Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe evidence points towards the pyramids being built by paid workers, and I think some even got to be buried in their own smaller pyramids
Correct, except smaller pyramids, those were also for the kings only, workers building pyramids had their own cementaries iirc.
But knowledge of this fact actually makes this meme even more relatable - the people in it were closer to wage slaves like us.
Correct, conditions of the workers of the Pyramids and Temples
-8 h per day, 6 days a week
-Free housing, food and a small garden for themselves and their families
-Medical assistance and care in sick leave due to illness and accident.
-Exempt from paying taxes
-Care and assistance for the old ex-workers.
(better than today in most countries)
Slaves (mostly prisoners of war and criminals) were naturally also used, but only for basic jobs and assistance. The Pharao knew very well that if he wants a job well done, he cannot get it with slaves and in poor conditions, but with well-cared and happy professionals.
So uhh, anyone building pyramids today?
Yes. But the term has changed
gets rewarded with more work for working so hard
Okay hate on capitalism, fair enough
But equating it to literal slavery like we’ve had in the past (and still have in some parts of the world) seems problematic to me
“Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”
— Frederick Douglass
I suspect that most other actual slaves would not entirely agree with that sentiment
Frederick Douglass the famous non-slave
Your original stance was that it is “problematic” to equate them. Do you think it was problematic for Fredrick Douglass to equate them? If not then your original position has to change.
We don’t have polling on prior chattel slave views on wage slavery, but since you’re making a habit of just going with your gut, I’ll do the same. I’d wager most prior chattel slaves would’ve been more than happy to abolish all forms of slavery (including wage slavery).
Douglass died in 1895 when the standard of living was wildly lower than what it is today, its not an equivalent comparison
“Gee, I know I said all that about wage slavery, but who could have predicted iPhones and corn syrup. This is great!”
Read the shit you’re making claims about.
Why don’t you do the same? Your original quote is 137 years old. It is in fact problematic to equate the economic landscape of 2023 to that of 1886. In that quote Douglass is specifically criticizing the treatment of freed slaves, not capitalism in general. (If you want to convince people capitalism is bad, you need to make valid criticisms, not twist old quotes to suit your narrative)
If the age of an idea is a judge of its quality, the old man of capital is defeated by the youthful zeal of communism.
I got the quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
Where did you hear that it was specific only to freed slaves?
Your stance still needs to change then. Your issue isn’t comparing wage slavery with chattel slavery, it’s comparing slavery when the standard of living has improved.
Now this stance is still problematic, imagine we lost the civil war and the north became socialist, abolishing wage slavery. The south would have chattel slavery and the north would have no slavery. Now imagine the standard of living for chattel slaves vastly improved, and someone then tried to compare “modern day chattel slaves to wage slaves”. Your stance would then be this is wildly unfair to modern day chattel slaves because wage slaves had a worse standard of living, a position we both understand is ridiculous.
Has chattel slavery been replaced with wage slavery for a large population since then? (Actually asking, not rhetorical)
If living conditions have improved for wage slaves but not for chattel slaves, then I’d imagine they would agree with you.
Why?
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we’ve had in the past
we definitely still have slavery in America. Like, in America. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of companies that outsource their slavery to other countries and then ship the product here so we can pretend it’s not made by slaves, but plenty of companies skip the middle man and just use slaves here
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The whip makes the joke that they are slaves but it’s believed it was mostly wage earners build the pyramids. The joke still stands though. I mean it’s a fucking mausoleum. Wasting societies resources for a vanity project. The irony of his statement holds either way, as a wage laborer or a slave.
What literal slavery? The pyramids weren’t built with slave labor.
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor.
Having 100% exclusive rights over the fruits of a person’s labor, so, a job.
Slavery typically involves compulsory work with the slave’s location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage.
Ever applied for a mortgage?
Having 100% exclusive rights over the fruits of a person’s labor, so, a job.
But they don’t. I can end this arrangement at any point in time.
Ever applied for a mortgage?
Yes, and I can’t remember anyone forcing me to buy this specific apartment, or preventing me from selling it and moving anywhere else.
Regardless, my point wasn’t that work isn’t slavery, my point is that the pyramids weren’t built with slave labor.
There’s a dude with a whip in the picture, so it seems like the artist believes it was slave labor
It’s a common misconception.
Never mind the foreign interest campaigns to get Americans to be less productive
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It’s laughable, really. A country where one person could go to work while the other one could stay at home and still afford a house and a car at least.
American citizens got reamed by megacorps and some even enjoy it.
People are getting paid to fuck?
Do you have a link or source for this? Never heard it before
Interestingly, I think the current consensus is that the workers who built the pyramids were not slaves, but rather ‘volunteers’ or ‘citizens’ who worked during the farming off-season. The ancient Egyptians didn’t use coins at this point, but the workers seem to have been housed in a kind of workers settlement near the site and paid in beer, bread, and grain.
Capitalism can suck my famous balls however
I’m somewhere between the whipper and the whipee.
Average feudalist enjoyer
What’s going on with the rope on the front of the stone block? It looks like it’s going to the taskmaster’s hand, but he’s standing behind the block, so that makes no sense…
The artist drew this in like five minutes.
The rope isn’t taut.
Ai generated?
The communist version of this meme has someone with a whip and sword standing behind them and telling them to work for the benefit of the people or die
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At best European nations are social liberal democracies. No European country is a socialist nation.
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Humanity is flawed, so any of our constructions will be. But democracy is better than any alternative.
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I mean I guess you could have a socialist or feudal democracy, but the problem begins with those when you think about what happens with political dissidents
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I’m an American. No European country is a socialist nation.
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Fuck off
🙄
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A good faith attempt to end the capitalist mode of production and move to the socialist mode as envisioned by Marx. Elimination of the role of capital in the ownership of industry or production, that’s your chief characteristic
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China is a socialist democracy too. Dont leave them out.
The only part of China which is at all a democracy is Taiwan
Taiwan aka Republic of China aka state of China aka not a country. I dont care what a hand full of redditors have told you but they dont have a seat at the UN, the United States and EU doesnt recognize it as a sovereign nation, Taiwan depends on Chinese government and Chinese exports.
Either way, China claims itself to be a democratic socialist country so just own that.
Yeah ok man I don’t care about your geopolitics, the point is that the only part of what is considered China which is at all democratic is Taiwan. The PRC is a totalitarian, one party dictatorship.
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You know I’m a communist, and I’d actually wager we would agree on your stance here if you chose better words. What you’re actually advocating against is state capitalism, and we both agree it’s a horrific and unjust system.
Something I’ve noticed about “anti-communists” is they absolutely love taking the USSR, CCP, and DPRK at their word for what they are. When they describe themselves as communist/socialist, you take it as an undeniable fact.
Do you think the DPRK is a democratic republic? It’s in the name. Of course you don’t, because it’d be ridiculous to let an authoritarian regime change the definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean :)
There’s two paths to talking with a communist. Either they’re a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven’t been shown to be practically achievable. I don’t say this to be a dick, man. I much prefer the utopian idealist communists over those who cheer when political dissidents are machine gunned for wanting democracy. But it still doesn’t make libertarian communism a workable system, whether it’s anarchic communism or democratic socialism or some other form of stateless society.
So, I am happy to be civil with you, I just fundamentally disagree about whether attempting to achieve those ideals would end well. In my opinion, it would have one of three results - anarchy and a breakdown of the economy, imposition of totalitarian rule in reaction to groups of people who don’t want to give up their private property rights, or reversion to another form of economic structure, like capitalism.
Either they’re a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven’t been shown to be practically achievable
Well allow me to present the third option: communism has been tried in Australia and North America, and it worked. Marx’s ideas of what a communist society would look like were informed by descriptions he read of how the Haudenosaunee people actually organised their society. They did communism for thousands of years and it worked.
Marx covers tribal societies in his books and he doesn’t consider them to be practicing the socialist mode of production. In fact, he describes the tribal mode of production. You should read some theory.
No economic or political system can be shown to be practically achievable before it’s been achieved. If you don’t think the following examples are examples of genuine socialism/communism, then that’s not an argument against the ideology.
We’ve had communists fight alongside other leftists. So revolutionary Catalonia was a functioning leftist space, meeting all the criteria to be called communist (classless/moneyless/stateless). It functioned incredibly well for a year before it was invaded.
If you want a longer, but smaller example, Red Vienna existed for about 2 decades and was a fully functional socialist space that improved worker’s lives before being outlawed by a regime change.
If your position is that imperialist capitalist nations will always invade/outlaw well-functioning socialist/communist systems, you can’t know that for sure, but it’s definitely a possibility. That doesn’t mean the entire idea is worth throwing away.
What imperialist capitalist nations
It won’t always be the same ones so I’m unsure of what you’re asking. Which ones invaded the spaces I listed before?
For Revolutionary Catalonia it was the Nationalist Faction who overthrew them. They advocated for, and implemented, a form of national syndicalism that was “fully compatible with capitalism”.
For Red Vienna is was the fascists who overturned the socialist policies and returned the city to a state of capitalism, allowing land-leeches and other bourgeoise to return to continue exploiting the working class.
That sounds pretty statist. How do you square that with the fact communism is stateless?
Anarchic communism is an incoherent and silly an ideology as anarcho-capitalism. It’s impossible to argue against someone who believes in the economic policy equivalent of believing the world can run on kittens and rainbows.
Someone do something about political memes on the general meme communities please
Since this community’s rules don’t prohibit political memes, maybe you should start an apolitical meme community?
Or at least require a decent font.
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this is racist against black people
Wut?
The pyramid builders weren’t even slaves ya dumbass
Not everyone in capitalism is a winner, and that’s ok. The big advantage is that the losers are usually offered the opportunity to work and make a living.
The alternative is crossing your fingers and hoping the government (or whatever body is responsible for distributing pay) gives you what you need. If they don’t, tough luck, there’s nothing you can do about it.
As opposed to under capitalism where you have to cross your fingers and hoping that one of those winners will offer you a job with living wage, while another doesn’t charge you an arm and leg for housing.
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If none of the winners offer you a job, make your own, or acquire some marketable skill. You have options and opportunities.
There aren’t as many options for housing as I’d like honestly. I’d prefer less regulation to allow for lower quality, cheaper housing. As it stands though, you still have options and the ability to improve your living conditions.
Ableism at it’s best. I bet you‘re gonna ask for compensation if you ever get disabled for some reason.
Smart people will do fine either way. I thought you were showing concern for the other people.
I think everything I said applies to stupid people as well.
There’ll always be people who need to rely on charity, but if even a guy in a wheelchair can make a good living and has more opportunities than he can count I’d say that’s a really good sign.
The problem is that the biggest “winners” in this case are almost exclusively the people willing to go the furthest to put profits ahead of people, which in a better system would never be incentivized.
Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all others which have been tried
“I went to high school. Hear my wisdom”
If you disagree, feel free to point to a superior alternative which has been demonstrated in reality
Socialism
As demonstrated by which socialist country
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You got asked to name a successful economic system, and you chose feudalism? Holy shit man i’d love to hear the argument to back this up
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Feudalism didn’t lift nearly as many people out of poverty compared to Capitalism.
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That leads to a beauty of capitalism though. People prioritize profit, yes, but with competition, the way to make a profit is to be appealing to people. You make a profit by providing the best good or service at the best price. This means that the people who have the goal of profits also have the goal of pleasing their customers.
There’s a quote from somewhere that goes something like this “capitalism takes the most ambitious, selfish, and capable people and forces them to stay up at night thinking about what everyone else wants”.
Beauty of capitalism. God fucking take me now.
Rot in hell bootlicker
We have seem over and over again that companies will eventually become greedy and will kill all competition. One example Standard Oil , they will eventually not serve the customers as you mentioned. The customers will have to pay really high prices for lower quality service or product. I am not a lot into socialism because we come back to the same that one entity is controlling everything and we have seem also that the government sucks. So maybe a hybrid approach will be nice to try.
Insulin prices in the US is a great example of this. It’s not about being competitive, it’s about charging the absolute highest amount they can possibly get away with.
Yes that’s a great example! Capitalism is great in paper it improves quality of life and the free market make companies more competitive but big corporations abuse this and create monopolies.
Insulin prices would be a lot lower if more people were allowed to produce and sell it.
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It’s not a question of not being allowed to produce it, it’s anti-competitive practices by the pharmaceuticals industry, which capitalism rewards.
Specifically, drug manufacturers have repeatedly made lots of little changes to their existing insulin products in order to apply for new patents on them. This process, called “evergreening,” has discouraged competitors from developing new versions of existing insulins because they’d have to chase so many changes. This has slowed down innovation, along with “pay for delay” deals, in which insulin manufacturers pay competitors to not copy specific drugs for a period of time.
Even though there are very few insulin products that have patent protection on the compound itself, the vast majority of insulin products still have patent protection on the pens and other devices that deliver the dose of insulin. Novo Nordisk has patents for Novolog, Novolin, and FIASP products; Sanofi has patents on the devices for all of its products; and Eli Lilly still has patents on some devices that deliver Humulin and Humalog.
The patent protection on the devices is significant. Because the pens and other insulin delivery devices can only be used on with one brand of insulin, competition on those products is effectively delayed. While a prospective competitor could develop a follow-on biologic or biosimilar of the insulin, it would have to develop its own delivery device.
Save for pay for delay, all of those rely on patents and copy-rights, which are government intervention.
According to the first source, it also looks like competitors are entering and offering lower prices, including open source methods (though I have no idea how that really works). One of the biggest problems for all of them is the government saying “no, you can’t do this or that for whatever reason”. Sometimes it’s good for the government to intercede, but it seems like in this case it’s helping perpetuate monopolies.
Monopolies are pretty dangerous, and I’d like to avoid then as much as possible.
I think that they’re generally created and sustained by government intervention though. Bailouts, legal fees, red tape, price controls, exceedingly long copyrights, they all hurt new competitors more than established ones.
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If one company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks then I’m going to buy someone else’s bread and that company loses a lot of money.
If every company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks, that’s an extraordinary opportunity for a new competitor to come in with reasonable prices.
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You should read Lenin’s “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism”, you’re like 2 steps from it, just in this moment you try to turn back the clock instead of looking forward.
“I studied economics in high school. Hear my wisdom.”
What about monopolies?
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This comment is fkn stoopid. Seriously. Look at the logic
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There are quite a number of other alternatives. Your reduction of this issue shows that you are not only a capitalist whore but also very ignorant.
I wasn’t aware there are ao many other options? Could you reference some?
I guess you could grow and make everything yourself, buy that doesn’t seem like an economic system.
I’m actually not sure how pay was distributed in feudalism, so that could theoretically be another way, but I doubt it is.
Something like UBI would be the latter option.
Maybe if you had capitalism at a macro level, but communism at a micro level. Each town internally worked like communism, but interacted with others in a capitalist fashion. But even there, there will be people in the town distributing pay (or goods and services directly) without you having control over it. You might be able to be especially charismatic, or threaten a revolt, but I don’t think those are things people can typically do.
