Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna’s Archive


It’s so wierd being like “okay so I believe that all the problems are caused by capitalism but still you are horrible at managing your finances” to my family.
You shouldn’t have to be “good at managing your finances” in an economically just world. You would have all your basic needs provided for at no cost. Money would only be used to buy things that you want but don’t need. The worst you could do if you were “financially irresponsible” is squandering the money you get for spending on leisure and recreation, on things that don’t fulfill you. No one could go broke because there would be no bills to pay. Oh, and gambling would be banned of course.
I mean both can technically be true.
No one chooses to be poor but bad financial decisions can make a bad situation worse. Given that we live in a capitalist system it does stand to reason that we should try to avoid poor spending habits since that can make life harder for us. When capitalism is gone that may no longer be the case, but sadly capitalism isn’t gone yet and we have to operate within it by the conditions it sets for us.
Which sucks, sure, but this is a constant throughout history. The feudal lords didn’t care if the peasants were personally pacifists; they got conscripted into the levies regardless and it was either serve the lord in war time or hang by the neck until death and until the pacifists were ready to have the lord lynched, burn his castle, and seize his wealth the choice was death, service, or banditry.
Think of it in the context of that “we should improve society somewhat” comic.