I avoid them if I can. If the store wants me to work for them, they can pay me. If they don’t have any available human checkers, I will pay myself by accidentally not charging some of the items. I have left stores and attempt to tell store managers why.

If we had a sane economic system where jobless folks still got their needs met, I’d be all for automation. But we don’t. So every time we allow the corporations to profit with less human workers, we are fucking over our fellow humans.

Eh, I think Trotsky and Lenin have some responsibility. While I am in full support of October (and Leninists ideology), I think the Bolshevik repression of the 20-21 strike wave was a troubling development demonstrating separation between the party and the class. (Kronstadt began in sympathy with that strike wave.) Then in the 10th Party Congress, the Workers Opposition took up some of the workers demands and pushed a program to keep party and state separate. They urged union control of the economy and democracy. In response, Trotsky argued that unions would no longer be necessary at all! Even Lenin thought that was going too far. But this is when democracy came under attack even within the party and factions were formerly banned.

Here is the text of the Workers Opposition manifesto. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm

The text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. The headings, “individual or collective management” and “bureaucracy and self activity of the masses” seem prescient.

Trotsky became a champion of democracy a little late, only after methods of repression he himself used were turned against him.

Right, a dictatorship OF the class proletariat OVER the class bourgeoisie. And can, should, or even needs to be a democracy WITHIN the proletariat.

Unfortunately, tankies turn the phrase into an excuse for authoritarianism, which they wank over.

Marx himself called the Paris Commune to be an example of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Commune had universal suffrage and recall of neighborhood representatives on demand.

No.

This is a load of shit. Why it has up votes blows my mind.

Do some reading or watching of hunter gatherer societies and you’ll see lots of group survival activities. Teamwork in hunts, in preserving food, in crafting tools, and making shelter.

If we were this self-centered, we wouldn’t have such advanced communication, which is how we were able to do all those group activities.

Survival of the fittest is survival of those that cooperate.

"One of the employees at Spirit AeroSystems, which reportedly manufactured the door plug that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon, allegedly told company officials about an “excessive amount of defects,” according to the federal complaint and corresponding internal corporate documents reviewed by us.

According to the court documents, the employee told a colleague that “he believed it was just a matter of time until a major defect escaped to a customer."

https://jacobin.com/2024/01/alaska-airlines-boeing-parts-malfunction-workers-spirit-aerosystems

He did. It contradicts basic tenants of Marxism, but he did write theory.

Edit: tenets. That’s embarrassing. Thanks.

You paid money for something and then you find you can’t use it again. You seriously think that isn’t fucked up?

You’re absolutely right that there IS a difference between the two parties.

But Obama’s healthcare plan was a rebrand of a Heritage foundation (conservative) plan that had been enacted at the state level by Romney in Massachusetts, and the most progressive part (the Medicaid expansion) was a last minute compromise to make the plan CHEAPER because the majority of the plan is a tax payer subsidized government enforced insurance monopoly. It hasn’t ended medical bankruptcies and it doesn’t cover everyone.

Biden is actually better than I expected, while he gave in to the antics of Sinema and Manchin a little too easily and he’s still drilling oil and gas, the “Inflation Reduction Act” is the best climate and infrastructure legislation we’ve had, just 20 years late and still too little. Meanwhile he lets the courts roll him on student loans, on reproductive rights, etc.

So yeah, the Democrats are better than the Republicans but they still SUCK.

Since Eugene McCarthy in the early 70s to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and recently Bernie, working inside the Democrats has not worked. But obviously neither has working outside. We need to keep trying, and I wish I had a better answer. But we need to do better than the Democrats.

Before the Zionist movement, Palestine was ruled first by the Ottomans and then the British. Prior to Zionism, the land held Christians (the latest bombardment destroyed the 3rd oldest Christian Church in the world), Muslims, and Jews. In fact the early Palestinian national movement considered Jewish Palestinians to be Palestinian and their demands them full rights in a secular state of Palestine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Jews

Genetics, if that matters, shows that the pre-zionist natives of Palestine are closely related to European (Sepahrdic and Ashkenazi) Jews. Basically some people left centuries ago, but some people stayed.

Now since 1948 those that left want to kick out those that stayed, or kill them if they don’t leave.

There are covenants all through Israel that forbid travel and residency by “full citizens” Palestinians of Israeli citizenship. There are separate schools. Do we not remember “separate is not equal”?

It’s important to note that our sexuality is socially constructed, our desires are not solely based on biology but culture.

“In the Christian medieval world, some theories held that women received far more pleasure from a sexual encounter than men, and had much greater sexual appetite.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_female_sexuality

Ups and fedex still frequently use USPS for last mile in many areas. USPS has a mandate to serve and maintain infrastructure in the whole US, and the corporations use that. So does Amazon of course.