What they don't teach you in history class

They are an art collective and their whole purpose is to demonstrate how money is arbitrary. Do the slightest bit of research.

yup... completely clueless to the hypocrisy... I already said that...

They’re not in the business to be successful and make profit. They don’t even want to be considered a company and realize they need money to survive under capitalism.

hypocrite - a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Vietnam, China, Cuba

Nope... try again...

China has the worlds largest economy and lifted 800 million people out of poverty.

Vietnam is perhaps the fastest growing economy in the world and their growth almost outperforms China.

Cuba is still able to provide a generous amount of social programs to their people despite being cut off from most trade thanks to US sanctions.

Not an example of a socialist government... thanks...

"No. Over the past hundred years, there have been more than two dozen attempts to build a socialist society. It has been tried in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Hungary, China, East Germany, Cuba, Tanzania, Laos, South Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela, among others—not counting the very short-lived ones. All of these attempts have ended in varying degrees of failure."

Sorry... you making a meme doesn't make it true... Try some real facts next time...

Okay, using your own words, how is China a failure if they have the worlds largest economy, lifted 800 million people out of poverty, and have a market socialist economy?

BTW: do you ever get tired of being wrong? That’s why I stopped being a conservative. I couldn’t keep denying reality anymore.

I'm not a conservative... so you're wrong again...

Why do you even keep talking. You didn’t know what a market is. You’re not about to tell me what you think a “socialist government” is.

Your attitude every time you respond to me, which is on every meme is basically: nope, sorry…. OOPS!!!!! Wrong again!

Tell me again when China joined the WTO and that the WTO is not based on Capitalism...

That's a BIG OOPS

It means having a combination of worker co-ops, nationalized and private enterprises in the framework of a market economy. Capitalism means property and the means of production are owned privately. Market economy means the market is guided by money and supply and demand.

Sorry... go look up the definition for a socialist government... smh

If you are right wing, I consider you a conservative.

I'm not right wing... so wrong again...

You didn’t answer my question.

capitalism is the market... duh... there's no free market in socialism...

Yes, and the move has been criticized and has played some effects on China's economic policy, still, everything is decided and managed by the Chinese Communist Party at their own discretion and pace. There is more planning than leaving things to the market.

Still not a true Socialist government...

Thanks for admitting it...

LOL

It says China is a socialist state

So you didn't know what a socialist government is... got it...

I don’t actually think you’ve read any labor history at all.

You do have to consume under capitalism or else you die. No, you are not literally forced to purchase anything, obviously, but you don’t have any choice but to consume or else you starve and die. You can’t provide for yourself because resources have been gobbled up by property owners.

Free the market and you return to the gilded age. We’ve freed the market and now we’ve gutted the middle class, deindustrialized America, wages are going down not up, jobs are going overseas, it’s a failed experiment.

"I don’t actually think you’ve read any labor history at all."

Nope. Not one word of it. But I started working with my dad when I was 15 years old. He was a plumber who ran his own business. I'm 64 years old and I am still working so I have been working for almost half a century. So while I haven't read labor history, I AM labor history.

Plus my dad was a union plumber and my brother was a union welder. My dad thought more like I do but I have heard all about how the unions mythically saved the entire nation from all 5 or 6 of those horrible sweat shops. I know about how Marxism has corrupted this nation so that people actually believe that corporations are controlling their lives. And how every single business owner is exclusively motivated by greed and exploitation of the working class. Not a single one of them ever thought, "Hey I have a great idea for X that will make doing Y a whole lot easier" or "XYZ company makes a really crappy widget, I think I can make a better widget than that". No business owner at any time has ever had those thoughts run through their minds. They just want money anyway they can make it and they hire people specifically to make their lives miserable.

Am I sounding about right? Is that the labor history you're talking about?

"You do have to consume under capitalism or else you die."

Oh really? Is that what you think? Oh my oh my how did this country ever survive before the Progressive era. Dude, my dad grew up on a small 10 acre farm in Alabama. He was born in 1917 in a log cabin with dirt floors. If they didn't grow food on that 10 acres they didn't eat. If they had any produce left over they would sell it. Capitalism existed all around them and they didn't die because they grew their own food.

Capitalism makes no demands whatsoever on you. All capitalism, or rather the free market, is is the freedom to sell or buy a product and/or service from someone else. The means of purchase can be a barter or with currency. That is it. No more and no less. So that means all of the BS Marx talked about when he coined the word "Capitalism" is hogwash. He knew that capitalism was his biggest obstacle so he had to trash it in order to get people to accept his snake oil cure for everything.

You’ve never read Marx, so stop acting like you understand his intentions. Marx inspired a socialist movement that has lasted generations. He was there for debates during the days of the First International, and there were different schools of socialist thought.

Marx was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon among other thinkers, even David Ricardo and Adam Smith. In Capital, he analyzes the processes of the capitalist system to better understand how it works. From there he offers his critique of political economy and what he thinks is a better alternative. Marx didn’t invent socialism or even communism, people lived like that all over the globe in various spaces before capitalism.

The labor history I speak of is the Haymarket Affair, when police disrupted a peaceful strike for an eight hour work day and started beating workers. Then the next day, the police returned despite a peaceful demonstration. A bomb was thrown (believed to be by an officer) and chaos broke out. Eight labor leaders were charged, despite being innocent, and capitalists paid the state to have them hung.

There is a notorious history of the Pinkertons, private security for the capitalist class who in many cases shot at striking workers.

People organized for decades in the US before it was even legal. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act by the mid 1930s that workers had a protected right to organize in the workplace.

The Communist Party and socialists in America were notorious for their stances against racism and segregation, and they also helped to organize the first multiracial unions at a time when blacks faced intense hostility from white workers, and employers considered blacks last for employment, and paid them far less. At the time, the pro-capitalist argument was one of pro-segregation, believing that private property rights enabled property owners to discriminate against blacks if they pleased.

Many civil rights figures identified as socialist or democratic socialist, some joined the Communist Party (W.E.B. Dubois did so out of protest).

Socialists historically fought for birth control (Emma Goldman was jailed for educating women about birth control). Margaret Sanger was a member of the Socialist Party. Socialists and radical feminists were a part of the movement that resulted in Roe v. Wade. Emma Goldman was an early champion for LGBTQ+ rights. Angela Davis has been a lifelong advocate for prison abolition.

"You’ve never read Marx"

Not cover to cover but I have read enough to know that Marx was flat out wrong and looked at the individual as ants. He believe in a one size fits all approach to micromanaging people's lives. He hated Jews, Africans, Spaniards, Scots and a few other groups of people thinking them inferior.

"Marx was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon among other thinkers, even David Ricardo and Adam Smith."

Marx took Ricardo's labor theory of value even though the labor theory had been discredited about the time Marx was born. He may have taken from Smith but not from Smith's "Moral Sentiments" or "Wealth of a Nation". It had to have been from Smith's later works when Smith had given up and capitulated to the English government.

"The labor history I speak of is the Haymarket Affair, when police disrupted a peaceful strike for an eight hour work day and started beating workers."

Are you trying to say that Capitalism is the reason why they were beaten? They were beaten by cops because cops were more violent in those days. So were the Pinkertons. People in general were more violent in those days and the further you go back in history the more violent people were.

Unions did not have near the effect on the business world as pro-union and communists think. At their highest point they only represented 13% of the work force. The reason why the business world changed (and it took several decades) is because of the free market. People learned they quit and go some other place for higher wages. Then people quit when they found out some other business was offering health care benefits. I think the 8 hour work day was imposed by the federal government (which they had no right or authority to do) but before there were any unions in this country Henry Ford gave his employees an 8 hour work day. It was just a matter of time.

When you get an education and develop your skills you make yourself more valuable to an employer. I have been a software developer for over 30 years and there have only been a small number of times I have had to take a pay cut when I started a new job. I just started a new job that gave me the biggest increase in pay that I have ever had. Plus a month after I started they gave everyone a raise and a bonus to help surviving your president's inflation. No government, Marxist or union helped in the slightest with getting this job or with the benefits they offer.

The labor theory of value has not been discredited, no matter how much the subjectivists would like to believe it has been. The LTV has literally been empirically proven: http://carecon.org.uk/QM/Papers/Zachariah_LabourValue.pdf

Cops still work to disperse striking workers. I haven't seen it in the U.S. recently, but they are certainly violent against strikers in other countries. The police are typically violent with protesters in popular movements in the U.S.

Unions peaked at 35% of the US workforce in 1954. The 8 hour work day was initially imposed by the government in some industries, BECAUSE WORKERS FOUGHT FOR IT. Workers in the auto industry did not leave, they were unionized in the United Auto Workers, they negotiated with General Motors in 1950 and won pensions benefits and higher wages. They were successful in doing this with Ford and Chrysler too.

Remember how I mentioned the government stopped funding universities like they used to? That significantly affects a person's ability to afford higher education. And they may have worse opportunities now thanks to right-wing austerity politics defunding public schools. I have had three different jobs this year and while I got a $1 raise at one, none of these reflected cost-of-living changes or kept up with inflation. The thing you keep demonstrating to me is that classic right-wing attitude, "f**k you, I got mine." Nobody needs help because I came from this background and was able to pull myself up by the bootstraps. Therefore, nobody else has an excuse.

You are incredibly egocentric and unsympathetic to the struggle of many. There are millions who still have no health insurance through their employer. There are people struggling to pay bills at the same time that they're paying off debt. There are people who have no money to afford transportation to a job every day. There are people with no stable home, and that is a barrier to employment. You simply don't give a f**k, because you will never admit that your system is simply inhumane to too many people.

"The labor theory of value has not been discredited, no matter how much the subjectivists would like to believe it has been."

Hate to break it to you but yeah, it was. You forget that labor are also consumers. Consumers do not get the best value for the price if labor is setting the value of all products and services. Henry Ford realized this when he gave his employees higher wages so that they could also be customers.

So if the consumer is the priority in the business world then prices are lower and wages are higher. I know that is a hard concept for you understand because everything you have read contradicts that but reality has always been at odds with Marxism.

I'm getting tired of this banter. Good night.

Your simplistic understanding (or should I say non-understanding) of history and even economics makes me think you probably haven’t done the due diligence of even read an economics book either.

This is the problem (one of the many) with the reactionary mind. They reject reality, statistics and research because it contradicts their worldview and base everything off of their own biases and experience, and universally apply that to everyone else in order to blame poor people for their own situation, for example.

How can you deny that corporations are controlling our lives? They have extreme wealth and power and their economic moves have immediate impacts on communities. They are authoritarian, unaccountable and undemocratic institutions that often do not reflect the wishes of the people. People employed by corporations are a part of a centralized structure and are far removed from the actual owners.

Not everyone at the start of their business is necessarily motivated by greed, it’s just that every business is motivated by profit because without it it could not last. Money corrupts, as history has shown. Right now we are seeing corporations keep wages low while they rake in record profits, and also spend millions in union busting campaigns. None of that is exploitation, to you.

It almost seems like some businesses might hire people to make them miserable. It sounds like you worked for your dad. I’ve worked in numerous places, many with toxic work environments that the company had zero interest in resolving. I was ignored. In fact, this was at my grandfather’s own business. At another place everyone took issue with the boss, and sometimes so did the higher ups, still they never removed him even though he was grinding us.

You don’t understand what I’m saying at all. Of course your dad can provide for himself. He OWNED LAND. Most people are members of the working class and do NOT own land. That’s why they can’t grow things or access resources for themselves without selling their labor, and then they get subjected to asshat bosses who are incentivized to keep wages low and profits high.

"Your simplistic understanding (or should I say non-understanding) of history and even economics makes me think you probably haven’t done the due diligence of even read an economics book either. "

Not true. I've read a few books on economics. But even before I read what other people think I thought things through in my own mind. I figured out how the free market works before I found out that I was right on everything I had thought.

What you have failed to do is accept that socialism has failed ever where it has been tried. You try to separate Hitler from socialism by using the excuse that Hitler killed all of the socialists. Hitler was a socialist. Once in power he more than anything was a despotic psychopathic dictator. But Germany did not elect him chancellor because they wanted to live under a despotic psychopathic dictator. The voted for his brand of socialism, national socialism.

So it is back to what the hippies in the 60's called people who would not go along with their Marxism is it? I am a "reactionary". Everyone is a reactionary. You are reacting to my condemnation of Marxism. Here is the the true in all of it. History has shown that Marxism is an abject failure. Even in countries where they aren't fully Marxist. Sweden claimed they tried socialism for a while and just about destroy themselves so they backed off to a market based economy. They are still more socialistic than we are but they are not full on socialist.

Let's just stop this dance of back and forth. Just realize that nothing you can ever say is going to change my mind about socialism. It is not because I have uneducated or unread. Stop think that there has to be some reason for not coming to the same conclusion as you.

I will say this, I am not an intellectual, I am just an average man. I do not have an advanced degree nor am I an academic. However, I am not an idiot. I learned how to think for myself instead of just quoting what my college professors told me.

I realize that you cannot see anything bad in Marxism and probably think it is the solution to all of the world's problems. You are not alone. There are a lot of people all over the world who have bought into Marx's nightmare. But once you realize that Marxism concentrates all political power into the hands of the government and not the collective and especially not the individual, then you start to understand just how dangerous that really is.

No, you are not an intellectual. That is obvious. "Reactionary" doesn't mean reacting to things, ffs. It means you resist progress and you favor and want to restore society to what it was in the past.

I have given numerous examples of socialist success, you've either not seen them or you've decided to ignore them.

I've also told you why Hitler was not left-wing or socialist, but you've already made up your mind and hate the intellectual consensus as to why he was not a leftist.

I have never said I was a Marxist, you assume I am because I endorse communism. I am an anarchist, as I know I have told you before, so no, I don't believe in concentrating political power into government. You folks like to act as though the rest of the world has been devastated by socialism and communism, but that isn't accurate. Socialism is the platform of many of the major left-wing parties in Europe. Three South American countries just elected socialist presidents. We are sick of neoliberal and global capitalism. Socialism is the future.

"No, you are not an intellectual. That is obvious."

Yeah but don't flatter yourself. You're not one either otherwise you would not spend your time on ImgFlip. Not only that if you had the IQ to be considered an intellectual chances are you would not be a Marxist.

What you are is a very well read Marxist. And by well read you have read everything that Marx wrote and probably a few other pro-Marx books as well. So your brain is fully saturated with that stuff so much that you are unwilling to challenge that brain investment with actual facts.

Once again the left has hijacked a word and put a different meaning on it. The etymology of the word shows that what I said was correct. However, I will accept your definition. I do want to dump Marxism in favor of the Constitution, freedom and inalienable rights. Why? Because I do not need or want the government in my life. I want to live my life how I choose and not have it chosen for me. I want to own my own property so that I can do whatever I want on it and to it. That is why I bought a house that does not have an HOA attached to it. Unfortunately, there are city ordinances that I have to comply with but for now I am willing to comply because they haven't been an issue so far.

That does not mean I want to go back in time, remember I'm a software developer, the farthest back in time I could go and still have a job is the 80's. All of my programming experience is on the PC. I don't know COBOL or RPG or any of the mainframe languages going back in time.

Which is really going do suck for me when the Great Reset is over. We will be forced to use wind and solar to power everything which cannot even come close to the demands we need without destroying the environment and we will be forced to drive electric cars which will increase the demand for electricity. So now would be a good time to invest in a horse and buggy because us peons are not going to be able to get around any other way in the new global fascist world that Biden and the left are leading us into. Oh sorry to disappoint you, it's not going to be communism, it is communism's snot nosed little brother. Hey, but that is a whole lot closer to communism for ya. So you got that going for you.

What you have failed to read or understand is economic history.

First the United States of America has never had a truly free market. As long as any government, city, county, state or federal makes any tax law we are less free and so is the market.

Second when the market is freer so are the people. When people are freer they have more opportunity to improve their lives. They do not have governments getting in their way. The last time this was most obvious was when Calvin Coolidge was president. This was before all of the nonsensical laws had been passed that are still on the books like the New Deal stupidity, LBJ's Great Society crap, Nixon taking our currency off the gold standard and Carter's inflationary policies. The reason why I say that is because we would have seen another "roaring 20's" in the 80's under Reagan. We still saw a huge improvement in the economy and society as a whole. Coolidge only had to deal with Wilson's disastrous income tax and Wilson's Federal Reserve (a group of foreign Marxist bankers who tries to control the means of production but fail miserably). When Coolidge took office only the rich had refrigerators. When Coolidge left office everyone had refrigerators. Coolidge took a hands off approach to the economy. In 1919 there was a stock market crash that was nearly identical to the one 10 years later. Harding was president at the time but he died in office and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge took his place. They both had a hands off approach and within 18 months that crash turned into the biggest economic boom we've ever had. They called it the roaring 20's because EVERYONE prospered.

The Progressives HATED that because it shot their pathetic Marxism to pieces. So the Federal Reserve had to do something and they cut the money supply in 1929 and created another stock market crash. Only this time Republican Herbert Hoover was president and he thought the government should fix it. That was his big mistake and at the end of his term in office he barely made any public appearances because of his shame for causing the Great Depression.

But that's was okay for toxic narcissist, Franklin D Roosevelt. He came in on a platform of "change" and people bought into it. Then he took every policy that Hoover started and expanded them and added to them and called it the "New Deal". In doing so the recovery never happened until he died in office. Not even WWII fixed the economy, it just killed off the poor.

I’m not completely familiar with the economic history of the early 20th century, I am more familiar with our economic course over the last 50 years under neoliberalism. Notice I am willing to admit I don’t know enough to speak about something, unlike you, who will speak to great lengths making guesses and being totally uneducated on a subject.

No, the US has never had a “purely” free market because that’s just impossible. You act like if everything was run by the corporations and businesses everything would turn out fine, with zero oversight and no worker protections. A free market suggests zero government interference in capitalism, which is simply impossible, because government created capitalism and the two can never be truly divorced.

The fact that you think the government shouldn’t help people during an economic crisis is laughable, and it is strange that anyone would be comfortable with an economic system that collapses every five to seven years and needs to be bailed out each time. Your statement about WWII not getting us out of the depression is just flat out wrong. Pretty much any historian will tell you that. Even I know that.

I’d love for you to elaborate about Carter’s “inflationary policies”. Do you think he was responsible for high gas prices?

If the hands off approach is best, how come the 50s and 60s were one of the most prosperous periods in US history in terms of the economy, despite strong intervention into the economy, tight regulation, high unionization and high corporate tax rates?

Studies today show that Reagan’s generous tax cuts went to the super wealthy and did not trickle down as he promised. Neoliberal governors have tried the same thing and the corporations simply keep the money, and in some cases even use it to go overseas anyway. Unions today are half of what they were under Reagan, and today the current generation earns less than their parents did. Reagan strengthened the corporation’s power against the worker. Reagan and different austerity politicians also cut university budgets and now we have a $1.7 trillion student loan debt crisis.

"Notice I am willing to admit I don’t know enough to speak about something, unlike you"

Really? This is not the first time we have had these conversations. And at no time did I ever tell you that I am not the most educated man. Apparently you made this comment BEFORE I replied to some of your other recent comments.

So in case you missed it all the times I have said this before to you and others...

I have not read any of Marx's books cover to cover. I do have an electronic copy of Das Kapital that I might read one day... maybe. I have read other economics books including the Road to Serfdom by F.A Hayek and a fascinating book called The Big Three in Economics by Mark Skousen. I've read several others. I even read all 1,100 pages of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, except for John Galt's 3 hour speech towards the end where he repeats himself over and over and over. I skipped ahead to just after the speech.

I read a great book that starts with the beginning of the Progressive era called "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. That was a game changer. He has footnotes and references up the wazoo so you know he isn't just making crap up unlike Howard Zinn's "A History of the United States of America" which has no references and is total fiction.

I have never taken one economics class in college because back then it bored the snot out of me. I didn't take an interest in economics until I was in my late 40's. It was in my mid 30's when history began to interest me.

I am not an intellectual. I don't have multiple degrees or even an advanced degree in anything. I don't even have a bachelor's degree but yet I am a software developer because I pushed myself to work in that field. I do have an associates degree. I am just an average guy who has spent the last 30 years writing software and I am nearing retirement soon. I have a huge stack of other books that I want to read but when I'm not working I spend way too much time watching TV or talking to people on ImgFlip.

There. Was that enough humbling of myself for you? Are you happy now.

Actually God and Jesus is Freedom. What capitalism does is give full purchasing power to the buyer and consumer unlike socialism, communism, and monopolies.

Yes, getting stoned to death for gathering sticks or even taking a crap on the Sabbath is total freedom!

btw, monopolies are the inevitable consequence of capitalism, as is corporatism, the latter which the rightist propagandists try to pretend is, in effect, socialism.

"Actually God and Jesus is Freedom"

The God of the Bible prohibits people from saying what they want or having freedom of religion. The Bible literally commands the death penalty for blasphemy or worshiping other gods.

Or using the crapper on Saturday,,,