this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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Huh. You'd think the cotton gin would've allowed them to get by with fewer slaves.
That would've maintained production at the level it already was (and also reduce prices and profits).
Under capitalism, you can't just maintain production. You gotta EXPAND EXPAND EXPAND.
See Wage Labor and Capital for an explanation for why this must be true, if anyone doubts this statement.
You don't have to subscribe to Marxian economics for this to be true, though Marx and those who listened to him are the only people who dwell on the topic for long.
Part #1 of my statement is pretty much self-evident. Part #2 is the very premise of market competition, no?
You don't have to, no, but Marx makes a compelling case and explains it simply, and thoroughly. It's easy to think that Capitalists can just maintain production, but this doesn't bear out in reality.
Additionally, Marx points out what are the necessary consequences of these forces.
I agree, but quoting Marx is a little counterproductive when the audience is primarily not socialist and, indeed, might be apprehensive towards the concept due to the Leninist dictatorships and Western corporate propaganda.
Lemmy has a very strong leftist base, especially Marxist as the devs are Marxist-Leninists, and there are many progressive liberals who would do well to read theory. I disagree with it being counterproductive to suggest reading Marx.
The tankies over on Lemmygrad and Hexbear (aka the Dessalines and people like him) have very much left (heh) a very sour taste in the mouths of many locals.
Some Lemmy users are against leftism, sure, but the majority of Lemmy is Leftist leaning at minimum. That's kind of the entire point of Lemmy's structure, and the broader culture has morphed around that fact.
If I had to guess, most Lemmites are socdems, not socialists.
It is very easy to overestimate how common one's own viewpoint is, especially when in a filter bubble.
What makes you believe that to be the case? Lemmy.world is overwhelmingly liberal/socdem, but the broader Lemmyverse is Socialist leaning, whether Marxist or Anarchist.
Lemmy has ~390k users. Just over 150k are on World. That's almost 40%.
Another ~50k are on NSFW, and can thus be assumed to not care. If we remove them from the equation, we get ~44% being on World.
The third-most popular instance after World and NSFW is .ee. The people there are broadly progressive but usually not socialist. They have just under 29k.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Have you done a poll of the percentages that identify as liberal vs socialist on these sites, or do you genuinely believe there are no Socialists on .world or .ee?
Are these active users, or total users?
I'm doing this on the digital equivalent of the back of a napkin. I have not done any surveys. This makes me curious though. Does Lemmy have polls?
I believe that's total users. We can also go with number of comments per week, according to Lemmyverse:
World - 41,575
.ee - 8,605
NSFW - 820
My own instance - 777
Here we can also see our leftie friends starting to appear:
Hexbear - 14,411
db0 - 2,632
Lemmygrad - 2,220
SLRPNK - 1,435
So you have a good amount, you're still missing lemmy.ml, and are still assuming everyone on .ee or .world are not Socialist.
I'm not assuming everyone there isn't socialist. I assume that most aren't, based on anecdotal experience.
For some reason lemmyverse, where I got the other stats, doesn't mention .ml, though it mentions the Enterprise subdomain, which I hear of for the first time.
If you can find out the number of comments per week on .ml, I would be glad.
If you're just working off of vibes, then what's the use?
Either way, I am unsure of the comments per week or active user count of Lemmy.ml, but it is large, larger than Lemmygrad or Blahaj, and probably larger than Hexbear.
You yourself said that World is mostly socdems and liberals. Once you're here for long enough, some patterns become visible.
Either way, I think I'll try to cook up a poll so we can measure the class consciousness of Lemmy, haha. Do you think asklemmy will accept such a post?
Depends, Lemmy.ml's? Probably. .world's? Probably not.
The point is that Lemmy.world is mostly liberal, but Hexbear, grad, etc. are 100% Socialist. There aren't 100% liberal instances.
I looked up the rules. .ml bans politics. World doesn't. So the inverse.
For the purpose of on-the-napkin statistics 98% is good enough.
That's communist thinking. In communism, we only produce as many goods as people actually need, and nobody goes without, so demand is always fixed. But in capitalism, there's always more poor people going without you can sell to, and even if demand is fully met, you can keep producing goods to sell to stores who'll throw them in the garbage, and you still make money.
A lot of very bad decisions have been made by people who expect a capitalist economy to work like a communist economy. This is a completely reasonable mistake to make, because human beings are naturally communist. But it's still important to remember that we don't live in an economy that matches our natural intuitions. We live in capitalism.
The plantation owners sold cotton for a profit, so they were financially incentivized to expand production to increase profit. They could get by making the same profit with fewer slaves, or they could use the same number of slaves to make more profit, and with more profits, they could buy more slaves and make even more profit.
The entire economy of the south quickly became dependent on the institution, as capital investment solely flowed into slave plantations, while the industrial sectors stagnated. It took the war to change that system, and turn investment towards industry.