Hey folks!

I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.

Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.

However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.

Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.

I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.

If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.

Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!

  • barsoap@lemm.ee
    24·
    22 days ago

    drag quite clearly has stated that “Marx was an Anarchist.” This is wrong.

    Absolutely.

    The insistence that managers make up a distinct class is more of an Anarchist thing than a Marxist one, as adopting such analysis would be similar to calling plumbers and elictricians their own classes in and of themselves, rather than substratums.

    Plumbers are not in a power hierarchy relationship to electricians so that’s a strawman.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      61·
      22 days ago

      Class isn’t “power hierarchy” in Marxist analysis, though. That’s an Anarchist interpretation, one I won’t say you can’t hold personally as valid, but that’s not the Marxist critique. Engels and Lenin specifically called managers Labor aristocracy as they are necessary aspects of large industry, and not a class in themselves. Class instead is a social relation to ownership of the Means of Production.

      In the “Administration of Things,” as Engels puts it, there are to be administrators, and production along a common plan. It’s through this that large industry under Capitalism paves the way for the transition to Socialism, and then Communism, socialized production requires an informed plan.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
        22·
        22 days ago

        Class instead is a social relation to ownership of the Means of Production.

        And the managerial class doesn’t have that? Is it easier or harder for an MBA to get a loan to become a millionaire than it is for a worker coop? To furnish golden parachutes for themselves while leaving workers with not even the dole (heard of some nasty practices in the US, there, making people ‘quit without cause’ by bullying etc which would disqualify them from welfare).

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          51·
          22 days ago

          Is an Engineer a class? They make better money than assembly workers. The answer is no, Engineers are a substratum of the Proletariat, worthy of their own analysis, but not as distinct from the rest of the Proletariat. That’s why Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc all viewed managers as proletarian, doing a separate kind of labor, and even distinct living conditions on average, but retaining the same labor relations to the Means of Production.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
            22·
            22 days ago

            but retaining the same labor relations to the Means of Production.

            So you’re saying that there’s no difference in things like capital access. “Same relations” implying “no difference, nada, zilch”. I don’t find that assessment compatible with the material conditions we live under.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
              51·
              22 days ago

              One proletarian has the strength of two average proletarians. Does he constitute his own distinct class, as he can leverage that for somewhat higher pay, and therefore eventually become petty bourgeois? No. Again, we can see specialized labor as a substratum, but to confuse it for a class in and of itself goes against the Marxist conception of class.

              Now, if you define class as relations of hierarchy, there’s no dissonance, and we can consider managers their own class. But at that point, we have to be careful not to trip over each other’s understanding of class when discussing Marxism vs Anarchism.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
                22·
                22 days ago

                One proletarian has the strength of two average proletarians.

                That’s a relationship to a crate or to barbells, not to capital or the means of production.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                  51·
                  22 days ago

                  I already explained how this can cascade into a different relationship at a rate more advantageous than the average proletarian, as you already saw fit to distinguish classes.