Commiunism

Sorry if this might come as rude or elitist - not my intention as I’ve been there, but I’d really recommend reading some theory if you’re interested in this kind of stuff. Even some shorter works of Marx & Engels will dispel A LOT of misconceptions a leftist might have about socialism/communism/what’s actually the problem/etc that one might get just via osmosis of the popular discourse.

Now to respond to some of the points (though not all, too tired right now):

My point about workers not getting full value from their labor mostly targets the wording in the meme, it’s pedantry. Whether you think it’s fair to count taxes or not isn’t really relevant, but the fact that you have a system where whether you like it or not the state will take away some of your earnings from your labor means that you cannot really receive the full value of your labor, something always will get deducted. Though there was a better example of this I should have used, directly related to labor that you end up making:

Agreeing with your fellow workers to take home less pay to keep the factory viable is not exploitation.

Taking less pay in order to compete in the market economy is literally what capitalists do on behalf of workers - take their surplus value to expand production and remain competitive (and ofc live off of this surplus value themselves individually). In a coop, this would also happen under a market economy as you yourself say, and this money will come from the value of the commodities they produce as in the fruits of their labor they’re supposed to be getting “full value” of. See how it doesn’t make sense?

Also, I admit I should have asked this previously, but what exactly is socialism defined by for you? Based on your comment, I gather that few things exist in this socialism, and those are:

• Commodity production and markets remains in place
• Surplus value is still being appropriated, but democratically
• Getting taxed by the state to help the community via public services
• Money remains in place as value form, meaning capital accumulation is still possible
• Something that can be achieved through reforms if enough people believe in it? (idk about this one but that’s what i’m inferring)

Now I might be wrong about these and maybe you have a different definition in mind, but this is pretty much identical to a social democracy which is still fully capitalist. Coops exist within capitalism right this moment in some countries - individual companies where workers collectively own the means of production, but they still have to play within the rules of capitalist mode of production.

Sure, it might be better but socialist/communist goal isn’t to make things better, but to change the current state of things entirely. This is why actual socialism, which is defined by figures like Lenin, Marx and other non-falsifier communist theorists has markets and commodity production already abolished. Before socialism after workers take power, there is a period of transition where commodity production at least partially remains in place as a way to distribute goods while productive forces (like factories and infrastructure) are still being developed so everyone’s needs can actually be met during socialist stage.

Money gets abolished in favor of labor vouchers that get discarded after being used up (so there’s no more accumulation of capital), things start being produced for use - there’s still a long way to go towards communism at this stage, but this is how you actually stop being capitalist and create a separate mode of production instead of just making things a bit better but still fundamentally capitalist.

Anyway yap yap nobody reads this as seen from the amount of upvotes, still had to leave one as it would have felt rude if I didn’t and just left you hanging there

Fully automated luxury gay space communism

That’s Communism, not socialism. Sure, socialism has some similarities to Capitalism, that’s because Socialism was never the end goal, but a transition period between Capitalism and Communism.

Yes, never said that was socialism, only that’s how a fair society can only operate. Also, depending on the socialism in the context, it might not even be a transitionary period but rather bourgeois socialism that Marx criticized thoroughly in Critique of Gotha Programme, which is where 99% of my comment comes from

Workers don’t ‘exploit’ themselves, workers decide if it’s worth doing the work for what they can reasonably expect in return or not. If they decide it is worth it, it’s something they chose for themselves, not even close to the same thing as a Capitalist squeezing every last cent of ‘profit’ from you as they possibly can and basically forcing you to do it by making it impossible to survive if you don’t.

The market forces workers to exploit themselves, given how the primary way cost cutting happens is through decrease of wages, as most production costs are set in stone (like materials needed or machinery upkeep

They still get the full value of their labor. Taxes used to benefit the community benefit workers as well, because they are members of the commuity. Capitalists under capitalism still (are supposed to) pay taxes- and so do workers. Workers who are more fairly compensated for their work and have to pay taxes are better off than a wage slave who isn’t fairly compensated and still has to pay taxes.

Yes, but if they pay a portion of value of their labor, they don’t get the full value. It’s an involuntary payment that is good and necessary, but the point is that getting full value is impossible under bourgeois state and commodity production society

I asked my insufferable pet cat about this, and they dropped a wall of text on me:

It’s not socialism and this exact notion that “socialism is when workers get compensated fully and fairly for their work and when they own the means of production” has been thoroughly called out for being nonsensical. Workers merely owning their means of production is a minor improvement, but it doesn’t abolish capital or exploitation given how markets and commodity production still exist.

Now, in order to compete within that market for profit, workers have to exploit themselves by reducing their wages, increasing their own work hours to produce more goods to outflood their opponents so they essentially turn to collective capitalists.

A person under this system also can’t make full value of their labor, simply because there’s taxes that are used to fund public sectors such as education, healthcare, etc (it’s necessary though). People also are different, some can work more intensely with higher tempo due to how they’re built, and others might not be able to put in the same amount of labor, thus it’s impossible to have “fair compensation” without uprooting commodity production, doing away with money completely and instead producing things to fulfill everyone’s needs. Only then can things truly be “fair”.

just because they break each other’s balls all the time doesn’t mean they can’t be friends