Thread by @apeirophobic

Socialism is when the workers own and manage the means of production. This is what it had always meant, until the modern era where the world's dominant propaganda systems contorted its meaning into "the state holding a market monopoly."

Authoritarian notions of socialism rely upon your willingness to buy in to a sort of ideological alchemy: the state is a representation of "the workers," therefore when the state does something, the "workers" do that thing. Are you going to fight a revolution for that?

The state will never magically become a proxy for the workers. Ever. Mark my words. It has been roughly a century since that observation was first made and a century of validation has followed. Power structures only seek monopoly for themselves, no matter their aesthetics.

If you want to make a modern liberal republic undermine itself, by all means, go for it. You may make some limited gains there. But if you think you will make MORE gains by replacing limited democracy with an elaborate system of sycophancy, you are practicing a dangerous naivete.

The truly infantile disorder is the belief that we will create a power structure with nearly zero accountability and it will magically undermine its own strength because it wants to act in accordance with its aesthetics. As if power structures have ever cared about consistency.

And don't think that these distinctions can wait for later. They need to be worked out NOW, before our nascent movements have reached critical mass. Otherwise we will find ourselves with another society full of workers who feel like this: libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-f…

"I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That"

The paper before my eyes fades yellow

With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black

Full of working words

Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages...

They've trained me to become docile

Don't know how to shout or rebel

How to complain or denounce

Only how to silently suffer exhaustion

When I first set foot in this place

I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month

To grant me some belated solace

For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words

Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons

Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early

By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,

How many days, how many nights

Did I - just like that - standing fall asleep?

Xu Lizhi, after a failed attempt to leave this job and find one that involved working with books (his true passion), was forced to return to the Foxconn factory to sustain himself. He could not bring himself to confront more of this misery and chose to take his own life.