WaterBear [they/them, comrade/them]

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: May 13th, 2021

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  • I am for what you describe, but that isn’t what is written:

    “Electing or dismissing employee directors and employee supervisors, electing employee representatives to meetings of creditors and creditors’ committees of the enterprise subject to bankruptcy proceedings in accordance with the law, and recommending or electing management personnel of the enterprise as authorized;”

    Could mean those that employees vote in (which are not all), could also mean all that have power over employees but I doubt it. Reads like the German and swedish phrasing of the two categories: employee directors (those that are elected by the employees) and “owner” directors (which are elected by shares).

    The law has less ability to punish and gold accountable individuals and strengthens more the collective worker organs and gives more information, as well as representation and participation.


  • “China has made all companies worker-controlled. I would show this article to anyone that claims otherwise. This is worker democracy.”

    No. Don’t overhype yourself in idealist ways cause you want the CPC settle handedly now to introduce full worker control.

    This law is a good step and would be great for counties like the US. However it isn’t worker control, far from it. Sadly.

    It gives institutionalized organs für the workers, which convene rarely, but have mandates to convene, which is good. It is unclear what punishment is if they don’t. It is also unclear what powers they have, as for example the German model for large companies has a minority of board members be worker council elected (more or less). However within the board they are a minority. Here it is written, that the company shareholders don’t have a say in election of that portion. This means it isn’t worker control.

    It is an option though to create instruments that might be formalized to express that companies worker’s wishes. This is course will have structural problems i.e. who is allowed to vote, talk, what is with internal conflicts, what is with competition between that company and others or the conflict between members of that company and those not employed in it?

    For those questions the presented solution is the trade union of that company, which means a structured entity. It isn’t clear how exactly that is meant, as the conception of unions varies a lot. I doubt it is the US conception and think it might be more aligned with the bigger unions in China, but derived from their members of that company.

    To further align the workers with a struggle that is not only focused on that company the membership within the communist party for some is quite relevant. This is what real socialist countries often encouraged. China has therefore, with it’s high membership count, a different condition than if the concept would’ve just been copied.

    The obligations to coerce relevant people and information though is an important step to establish workers control and participation in the companies.

    I welcome the spirit of the law as presented by OP, but urge you to not view laws that are stepping stones as the goal already. Details, implementation and practice matters.

    There are reasons the law doesn’t go further so that it actually is (full) worker control. Capital is still relevant in China, both domestic (even though managed) and international (with mechanisms to reduce capital flight, but not well controlled). This law therefore does try to not scare International capital in practice too much. Talk of worker control (then making the most important decisions) is sadly still propaganda.

    The law, if it really got obligations for all companies to create this assemblies would go further then the German law, as that exempts plenty of small companies that account for a majority of companies, even though not a majority of employees. Germany also has no real mechanism to hinder a medium sized company to make smaller ones to slip through.

    according to the Provisions on Democratic Governance of Enterprises, relevant local regulations, and subject to the number of its employees.

    This means that it mirrors the German law a bit and could include local exemptions i.e. special economic zones.

    But none the less:

    is set out in national law for the first time.

    Current German laws with by having a worker’s council elected (sounds cooler than it is often, cause it dissipates anger a bit and makes wild organizing hard), which has the right to request management to talk and inform, but sadly no access to books. They can convene workers assemblies (paid assemblies of the whole employees) multiple times per year is necessary, but also has minimums occurrences required by law. There is too little punishment for hindering those established laws, as the German state is neoliberal in many aspects.

    I encourage you to talk to experts of our side in labor relations and see what you can demand from that new law within your company. Also see what structural differences in terms of unions, membership, party membership, co existing laws and judicial system exist, as well as rights to strike, to healthcare and alike.

    Within the US as within Germany democracy end at the gate to the workplace. To quote century old writers.





  • Literally posting Nazi propaganda. Both of the NSDAP and Neo Nazis after the war. You can do better. The way you frame the transfers - without mentioning the alternative of death etc. - is the big problem. Don’t weaken your retelling and analysis by such antisemitic errors you could fix by investing more time.

    Quickly after the grab of power the NSDAP started to further physical violence, political, economic and financial repression against their declared enemies. Which includes people assigned as Jewish, socialists and others. The most embellished scape goat were the Jews (as declared earlier with that I mean assigned Jewish).

    The freezing of people’s money, arisation (“Arisierung”), and alike were policies implemented early on (a fraction off the money stolen was what was allowed to leave the country), the stochastic physical violence of the years before 1933 (which was still partially planned by the nazi policies) was supplemented with structured more intense violence. This includes the construction of concentration camps, which political enemies face fast, too, and multiple aligning plans, including several kinds of physical extermination, but were flanked with PR of being law abiding, PR of not having laws that undue restrict Jews.

    In fact the Nazis took a cut from money transfers (else they wouldn’t unfreeze money, or effectively force family members to go into debt to get Ausreisevisa (passports allowing to leave the country)). The majority of the in antiemetic propaganda (literally the term the Nazis used) termed capitalist visas was used by people fleeing their physical extermination, going deeply into debt too acquire the necessary money to pay to leave the country.

    Within the Jewish community the question of whether one ought to work together with authorities which were already crushing down on Jews and in later phases openly exterminated Jews was widely discussed. The voices which spoke against taking refugee were when the people didn’t flee silenced in the vast majority within the Shoa. The visas were a way out for some.

    Are the war the Nazis started to produce contradicting multifaceted antiseptic propaganda and tried to combine antisemitism, anti brit, “anti colonial” (well nazi Germany at the good colonial power), nationalist, warrior ethos of Islam (without any deep understanding of Islam) bits and distributed them within the MENA region.

    Like in plenty regions the Nazis has power a part of the population did actively further those propaganda items. While there were of course also people joining the Allied forces military power (including the British military which was still essential for colonialist power projection), plenty did join the Nazis, too, or took military and political courses in the third Reich. The discussion in other words ought to not paint broad strokes, but look at the mechanisms which furthered sub classes and differentiation of political groups (secular, socialist, anti colonial, nationalist, religious, Islamist etc.)

    Within the region there are plenty examples of helping nazi policies (i.e. expropriation of Jews or even deportations), while in North African Holocaust discourse the exceptions are highlighted and repressions diminished. During the war 450k Jews lived in northern Africa. I want to note that while the intellectual sphere in Egypt was diverse, too, the public intellectuals were establishing good collective antifascism, sadly with less socialist influences than could be hoped for at that time (ie “DEMON AND INFIDEL Egyptian Intellectuals Confronting Hitler and Nazism during World War II by Israel Gershoni”)

    A side note: During the 1930s the Soviet Union would send socialists and Jews back to Germany, leading to their imprisonment, torture and extermination. Why that happened is a complex question and neither previous Russian and then Soviet antisemitism in the wide population are a single explanation (we remember Lenin’s speech against antisemitism), nor antisemitism of the party or it’s leadership explain it enough. The pressure to remain somewhat entangled with the Nazis economically during preparation for war also played a role in accepting Nazi demands.

    Imagine how much more strongly those real power decisions have to be done when you are within the grasp of the Nazi regime and want to get your family, loved ones and family out. A reading of the “Kapitaltransferabkommen” without context is easily repeating Nazi propaganda and we can do better.

    Of course the Jewish refugees from the regime had a right to flee and societies and states which hindered them (or turned back ships of refugees) did further the Holocaust.



  • This is a bad article. It takes disputed things as fact, ignores - even if we take the proclaimed author as author - his actions and critique of antifascism (which was demoting antifascism) in Italy.

    The article is also problematic for factual historical errors, content errors and themes aligning to Holocaust denial. In the east the vast majority of victims of the Shoa were killed by directly, outside of labor-extermination camps.

    There could be a lot more to be said, but surplus exploitation and crisis isn’t enough to explain the Shoa and it is also wrong that Hitler as result of Jewish congresses did start extermination conferences.

    We wouldn’t explain slavery and colonialism in the USA just with mechanist ideas of capitalism. The interplay, continuities, etc. do matter. Fifty years after the linked article was published is enough time to not reproduce it, but instead focus on works that are good.