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An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
171–180 of 353 posts
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#172I believe that the best antidote for this utterly bullshit marxist propaganda is ESR[0]'s essay "Why hackers should eject SWJs". Please take time to read this (and, if you like it, other his essays): http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context. But it is important to remember these are embodied roles and not character traits . I.e., a laborer becomes a consumer when they leave their place of employment to drive to the grocery store.
> Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context. Sure one can. One can be a "laborer" in the sense of spending one's working hours doing work for an employer instead of starting a startup or owning your own company, and also be a capitalist in that same context in the sense of using your skills as bargaining power with your employer to get the best return on t…
Using one's skills as bargaining power does not make one a capitalist. That person is still a laborer, their skills are the means of production. Capitalists control the means of production, laborers are the means.
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#174I'm all on board for expanding the class consciousness in our profession, but I feel like "get a union" is much better advice than "stop writing documentation".
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smart businesses know that in order to prosper, you have to make win-win deals. Free market economies grow and prosper because people are making win-win deals. Win-lose deals are the path to poverty and misery.
The point is that capital is currently trying to change the deal to win-lose and it's stupid to carry on as if we're still in the win-win glory days.
If you think you're on the losing end, say "no".
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Capitalist vs laborer is a true dichotomy, in that one cannot be both simultaneously within one context. Sure one can. One can be a "laborer" in the sense of spending one's working hours doing work for an employer instead of starting a startup or owning your own company, and also be a capitalist in that same context in the sense of using your skills as bargaining power with your employer to get the best return on t…
You really don't understand what a capitalist is, do you? Fortunately, I have enlisted ChatGPT to help you! p0pcult: Explain what Karl Marx would tell a five year old a capitalist is ChatGPT: Karl Marx would tell a five year old that a capitalist is someone who owns a business and makes money by hiring people to work for them and selling the things they make for a profit. The capitalist gets rich, while the workers w…
> This is what Karl Marx calls "exploitation."
Karl Marx himself knew he was peddling bullshit; he once told Engels, "I have of course so worded my proposition as to be right either way."
The real tragedy is that several generations of intellectuals swallowed his bullshit hook, line, and sinker, and in the 20th century well north of a hundred million people died as a result. I would hope we have figured out by now that that philosophy doesn't work.
> Capitalists acquire wealth, passively, by owning things.
Then by that definition, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, etc. are not capitalists, because they created things, they didn't just passively sit there and acquire ownership of things that already existed.
(Btw, even ChatGPT appears to get this since, in the very passage you italicized, it talks about "investment".)
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#177I believe that the best antidote for this utterly bullshit marxist propaganda is ESR[0]'s essay "Why hackers should eject SWJs". Please take time to read this (and, if you like it, other his essays): http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
Written in 2015, with ESR's typical naive-utopian ideas about "hacker culture". The whole point of TFA is that the corporations that employ the people who, at this point, make up "hacker culture" have shown their hand, and it looks very different when you can see the cards instead of the backs of their hand.
But also, the "SWJs" that ESR is talking about have almost nothing to do with the class warfare described in TFA. If you think they do, you don't understand SWJs or the marxist-sense of class warfare.
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#178I mean, apart from the highfalutin class warfare nonsense and generally bad advice, this is a pretty decent post. I completely agree that over the past 30-40 years, companies have been pushing down engineering salaries. It's not really as incendiary as the author might have you believe, though. Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it'…
> It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it's becoming more like being a plumber.
That's quite a dramatic change. Maybe it is inevitable because most jobs not involve computers.
> In the capitalist game, being an employee is never going to be a way to garner any real amount of wealth
In the capitalist game, being an employee is the only avaliable starting position to 95% of the population. It it does not allow a way to garner any real amount of wealth, then we cannot have social mobility and best people getting to the top. Then we are all poorer.
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#179all good but he forgot the most important thing: unionization
Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's plenty of evidence[1]; but more importantly, when putting stagnating salaries in the context of housing prices, CPI, and inflation, it becomes even more jarring. Today, as an engineer making 125-175k in LA, for example, you will literally never be able to purchase a home near to where you work. [1] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/it-jobs-are-no-longer-exceptional
I thought this might be the trick that would get pulled. House price inflation is a completely inappropriate measure. House prices are not kept stupidly high by the 1% or capital class but by the 50.1% that vote against allowing any kind of building anywhere near an existing house, not near an existing house or that, heav'n forfend, might endanger the habitat of the lesser spotted newt.
I don't think you can separate the behavior of the voting public from the conditions imposed on them by the capital class and the propaganda they feed us through their media properties.