that all sites that I visited wanted my "cookies". I started to questioning myself about and after some research I became a disciple of Richard Stallman and a Marxist-Leninist.
It started with privacy.
It continued with freedom.
It ended in hatred for 90% of the world.
Me too frfr
But is socialism really the same as communism?
Socialism is the name for the economy system where the working class rule the means of production.
Socialism isn't communism-lite. It's more of an umbrella anti-capitalist term.
I believe you are not alone. I have the exact same journey. Started installing Ubuntu 20.04 on a mid-2011 iMac. Now, I consider myself as a near-libertarian communist, I spend my free time reading books on communist theory.
Follow the white rabbit: https://lemmy.world/post/5739196
In my experience I've noticed Linux tends to (disproportionately) attract both libertarians and socialists/communists. I feel like I run into more of both within the Linux community than I do in other communities.
I started using Linux because I couldn't force myself to use Windows 8. Up to that point I used whatever version of Windows came right before the graphical interface but 8 was too awful so I started playing with mint and never went back..
I got off the capitalism train in the middle of that but that was only because I decided to major in business and when I saw how the sausage was made I jumped ship but I didn't know anything about socialism or communism or marxism or whatever you want to call it. I was so not into politics or economics that I literally had to search the Internet and ask people on social media what was an alternative to the crap I was reading for my classes.. And then I went down that rabbit hole. If was enlightening. I learned a lot.
Also... for people who think college is Marxist indoctrination...Marx was brought up for one paragraph in one book at the very very end of my 4 years. But by that point I already knew who he was just from the rabbit hole I went down when I was curious for some alternative to what I was being taught.
For me it was more of a: went from centrist to we need better regulations but we must ensure competition.
You'll get there