Lemmy is a decentralized, FOSS platform built by a Communist explicitly as an answer to Reddit. The people on Lemmy trend leftward, obviously, but that's because the very foundation is a rejection of Capitalism. If you want Capitalist Lemmy, there's Reddit.

FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.

Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastadon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.

Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.

Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.

[–] MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

FOSS itself is leftist, and a rejection of Capitalism. The ability for the users to simply fork off if they don't like the way something is heading is precisely an advantage of leftist organization, which is impossible with Capitalist Reddit.

Again, I find such statements very interesting, especially given that you so firmly rejected competition as inherently capitalist and undesirable. Because being able to just take something and fork it actually encourages competition. If I don't like where a project is headed, and I can take their code and make my own version, and if I do a better job at it than the original maintainers, I could even outclass them. Isn't that exactly the type of stuff you hate about capitalism?

Truth Social and Gab are built on Mastodon, yes. FOSS itself is a rejection of Capitalism, Capitalists going in and taking advantage of existing leftist infrastructure doesn't mean the infrastructure itself is Capitalist.

No, but it isn't inherently anti-Capitalist either, and that was my point. Also, they're both playing by the rules and making their source code available as required by the GPL, although AFAIK it DID take some legal threats before they complied. Commercial exploitation of FOSS is something that's explicitly allowed by most licenses, and Lemmy's is no different. They could have chosen one that forbids such things, but they did not.

Your last paragraph is a complete non-sequitor. Much of the USSR was indeed a failure, there was a ludicrous amount of corruption at the Politburo level, and the further up you went the less democratic it was, as only local Soviets were purely democratically accountable to the Workers. With each rung you went up, it was less accountable to the Workers. However, absolutely none of what you say about competition, the USSR, or otherwise follows logically.

Your style of argumentation and tenuous grasp on logic never fails to baffle me. So you agree that Soviet Russia was an abject failure and had nothing to do with "real" communism, and you also seem to agree that the Fediverse is a much better representation of it, but then you simply reject all my other conclusions without feeling the need to even explain that at all. Sorry, but I find this entirely unconvincing.

Communism itself doesn't depend on everyone following in lock-step, Capitalism does.

But if everyone ISN'T in lockstep then there might be... dare I say it... competition? And I thought that was a capitalist concept entirely.

[–] Cowbee@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago

I don't hate competition for the sake of competition. The goal of FOSS is cooperation until something becomes less than desirable, as the goal is a good product. With Capitalism, the goal is profit, and as such destabilization and competition are required. With FOSS, a new fork is only done for a better product, not for profit-seeking.

Commercial exploitation of an anti-Capitalist option does not mean the option is not anti-Capitalist. FOSS is a rejection of IP a la Capitalism, and a rejection of the profit motive.

I understand that trying to argue with sound logic is difficult for you, after all, nothing you've said has logically followed. Enough of being cheeky, though. The USSR was a specific model of Marxist-Leninist Socialism, they never reached Communism as Communism is a Stateless, Classless, moneyless society. They did many things right, like giving workers far more control, and providing free Healthcare and education. They also had many huge problems, like massive corruption at the Politburo level, and atrocities committed by government officials like the Katyn Massacre and Stalin's Purges. As such, I believe the USSR provides a wealth of information on what aspects did work, and what aspects were terrible. I do not want to recreate the USSR, nor use it as a template. I want to learn from it and create something far better.

You're confusing market competition for Capitalism. Capitalism requires competition and rejects cooperation, Socialism has both when it needs to. Capitalism cannot function without competition.

I understand that leftist theory can be hard to understand if you aren't at all familiar. I suggest reading leftist theory before trying to talk about it on social media as though you're saying something profound. It only comes off as profoundly ignorant.