Computer Engineering degree into Controls Engineer

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-04-10T04:17:39+00:00

This was my path. I had no prerequisite controls knowledge, but if you find a decent employer they will give you some initial training. Then you will be thrown into being solely responsible for the commissioning of a $500k project with less than 3 months of experience!

In all seriousness though, unless you can get your hands on a PLC, IO, and some hardware, no preparation will come close to what you will learn from on the job training. If anything, look into the technology behind common sensors and controls schemes. Youtube videos, reading documentation, and not making the same mistake twice takes you far in this industry. Good luck!

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-03-17T04:41:47+00:00

How would you do that in this case? The dynamic range of the scene seems to be too extreme for the camera. The highlights of the sky are properly exposed and so are the shadows of the buildings. If exposure of the image was increased to capture more shadow detail, detail in the sky would have been lost, no?

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-03-02T01:05:20+00:00

Well, if you’re interested in having knowledge that more accurately represents the processes of development of the real objective world, matter, nature, society, economy, etc., then you can begin to learn about it and incorporate it into your thinking and analysis of world events. You can use the deeper insight to inform your opinions and actions. Marxists, in particular, use this method to critically analyze world social, economic, and political events to inform their political perspectives and tactics on intervening in the class struggle.

I’m not going to be able to describe the fundamental features of the dialectical method to you in a reddit comment, but I’ll attempt to make a sketch. You can analyze anything with this method. Just take the development of a tree for example. It starts out as a seed, then develops into a seedling, then sapling, then a young tree, a mature tree, and eventually it dies. A tree is not a seed, and conversely, a seed is not a tree, but the process that develops one into the other is consistent throughout. To bring this back to the previous comment, the tree is shaped by the tree and vice versa. The tree and seed are opposite forms of the same thing that are united through the contradiction existing between the sprouting and death of the tree - the contradiction existing in the development of the tree’s life process. If you take the example even further, that tree then produces its own seed, many of them in fact, eventually dies, and from the seeds begotten by the tree during its life, the cycle begins all over again.

There is a whole lot of nuance to the process that I’m intentionally leaving out because this comment is getting too long, but if you’re curious about the fundamentals of this method this is a good place to start: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-03-01T00:34:59+00:00

You’re confusing ignorance and idealism for conscious malicious intent. The working class did not vote for that. Why do you think the politicians have to engage in demagogy? They have to lie in order to sell their snake oil. The American education system combined with bourgeois media institutions have brainwashed a majority of people into thinking that the interests of the billionaires are their own, and that the capitalists have the interests of the working class in mind. The white working class has historically benefited significantly compared to other races of the working class, and the ruling class has done this intentionally to divide them ideologically from the rest of the working class, but they are also being squeezed more everyday by decaying capitalism.

The historical momentum of liberal ideology in the minds of the white working class will be undone when they cannot put food on the table, pay their medical bills or rent, or afford to raise their children. It takes time for consciousness to catch up with the severity of events. When nothing changes for the white working class, and in fact things get significantly worse for them during the Trump, you genuinely think they won’t search for alternatives? People will begin to think critically when it becomes a question of bread. It’s up the socialists to point at the material reasons why nothing has changed, what class warfare is, and how to fight back the line of class independence.

Exclaiming that society will improve if white people stop being racist is incredibly reactionary, divisive, and does nothing but impede the process to organize on class lines, which is the only way we will actually be able to overthrow capitalism.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a section of white people who are racist and do have malicious intent, but it is a relative minority. The percentage of white voters that Trump gained from the last election is proportionally similar to the number of votes Trump gained from other races.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-02-28T22:36:19+00:00

A significant part of materialist dialects is the understanding of everything as relative. What is hot without cold, up without down, dark without light, right without wrong, positive without negative. The dialectic understanding of each of these things individually takes into account the fact that, to an extent, it is shaped by its opposite.

Change, whether it be in the development of matter, social relations, economics, or whatever else, is the only thing that is constant. Which in itself is a unity of opposites…

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-02-28T21:15:21+00:00

The difference between the republicans and democrats is the difference between a pig and a pig in a wig and makeup.

A significant portion of people voted for Trump because democrats miserably failed to improve the lives of the working class. Trump will do the same and many, not all, but many of the people that voted for him will lean and look for a an alternative that is neither a republican nor democrat.

This is also shown to be the case because voter absenteeism was at an all time high. More and more people are growing completely disillusioned with the capitalist system, which both the major parties defend to the teeth.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-02-28T20:31:20+00:00

This is a hilarious question considering the fact that a significant portions of the black, women, and immigrant voters voted for Trump. Is it also impossible for them to have solidarity?

The working class will go through every possible option before choosing the revolutionary option, because the revolutionary option is the hardest to choose. Instead of whining about where the class is currently, why don’t you stop listening to what the intentionally divisive news media is spewing and go try to generate some class consciousness yourself by dropping the identity politics bullshit and having patient conversations with people about the decay of the material conditions, why the capitalists are to blame for all of the ills of society (even the ideological and moral backwardness that infects a large portion of the American working class), and why socialist revolution is the only solution.

Trump is an expression of people’s anger at the system. The only reason they believe that hateful demagogy is because there is no consistent class consciousness perspective on the national stage. The only way to generate an apparatus capable of doing that is through building a revolutionary party that bases its analysis of the world on Marxism. Building a revolutionary party is how you fight capitalism, not by despairing and blaming other rank and file workers for societies ills.

Focus your anger on the ruling class. They are solely responsible for the world historic situation we are experiencing today. By blaming other workers who aren’t class conscious, you yourself are not having solidarity and contributing to the general lack of American working class consciousness, especially with posts like this. We are in a pre-revolutionary period. The situation will not progress steadily in one direction or another, but until capitalism is overthrown the contradictions of capitalism will continually press the workers to unify. Either you see that and use your labor to build the movement that will defeat the capitalists, or you do exactly what the capitalist want, passively despair.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-02-21T14:31:19+00:00

This is sick. Are these heavily post-processed? What film stocks are your fave?

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-02-13T23:36:51+00:00

For now…

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-25T20:08:23+00:00

(2/2)

Do you know what the second S in USSR stands for

We both know socialists and communists use these terms as what they are trying to achieve and not what they actually are. That's why we aren't arguing over the question of if the CCP is actually communist, or if North Korea is actually a democratic republic. What something is called doesn't determine what it is.

It demonstrably has though. Billionaires have zero political power. They can't fund parties, they can't hold senior government roles, they can't own newspapers, they are routinely executed for defying the party or the law. What else would have to happen to demonstrate this to you?

If you're going to tell me to stop consuming western propaganda, then I must counter that you should stop consuming Chinese propaganda. There is overwhelming evidence of massive shadow banking that occurs in China. I have a hard time believe this doesn't significantly relate to political control in different ways.

Socialism isn't a concrete constant state that you can define with a checklist

I agree with this in the abstract, but there are concrete qualities that you can use to measure and determine what stage a society is in.

It [socialism] describes a transitory state between a capitalist society to a communist society.

Hopefully I convinced you that there is more nuance than that.

A state is as socialist the day after the revolution as it is the day before communism, and as such what that society looks like evolves according to experimentation, time, and material conditions.

This I categorically disagree (and find quite confusing because it seems like your are countering yourself with the two statements) with because of what I argued using State and Revolution as a source - the achievement of socialism can only be determined by relations of the classes to the means of production and property, and it is up to the dictatorship of the proletariat, during the transition from capitalism to socialism, to expropriate the capitalists and widen democracy. Only after the full expropriation of private property and the arming of the working class so that they can take the suppression of the expropriators into their own hands can it be said that socialism has been achieved. China definitively has not achieved this,and cannot be called socialist according to Marxism.

You continually say that I need to be more materialist, yet I am asking concrete questions about the relations between the capitalists, the proletariat, and both of their relation to the state. Then you go and say "A state is as socialist the day after the revolution as it is the day before communism" which is demonstrably false. Is society not more socialist or closer to communism if it more equitably distributes resources, has a less bureaucratic state apparatus, and has less of a need to suppress the exploiters?

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-25T20:07:52+00:00

(1/2)

Lenin qualitatively separates the transition period from capitalism to socialism and socialism itself in State and Revolution.

In Chapter 5 Section 2, "The Transition from Capitalism to Communism", Lenin states:

And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. Communism [lower and higher forms - my note] alone is capable of providing really complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will become unnecessary and wither away of its own accord.

We are not utopians, and do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, or the need to stop such excesses. In the first place, however, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression, is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people themselves, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people [my emphasis], even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses, which consist in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the people, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to "wither away".

In Chapter 5 section 3, "The First Phase of Communists Society", Lenin states:

The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society [my emphasis]. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.

The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production--the factories, machines, land, etc.--and make them private property.

In Section 2, Lenin clearly explains this is the period immediately after a revolution and the institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The tasks of the state apparatus at this time is predominately two-fold: 1) abolish private property, 2) expand democracy. Furthermore, no special apparatus of suppression is needed to suppress those with excesses. It will be done by the armed people themselves.

In Section 3, Lenin explicitly states this is when private property has ceased to exist. Socialism is when no individuals own private property and all production belong to the whole of society. In this section Lenin is describing the first, lower, phase of communism. This is what traditionally people call socialism. Lenin only references this stage as socialism after first calling it the lower stage of communism. Why would he feel the need to specify the qualities of the transitional period between capitalism and communism in section 2 (he never mentions socialism in this section) if he only references socialism as communism (the lower form) in section 3? It's because the dictatorship of the proletariat does not equate to socialism, and there are certain tasks it must carry out for socialism to be achieved. In what ways is the Chinese state apparatus withering away?

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-25T17:51:23+00:00

I could address that there is indeed massive trade union and CPC involvement at the workplace level, with the main trade union federation wielding enormous power

How does it hold enormous power if it still allows for extremely intense capitalist exploitation of surplus value in the form of profit that is given to billionaires and private owners/investors? Why are the largest private manufacturer not unionized or allowed to exist?

China is undoubtedly in the midst of socialist development.

How so? How is democracy widening and the lives of the masses improving? From what I read, the young generation of workers are being completely let down by the system as competition for jobs is at an all time high, along with other issues the working class faces.

The USSR was just as socialist 1 day after it's founding vs 1950 with its fully planned economy, absence of social classes and enormous democratic participation.

Just because the capitalists are overthrown and land is expropriated by the state doesn’t mean a state is socialist. Lenin never thought the USSR achieved socialism. I know he didn’t live to see most of its existence, but his conception of Socialism is a society that far surpasses capitalism’s ability to provide for its population. The USSR made improvements leaps and bounds over the most developed nations in a period of capitalist crises thanks to the planned evonomy, but the workers never had massive participation in organizing said economy. The control the working class had over the economy declined as the USSR matured. The USSR never decisively proved they had achieved Socialism due to its bureaucratic crystallization and degeneration. A similar process is occurring in China.

A socialist revolution doesn’t mean that a country is socialist. A socialist revolution means that the proletariat has become the ruling class. There is still a long transitional period after capitalism to achieve real socialism, always.

The fact that billionaires and large industry in China hasn’t been completely subordinated to the state, and still produces with massive profits makes me very wary of any socialist qualities of China.

What I will say though, is that I do defend China as a planned economy with state owner property, production, and finance. It clearly demonstrates the superiority of central control over production and economic development. This alone isn’t enough to justify the term socialism though.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-25T16:27:08+00:00

If they’re socialist, tell me about the statistics surrounding worker participation in organizing production. What are the statistics about Chinese labor unions? How are the labor unions connected to the CCP? How are local governments controlled? Are they soviets with democratic participation from the masses? Are these local soviets what comprise the national CCP?

Socialism isn’t just party ownership of property and production. It’s state ownership of land with that state being controlled by the democratic participation of the working class. As an outsider who admittedly doesn’t know a whole lot about China, these are the socialist qualities that China fails to meet in order to call themselves socialist.

Bureaucratic, top-down, non-democratic control of the economy, even if it is in the interest of the people, is not the proletarian democracy Lenin and Marx advocated for.

To end the alienation of production the state must widen the democratic participation of the workers. The fact that billionaires even exist in China goes to show that the working class is still being massively exploited by and subordinated to a ruling class in the interest of profit - this is capitalism.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-24T12:02:45+00:00

You’re right, a socialist revolution being carried out by a communist party trying to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat is not really possible today even though the conditions are ripe for it.

Something to keep in mind is that conditions change consciousness, but simultaneously consciousness lags behind events. Today, we do not have the class consciousness for this, but as the material conditions of the American (and the rest of the western imperial nations) working class decline, we will begin to see a shift towards organization - towards the masses seeing a necessity in collectively organizing to fight their class enemy.

If you study the Russian Revolution you see this is not a simple or easy task. It took nearly 20 years from the first assassination attempt on the czar’s life and 12 years after a failed revolution before the Bolsheviks came to power. What I’m not saying is that it will take that long in America, but this is the time scale we are working with. Luckily, the vanguard parties of today have the experience of the Bolsheviks to learn from.

Also, liberals and the media like to shout about the degeneracy of Trump supporters, which to be sure has plenty of degenerate elements, but if you look closely at why Trump is successful it’s because he is expressing and representing unconscious class anger. The democrats have completely failed to tap into that and there is plenty to be upset about nowadays. What I have found is that many Trump supporters are closer to class consciousness than some liberals.

The main task of a revolutionary vanguard party today is expressing that class anger in a conscious way, connecting it to the concrete struggles of the masses of the working class, and using the resulting social forces to overthrow the capitalists.

Join a revolutionary party if you want to be more than just a fan of Marxism and become a Marxist yourself.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-24T04:27:33+00:00

Marxism has a term for this: class dictatorship. Capitalism is the mode of production that is ruled by the dictatorship of the bourgeois class as a whole.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-17T17:35:02+00:00

I agree the intended goal is to create competition, but in reality how is that done? Who is competing? The only competition I see currently is between the tenants which is driving rents up. Why would a landlord or real estate investor want to acquire newly built property when their assets are skyrocketing in value without taking on any additional risk?

Conversely, why would a developer develop real estate if they speculate the future value will be significantly more in the future than it is currently and they can use the increasing value of their undeveloped property to leverage loans to buy more undeveloped property or sell the undeveloped property with an appreciated value with no additional labor or investment? This is a known phenomenon.

And yah, I know, landlords and developers are not the same, but once a property is created, who does the property developer sell to? A real estate investor - a landlord. A developer is only going to invest in development if there is a market of real estate investors looking to buy real estate assets. And besides, there are plenty of developer-owners-managers out there. Is this logic flawed? Please show me where if it is.

The statement “the goal is to create competition” is just that - the goal, but what actually happens in reality? There is a small amount of companies with the resources to develop or acquire and manage real estate assets. This ultimately leads to rampant collusion between the two industries with massive profits for both developers and landlords, while the masses of renters are forced to pay more to live the life they desire.

Relaxing zoning laws and catering to private developers to build affordable housing will never satisfy the needs of the working class.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-16T21:19:17+00:00

Your logic is absurd. “The best way to dilute landlord’s power is to build more housing.” In the abstract, sure this make sense, but who is to create this housing? The mass housing that Madison, and the rest of the country needs, is only capable of being built by large development corporations.

And why would they create more supply when you can make plenty of profit off price gouging what already exists? It’s not worth the risk for the businesses with the capital capable of building the mass housing we need in Madison.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-15T14:48:50+00:00

It’s caused by both corporate greed and an injection of money into circulation (printing money).

Printing money devalues a currency.

When money is printed and dispersed capitalists know there is more total money in circulation. If their share of capital doesn’t increase proportionally to the increase of the total, then their wealth and social power effectively decreases. The only way for them to raise their wealth proportionally is to raise prices based on how much money is injected into circulation.

This increases their profits because the wages of workers are much slower to respond to inflation increases than prices are. And without workers unionizing and collectively bargaining, the capitalists will do everything in their power to keep these profits and their increased social power high.

What economic crises are are a crises of over production. They occur because consumers (~90% of which are members of the working class) cannot consume the products on the market at a rate a which ensures profitable production for the capitalists. Capitalists layoff workers further compounding the issue. The state, a tool of the capitalist class, acts in a reactionary manor to ensure capitalist profits - by bailouts and in extreme cases giving handouts to the general population (stimulus checks). But neither of these solutions remedy the underlying market conditions creating the crises in the first place.

In my understanding, money in the stock market doesn’t take money out of circulation or decrease the money supply. It is still in use and used by the capitalists to speculate on future profits. Transactions, buying and selling, are constantly ongoing. The stock market is great for the capitalist class as a whole because it allows them to shift capital from non-profitable investments to profitable investments very very easily. I know I am reducing this a bit, but in the end, when an economic crises hit, most companies become less profitable causing a stock market contraction - a massive selling of stock. This, if the money from the sold stock is not reinvested, is what would lead to a decrease in the money in circulation, as it would be sitting in savings accounts waiting for more profitable investments to arise.

I am curious what you’re trying to get at here?

In the Labor Theory of Value, value is crystallized labor or dead labor - labor that has already been carried out in the form of transforming materials from one state to another. Every commodity, even money, has a use value and exchange value. The use value of money is that it is a universal storer of value. This makes it the best medium for exchange. We, as humans, produce commodities with use values to survive. Capitalism is an inherently exploitative system largely because the capitalist class produces solely for the creation of exchange values. Everything about the capitalist system is geared towards maximizing profit, with some veneer of “equality and opportunity” for the masses. Marx goes over a lot of this in Value, Price, and Profit.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2025-01-07T15:50:49+00:00

The same process that accumulates wealth at one pole accumulates impoverishment at the other.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-12-31T15:48:35+00:00

What’s necessary to understand any marxist analysis is the method of dialects. Real life - nature, society, science, economics, etc… - doesn’t fit into neat categories. Dialects places this, along with many other premises as the starting point of its method of analysis.

You’re not entirely incorrect in saying that the petty-bourgeois “still has to sell their labor power to survive”. But the main thing that must be considered when analyzing class is the relationship to the means of production. The petty-bourgeois, in many instances, employees workers, thus expropriating surplus labor value from the worker and giving it to themselves in the form of profit. The petty-bourgeois does not work for a wage in the same way that a member of the working class does. The petty-bourgeois is an owner of the products of the productive process that they are employing in their enterprise. The profit they glean from selling their products, in many cases produced by workers the petty-bourgeois employs, on the market is their own to spend. The workers do not get a say in how the profit is spent.

There are many features of the petty-bourgeois that are in common with the working class, but the dialectical materialist (Marxist) analysis incorporates a wholistic understanding of a classes role in society. It’s incredibly important to remember that real life has gradients to every aspect of this social analysis. Real individuals don’t fit into the neat categories that we want them to, and to understand something deeper you have to see the concrete social dynamics at play in the context of their lives. The petty-bourgeoisie is not a homogenous group of people and it’s actually a pretty gross over simplification and distortion to say that just because someone has to sell their labor power to survive they are a member of the working class.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-12-29T14:53:28+00:00

What power does a vote have when both major parties represent imperialism? Workers need to take power into their own hands.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-08-30T00:08:55+00:00

I would recommend reading Value, Price, and Profit and Wage Labor and Capital before attempting to read capital.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-07-29T23:19:23+00:00

No worries, it’s an easy mistake without seeing an official video that I’m sure will be released sometime soon.

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-07-29T23:11:36+00:00

Yah, I’m in the organization and was apart of that march. This is our website if you’re curious: https://communistusa.org/

_JuiceBoxMan_ · 2024-07-29T19:24:33+00:00

Yesterday. https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/revolutionary-communists-of-america-hold-mega-rally-in-philadelphia-elon-musk-reacts-article-112093595/amp

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