This is the thing that is so curious about the concept of the general strike/siezing the means of production.

The workers already have seized the means of production. I mean truly. Owner does not have the keys. Some manager unlocks the building for the day. Workers show up to the farm. Everything gets done every day whether the owner is there or across the globe or some dubious llc entity. The only thing the owner functionally does, is to be an address on file to send their cut of the profits. Nothing more than a specially designated furnace to burn a subset of the monthly revenue, at least in terms of their actual interaction with their business and their businesses interaction with themselves.

Socialism is as easy as people waking up, going to work as usual, and not mailing that check to the owner. And having the owner go to the police, who in turn tell them "Awe shucks." These are the only conditions for socialism in 2026. Same as they were in 1926. So tantalizingly possible if people were just on board with it and not beholden to capitalism. Propaganda is why there are a subset of workers who will continue to diligently burn revenue for the owner, and why police will ultimately make the choice to sacrifice their own lives for the petty profits of this ownership class versus consider their own position in this world.

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nostrademons 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Usually socialist revolutions fail because nobody can agree on who the new leaders should be. Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves.

We saw this with Occupy Wall Street and the CHAZ in the U.S - these protests didn't fail because they were crushed, they failed because local police basically let them win and then once they won different factions had different ideas of what to do next. We also see it at the state level with the Soviet Union (where a strong dictatorship did eventually emerge - the communist revolution didn't mean everybody was equal, it just meant some people were more equal than others) and in Vietnam (which became intensely capitalist less than 15 years after the communists won.

The function of the business owner, CEO, or other executive figure is simply to be a symbol of which direction the organization needs to go. They don't do any work themselves, and they are selected for their ability to look pretty and shout platitudes that other people follow. But that symbol is needed to actually get the people moving in one direction.

	▲	asdff 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Workers seize control of the means of production...and then what? Who determines what they should do with it? Who do they look to for guidance? If you elect/appoint/select someone, now they are the new capitalist. If you don't, the machinery sits idle while various factions fight amongst themselves. And then what is you do what you would have done at work yesterday, today. Same job description as you had previously. Your manager? Same as they were yesterday too. Everything exactly the same. Just some guy you never see is not getting their passive income. No machinery would sit idle for the same reason no machinery sat idle yesterday: people showed up to run it. This is sort of how it worked in Cuba. Factories were nationalized and people went from working for the man to working for the public. And then the man had no government that would listen to them either. They had to go to the US government, argue that this was some great taking if left unanswered would sure happen all over the US and the rest of the world, and a hasty invasion designed by the US for these business owners to feign any political responsibility was designed, executed, and pushed back on the beachhead by the Cubans. Today the nation of Cuba remains sanctioned because of these owners from decades ago and their descendants, who still represent a significant political influence in south florida congressional districts, still feel like they were robbed by the people they were exploiting.