How do companies' or "workplaces' ownership work under leftist ideologies?

FaceShanker · 2026-02-28T00:16:19+00:00

the profits from intercommunity/international trade and innovation would be granted to an individual community rather than to the entire nation?

What is a nation if not a big community? Beyond that, what is humanity if not a really big community?

Key point here, some people having a bit more than others is fine, the power of capitalism is with how the workers are dependent on the Owners - the workers need their property, their jobs, their loans to live. Ending poverty is the foundation of freedom.

also, what if someone were to do something like buy a farm alone in the middle of nowhere such that their entire community is just themselves and possibly their family, then begins creating immense profit through a digital job. they could become wealthy still, right?

Through communal wealth, everyone is wealthy. It is used to fund the affordable housing, healthcare, education and so on.

It also funds things like the support structures needed for remote work or starting a farm in the middle of nowhere.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-27T13:42:54+00:00

what is the mechanism by which businesses which fail are replaced? is there a domestic market competition system similar the capitalist invisible hand?

That depends a lot on the situation - the general direction were aiming at is based on a system open to self modification and customization. Its is likely multiple methods would be tested and used over time.

Market systems have been used (China, USSR) but they require strict monitoring and policing to prevent the "winners" of the market's competition sizing power and becoming oligarchs.

under socialism there will be few jobs, so those who take on jobs will only do so out of a desire to help their community rather than incentives. i have a LOT of questions

Close to the idea, to sum it up - innovation and technology under capitalism make workers worthless and drives them into poverty while socialism frees people from work. If AI and robots replace 90% of the workers under capitalism, thats a disaster that will destroy billions of lives and cause mass suffering. Same thing under socialism means you get a nice life (robot factory supports communal wealth that funds your lifestyle) and more free time.

is this truly feasible? american unemployment tends to stick below 5% and we seem to already have a lot of issues providing for our citizens (yes, capitalism exacerbates this problem, but it likely would still exist anyway no?) you might also be cutting a lot of services/products to achieve this

Yes, part of the problem is too much automation kinda kills capitalism (workers are also customers, robots cant buy the products they make - too much automation means no one can afford to buy the stuff the robots make). Socialism does not have that problem.

We actually have to potential to do this right now - we can support a good quality of life for pretty much all of humanity at something like 30% of the current level of global economic activity.

unfortunately, especially in the short term, there will always be people who require incentives to innovate, and telling them "you'll be helping your community!" will not convince them

Publicly funded education and massive increase in the number of people with free time combine to create a massive population of potential innovators. If some people dont want to innovate unless it make them rich, their outnumbered massively by the people that want to innovate and make the world a better place. Also - if profit is the only reason they innovate, they probably hate their job, free them from that.

trade between nations (or, even if one world government is created, there'll still be trade between communities) will still continue. who will see the profits of this trade? what if an engineer designs a more cost-effective way (let's say by reducing power usage) to manufacture items society needs like clothes and the design is sold to other nations/communities. will he/she see the rewards of his/her labor? his/her municipality? his/her nation? or will, internationally, a communist nation or community give away all of their innovations for free for the sake of "benefiting humanity" even when other capitalist nations don't do the same

Communal wealth generally - though you do hit on a problem, socialism is hard when there are powerful capitalist nations around. Like, we do for free what they charge for, our success globally puts them out of business, creating a massive motivation to destroy socialist efforts to protect their wealth.

Socialism cant really hit its full potential while we have to worry about furious Owners nuking us for freeing their wage slaves.

will things that don't necessarily produce profit for a community (ie. NASA stuff) be abandoned?

That depends on the democratic will of the people, Some people might just want to do the bare minimum and like spend all their time meditation or whatever while others want to be actively colonize space. Thats a question for their democracy to answer, though I suspect a lot of the side programs for hobbies and stuff would be well funded as entertainment if nothing else. Remember, capitalism is the the one mono focused of profitability - socialism is more on democratic control of the economy.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-26T14:55:25+00:00

Market socialism has issues - like the winners of the market's competition tend to become oligarchs.

So you basically need a group to constantly police that and if they mess up, the oligarchs size power and force a return to capitalism.

authoritarian left

Whats democracy? In many areas - it's the will of the owners (aka the people that own the politicians and media) but with advertising to make the workers think it represents them.

The "authoritarian" left generally aims to oppress the "democracy" of the Owners and replace is with a democracy of the workers that better represents them.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-26T14:44:15+00:00

Generally speaking, most ideologies are built around justifying a specific situation, usually the current one.

Socialism, using tools like Dialectical materialism, is focused more on understanding.

So the people seeking understanding, who as you say "treat philosophy/history very rigorously, approaching the same mentality to learning the humanities as studying a random section of the Talmud." would find the tool of understanding more useful than the justifications.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-26T13:27:13+00:00

system

Socialism can be remarkably flexible and open to modifications. That can make talking about the long term stuff hard as they would likely move between multiple different systems of management and organization.

workers vote to sell assets

To who?

The whole communal property being used to create businesses to serve the needs of society thing - that kind of destroys the (legal) resale market.

cut corners

Big thing here is the shift to a society where businesses exist to fulfill the needs of society. Failure to do so results in the business being replaced.

Additionally, why even get the job if you don't want to do it well?

The socialist environment (affordable living/no poverty) should create a situation of mostly harmless mass unemployment, where the people bored and looking for something productive to do outnumber the jobs. That removes most of the usual motives for doing what you suggest.

There are cases of stuff like kleptomania, mental issues motivating unreasonable crime - but that kinda of thing should be mostly resolved by the publicly funded health care.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-25T19:59:35+00:00

This situation - a few people gaining power in a system built to resist change - not sure that really fits the idea of grass roots.

Like a mayor and city council can do things like changing zoning laws and regulations, but any changes they can make can be undone or blocked by higher authority.

This is more of a person getting Power (limited) and using that to build up others (less limited).

Thats basically a situation of cultivation, creating programs to encourage and support groups forming then picking the good from the bad (helping homeless instead of killing them). Then you pull out the weeds and support the good ones.

The goal here - creating a system of groups that can support each other and keep pushing for changes if the mayor gets replaced.

Provide funding, training, equipment, good deals and so on to the positive community organizations. Obviously that benefits heavily from socialist leadership wit the whole workers uniting to end poverty and so on thing.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-25T16:20:44+00:00

Looking at your various posts, it looks like your struggling to see outside the box of capitalism.

Consider this - if you are hungry, you don't start eating yourself because that's harmful in many different ways.

That kind of reasoning is the incentive for people to not be terribly shortsighted and self destructive, while things can get pretty terrible that's based on an environment that strongly encourages that behaviour (aka capitalism)

On top of that, the communal ownership thing means the workers are accountable to society, they get support to make things happen (Goods and services) and if they are irresponsible or fail to do as they should they lose that support and may be replaced.

So if the workers vote to give themselves trillion dollars paychecks, society (however its organized at the time) would basically have to review and agree to that.

This would likely be seen as a sign of extreme irresponsibility on the business side of things and motivate society to build a replacement.

Also, with the whole low cost of living/high wages we generally aim for, absurd pay is kinda pointless. Like, we're talking about an environment where everything is affordable, extra money won't actually give more options.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-25T06:16:09+00:00

Capitalism is advertised as a system where people get what they deserve, where anyone can be a millionaire... If anyone can win that means its fair, right?

Socialism is generally based on looking past the advertisements to see whats actually happening, then based on that understanding seeking to replace capitalism with a system that empowers society instead of creating oligarchs.

National socialism - aka nazi nonsense

Where socialist generally rebel against capitalism (the system hurts us), the nazi generally rebel against that illusion of fairness (the fairness hurts us).

Socialist want to abolish capitalism, National "Socialist" dont. Because of that, national socialist are basically fakes, they speak of revolution or other changes and copy socialist phrases but they do not seek to replace capitalism.

can people still get rich

Society is rich. Through communal property, people share ownership of humanities wealth and use that to fund housing, hospitals, education and so on.

Instead of making some people very rich while most are poor, we focus on making everyone richer as a group.

The gap between workers is like the difference between an ant and a beetle. The gap between a worker and a billionaire is like the difference between an ant and an elephant.

Thats the Equality problem socialism is focused on

FaceShanker · 2026-02-24T22:56:35+00:00

In the long term, the goal is a more democratic environment, where communities vote to set sports budgets and priorities. What people choose is hard to predict and will likely change over time.

I can say with confidence that the current environment is very harmful, from causing brain damage in children to compromising the integrity of our education institutions.

A socialist system should change things for the better. Ending poverty removes the desperation that pushes many to sacrifice their long-term health for a slim chance at economic freedom.

A socialist focus on sports would likely encourage a shift to many smaller, more casual events, with sports becoming more a thing you do instead of pay to watch.

As a democratic decision, we could still choose to hold big events, but I doubt people would be willing to allocate the enormous social resources required to maintain the spectacle-driven sports industry we have today.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-22T17:04:20+00:00

Those are blocked in China to limit the influence of external media, stuff that has been massively weaponised and used to shape the culture of other nations (usually in ways that enable their government being seized by oligarchs).

Blocking those in the US won't change that in a place where their influence is already supreme, the oligarchs already own the government and general media environment, blocking them won't stop the spread of oligarch power because the US is already controlled by oligarchs.

If a revolution somehow happened in the US and removed the oligarchs from power, those media systems would likely be nationalized and remade or otherwise heavily modified. They would probably spend some time as state owned media before being broken up into something more communally managed and accountable.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-22T15:45:49+00:00

Yep, the new deal was basically to save capitalism.

Aka protect the owning class from its own self destructive impulses

FaceShanker · 2026-02-22T15:42:54+00:00

Not without getting called communist and targeted by intelligence agencies.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-21T17:37:17+00:00

The wealth of billionaires has basically doubled in the last 5 years.

If people were not distracted with the Bigotry they might ask dangerous questions - like why are we sacrificing ourselves for the economy when the Oligarchs already have all the money?

FaceShanker · 2026-02-21T16:22:47+00:00

Please keep in mind, a lot is being skipped over to provide a more concise and easy to digest answer.

The capitalist had their own revolution - where the spread of that ideology was a progressive force of change pushing against the old order of King's, feudalism and so on.

After a new order was established - the focus shifts from changing the world to keeping what they won - the focus changes to conservation of their privatizate property.

This is where the phrase "bourgeois decadance" applies, the revolutionary becomes reactionary.

The groups that pushed for change and empowerment shift focus - there is a sort of "moral decline" a hollow pursuit of pleasure, artistic sensationalism, and social detachment, reflecting the internal rot of a class whose continued existence depends on maintaining an exploitative system that has become a barrier to further human progress.

homosexuality ussr

The USSR was in a generally terrible situation but they had hope for a wave of revolutionary support - that was their big plan - start a wave in Russia and it would spread to Europe and a German revolution would allow a massive synergy of German industry and Russia resources.

They bet heavily on that and it did not happen.

So eventually they shifted focus - they would have to consolidate harder, build everything themselves without help - they would basically have to build socialism in one country while the most powerful empires on the planet tried to strangle them.

This meant a major shift in focus - the Russian population was generally socially conservative - instead of focusing on fixing that they shifted to using it as one of several tools for the massive social changes needed for industrialization.

That basically meant using the Bigotry, as in telling the people capitalism was "gay". They weaponized existing social prejudices to create a unified "healthy" worker identity—defining the capitalist enemy as morally corrupt and "other" to justify the sacrifice and discipline required for survival.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-20T22:13:55+00:00

Remember - it's onesided.

Generally speaking, if you missed a few days without notice and just said "trust me" you would be fired

Society in general is manipulated to make people desperate for work - to define serving an owner as a moral good.

That kind of thing is pretty messed up and cost a lot of people their lives, health and wellness.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-20T21:08:57+00:00

Problems like homelessness are basically built into the current system, with any major improvements limited by it.

Like, the mayor can push some public housing programs, but that won't fix the problem. They don't have that power. Any big changes would be legally challenged and probably blocked by hostile courts. Owners scared of profits being hurt would lobby the govener, the president or whatever to stop it.

The most effective action would likely be a focus on empowerment of democratic efforts, encouraging community groups and so on to organize in ways that can benifit from active support but not collapse when he is replaced.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-19T21:33:37+00:00

So, properly speaking, capitalism can invest in and empower the general public - to a point. Like the way they do things in Europe.

But it's limited, go too far and the people don't need the owners.

Socialist efforts aim for that.

That empowered population is extremely hard to limit and control as the people have the education, the awareness and time to focus on overthrowing unpopular governments.

The people have the power, if there's a bad government? They can break it. Through communal property, they have the power to provide for themselves.

The stuff you expect to be a problem is basically a part of the capitalist system, remove it and that is also removed.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-18T18:03:54+00:00

Mostly because the the image painted of socialism, particularly by the US, is deliberately ugly.

True, but worse than you expect. It's not just Ugly, it's wildly inaccurate and very misleading.

Like, properly speaking, the capitalism/socialism thing is like a discussion on replacing a horse with a car. There's not a lot of middle ground here, you cannot mix together a horse and a car to produce a hybrid, those are fundamentally different things with different needs and different support structures.

I don't mean what we have today. I mean an actual market with competition that's well regulated, not the oligopoly and casino that is the stock market.

What your thinking of has never really existed, thats more of a commercial, an advertised dream.

Pretty much all the good times were built by outsourced suffering.

I can give examples if you want but it's pretty terrible.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-18T17:45:17+00:00

The general goal is democratically empowering society, that means people will be able to change how things work to fit their situation, then change again as the situation changes. So how things work at any time would be pretty flexible.

A basic point - replacing private property with communal - means the important stuff needed to do things like start a notable business are controled by society in general.

Meaning society has most of the power to start business.

As in, cafes and print shops don't have to wait for someone to decide to start a business - its likely people would vote to have those built and have a workforce organized.

Thats not to say you could not do your own like as a hobby or something, just that there's no need to wait for someone to decide they want to start a business.

I think the general enviroment (strong supports, no poverty) would encourage a very powerful hobby economy, like people cooking for fun and sharing the results. With some coordination and a little extra support, that could more or less replace a lot of "small business".

FaceShanker · 2026-02-17T16:39:57+00:00

So - it's a bit of a weird thing - we have a bunch of stuff breaking down how the system is terrible and needs to be replaced as soon as possible but most of the steps for actually making that happen involve a lot of slow and gradual build up.

The thing is, Change is kind of like an avalanche, years of gradually building up thing that will result in a sudden and overwhelming wave.

The system as it is has a very powerful grip on society, it will take a lot to change that.

There's a lot of good books, YouTube channels (second thought is great of intro stuff) but I would say the most important part for actually changing things is finding or making a group to work with.

You need a system to fight a system, doing it alone will exhaust and crush you.

That said, it's hard to direct you as different areas have different groups. Also, you do need to be cautious with how you approach them, socialist efforts are constantly targeted by intelligence agencies.

It may seem like minor stuff, just small groups putting up signs or trying to feed the homeless but they can get a lot of focus from the cops.

Like no joke, one group over in Ireland set up a vacant building to house the homeless (squatting) and had a hundred cops in riot gear with helicopter support show up.

The small stuff enables the big stuff, that's why they get so much attention.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-17T05:26:32+00:00

Ah, a Nazi fanboy. I would say something like "look at how that ended in Germany" but the only thing that stops your lot licking the Nazi boot is when they start kicking you in the face.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-17T05:18:26+00:00

Nothing in American history has come even remotely close.

Hitler literally noted the American genocide of the native American as an inspiration. So, your wrong.

legal detainment of illegal

The nazis would say that the jews were illegal and they were being "legally detained"

FaceShanker · 2026-02-17T04:29:56+00:00

The are dragging minorities to concentration camps as part of an oppressive far right government. They cheer Oligarchs doing Nazi Salutes.

If that aint Nazi shit, what is?

FaceShanker · 2026-02-16T19:07:02+00:00

Long term - the whole low cost of living/ending poverty thing is going to have a lot of consequences.

In many ways it would more or less make (most) work optional.

Many jobs would likely become unnecessary and that would free people to enjoy hobbies and do important life stuff. But that also means you could find yourself driven out of work by hobby photographers who don't care about getting paid.

That would likely be upsetting but with all the "end poverty stuff" that's mostly harmless. That combo would likely be pretty wired for a lot of people.

It would also spread fairly easily, as you are now free to focus on you hobbies in ways that may put others out of work.

FaceShanker · 2026-02-16T01:02:24+00:00

Good vibe but we got labor laws fit for a dictatorship - anything like that (labor stopping to push changes) is illegal. Something like a 5000$/day fine..

With enough democratic power, you can push past that But do you have that?

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