The failure of 21st century Marxism is forgetting the material world it was designed to address

👀ing @ China and wondering if those hundreds of millions of “21st century Marxists” Communist Party members forgot to address the material world while becoming a superpower and rapidly outpacing the world hegemon empire economically.

(Though for the record, I agree that reading theory is only half of the necessary equation needed for someone to overcome their liberalism.)

You really are demonstrating a complete lack of familiarity with the topic while trying to defend small business owners. Small businesses that hire employees are exploiting workers and stealing the surplus value from their labor just like giant corporations do, full stop. You might have a leg to stand on if you were referring exclusively to co-ops but even those are rife with issues under capitalism (I wrote some about co-ops in another comment) and can only be said to have control over the tiniest fraction of the means of production. Socialism is the proletariat as a class owning the means of production and small business owners are by definition part of the capitalist class - this is about society as a whole, not 3 or 4 guys getting together to buy some machines (owning a lil slice of the MoP) they then use to exploit the people hired to work those machines. Even if those 3 or 4 guys chip in with the work, it’s irrelevant. That’s literally the problem, not the solution.

All of this is just scratching the surface on correcting the misunderstandings you’ve displayed. I don’t have the time or inclination to go into all those corrections and I think it’s safe to say the same is true of OP. If u/Cowbee was in this thread, he would probably be willing to go into it for you but I’m not going to bug him with a ping. However I couldn’t stop you from DMing him if you were genuinely interested in learning. Or you can just check out his reading list which I would encourage any lurking readers, since you mentioned them, to do as well.

Meh, I think it’s fair to make a distinction between the classic German ones and the USians, but I get what you’re saying.

Yeah that’s fine, but just so you know, that character’s name is Homelander and he is the literal American-Nazi imagined ubermensch, the blond haired blue eyed evil superman who manifests whatever he wills through might-makes-right violence. He is the embodiment and epitome of U.S. fascism. The expression on his face in the image you used really does capture the emotion you were going for, without a doubt. It’s just that anyone who knows the character, seeing a pic of him representing a leftist’s thought, may well squint at it with a little suspicion or confusion.

There are liberals right here in this thread defending the poor smol bean fascist small business owners, wtf are you on about? It’s one of their favorite things to do in defense of capitalism because they can pretend like exploitation only exists due to the imaginary “corporatism.”

I agree with OP and frankly if you think liberals don’t support fascist small business owners, or worse you also support them, then I sure hope you don’t think of yourself as a leftist. But I have to admit I did raise an eyebrow at the choice of character used to express the sentiment.

Co-ops are generally good and worth supporting. They are undeniably a better alternative within capitalism to the standard business ownership model and they can be great for raising worker’s class consciousness. That said, the ones you might see in the imperial core or any capitalist nation are not a threat to capitalism itself (if they were, they wouldn’t be allowed to exist). This is in part because they are always going to be fighting an uphill battle in a competitive labor market where all other businesses get to exploit their labor, forcing co-ops to operate at a disadvantage. Even as they are at a disadvantage especially compared to large corporations whose scale alone give them a massive advantage over all small businesses, co-ops in the imperial core still benefit from the primary contradiction of our age which is imperialism, the extraction of super-profits from exploited nations. Which means you will still have co-ops that are reactionary when it comes to dismantling capitalist hegemony. In other words, the workers of a co-op may jointly own their own business and the portion of the means of production within the purview of that business, but ultimately the means of production include all the economic inputs from the rest of the world, like the minerals that co-op must buy from mines in exploited countries or the basic food ingredients grown on land in the global south. This puts the material interests of even the most egalitarian first world co-ops at odds with communism. It has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread that small business owners occupy a spot in the social hierarchy where they are squeezed from both above and below in terms of their material interests, well this is also true of co-ops but perhaps doubly so.

In short, yes worker co-ops are good, and if you can support them over other businesses it’s a good idea to do so. If you are fortunate enough to work in one, great. But don’t expect them to have more revolutionary potential than workers unionizing. You will be disappointed if you think that worker co-ops are the vehicle towards socialism that some of their biggest proponents often like to say they are.

Not sure why you think I’m emotional

Your very first comment to the post was just dripping with unwarranted condescension which is the hallmark of someone who is angry about something and spiteful towards the person they’re replying to. That is all very much emotional. And to be clear, it’s not “wrong” to be emotional, it’s often the appropriate response (though in your case, it was not). Own up to it.

I expressed an opinion that’s different, that’s all.

Oh that’s all? Just an opinion, really? You’re so clearly doing the “I’m not mad, I’m not mad! You’re the one whose mad!” thing and anyone reading this thread can see that, whether they agree with you or not. It’s not wrong to be upset about something, but come on and just own it instead of denying it and embarrassing yourself by pretending otherwise.

The meme was somebody being frustrated hearing liberals tell you to support small business. Idk, nobody tells me how to shop, I just called in to question how often the issue actually happened to the poster to make them post this.

This has nothing to do with anyone “telling you how to shop,” but that that’s where you immediately take it is very telling about your mindset. Do you have any idea what outsized role small business owners (aka petty bourgeoisie) have played in all historical and current fascist movements? Of course you don’t, or you wouldn’t have acted so personally aggrieved, thinking OP was criticizing your shopping habits (lol). Your snarky and sarcastic tantrum about OP’s completely justified seething at the well-known liberal tradition of idolizing some of the most objectively reactionary elements of society only goes to show how deeply ignorant you are about leftist theory and historical reality.

People are just in a rush to grab a pitchfork lol

“Could I be wrong? No, of course not! It’s just that everyone else is out to get me.”