r/technology • u/marketrent • 1d ago

Site altered title “ALL HAIL CHAIRMAN TRUMP! WITH HIS GLORIOUS 10% PURCHASE OF INTEL, THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF AMERICA ENTERS A BOLD NEW ERA” -- California governor Newsom riles Republicans with Trump-trolling posts

https://www.barrons.com/news/meme-lord-newsom-riles-republicans-with-trump-trolling-posts-05b74794
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u/Electrical_Top656 1d ago

the differentiating variable between capitalism and socialism is the ownership of the means of production, private hands in capitalism and the people/state in socialism

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u/Hettie933 1d ago

Yeah, but this is neither of those. Most of his supporters wouldn’t understand what it really is, so it’s smart to label it communism. Not that it will change what is left of their minds.

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u/telthetruth 1d ago

It’s fucking fascism. An authoritarian government is taking stake in a company to ensure it functions for their benefit.

Socialism implies that the government will take control of a utility to become a public service to benefit all. Intel is not a public fuckin utility and this will benefit no one outside of the oligarchy.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 1d ago

It’s fucking fascism. An authoritarian government is taking stake in a company to ensure it functions for their benefit.

The specific reason why this government is doing is of course sus, but I don't think "owning strategically vital industries" is such a bad thing for states to do, even from a left wing perspective. It means there's potentially more accountability and political control over things that are important for the country to keep functioning even in time of crisis - which can be democratic accountability if the country's democracy is healthy (which is not in this case, but different story).

Saying that chips aren't vital in this day is delusional.

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u/Immabed 1d ago

If this investment keeps Intel from toppling it absolutely does serve everyone, at least everyone who ever buys a computer. If Intel topples we lose global competition in CPU's and TSMC becomes the only place to go for cutting edge semi-conductor fabrication. That causes CPU stagnation and jacks up prices, at least if we look at historical examples.

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u/magnoliasmanor 1d ago

Intel was not going under though. This isn't GM in 2008.

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u/Immabed 18h ago

Intel is on a trajectory to sell off it's foundry business.

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u/randylush 1d ago

Eh… the US government owning a stake in Intel is a poor investment, but come on, it’s not fascism lol

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u/gmes78 1d ago

By itself, no, it isn't.

In context, however, it's yet another similarity to fascist governments of the past.

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u/4dxn 1d ago

its both. politics is a spectrum, not absolute. i can't think of a fully capitalist or socialist country. even north korea who is generally a socialist country has a lot of private ownership outside the country (the kim family does at least).

countries are in between, they are both. this is an example of private and public hands owning the means of production.

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

if everything is "both" then the terms have no meaning.

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u/4dxn 1d ago

but if everything is neither, the terms have meaning?

when has socialism and capitalism been mutually exclusive?

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

You have to use material analysis to consider if a country is capitalist or socialist. America for instance is ran by the rich, who write our laws and control our political parties. Because the rich are running everything, and never are prosecuted for their crimes, I can pretty comfortably say we live in a capitalist country.

Meanwhile in China, the rich are actually prosecuted / given death penalties for working against the interests of the Chinese people. Not to mention rural land is all either government owned or controlled by collectives of farmers; private ownership of this sector is abolished, which lends more credence to them being a socialist country. Also they are ran by a communist party lmao

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u/Holovoid 1d ago

Meanwhile in China, the rich are actually prosecuted / given death penalties for working against the interests of the Chinese people.

Man, if fucking only we would punish people with 1/10000th of this energy in the US

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

It will never happen until we get rid of the political system we have. It's designed rn such that democrats are just "republican-lite" and they'll never give us what we actually want / need. Plus they just shift further right along with republicans, but at a slightly slower pace so that they always look to be the "better" option

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u/theshadowiscast 1d ago

Plus they just shift further right along with republicans

How have they shifted right?

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u/IsaacLightning 16h ago

?? They dropped the "progressive" act they had in the Obama administration, no support for Universal Healthcare or anything actually progressive, they now support the border wall (was in Kamala's platform for 2024), no support for minimum wage increase anymore, etc etc. They're just republican "lite". Oh and now they've been throwing trans people under the bus, blaming them for the election loss and now deciding to fuck over trans people in sports

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u/Rich_Housing971 1d ago

it's called a mixed economy.

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

"so it's smart to lie about it" ??? what

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u/adthrowaway2020 1d ago

It’s like Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Private market but the government must own large parts of the business.

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

Yes, which is good. And it's been working exceptionally well

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u/Hettie933 1d ago

It’s a joke in a troll post, dude. What are you worried about?

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

Lol by that logic are trump's unhinged tweets / posts "troll posts"? Cause that's the republican defense.

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u/Hettie933 1d ago

I really don’t understand why this joke makes you so mad. I have only ever voted for Newsom with resignation, but he is making fun of how they use terms without understanding what they mean. He is making fun of Trump shaking down Intel by calling it a word they hate, and assuming that some of the more intelligent of them may have a moment or two of cognitive dissonance before they get their talking points via Fox News. It’s not that deep.

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u/IsaacLightning 16h ago

I mean I get that, I suppose. But many liberals genuinely believe shit like this is "communist", so I don't think the joke lands as well when his own voters believe it. Plus why not just call him a Nazi lmao? Would be more accurate, especially given the Nazi's corporatist government

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u/wildwildwumbo 1d ago

This is just bolstering a business that is deemed "too big to fail" like when the auto makers had to give up some of their shares as a condition of their bail out in after 2008 financial disaster.

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u/baconcheeseburgarian 1d ago

Intel didnt need a bailout. This was a shakedown.

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u/FoodLionDrPerky 1d ago

Yeah, they kinda did. Intel has been losing money year after year. There's also national security interests and of course good old fashioned corruption in there too, but Intel's not been doing so hot for a while now unfortunately.

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u/baconcheeseburgarian 1d ago

That doesnt mean they needed a bailout. Businesses struggle and need to adjust their business models.

Can you provide any evidence they needed or asked for a bailout? Trump tried to force the CEO to resign then got a 10% stake.

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u/Asleep_Floor 1d ago

Intel has been in decline but my understanding is that they qualified for loans in the CHIPS act that trump has now converted to shares of the company. They needed those loans to stay afloat so it was definitely a shake down.

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u/kingofshitmntt 1d ago

It also doesnt make it socialism either.

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u/baconcheeseburgarian 1d ago

The GOP called it socialism when Obama sent billions to Detroit in the 2008 crash.

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u/kingofshitmntt 1d ago

Yes and it wasn't socialism then either. Hence why all this is fucking stupid lol.

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u/baconcheeseburgarian 1d ago edited 1d ago

Newsom is satirizing Trump and the GOP who called this kind of thing socialism in the past.

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u/Leelze 23h ago

Yeah, that's why the rest of us recognize it as nothing more than Newsom's people making a joke.

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u/4dxn 1d ago

lol what? intel only lost money in 2024. not sure how one year equates to year after year.

Intel Net Income 2010-2025 | INTC | MacroTrends

prior to 24, they've made money almost every year.

0

u/wildwildwumbo 1d ago

The company has lost like 60% of it's value since 2021. They got almost $9 billion dollars with this deal. If this is a shakedown then please shake me down as well. 

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u/baconcheeseburgarian 1d ago

That doesnt mean they were going bankrupt or that it was a bailout.

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u/kingofshitmntt 1d ago

No one wants to acknowledge that the government owning a stake in a company is not fucking socialism. This is so stupid.

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u/ForensicPathology 1d ago

Everything is socialism to the target audience.  If they have enough brainpower to "um actually" this, then maybe some of them won't be so quick to call everything else socialism (not likely)

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u/Leelze 23h ago

Y'all don't want to acknowledge that it's a joke mocking MAGA & their "it's socialism!" fear mongering when talking about anything they don't like.

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u/kingofshitmntt 18h ago

people are literally trying to rationalize it into being an actual example of socialism, i dont think its having the effect you think it is. Nationalization isnt a bad thing. The fossil fuel industry should be nationalized but now thinking that having a 10% non voting share is similar to nationalism and is what Trump is doing is a net negative on the ideological battlefield.

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u/Leelze 18h ago

Yup, plenty of idiots out there, just like there are idiots who think socialism is communism or Democrats want to turn the US into Cuba. But it's still a joke 🤷‍♂️

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u/Outrageous-Orange007 1d ago

Its called state directed capitalism and its what China has.

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u/sw00pr 1d ago

Is it still "socialism" if the state is not in the hands of the people?

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u/Iohet 1d ago

You could make that argument with Venezuela, but I think it's a bit harder in the US given the 2024 voting results

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u/sw00pr 1d ago

And the polls too, I guess. While not a majority there is still a significant portion that support these policies.

Follow-up question: If a democracy votes for an autocrat, should supporters of democracy step aside and let it happen? ...It's only consistent to do so. But it don't feel right...

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u/Iohet 1d ago

Step aside? Absolutely not. But we're still within the elected term, so it's hard to argue that this isn't the majority's will, for better or for worse (obviously for worse for those who would like to continue being a democracy)

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u/Arndt3002 1d ago

Well, we still called the USSR communist despite being in control of a vanguard party that pretends to be, but is not at all, controlled by the will of the people.

In fact, that's a predominating aspect of Marxist-Lenninist theory, that the people can't actually run things themselves and need a "dictatorship of the Proletariat" to control things for them.

But in a sense, I guess, since it all sort of hinges on who "the people" are and what "their will" is, which often is just code for "things I like" whether you're a right or left wing authoritarian.

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u/Noughmad 1d ago

Well, we still called the USSR communist

We called it communist, but that's not what they called themselves. The ruling party was communist, but "communism" was a promised end state they were trying to move towards, not the economic model they had. The republics were socialist, which does mean public/shared ownership of the means of production.

However, even Lenin himself realized that the state owning everything does not mean that people control it. He even described their system as "state capitalism", as in, the state is the only capitalist, and workers/people are not in control. The fact that a big factor in its collapse was a giant workers' union protest also doesn't help their case.

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u/Chrontius 1d ago

<alwayshasbeen.meme>

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u/Continental__Drifter 1d ago

State ownership of the means of production is state capitalism, not socialism.

The differentiating variable between capitalism and socialism is that the means of production are controlled by a class other than the workers themselves, and operated for profit to exact profit from the workers.

The exploiting class can operate within a market economy (e.g. USA), or directly control the state (e.g. China, USSR), but they're both capitalism, just different forms.

The distinguishing factor between capitalism and socialism isn't "does the state control the economy or not", it is "are economic forces meaningfully controlled by all those who labor in it or not".

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u/DutchMuffin 1d ago

this is the state doing capitalism, so it's just state-capitalism (which, btw, was mostly what the USSR was). if 10% of the company was in an ESOP, that might be closer to socialism

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u/marketrent 1d ago

“It certainly looks like MAGA is going Marxist if not even Maoist, especially across Trump’s vicious personal targeting of individual business leaders; government crackdown on business freedom of expression; weaponization of government powers; apparent extortion of businesses; and insertion of government into an unprecedented, outsized role in private sector strategic investment, capital flows and business decision-making.”

-- Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld with former Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper, former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, former Medtronic CEO Bill George, and Laura Tyson, former chairman of the White House Counsel of Economic Advisers.

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u/kingofshitmntt 1d ago

Stupid. How is MAGA going Marxist? Marxism is a critique of capitalism. None of what he's doing is anything remotely related to "marxism".

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u/Chrontius 1d ago

Practical Marxism and theoretical Marxism bear a resemblance to one another, but shitty people are easily corrupted and usually crave power over others.

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u/Arndt3002 1d ago

It's not Marxist in a theoretical or ideological sense.

It's "Marxist" in a very specific sense of being a dictatorship of the Proletariat in the process of waging a class war along nontraditional lines. Their proletariat being the "white working class" who want to fight a war against "the elites" and the professional managerial class. This is fought by, for example, attacking "the citadel" of academia and "liberal consultants" as a sort of force of bourgeois elitism (such attacks being compared to Maoist attacks on traditional cultural institutions).

They want to attain this through centralization of governmental power via a dictatorial state that represents their interests, including through collectivization/nationalization of industries they see as running counter to their interests.

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u/randylush 1d ago

Maoist then

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u/Youutternincompoop 1d ago

wow that is an incredibly stupid opinion.

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u/IsaacLightning 1d ago

This guy hasn't read Mao or Marx, lmao

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u/Ass4ssinX 1d ago

Sounds like another person who doesn't know Marxism or Maoism.

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u/templethot 1d ago

Classic “Marxism is when the government does something I don’t like”

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u/kingofshitmntt 1d ago

Dude this whole discourse around the government owning a stake in a company - a non voting 10% share being full blown communism is so fucking stupid.

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u/aqtseacow 1d ago

It is also entirely in line with other countries owning large portions of their essential and even non-essential Industries. Just look at most of Europe, significant portions of their media, banking, mining sectors all have some level of state/municipal ownership involved.

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u/reasonrob 1d ago

Liberals hate socialism too, and are just as confounded by it as fascists.

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u/Chrontius 1d ago

America turned a profit on turning around Ford, we can do something like that again.

(Will we? Naaaah, probably not)

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u/randylush 1d ago

Wait til people learn about Amtrak lol

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u/tbiards 1d ago

Isn’t it considered communism? Sorry for being dumb.

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u/BitDaddyCane 1d ago

I thought it was people for socialism and government for communism?

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u/_Joe_Momma_ 1d ago

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production.

Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production by the workers doing said production specifically, after all private ownership is still ownership by "people".

You can make a case for state ownership as a form of socialism in the case of public utilities (telecoms, electricity, etc.) since the public relies on them, but only if the state is actually representative of and beholden to the public.

Communism is a further extension of socialism where class, the state and money have been abolished. Does that mean the authoritarian regimes who call themselves communist were lying? Yes, the same way Saddam Hussien or Vladimir Putin lie about being elected presidents of liberal democracies. Authoritarians will do that.

State ownership of the means of production is just nationalization and doesn't really map onto specific ideology on its own. It can (again: can) be done for socialism, for war efforts, for fascism, for bailouts, for just having an extra revenue stream, for any number of reasons.

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u/AhChirrion 1d ago

There has been different meanings for "capitalism", "socialism", and "communism" since those words were coined.

Depending on the meanings chosen, "socialism" and "communism" can be synonyms or two clearly different things.

Indeed, in some meanings, "socialism" and "communism" require the people, through a highly democratic government, to own a minority or majority or the totality of the means of production. A government that actually works for the good of all the people, not mainly the rich, so it's basically the people owning the means of production woth the government just managing their assets.

In other meanings, it's indeed the government the owner of the means of production.

And in most recent meanings, a public library is communism.

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u/bleh-apathetic 1d ago

Capitalism: private ownership of the means of production

Socialism: worker ownership of the means of production

Communism: government ownership of the means of production