The point is to put control of the state into the hands of workers.

The state always exists to control society to some extent. In our current society by far the most powerful group are the small number of people who own the overwhelming majority of industry, a remarkably small group we call the 1% but really we could call them the 0.001% - the 0.001% of humanity, about 100,000 individuals, who own an estimated $10 trillion. The elite of the elite. The 1% of the 1%.

This group is defined by their wealth but it’s not just their ownership of finance and industry that makes them a supra-national government, it’s the fact they crosspolinate their boards by sharing board positions between this select group, participation in a set of “think tanks” that then determine government policy, advisory boards to government. The wealthy elite of society are in fact a ruling oligarchy for whom economic power and political power are in fact synonymous. Their economic power is their political power and the method by which they really do rule the world.

Now it’s true that we have elections and we can choose between red team or blue but the things we are voting on are only what we’re allowed to vote on. In a largely procedural sense there is truth to our democracy. We do cast our votes and I’m sure most of the time that vote is counted with scrupulous honesty. The problem is that your vote doesn’t really matter. We can squabble about abortion rights or trans rights but the reality is you can even see the high water mark of true democratic power in society and that is somewhere below the ability for the people to choose if they want a public option health care provider in the USA. Anything above that line isn’t really up to democratic debate and is in fact decided by the privileged elite.

Things like engineering consent to go to war in Iraq, deciding if we want to fund islamic extremists in afghanistan to fight the USSR, toppling regimes in South America, funding death squads in Nicaragua… there is a TON of shit that simply isn’t up for democratic debate and when it comes down to brass tacks the decision to embrace neoliberalism as the dominant ideology was not a democratic decision and it doesn’t reflect the ideological preferences of almost any of the USA but clearly it does represent the interests of the 0.001% so that’s why we live in a neoliberal society.

If you think “western democracy” is adequate to defend us against domination by a sneering elite, then you are wrong and blinded by repetitive propaganda. Demonstrably the policy choices we make always operate to benefit the 0.001% the most be it cutting taxes, setting interest rates, using public funds to bail out banks, going to war to establish control over key economic resources, none of this is done democratically and this stuff actually matters a lot.

What we exist in is not really a democracy. It does have various procedural trappings of democracy, like we do go and cast our votes, but really the democratic domain is highly restricted. It’s not the same as being fake, it’s more that while it’s real enough it’s limited to domain where democratic power doesn’t contradict the interests of societies true ruling class - the 0.001%.

We socialists call this a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The state is in fact under the control of the financial elites, the bourgeoisie, and the procedural equipment of democracy we have is mostly just a facade incapable of actually changing the system, incapable of taking power away from the bourgeoisie, incapable of opposing their interests in any sustained manner.

There’s always a risk of the state coming under the domination of a small group who use that power to oppress others. Socialism can’t eliminate that risk since that risk exists so long as humans can hit each other with sticks. Instead socialism points out that we currently are living in a society where the privileged few who currently have power are using their sticks to enforce their own interests against the rest of us and that we should probably do something about that.

Create a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, meaning the proletariat control society instead of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat control the state. The proletariat means workers. So some democratic system where the privilege of participating in the vote means being working class.

You can think of the corollary, participation in the true ruling oligarchy of the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie is limited to having an extremely large amount of wealth. Voting power in this system is defined by how much money you have, and some tiny group of people have an extremely large amount of money and this is what gives them power. Voting power in the current system, the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, is defined by how wealthy you are.

Voting power in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will be limited to the working class. This is accomplished by limiting voting rights to workers and by eliminating private ownership of “capital”, meaning basically investment income will be banned and you won’t be able to earn money from investing anymore which means that having lots of money is no longer a form of political power.

Economic power is political power which is why the means of production should be owned by the workers. This isn’t just a matter of wealth redistribution. That’s also how political power is redistributed. The ability to vote is the smallest part of political power. It matters sure but really true political power, the true ability to have a voice in the shaping of society, is to have economic power. So to truly have a democracy we must have truly distributed economic power.

TL;DR they backed up their servers

This is purely an ad for Amazon Web Services.

I remember very briefly trying to be one of those edgy kids but just a few minutes on rotten and I realized I was not in fact one of those kids.

:communism-will-win:

There are a lot of psyops out there though.

Iran reports they have arrested the members of 4 operative cells directed by Mossad

The Zionist criminal regime, taking advantage of the recent riots over the past weeks in several parts of Iran, intended to conduct several hybrid terrorist operations by directing operative teams, it added, but all the terrorists were arrested before taking any action.

It sounds like the Mossad operation was pretending to be some kind of buyers group for metallurgy products and in this way was learning about the structure of this industry, and it then seems these four squads were either hit squads to kill some key actors or industrial sabotage or some mix of these.

MFW Trans rights and Scottish nationalism are aligned

:rainbow-bravehart:

Ladies and gentleman, we got 'em.

I think the logic was described quite well by Mearsheimer when he said “we’re going to be the 800 pound gorilla in the room.” His summary of the American imperial project is more or less “someone’s gonna do it so let’s make sure it’s us.”

It’s basically prison logic. “If we are the biggest and baddest mother fucker in the room, then we are safe.”

It’s a kind of toxic concept of preemptive self defense that grows from the genocidal colonialism. There is a cultural assumption that if they aren’t putting their boot on your neck then you’re going to put your boot on their neck.

The ideological battles are over. We are at The End of History. All that remains is to choose the more competent managers. Change is as pointless as it is futile.