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Everything belongs to the workers
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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Yes, right now I find it hard to imagine how Trump intends to extricate himself from this situation. Trump faces a "tough decision"—either that, or he starts drinking vodka. The U.S. needs years to rebuild its military, not just weeks or months.
Currently, in a hasty scramble, they are field-testing their new technologies in Ukraine; however, I doubt the U.S. is capable of reorganizing its military as rapidly as Russia did at the start of the war. Then again, we shall see—perhaps Trump is a capable manager... (haha), even if he is currently neck-deep in shit. It seems to me that he won't be able to wash himself clean of this—nothing can save him now; he is a lame duck.
Just recently, I was trying to understand the difference between shortages in a planned economy and shortages in a capitalist economy.
I came to only one conclusion: under capitalism, shortages are highly profitable for capitalists; they allow them to generate excess profits while maintaining the same—or even lower—levels of production. A shortage is simply a mechanism for extracting additional funds from the public.
This is the very same scheme that speculators employed during the Soviet era—a practice for which they faced prison sentences. Under capitalism, however, these same individuals are regarded as highly respected figures in the world of macroeconomics—people like Trump and Musk. They ought to be shipped off to the USSR so they could finally be judged according to their true deserts—specifically for the things they are doing right now.
Just take a look: Russia, too, has its own Ma... доморощенный.
https://ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/30/milliarder-deripaska-predlozhil-vvesti-12-chasovoi-rabochii-den-vklyuchaya-subbotu-chtobi-ponyat-ekonomiku-a191202
It’s all very simple and straightforward: you work harder, but you get paid the exact same amount. You’re working for the good of the Motherland... :))))
"The Motherland"—that’s actually Deripaska’s codename in certain circles... :))) Oh, how I miss Comrade Beria.
Stalin didn't ban the Church, which implies that it was, after all, necessary—especially during times of hardship. It was mainly women who went there—women whose husbands were either at the front or had already perished. There, they found at least some measure of solace to keep from losing their minds during the war.
But Solzhenitsyn and his ilk decided that Stalin—the Antichrist—had repented and come to believe in God... )))) And they’ve been playing that same broken record for forty years now.... The only thing missing from that story was Rasputin....
Just recently, a new Russian film aired on Russian TV channels... It’s the kind of thing that would make Dr. Lecter look like a nervous amateur. The story goes that when the Germans were at the gates of Moscow in '41, Stalin was in despair and didn't know what to do; so, he decided to visit a vedunya—a blind old seer. The sorceress handed Stalin a wooden icon and said: "This icon must be flown around Moscow three times..." ))))) Stalin took the icon and entrusted it to the Soviet Union's finest pilot. The pilot proceeded to circle Moscow repeatedly while under heavy fire from German anti-aircraft guns. By some miracle, he managed to fly around Moscow three times. And what do you think, comrade? The Germans immediately retreated from Moscow... )))) С Божьей помощью!
They’ve completely lost their minds over these icons!
https://youtu.be/Cz5uF6ms3Do
And this is the disgrace I am forced to witness right now. And just try saying anything against God...
And agree capitalism is built on extraction, and every crisis creates opportunities for somebody. Especially true when that somebody is causing the crisis and they have inside information. Russell actually had a great essay on the whole extraction mechanic https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
And yeah religion is being pushed in a very obvious way, although I recall seeing a survey last yeah I think where it showed that number of religious people is about the same as ever.
I’ve never heard of this guy. But having read his work, I can say with absolute certainty that he has never done physical labor in his life; he views physical work as the worst punishment imaginable. I don’t know—perhaps he is a highly revered and famous figure—but he hasn’t the faintest clue about the mindset of a working man. He describes the psychology of a slave, not a worker.
I have interacted with hundreds—if not thousands—of workers throughout my life. I can state unequivocally that what he writes is simply untrue! I have seen countless workers who derive genuine pleasure from their jobs; in fact, I’d go even further and say that they live for their work. And his assumption that, given an abundance of free time, they would suddenly start painting pictures or writing poetry just makes me smile! A working man feels lost without his work. And when a working man feels lost without work, he doesn't head off to the theater or the opera; he drinks vodka. To draw a worker toward art, science, or a mind-expanding hobby, he requires a foundation of systematic knowledge—the kind that enables him to survey the full range of options and select the one that best suits his personal tastes. As for his anarchic notion of abolishing universities—I consider it utterly utopian.
However, I do partially agree with his core premise. And this is precisely the point—the one you and our Chinese comrade seem to miss—that I am constantly trying to articulate: a person who works more than eight hours a day will very quickly devolve into a Neanderthal, regardless of how much money they earn. Their intellect dulls; they lose the capacity for independent thought because they simply have no time to think—life rushes past them like a hurricane. And that is exactly what the capitalist wants: a herd of sheep marching in lockstep toward the "bright future" of capitalism.
Perhaps things remain the same today; however, state propaganda has partially injected this ideological sludge into the school curriculum—specifically the works of Ilyin, for instance, who reveres only God and the Tsar. Their aim is to construct an ideology in the vein of Neo-monarchism.
Yeah, Russell is the quintessential British liberal, hence the disdain for the working class in all his work. But he does get at the irrationality of capitalism here where the goal is simply to maximize profit with no regard for anything else. I also very much agree with your point that overwork turns people into zombies.
My view is that required work should be minimized as much as possible, and people should have the ability to choose how they spend their time.
Also agree that's precisely how religion is being used right now, hopefully that fails.
Yes, exactly, his article is steeped in contempt for work.
So much so that he considers writers and artists slackers—that sounds ridiculous to me.
Example: Jules Verne worked very intensively. His workday lasted up to 15 hours. The writer strictly adhered to the following schedule:
Start: early morning, from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM.
Finish: late evening (around 8:00 PM). Daily output: he wrote 10 to 20 printed pages daily, which allowed him to publish several seminal novels a year.
How can you call this man a slacker, and where would he find the time to work for four hours, only to then... in his "free time" pursue creativity?
And what mark did this man leave on history?
Yes, I liked his logic, at some point I even got carried away reading it.
I saw this with my own eyes in Moscow. People on the metro are empty-eyed, detached, and always in a hurry. Such are the conditions for survival there.
I'm not sure about the 4-hour period. I doubt unemployment in more or less developed countries is 50%... it's probably not even like that in Africa.
But 6-8 hours, depending on the complexity of the job, would be normal.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn't have to work. People like making things, it's in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want. Like even public access to labs, factories and so on. I think we'd see incredible things getting made because people would get ideas, find like minded people and work on projects together just because they find them interesting. We actually see this happen with software and the whole open source movement already. Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don't make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting. The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.
This can only be possible when AI is channeled in the right direction. AI should free people from work, not so they become unemployed, as would happen under capitalism, but so they have more time for creativity.
I think more attention should be paid to childhood education, so that children can be instilled with a passion for something sublime from an early age. How can you instill anything in a child today if all they see is profit?
The education system needs to be completely overhauled—that's where we need to start.
By the way, Stalin personally edited the first Soviet history textbook for schoolchildren. He also placed great emphasis on educating young people.
As that liberal philosopher who fears work said, it won't work! First education, then a creature—not the other way around. And studying is hard work, so you can't just slack off and become Lomonosov. We need an educational foundation for that. Therefore, from early childhood, children must work; they must become accustomed to work in order to achieve real results in the future. They also need an incentive to do so, and it's best if it's not money, but high ideals, as was the case in the USSR, the most educated and well-read country in the world. I've already experienced this firsthand: the horizons of a Westerner are much narrower than those of someone raised in the USSR. In the USSR, creative people were trained from school, while in the West, they produce narrow specialists who don't need anything beyond their specialty. They don't need critical thinking, for whom life is a chain of simple algorithms.
I understand everything here because I experienced it myself, with my son.
The attraction to computer programs lies in the fact that a child, as soon as they begin to understand, immediately becomes passionately fascinated with computers. There comes a time when the child gets bored with computer games and wants to get something more from the computer, but the computer still fascinates them as much as ever. If your father is a millionaire, at this point you can turn into Bill Gates or Elon Musk.
But I would slightly modify your concept of the new world. It's not about people having free access to production facilities or laboratories, but about computer simulators of various processes in schools.
A cultural revolution in society is needed.
Every form of automation is turned against the worker under capitalism. AI will be no different here, and it might accelerate the collapse of the whole system.
And agree that education needs to change significantly at this point. A lot of education focuses on rote memorization, but what's really important now is the ability to integrate the available information, evaluate it, and make decisions. Basically, applying dialectical thinking to the world. Also very much agree that USSR education was far better and broader. Becoming an intellectual was basically seen as the way to move up in society. In the west it's just about making money which creates a very narrow and selfish horizon for people.
Teaching kids to experiment using computers in school is actually a really good idea. Once they develop the mindset it's applicable everywhere, and easily transfers to working with the physical world too.
I do think we'll need to restructure society in significant ways in the near future because technology is outpacing our existing social norms. Unfortunately these kinds of upheavals tend to be highly volatile socially.