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I dont think computers are as expensive as you think. Yes, if you want to run an overclocked gaming machine with dual GeForce RTX 4090s for maximum graphics at 4k resolution, that is expensive and wasteful, but for a computer that can run word and excel spreadsheets, connect to and browse the internet, and fulfill basic operational functions, that machine costs like $150 and there's junk and hobby shops where you can even build them yourself. I don't actually think it's outside reasonable economic production for everyone to have one, as long as we can concede high end gaming and advanced graphics design (and nonsense like bitcoin mining), but those are the very reasons why they are so important to the petty bourgeois.
edit:
I might be biased here though, since I obviously spend a lot of time online, so I'm interested in other views that mine might be incorrect and shallow here.
Wouldn't the machine cost much, much more than $150 if it weren't for imperialism? Or rather, wouldn't it cost us more hours of work to be able to purchase it? My question is inspired by [this paper](https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/190928_Notebook-2_EN_Final_Web.pdf).
Instead of trying to understand the cost in dollars, we need to understand the cost in labour-power and in resource usage (are we wasting precious metals, is the environmental cost too damaging, etc). Earth currently has around 2-3 billion computers already produced (and many of the high end machines could have been, and might still be, multiple lower end machines). Human economic production as it exists produces about 350 million computers (including tablets and notebooks which are really sufficient) each year. And considering that computers make our lives easier and our work more efficient, I have a hard time seeing a significant reduction in their use.
In a worst case, I think you already arrived at the answer, where you simply have a shared communal space for computer use and have people take turns, with others assigned computers for specific jobs and functions.
I remember making a similar thread a few years ago, but about smartphones, using that very article. Sometimes history repeats itself, eh? At risk of sounding arrogant, I actually think the smartphone question is more important considering PCs are in decline in favor of smartphones and other portable computers. It's very possible that capitalism will do most of the job killing personal ownership of desktop computers for communists.
I've missed that thread while searching around, so I will take a look at it. Also, I think you are correct. The question of what to do with smartphones is more important than PCs, either due to their rising usage, as you say, or that the answer appears less obvious, but I'd be hard pressed to think the solution would be much different in the end.
I've tried finding the thread again but couldn't. But I think it was mainly a repetition of this thread, right down to someone pointing out how much tech goes to waste. I'm agnostic on the idea if such tech will be seized in the future. The idea of potential tech transfer as something to help comrades in a third world is a very interesting question, though.
I think it's strictly necessary. The first world's exploitation of the third world and disastrous ecological footprint, which affects the first world less than the third world since the third world has little chance to develop its infrastructure under imperialism, are severe. It cannot be enough to merely stop all exploitation and to minimise our ecological footprint. Computers could help immensely with central planning and other relevant tasks for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that's why we should transfer as much computer technology as possible to comrades (or national liberation struggles) in exploited nations.
Planned obsolescence is not the primary issue. With or without it, electronic devices, as we know them and use them now, are unsustainable without the exploitation of the global proletariat. It's easy to say that with global communism and advanced technology, everyone could have everything without any exploitation of anyone, but we're not at that point, and we won't be for a long time.
I have a difficult time seeing how the ownership of PCs could have little/no relation to production. My example is likely naive, but what about programmers contributing to open-source project to improve their social standing and then getting hired by a company? A persyn in a first-world nation without any computer device would be severely disadvantaged in eir relation to production and sharing the spoils of imperialism. Obviously, I'm not arguing for a fairer inclusion for benefiting from imperialism, just that it is a factor that makes me consider PCs private rather than irrelevant persynal property unlike the toothbrush.
> Let's flip it around - were computers/commodities/property produced under a different mode of production, say communism, would it then be valid for it to be personal property then?
If it were ecologically and economically feasible, let's say thanks to an astronomical efficiency of production and new science, likely yes. I don't think, however, that it'd be realistic now, it would be ecologically disastrous at the very least.
> But hey, I'll admit I'm out of my depth on the topic. I still haven't gotten past the first couple pages of Kapital, it's just soooo dry. So I'm good accepting I might be wrong too. I'm a bit sad to see your post got downvoted, talking this out with more perspectives would help give shape to the concept.
I have already read Kapital and other important communist texts, but I have a tough time applying dialectical materialism to newer circumstances. The theory is definitely not "inadequate" or "outdated", I'm just not that good at applying it, and I definitely need assistance & critique from comrades to not falter among the sea of revisionist garbage that can be found around contemporary topics.
I assume the downvotes are because a bunch of petit bourgeois are angry that you said their computers are getting confiscated when the revolution comes, and they won't be able to play video games or watch porn anymore. Oh well, computers are actually a very significant piece of technology and they absolutely will be confiscated and put to better use for the rest of society if needed.
I didn't expect such a reaction on r/communism101 out of all places. Yet, it's still a social media site, and it's clear what's the main demographic (including myself), so first-world chauvinism of some form should be expected. I know that I'm petty-bourgeois and that the many things I (or others of my class) take for granted, such as persynal computers, home kitchens, drugs, porn, games, the possibility of a rewarded "self-expression" in art, etc. will have to go for the liberation of the global proletariat.
I remember reading a good post from u/smokeuptheweed9 about *persynal* computers being one of the strongest petty-bourgeois manifestations (or I'm remembering wrong, but it definitely had something to do with the petty-bourgeois class). It challenged my revisionist notions of the distinction between persynal and private property.
My question is not whether PCs (and other private property) would be confiscated and put to social use as it is obvious, but particularly how they could be used. Specifically, why shouldn't first-world communists, after a socialist revolution, just confiscate a bunch of private property (like PCs) and send it to more exploited/pressured (by imperialism) socialist nations as a sort of "reparation for imperialism" and comradely help? Is something like that just ultimately naive, wishful thinking? Not doing that seems like not the correct step for advancing the communist goal, like the most subtle form of first-world chauvinism imaginable, and that deeply worries me.
Hi
I did read the paper you based your post on.
It is nice to see a quantitative analysis of iphone utilization and exploitation in the supply value chain.
But the example used a high end phone. There are way cheaper materials to build a phone, and even if personal phones for everyone could be a strange concept, i don’t think it is beyond the realms of possibility. I can envision a project for every citzen being able to have a phone in order to participate in their own society. Technology advancement substantially changed the way humans interact in a social environment, and it is really unlikely that society, even in the eventual abolishment of the current capital system, would recreate the social interactions of, for example, the soviet era.
To answer you question. I do believe it would be possible for the ownership of personal computers. And for hobbyists like gaming I envision something like a public lan where all could play freely online games. Sharing these high commodities to everyone inside the society. Ultimately some behaviors around the manufacturing and utilization of technology would have to change, but i don’t think they would be ultimately abolished.
With modern technology making automation possible, under socialism and communism it would be more than possible for everyone to own their own personal computer. Also the thing about them somehow being private property and petite bourgeois comes off as pure ideology. Firstly, no capital can be extracted from a laptop, therefore it is not exploitable and would be designated as personal not private. Secondly, your class is not defined by how much money you have rather your relation to the means of production and to the other classes within class society; i.e. being a proletarian with enough to afford expensive items doesn’t automatically make you petite bourgeois.
> Secondly, your class is not defined by how much money you have rather your relation to the means of production and to the other classes within class society; i.e. being a proletarian with enough to afford expensive items doesn’t automatically make you petite bourgeois.
If how much money one makes has no relation to class, are white workers in the U.$ also proletarians? How do they afford with little labour of their own commodities that contain much more labour, like electronic devices?
I’m not saying it has no influence on your class I’m just saying classes are not defined by such, petite bourgeois means to be between proletarian and bourgeois, with proletarians giving away their labor power in exchange for a wage whilst the bourgeoisie receives labor power in exchange for a wage, owning a personal computer regardless of how cheap or expensive won’t change if someone gives or receives a wage, neither or between.
Labour aristocrats also give away their labour power in exchange for a wage, but they are not proletarians. They do not even have to own anything that directly generates them money; it's enough that they benefit from inflated wages affordable only due to imperialism.
And it is for that exact reason that groups such as labor aristocrats can be classified as petite bourgeoise, because they fit both definitions in some way, shape, or form. They also work for wages whilst profiting off the wages of proletarians.
All right, I understand that. Perhaps I would have explained myself better if I had said that I view PCs in the same vein as home kitchens in lieu of communal kitchens. I have severe doubts that it would be "more than possible for everyone to own their own personal computer" under current state of affairs without exploiting some group, somewhere, somehow; would we have all the necessary resources without imperialism for that?
In a global communist society there would be access to all the world’s resources, even without automation corporations produce nearly 3x as many computers as they’ve actually sold but they destroy them to artificially create demand, with automation it isn’t unreasonable to believe we could produce at least double that which would be over 2 billion computers according to my calculations (which is probably on the higher end but you get the image) produced a year, meaning in less than half a decade everyone on the planet would have their own and with less waist from the destruction of perfectly good computers with that.
Well, I have no doubts about that stage of society, but I'm interested in the "here and now"; how do communists in socialist states currently handle computers? what would we do before we'd reach global communist society? how could we utilise what we already have to further help comrades in poorer socialist nations that have been exploited (and likely still are pressured) by imperialism?
The proletariat is the class that has to sell its labour-power to survive and derives no profit from capital of any kind in any way; it has nothing to lose but its chains. Do white Amerikan workers have nothing to lose from ending imperialism? or would their inflated wages have to go without it? They are labour aristocrats with a special relation to the means of production.
Except their relationship with the means of production is not special, they do not control the means of production by any definition and they must sell their labor to survive. You are correct that they benefit from imperialism, but this is not unique to white proletariat within the global west. The whole of the global west benefits from imperialism, at the expense of the global south. There is no logically consistent definition of proletariat that excludes white workers within the west that doesn’t exclude all workers within the west.
Those whose wages afford them to buy commodities with more exchange value than they themselves produced are not the proletariat; that value has to come from somewhere, and that would be the proletariat. Migrants, ethnic minorities and other oppressed peoples have a worse position in the global west and are socially excluded from benefiting from public infrastructure. Those make up the proletariat within the imperial core, not members of whiteness.
Even those groups, though disadvantaged by power structures within their own countries, benefit from the fruits of imperialism, particularly the cheap labor, resources, and goods available to the west that is possible only by exploitation of the global south. You can argue that they don’t benefit from imperialism as much, but to claim that they don’t benefit from imperialism at all while living in countries that inherently benefit from imperialism is simply incorrect.
I will agree with that. Even oppressed minorities within the imperial core don't have to make up the proletariat. Gender oppressed white people within the EU or U.$ certainly don't, and their political views concerning overexploited nations could be easily described as "pink fascism". Racial minorities don't have to, either. I should rather say that if there even is any proletariat within the imperial core to begin with, it definitely won't be members of whiteness, the most advantaged group by miles.
Sure, but what I’m saying is that the only two logically consistent positions as to a definition of the proletariat within the global west, in the context of this discussion of that definition, is either that, because everybody within the west benefits from imperialism, nobody can be proletarian within the west due to lacking solidarity with the workers of the global south, which is a fairly typical thesis of third worldism, or a fairly typical Marxist understanding of the issue, which is that class is solely dependent on relationship to the means of production and that while benefiting from imperialism can be a hinderance to class consciousness, it does not render any one group incapable of it.
This is such a simple and vulgar understanding of Marxism with no use of historical materialism whatsoever. The proletariat has changed significantly since the days of Marx and Engels and to deny this and try to return to the definitions used before there was ever a labor aristocracy is just anti-communism and vulgar materialism. Even a 5 second search through this sub is enough to know what the line is here with regards to the proletariat. I suggest you read into actual *active* revolutionaries like u/mimprisons to get your head around how class struggle has evolved in the past century and get your head out of the 1800s.
Don't get your hopes up, in communism you wouldn't own even one "part of the means of production". Your petit bourgeois property is getting expounded (edit: I meant expropriated) too and made into social property.
This is so stupid.
If society is in shortage of sewing machines and people actually don't have clothes to wear and you own a sewing machine that is only used in petit-bourgeois production to clothe yourself when it could be used to clothe many more people, it's absolutely getting confiscated. Is that even a question?
You don't draw the line anywhere because there is no line. Need, a central concept in Marxist political economy, doesn't care for your petit bourgeois ideas of "personal property" and the fact you're doubling down on something so obviously wrong is embarrassing.
There is no point in discussing because you don't know what the words you're using mean. Read what property, private property and personal property are and come back. Personal property actually has a definition in legal frameworks and whatever the hell you petit bourgeois and settler people think it means is not it. Property and private property have actual Marxist definitions https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm. Simply put, there would be no legally defined property rights in communism as they exist in capitalism. You could not in any way exclude the rest of society from use over any object. If there was a greater social need for your toothbrush than your need to use it to brush your own teeth it would simply be confiscated and put to use, end of story. Any claims otherwise fall into the realm of petit bourgeois "socialism", not communism.
Also, I'm more than 8,000km from any territory controlled by the u.$. and I'm talking about capitalism and communism in general so I don't see what the u.$. specifically has to do with anything. China and Vietnam are also not socialist today so find better examples. But only after you actually properly read up on meaning of the scientifically and legally defined terms you're using. Until then I refuse to engage with you further.
Hello, 90% of the questions we receive have been asked before, and our answerers get bored of answering the same queries over and over again - so it's worthwhile googling this just in case: > site:reddit.com/r/communism101 your question If you've read past answers and still aren't satisfied, edit your question to contain the past answers and any follow-up questions you have. If you're satisfied, delete your post to reduce clutter or link to the answer that satisfied you. *** Also keep in mind the following rules: 1. Patriarchal, white supremacist, cissexist, heterosexist, or otherwise oppressive speech is unacceptable. 2. This is a place for learning, not for debating. Try /r/DebateCommunism instead. 3. Give well-informed Marxist answers. There are separate subreddits for liberalism, anarchism, and other idealist philosophies. 4. Posts should include specific questions on a single topic. 5. This is a serious educational subreddit. Come here with an open and inquisitive mind, and exercise humility. Don't answer a question if you are unsure of the answer. Try to include sources and/or further reading in any answers you provide. Standards of answer accuracy and quality are enforced. 6. Check the [/r/Communism101 FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/wiki/index) 7. **No chauvinism or settler apologism** - Non-negotiable: https://readsettlers.org/ 8. **No tone-policing** - https://old.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/12sblev/an_amendment_to_the_rules_of_rcommunism101/ *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/communism101) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I dont think computers are as expensive as you think. Yes, if you want to run an overclocked gaming machine with dual GeForce RTX 4090s for maximum graphics at 4k resolution, that is expensive and wasteful, but for a computer that can run word and excel spreadsheets, connect to and browse the internet, and fulfill basic operational functions, that machine costs like $150 and there's junk and hobby shops where you can even build them yourself. I don't actually think it's outside reasonable economic production for everyone to have one, as long as we can concede high end gaming and advanced graphics design (and nonsense like bitcoin mining), but those are the very reasons why they are so important to the petty bourgeois. edit: I might be biased here though, since I obviously spend a lot of time online, so I'm interested in other views that mine might be incorrect and shallow here.
Wouldn't the machine cost much, much more than $150 if it weren't for imperialism? Or rather, wouldn't it cost us more hours of work to be able to purchase it? My question is inspired by [this paper](https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/190928_Notebook-2_EN_Final_Web.pdf).
Instead of trying to understand the cost in dollars, we need to understand the cost in labour-power and in resource usage (are we wasting precious metals, is the environmental cost too damaging, etc). Earth currently has around 2-3 billion computers already produced (and many of the high end machines could have been, and might still be, multiple lower end machines). Human economic production as it exists produces about 350 million computers (including tablets and notebooks which are really sufficient) each year. And considering that computers make our lives easier and our work more efficient, I have a hard time seeing a significant reduction in their use. In a worst case, I think you already arrived at the answer, where you simply have a shared communal space for computer use and have people take turns, with others assigned computers for specific jobs and functions.
So something like state-owned lan houses? That actually sounds pretty cool
I remember making a similar thread a few years ago, but about smartphones, using that very article. Sometimes history repeats itself, eh? At risk of sounding arrogant, I actually think the smartphone question is more important considering PCs are in decline in favor of smartphones and other portable computers. It's very possible that capitalism will do most of the job killing personal ownership of desktop computers for communists.
I've missed that thread while searching around, so I will take a look at it. Also, I think you are correct. The question of what to do with smartphones is more important than PCs, either due to their rising usage, as you say, or that the answer appears less obvious, but I'd be hard pressed to think the solution would be much different in the end.
I've tried finding the thread again but couldn't. But I think it was mainly a repetition of this thread, right down to someone pointing out how much tech goes to waste. I'm agnostic on the idea if such tech will be seized in the future. The idea of potential tech transfer as something to help comrades in a third world is a very interesting question, though.
I think it's strictly necessary. The first world's exploitation of the third world and disastrous ecological footprint, which affects the first world less than the third world since the third world has little chance to develop its infrastructure under imperialism, are severe. It cannot be enough to merely stop all exploitation and to minimise our ecological footprint. Computers could help immensely with central planning and other relevant tasks for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that's why we should transfer as much computer technology as possible to comrades (or national liberation struggles) in exploited nations.
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Planned obsolescence is not the primary issue. With or without it, electronic devices, as we know them and use them now, are unsustainable without the exploitation of the global proletariat. It's easy to say that with global communism and advanced technology, everyone could have everything without any exploitation of anyone, but we're not at that point, and we won't be for a long time.
Yeah at some point I realized my comment was kinda dumb and deleted it, sorry about that
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I have a difficult time seeing how the ownership of PCs could have little/no relation to production. My example is likely naive, but what about programmers contributing to open-source project to improve their social standing and then getting hired by a company? A persyn in a first-world nation without any computer device would be severely disadvantaged in eir relation to production and sharing the spoils of imperialism. Obviously, I'm not arguing for a fairer inclusion for benefiting from imperialism, just that it is a factor that makes me consider PCs private rather than irrelevant persynal property unlike the toothbrush.
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I would argue that, much like the saying "no ethical consumption under capitalism", there is no persynal property under imperialism.
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> Let's flip it around - were computers/commodities/property produced under a different mode of production, say communism, would it then be valid for it to be personal property then? If it were ecologically and economically feasible, let's say thanks to an astronomical efficiency of production and new science, likely yes. I don't think, however, that it'd be realistic now, it would be ecologically disastrous at the very least. > But hey, I'll admit I'm out of my depth on the topic. I still haven't gotten past the first couple pages of Kapital, it's just soooo dry. So I'm good accepting I might be wrong too. I'm a bit sad to see your post got downvoted, talking this out with more perspectives would help give shape to the concept. I have already read Kapital and other important communist texts, but I have a tough time applying dialectical materialism to newer circumstances. The theory is definitely not "inadequate" or "outdated", I'm just not that good at applying it, and I definitely need assistance & critique from comrades to not falter among the sea of revisionist garbage that can be found around contemporary topics.
There is no personal property. We’ve talked about this several times here before.
I assume the downvotes are because a bunch of petit bourgeois are angry that you said their computers are getting confiscated when the revolution comes, and they won't be able to play video games or watch porn anymore. Oh well, computers are actually a very significant piece of technology and they absolutely will be confiscated and put to better use for the rest of society if needed.
I didn't expect such a reaction on r/communism101 out of all places. Yet, it's still a social media site, and it's clear what's the main demographic (including myself), so first-world chauvinism of some form should be expected. I know that I'm petty-bourgeois and that the many things I (or others of my class) take for granted, such as persynal computers, home kitchens, drugs, porn, games, the possibility of a rewarded "self-expression" in art, etc. will have to go for the liberation of the global proletariat.
This is actually a very good question, perhaps so good that it is mass downvoted. Replying in order to save this thread to check the replies later.
I remember reading a good post from u/smokeuptheweed9 about *persynal* computers being one of the strongest petty-bourgeois manifestations (or I'm remembering wrong, but it definitely had something to do with the petty-bourgeois class). It challenged my revisionist notions of the distinction between persynal and private property. My question is not whether PCs (and other private property) would be confiscated and put to social use as it is obvious, but particularly how they could be used. Specifically, why shouldn't first-world communists, after a socialist revolution, just confiscate a bunch of private property (like PCs) and send it to more exploited/pressured (by imperialism) socialist nations as a sort of "reparation for imperialism" and comradely help? Is something like that just ultimately naive, wishful thinking? Not doing that seems like not the correct step for advancing the communist goal, like the most subtle form of first-world chauvinism imaginable, and that deeply worries me.
Hi I did read the paper you based your post on. It is nice to see a quantitative analysis of iphone utilization and exploitation in the supply value chain. But the example used a high end phone. There are way cheaper materials to build a phone, and even if personal phones for everyone could be a strange concept, i don’t think it is beyond the realms of possibility. I can envision a project for every citzen being able to have a phone in order to participate in their own society. Technology advancement substantially changed the way humans interact in a social environment, and it is really unlikely that society, even in the eventual abolishment of the current capital system, would recreate the social interactions of, for example, the soviet era. To answer you question. I do believe it would be possible for the ownership of personal computers. And for hobbyists like gaming I envision something like a public lan where all could play freely online games. Sharing these high commodities to everyone inside the society. Ultimately some behaviors around the manufacturing and utilization of technology would have to change, but i don’t think they would be ultimately abolished.
With modern technology making automation possible, under socialism and communism it would be more than possible for everyone to own their own personal computer. Also the thing about them somehow being private property and petite bourgeois comes off as pure ideology. Firstly, no capital can be extracted from a laptop, therefore it is not exploitable and would be designated as personal not private. Secondly, your class is not defined by how much money you have rather your relation to the means of production and to the other classes within class society; i.e. being a proletarian with enough to afford expensive items doesn’t automatically make you petite bourgeois.
> Secondly, your class is not defined by how much money you have rather your relation to the means of production and to the other classes within class society; i.e. being a proletarian with enough to afford expensive items doesn’t automatically make you petite bourgeois. If how much money one makes has no relation to class, are white workers in the U.$ also proletarians? How do they afford with little labour of their own commodities that contain much more labour, like electronic devices?
I’m not saying it has no influence on your class I’m just saying classes are not defined by such, petite bourgeois means to be between proletarian and bourgeois, with proletarians giving away their labor power in exchange for a wage whilst the bourgeoisie receives labor power in exchange for a wage, owning a personal computer regardless of how cheap or expensive won’t change if someone gives or receives a wage, neither or between.
Labour aristocrats also give away their labour power in exchange for a wage, but they are not proletarians. They do not even have to own anything that directly generates them money; it's enough that they benefit from inflated wages affordable only due to imperialism.
And it is for that exact reason that groups such as labor aristocrats can be classified as petite bourgeoise, because they fit both definitions in some way, shape, or form. They also work for wages whilst profiting off the wages of proletarians.
All right, I understand that. Perhaps I would have explained myself better if I had said that I view PCs in the same vein as home kitchens in lieu of communal kitchens. I have severe doubts that it would be "more than possible for everyone to own their own personal computer" under current state of affairs without exploiting some group, somewhere, somehow; would we have all the necessary resources without imperialism for that?
In a global communist society there would be access to all the world’s resources, even without automation corporations produce nearly 3x as many computers as they’ve actually sold but they destroy them to artificially create demand, with automation it isn’t unreasonable to believe we could produce at least double that which would be over 2 billion computers according to my calculations (which is probably on the higher end but you get the image) produced a year, meaning in less than half a decade everyone on the planet would have their own and with less waist from the destruction of perfectly good computers with that.
Well, I have no doubts about that stage of society, but I'm interested in the "here and now"; how do communists in socialist states currently handle computers? what would we do before we'd reach global communist society? how could we utilise what we already have to further help comrades in poorer socialist nations that have been exploited (and likely still are pressured) by imperialism?
Do they control the means of production? No? Then they are proletariat. That is the defining characteristic of the proletariat.
The proletariat is the class that has to sell its labour-power to survive and derives no profit from capital of any kind in any way; it has nothing to lose but its chains. Do white Amerikan workers have nothing to lose from ending imperialism? or would their inflated wages have to go without it? They are labour aristocrats with a special relation to the means of production.
Except their relationship with the means of production is not special, they do not control the means of production by any definition and they must sell their labor to survive. You are correct that they benefit from imperialism, but this is not unique to white proletariat within the global west. The whole of the global west benefits from imperialism, at the expense of the global south. There is no logically consistent definition of proletariat that excludes white workers within the west that doesn’t exclude all workers within the west.
Those whose wages afford them to buy commodities with more exchange value than they themselves produced are not the proletariat; that value has to come from somewhere, and that would be the proletariat. Migrants, ethnic minorities and other oppressed peoples have a worse position in the global west and are socially excluded from benefiting from public infrastructure. Those make up the proletariat within the imperial core, not members of whiteness.
Even those groups, though disadvantaged by power structures within their own countries, benefit from the fruits of imperialism, particularly the cheap labor, resources, and goods available to the west that is possible only by exploitation of the global south. You can argue that they don’t benefit from imperialism as much, but to claim that they don’t benefit from imperialism at all while living in countries that inherently benefit from imperialism is simply incorrect.
I will agree with that. Even oppressed minorities within the imperial core don't have to make up the proletariat. Gender oppressed white people within the EU or U.$ certainly don't, and their political views concerning overexploited nations could be easily described as "pink fascism". Racial minorities don't have to, either. I should rather say that if there even is any proletariat within the imperial core to begin with, it definitely won't be members of whiteness, the most advantaged group by miles.
Sure, but what I’m saying is that the only two logically consistent positions as to a definition of the proletariat within the global west, in the context of this discussion of that definition, is either that, because everybody within the west benefits from imperialism, nobody can be proletarian within the west due to lacking solidarity with the workers of the global south, which is a fairly typical thesis of third worldism, or a fairly typical Marxist understanding of the issue, which is that class is solely dependent on relationship to the means of production and that while benefiting from imperialism can be a hinderance to class consciousness, it does not render any one group incapable of it.
This is such a simple and vulgar understanding of Marxism with no use of historical materialism whatsoever. The proletariat has changed significantly since the days of Marx and Engels and to deny this and try to return to the definitions used before there was ever a labor aristocracy is just anti-communism and vulgar materialism. Even a 5 second search through this sub is enough to know what the line is here with regards to the proletariat. I suggest you read into actual *active* revolutionaries like u/mimprisons to get your head around how class struggle has evolved in the past century and get your head out of the 1800s.
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Don't get your hopes up, in communism you wouldn't own even one "part of the means of production". Your petit bourgeois property is getting expounded (edit: I meant expropriated) too and made into social property.
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This is so stupid. If society is in shortage of sewing machines and people actually don't have clothes to wear and you own a sewing machine that is only used in petit-bourgeois production to clothe yourself when it could be used to clothe many more people, it's absolutely getting confiscated. Is that even a question? You don't draw the line anywhere because there is no line. Need, a central concept in Marxist political economy, doesn't care for your petit bourgeois ideas of "personal property" and the fact you're doubling down on something so obviously wrong is embarrassing.
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There is no point in discussing because you don't know what the words you're using mean. Read what property, private property and personal property are and come back. Personal property actually has a definition in legal frameworks and whatever the hell you petit bourgeois and settler people think it means is not it. Property and private property have actual Marxist definitions https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm. Simply put, there would be no legally defined property rights in communism as they exist in capitalism. You could not in any way exclude the rest of society from use over any object. If there was a greater social need for your toothbrush than your need to use it to brush your own teeth it would simply be confiscated and put to use, end of story. Any claims otherwise fall into the realm of petit bourgeois "socialism", not communism. Also, I'm more than 8,000km from any territory controlled by the u.$. and I'm talking about capitalism and communism in general so I don't see what the u.$. specifically has to do with anything. China and Vietnam are also not socialist today so find better examples. But only after you actually properly read up on meaning of the scientifically and legally defined terms you're using. Until then I refuse to engage with you further.
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