Cool story but I’ve never spoken to a party member, and the historical books I read aren’t from party members either.

I always meant that “again” as in “this week,” haha. It was my first rodeo, and I wanted to use it to help push me to read it. A new person has run the Capital reading threads each year, for the past 3 years!

It’s not treason, it’s the purpose of the US Empire’s millitary.

Rest in peace. May the US Empire and its dogs crumble.

Minor correction! Only read Volumes 1 and 2 of Capital, and only once each. Planning on revisiting them after I finish my current bug on dialectical materialism. But thanks for the defense!

I do, actually! Did fairly well in my economics classes, though bourgeois economics is bullshit. I have read the first 2 volumes of Capital, so I’m still no expert but certainly not a beginner.

Nobody is saying the USSR was perfect, but all you’ve brought is just personal anecdote. I’ve spoken to people that say much the opposite!

Nah

Repeating the same dogmatic claims isn’t evidence. Stalin was definitionally not a dictator, and even offered to resign half a dozen times. The USSR was immensely liberatory.

Not sarcastic, just a communist.

Socialism fundamentally works by creating a system that taxes those who have more than others and goes to those who have less than others.

No, it doesn’t. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution based on public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes in control of the state. The rest of this paragraph isn’t worth responding to, because it’s based on a false premise.

In relation to the last panel, they are saying that they are giving 85% of their labor value to their boss who doesn’t work. There’s multiple problems with this way of thinking. The first and most obvious one is the 85%, which is just an arbitrarily large number to make it feel scary.

Capitalists fundamentally make profits by paying workers for less than the value their labor-power creates.

Second is the claim that the boss (and one can assume owner) doesn’t do any work. That’s obviously not true because 99.99% (I’m being dramatic) of owners work an equal or greater number of hours per week than the rest of the employees.

Nobody is saying owners do literally no labor, just that their obscene wealth comes from stealing from workers, not from their own labor. Otherwise their wages would be about the same as any other worker at that company.

And there’s also the fact that while needing to know how every aspect of the company operates the owner is the one who takes the biggest risks and has the most at stake so it makes sense that they make more than the new hire who has no work experience.

The biggest risk a capitalist takes is in becoming a worker. Workers risk their livelihood.

Yes, you’ll have owners who take more than they “need” but you also have to remember that technically all costs of the company can and are taken out of the owners paycheck because the lower profit the company makes the lower the owners paycheck can be.

Sure, but their paycheck is made up of stolen surplus value to begin with.

Hope this helps!

Be aware that psychological warfare is common right now, and a tried and true method of Israel. Wait until the IRGC confirms or denies.

Can you explain?

What makes you say that?

China isn’t expansionist, though.

I suppose that exists on Reddit, but I don’t really see that much overall.

I don’t think that was their intention.

Ah, gotcha.

If it’s not on the list, it isn’t socialist. As for the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state, it’s socialist by definition.

No? To the contrary, people need to work if they are able, at least until automation can cover most production and distribution.

Do you live in Cuba, Vietnam, the PRC, DPRK, Laos, or Venezuela? If not, you don’t live in a socialist country, but a social democracy, which is capitalism but with safety nets. These social democracies in Europe rely on imperialism to subsidize their safety nets.