Genuine question. How would a transition to socialism work in practice?
Eating the billionaires and "nationalizing" publicly traded companies is the easy part. Saying "you can still possess your car" is also easy. The hard, and ultimately unpopular, part is everything else in between. Summer cottage? Family farm? What happens to pensions/retirement savings, land ownership, inheritance, small businesses, the apartment your are renting out to pay for your own rent...
Yeah, I know, these things tend to be out of reach for younger folks these days, precisely because of hyper wealth concentration. So with billionaires and mega corps out of the picture, the question still stands.
When socialists say they want to collectivize private property, they use a meaning of private property which equates to "means of production", or "capital". The goal is that there won't be owners of capital earning money simply by employing other people to work the capital and stealing a part of what they produce (surplus value).
In your example, summer cottages and family farms aren't means of production, so there's no reason to redistribute them. Pensions and retirement were guaranteed to everyone even in the USSR, where women retired at 55 and men at 60, so I can guarantee socialists want you to have a pension. Small businesses that employ other employees would have to be collectivized eventually, which could mean that the owner simply becomes one normal worker in the business, working alongside the previous employees instead of above them. Regarding the apartment, you don't need to rent out an apartment if the rent of your apartment costs 3-5% of your income (as was the case in the Soviet Union). Land ownership and inheritance are a bit grey. Obviously nobody wants to collectivize your nana's wedding dress, or your dad's funko pop collection. Obviously we would want to collectivize if you inherit a big factory, or 20 flats that your mom rented out. For things in the middle, it becomes a bit more grey, so there's no easy answer. I bet everyone would agree that uprooting people isn't generally a good thing.
Summer cottage? Family farm?
One fairly straightforward plan is the nationalization of housing. If you own and occupy your primary residence, you may stay. If you have a secondary residence, you can keep it as a vacation home. If you own more than that, they're going to go to the state. Pick two. If you're a renter, and you occupy that place, it's now yours. Anytime someone is moving, the government has the right to first refusal, which it will always utilize. Effectively, the governments buys the house back each time, and then sells it again to someone new. If you die your home can go to a family member/designated person. No one may more than 2 homes, no one may sell a home to another individual directly, though the transfer/sale of a home to a specified individual can be arranged through the government. All rents/mortgages are income based, and payments end after 5 years.
Cuba has done this fairly successfully. Yugoslavia had a similar system. No, it's not the best system imaginable, nor is it super popular with the fucking leeches owner class, but it's viable, doable, and simple enough to set up while insuring that all people may be homed.
the government has the right to first refusal
the transfer/sale of a home to a specified individual can be arranged through the government
And time and time again this has lead to people in the government abusing this power and assuring for themselves and their families a completely different standard of living than the rest of the population. I've lived in a socialist country and the end was not pretty.
It sounds great on paper and has proven great on small scales (with the option to leave the community if you want), but on larger scales human nature always messes things up.
Sure, so let's try nothing, because the current system works so well. I mean, what with us having solved homelessness, having equality, and fixing the climate, I can't imagine why we should do something different.
I understand that you've had a bad experience, and I also understand that the real world examples of nation states claiming to be socialist have been less than ideal, but, as a species, we have to decide what is more important, because we're running out of time. I'm not a Soviet fan boy or a tankie, I'm an anti authoritarian, libertarian socialist. But it's a bit like the US election right now. I don't like Kamala, but I'll take her over Trump, and continue to work outside of that to achieve my actual goals. I don't like state socialism, but it's better than what we've got. If the biggest problem with socialist states has been corruption in the upper echelons of power, then that is excellent real world data to draw from when we considering alternatives to both our current system and the experiments of the past. Strict transparency, more citizen involvement, less concentration of power. Sure, again, not my ideal system, but it's something better. We have examples to draw from, both in failures and successes. Yugoslavia had a lot more personal freedoms than the USSR, and a strong focus on worker cooperatives. Cuba has managed to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world with shoestrings and belt buckles. The USSR gives us an example of just how quickly progress can be made in areas like industrialization, crucial information that could help us in the transition to renewable energy. The US and Western Europe have created citizenry that are unwilling to accept, at least in theory, authoritarian, iron-fist control. We absolutely can create something that blends these philosophies, but it is imperative that it's focus be on the creation of an egalitarian society that works towards ending tyranny, which includes the tyranny of workers, and seeks to solve the climate crises. We do not have a choice if we want to survive the next few decades.
Sure, so let's try nothing, because the current system works so well.
Not where I was going with it. There are definitely a lot of things that should be done, especially in the US, which I wouldn't even call socialist, just common sense (like universal healthcare). But you can't tell people "you're not all equal" and suddenly they all believe it. That's why most socialist countries were also authoritarian. Maybe over many generations of progressive change things can go differently.
Most socialist states have been authoritarian because most of them of were authoritarian before their socialist movements. They are a product of their own cultures. In addition, most are authoritarian because they're attempting to recreate the successes of the Soviet revolution, and using their system as a baseline.
Also, my first paragraph in that comment was aggressive and I apologize for that. I should have come better than that. But the fact remains, socialism is not the problem. Authoritarianism is. They're not one and the same, nor is one required for the other.
Human nature? Which part of human nature? Humans are multifaceted. Also, there has never been an example of socialism in practice, even moderate social democracy that secured domestic mineral and oil resources for its own people, that hasn't come under direct attack, invasion, embargo, sanction, etc., by western capitalist powers. It usually isn't human nature messing things up, its direct capitalist imperialist intervention.
Also what model of human nature are you using? I prefer the dialectical construction of Benedict Spinoza in his book Ethics, have you ever considered what you mean by it or where you picked it up from? I see a lot of hand waving about human nature from people, but no description of what it actually is. How do you know you aren't using a flawed concept in your determination?
This is also the way it works in Singapore, where you essentially lease an abode for life
Do you have personal experience with it there? If so, how do you like it?
The way I heard it explained that made the most sense is personal vs private property. If it's something a person uses regularly. Personal property. Otherwise public property that can be leased short term for production and business use. But never owned by a large parasitic business/corporation that will horde resources and foul the land with no concern for others.
It works by encouraging union and co-ops, actually punishing companies that break laws, and providing social safety nets. Basically everything this comic points out.
So by "encouraging", I take that to mean a mixed system? I'm all for the Nordic model. I think a hard-line approach is ultimately too disruptive and unpalatable to a majority of people's current personal situation, and I feel like it's important to communicate that for buy in.
What is unpalatable to the people current personal situation tho? The problem is you are already seeing it from a capitalist point of view where you think most people have something to lose.
First, your second house or small business are not means of production.
Second, most people dont have a summer cottage, most people dont have a family farm, most people dont have land ownership, most people dont inherit shit, most people dont have apartments they are renting, most people dont have small business.
Most people have nothing to lose and everything to gain when we talk about people owning their workplace. If you think otherwise you are overstating what most people own, which is close to nothing. What most people think of is the idea that if they work hard enough they will someday have that apartment to rent, that summer house, that big money their sons will inherit, which for most of earth's population is just bullshit.
I'm all for the Nordic model
The sad thing about the Nordic model is that it relies on wealth and labour extraction from poorer countries as much as the rest of capitalist countries do. Being on the upper side of unequal exchange (I beg you to read on unequal exchange, even if only the Wikipedia article), makes it very nice for some lucky few in Europe / North America, and very hard for the rest who aren't on the upper side.
A mixed system which starts with changing the most socially egregious examples is probably the only politically viable transition; lots of people fear disruption, and it takes time and proving to them that the changes are beneficial.
I'd suggest beginning with something like Corbyn's Labor had proposed; if a capitalist business is sold or fails, the workers are given first right of refusal and a govt loan is given for them to purchase as a worker cooperative.
The problem is that capitalists will not tolerate a system that is made to remove them over time, and they will fight you to the death to keep you from passing reforms like that, as seen by Corbyn's campaign being sabotaged from all angles.
While I do agree these people exist, most people are some mixture of benefiting from, and being harmed by the status quo. To erode support for a mode of production takes both fighting those who are directly against your class interests, and convincing the majority of people that their class interests align with your actions. Often those who feel the most precarity under the current system are it's most ardent defenders, simply because their afraid of loosing what little status they have eked out for themselves.
Corbyn was sabotaged both by people who rightly saw him as a threat, and by those who didn't see the benefit he could bring them.
My point is that convincing people is not enough, because the system at base being plutocratic does not just mean the poorer suffer, but that the levers of power are controlled by the rich, so democratic efforts at revolutionary reform (such as would make the system not plutocratic) are doomed to fail from the outset.
Give it a few generations.
I'm not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.
Some postcapitalist policies include
- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI
Some people think so. That doesn't make it a good academic definition. You get into the shitty definition of socialism that Dr. Wolff mocks:
"When the government that's a lot of stuff, that's socialism. And the more stuff it does, the more socialist it gets. And when it does a reeeeeal whole lot of stuff, then that's communism"
The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
Rhetorically, it doesn't matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.
The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
True, it does not matter for your point. I was just interested. Thanks for your answer.
Wealth tax and taxing inheritance. You know it works because the capitalists flee the fucking country as soon as you inplement it (or rather before, when they buy information from a corrupt official or legally from a politician).
So then how is that supposed to work? Tax something that can walk across the border tomorrow?
The capitalists subverting liberal democracies like this is precisely one of the reasons we call them dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. Fortunately, since absolute democratic control should be held by the people, we can just seize their assets for the public through exit taxes, but they will find ways around these as well, so preferrably retroactively.
Now, this would surely tank foreign investment capital in our countries and people might say that is going to "ruin the economy". However, national control over resources is a necessary step in combatting global economic imperialism, and even though Western economies would suffer somewhat, it is precisely because they are on the top of the food chain of exploitation and frankly deserve to.
The majority of people should see a rise in material conditions and in freedom, as this makes them free to own their means of production and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
family farms are practically non-existent (i admire romanticism lol). Pensions get paid, land is not owned, homes inheritance is on the right-of-first-refusal of undefined-length lease, small businessman become paid position in agreement with employed workers, rent is asset depreciation no more no less. You can afford asset depreciation on 200 million mansion? 50 people together probably can
A worker coop is an example of joint self-employment. The workers are not employees, and the employer-employee relationship is abolished in worker coops
The others have given more concrete examples, so I'll skip that and simply say that contradictions are resolved through practice. As in we can talk about the problems and solutions all day, but it only when we start to actually make the changes, do we create and engage with the problems and develop solutions in response.
Translation:
"You know, it'll just buff out bro we build the bridge in front of us as we walk across it bro"
Is what humans have always done. Capitalism has so many contradictions, we have entire legal and regulatory systems and social programs in place to make it viable, and governments still have to bail it out with our tax dollars every 10 years or so.
The small business part of the transition is "easy" (or at least, not any harder than maintaining a capitalist business), people have been and are currently doing this already. They are known as worker-owned cooperatives, and are often extremely liberating to those who make the effort. Depending on the industry (and the government you live under), it's not even that difficult, roughly on the order of forming a freelancing agency. There are also entire organizations dedicated to assisting with corporate transition to cooperative structure.
Here are some good examples of resources in the US to start learning that process:
It is really funny (read: not funny but sad) that you think our current system is working. This post has such big "I have not thought about this at all and am out of ideas" energy that I can't engage with it seriously.
Do you own a summer cottage right now? What percentage of people do? Will not owning that cottage impact anyone's life in a meaningful way?
But yea, sure, let's have a few hundred people own more wealth and thus influence than the rest of the world as a whole! It's the best way to make sure the people a step or two below those few hundred get to have a summer cottage! This really makes society the best it can be!
What happens to pensions/retirement savings
These are still paid. Socialism is concerned with the means of production, not what amount to bank accounts.
land ownership
If it's a personal residence, it's cool. If it's a business's privately-owned land, it's up for grabs if the local community has a better use for it
inheritance
See the above distinctions. Money is secondary and personal property is fine, private property is liable to be taken.
the apartment your are renting out to pay for your own rent
Either the cost of your rent is dramatically reduced or your housing is turned into some type of cooperative, so there's no need to exploit someone else to make rent.
The exact plan is something that would be developed based on the political-economic situation that led to the revolution in the first leave and the needs that arose. There can be no perfect prescription because one cannot predict the exact situation we will inherit.
Immediately following revolution in the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks had to fight a war against invading capitalist forces and domestic capitalist revanchists. They implemented forms of fatm collectivization that were largely restorative of traditional practice but without feudal lords and while also attempting to industrialize. This went less efficiently than needed so they adopted the NEP, then abandoned it for further central planning once its purpose was fulfilled. They ensured housing for all, placed doctors, cafes, and housing at factories, invested heavily in infrastructure and education, promoted women as part of the workforce and larger society against patriarchal attitudes, and prepared for the inevitable further invasion by capitalists, this time the fascists. They built based on their ability to control the means of production by and for those who work and based on the conditions they faced. They faced poverty, landlordism, a poor level of industrialization and infrastructure, joblessness, external military threats, etc. They implemented many policies over time attempting to work around hurdles, most of them imposed by capitalist countries trying to destroy them.
In China, they faced an even greater level of landlordism, of petty landowners that would routinely exercise inordinate control over people's lives and abuse them. China was even poorer than the Russian Empire, being a colonized country forced to subjugate its economy to foreign capitalusts. China had to fight a war against Japanese invaders and developed in the context of not just a liberatory nationalism but a betrayal of the communists by the KMT. They similarly had to industrialize, to deal with poverty, to deal with foreign aggression from capitalists that promptly encircled them and instituted sanctions. They achieved transformatiobs never before seen, of skyrocketing life expectancy, an end to famines, industrialization without stealing through colonialism.
When revolution comes to your country, what state will it be in? Will you have to kill neofascists that started a civil war? Will you need to rebuild a militant labor movement? Will there be an economic underclass most poised to contribute and then make demands of the transition?
Basically, when the working class has a liberatory victory, it can now more directly demand change. What changes will be a product of what is needed for the working class's own interests. In Cuba many villages had no doctor and essential medical care required a group of people to carry the sick for a day or more. So they built hospitals and trained doctors. They now have the best medical system in the world for a country with their size and wealth.
Anyways with that said I'll try to answer your specific questions.
Summer cottage?
lol who cares? A second home in a country full of homeless people!? I cannot be asked to care. Most likely it will be ignored because socialists are far too kind.
Family farm?
If you live in a rich, Western country these no longer exist. Farms are large agribusinesses owned by companies. Pappy had to sell his farm to them in the 70s and 80s.
What happens to pensions/retirement savings
These are numbers on a spreadsheet that are currently held by a bank or government. Their purpose is to guarantee retirement. During any real revolution the banks in question will be seized and repurposed, possibly even abolished depending on conditions, as they are the organ of society most antagonistic to us. There is no guarantee that the accounts will have anything in them nor that the government would have had any legitimacy to guarantee retirement before we won. They will try to take the money and run. They don't care about your pension, lol. It's just capital for them to lend out and make profits from.
Traditionally, socialists have simply guaranteed retirement via the state. An actual guarantee. And because socialists have also traditionally made so much of life available at no or low direct cost to the individual (housing, healthcare, transportation, food), this mostly just means you get to live your life exactly the same but just don't have to work.
land ownership
If the socialists are competent they will make the state the owner of all land and then figure out how to use previously corporate land for the public good and find a reasonable compromise on personal land. But it really depends on the conditions of revolution. Is land reform a revolutionary promise? What land and for what purpose?
inheritance
Should probably be largely abolushed but this also depends on the revolution. Nobody is coming for granny's keepsakes but you don't get to inherit the slave plantation.
small businesses
This is a term used for tax purposes in certain rich Western countries. It's not really meaningful for when to expropriate and plan, for example. Many industries should not even exist, they are parasitic, and this includes many small businesses. Smart socialists will not make decisions based solely on a tax bracket aside from needing to be practical about how to allocate transitions and planning resources. For example, China institutes more control over businesses as they become larger, both via government oversight and worker control.
the apartment your are renting out to pay for your own rent...
If you're doing that you're a financial idiot lol. Much better for the state to allocate your housing and keep you away from such decisions.
Socialists have traditionally guaranteed housing via various mechanisms, starting with building enough of it and ensuring it exists where people should be for economic activity. Connect it to transit, make it available bear industry and retail, etc.
Yeah, I know, these things tend to be out of reach for younger folks these days, precisely because of hyper wealth concentration.
Basically everything you mentioned is out of reach for the vast majority of humanity due to the capitalsti system. You're describing things that only the petite bourgeouis in impeeialist countries even think about. This us a very small number of privileged people even in those countries.
So with billionaires and mega corps out of the picture, the question still stands.
It doesn't stand at all, you are just unfamiliar with two centuries of working class political struggle and geopolitics. This is understandable, as Western educations do their very best to ignore most of it and misinform about the rest. One of the things they teach is the cartoonish impracticality of socialist systems that they describe with fanciful and false stories, basically fairy tales to appease reactionary capitalists that promote such propaganda in the first place and, for example, dictate what textbooks the Texas Board of Education buys and therefore the content in classrooms nationwide.
The untold reality is that socialists are actually very practical and realistic people that build from the needs of the wider working class and have traditionally tracked commodity prices and investments and military funding allocations and run and led worker revolrs and run and led wars of liberation. We are practical to a fault and endeavor to understand the world as it is and what is needed to liberate ourselves from an oppressive system and offer a vision of: what if we built this world for ourselves and not bankers or a noncorporeal profit-generating machine?
Genuine question. How would a transition to socialism work in practice?
Generally, Leftists believe it can only happen via revolution. The general idea is to organize and build dual power, so that when an inevitable revolution arises, the working class is already organized and can replace the former state.
Eating the billionaires and "nationalizing" publicly traded companies is the easy part. Saying "you can still possess your car" is also easy. The hard, and ultimately unpopular, part is everything else in between. Summer cottage? Family farm? What happens to pensions/retirement savings, land ownership, inheritance, small businesses, the apartment your are renting out to pay for your own rent...
You're working off the mindset of maintaining Capitalism and piece-by-piece Socializing it, which is not what Leftists generally propose.
Generally, Leftists believe it can only happen via revolution.
I'm an outsider and I don't really know much about Leftist thought. I'm curious what the general belief among Lefists is for why this revolution hasn't happened? (In the capitalist West that is?)
Marxists believe it is due to Imperialism, also known as Unequal Exchange. Western Capitalist countries export the vast bulk of their poverty to foreign countries with cheaper labor to make a wider proportion of profit, similar to the idea of countries functioning as Bourgeoisie and Proletarian.
Whether you agree with Lenin's analysis of the State and Revolutionary methods, I have yet to find a Leftist that disagrees with his arguments in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
What we are seeing is an increase in Anti-Western sentiment among the Global South, as conditions deteriorate and expropriation increases. As this revolutionary pressure builds, the weakest links pop, so to speak, weakening Western Hegemony and driving their own Proletariat closer to revolution.
Marxists believe it is due to Imperialism
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "imperialism" here but regardless, what is the solution to imperialism according to Marxists?
I elaborated on it later, it's the concept of exporting the bulk of industrial production to foreign countries to super-exploit for super-profits.
Imperialism defeats itself in much the same way Capitalism does, it increases in severity and exploitation until a boiling point is reached, and the country in the Global South moves towards domestic production and nationalization of their resources and products, rather than serving as an outsourced factory for wealthy Capitalists abroad.
I don't think we're communicating. I asked what Marxists' solution to imperialism is. I can't see any solution in what you've written here.
What do you specifically mean? I just said Imperialism defeats itself, and people in the Global South can act against it by protecting their own production and resources.
So you're saying Marxists have no solution to imperialism?
They do. Supporting movements in the Global South against Imperialism by the Global North. Looking at the nature of Imperialism dialectically, it appears to be deteriorating as exploitation increases, so these movements are gaining momentum. This is what I mean when I say Imperialism defeats itself, as exploitation increases (as it must to counter the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall), it also increases pressure against itself from those it exploits.
Supporting movements in the Global South against Imperialism
We're not communicating. That's not a "solution" as I understand it.
How would a transition to socialism work in practice?
Decade by decade, have more things be run by the government rather than for-profit enterprises.
For example, in the 2020s, the US could transition to a Swiss-style healthcare system. In that kind of system, everybody would have insurance provided by a private company, but the most basic plan would be very cheap and offered by every company, and there were subsidies available so nobody in the country was uninsured, no matter what their financial situation. The US could also have a government owned bank that operated out of every post office that provided extremely basic banking services with zero fees. Private banks would still be able to compete with that, but they'd have to compete on extra services that the government bank didn't offer.
In the 2030s you could tackle education and housing. All state-owned universities could offer education with a $0 tuition and all textbooks available digitally for free. Maybe for some majors you'd have to agree to provide some public service to offset the cost of that education. Like, a doctor might have to agree to serve for 5 years in a remote area that typically doesn't have good medical coverage. Or, a lawyer might have to spend 5 years working as a public defender. For housing, the government could buy and own housing. Any citizen could get an apartment and pay a low monthly rent directly to the government. Subsidize that rent so that if someone couldn't afford to pay any rent, they could still live there. Private homes could still exist, and would be more spacious and more luxurious, but everybody would at least be able to start with something decent.
Then you could tackle transportation. Tax private vehicles and use that to fund public transit. As transit got better, fewer and fewer people would feel the need for the luxury of their own vehicle, but those who did could continue to subsidize public transit for the rest (instead of the current situation where cities subsidize drivers).
Then you could look into food. Maybe everyone gets the equivalent of food stamps. Maybe instead of throwing money at private farmers to grow corn, making corn so cheap that it's almost free, resulting in awful things like high fructose corn syrup in everything, the government could be responsible for some basic crops, and allow private farmers to grow specialty things / luxuries.
Media would be easy -- just set up something like the BBC but for the US. Most other countries in the world have something similar.
Bit by bit, just chip away at all the for-profit things and allow the government to either take it over entirely, or to provide a bare-bones version that was available to everybody, while allowing people to keep running their own private for-profit ones that offer a more luxurious experience for people who want to pay more.
have more things be run by the government rather than for-profit enterprises
Who has these things happen and how?
I'm not a proponent of socialism due to the whole 'state' aspect, but I'd say universal healthcare and unconditional UBI would be the actual first steps toward the moneyless and stateless goal put forth in this comic.
“But what if one day I get generational wealth? I better vote against anything that might reduce poverty and wealth inequality!” - republican voters
This is really just a very specific type of socialism, as indicated by Lenin being here; an authoritarian who killed other socialists. This is about ML.
The first and last panels are right, but, for example, according to this post Anarcho-Communists don't exist. They don't believe in "evolving to a point" as the third panel says, they believe in jumping straight to that point. Also, Libertarian Socialists wouldn't really be fond of "elected committees" controlling things, as the second panel talks about; maybe electing people into leadership positions inside of a company/cooperative, or maybe even having unions make those decisions, but nothing above that.
They included a picture of Picard too, should I assume this is ML-utopianism and just shut down listening completely?
Also, I'm an anarchist and don't believe in "jumping to the point." We're not all teenagers with no concept of how societies work. We're opposed to the State and any form of imposed hierarchy. That I'm opposed to the State today doesn't mean I don't vote or that I'm just waiting around for the spirit of Good Anarchism to posses every person on Earth suddenly.
Like any reasonable person with an ideology, I make plans to spread my ideas to more people over time. The capitalist state isnt going to auddenly collapse into anarchy and if it did it woukd be terrible because other parts of the collapsing state are going to form monarchies, fascist authoritarian fortresses, and many other balkanized microstates. It would be the worst possible outcome for anarchists!
No, our goal is to enact socialism. Then to whither away the state apparatus into communism. Then to whither away the global hierarchy in favor of self-determination and negotiation.
In no universe do serious people think: Step 1: destroy all governance. Step 2: ????. Step 3: Anarchist utopia.
Good comment. Whether Marxist or Anarchist, goals must be built towards, and cannot be vibed into existence.
Also, I’m an anarchist and don’t believe in “jumping to the point.
[...]
No, our goal is to enact socialism. Then to whither away the state apparatus into communism. Then to whither away the global hierarchy in favor of self-determination and negotiation.
Then, by definition, you're a Marxist, you're literally summarising Marxist theory. Anarchists don't believe in going through that middle step.
In no universe do serious people think: Step 1: destroy all governance. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Anarchist utopia.
If you want to see how an anarchist revolution works, go look up Catalonia and the CNT-FAI, Anarchist Ukraine or the Zapatistas.
ML would be about a vanguard party. That kind of elected council with central planning can happen without it. That vanguard party is where ML goes all wrong and tends to devolve into cult-like behavior. Edit: and not just the big one's in Russia/China/N. Korea. Lots of smaller ML groups devolve into cult-like behavior, too.
I do agree, though, that the second panel is still too specific. There are many ways to organize the workers, and that second panel is far too narrow.
It is very clear that it's about Socialism, so leaving AnComms out is fair.
AnComms are socialists, though. As are communists, and all anarchists who are not AnCaps, but those aren't even really anarchists.
Socialism is just about workers controlling the means of production; how you get there, the styles and forms of leadership, and all other things, are where all subgroups differ. The same way that in capitalism you can have Soc-Dems, Liberals, Libertarian Capitalists, Fascists, etc.
AnComms are under the socialist umbrella, but the comic isn't delving into every single thing that's under that umbrella, because it's not 600 pages long.
Vanguard politics consistently lead to a new different hierarchy that is just as bad as the current hierarchy is my problem. Leninism just sucks. The peers who said he sucked were right. Leninism leads to Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot, etc. When people try to scare the shit out of us by acting like socialism is more dangerous than capitalism we have Lenin to blame for thinking anyone could have the strength to wield power without being depraved by it.
Hierarchical societies just don't work. And I won't apologize for saying Bolshevism sucks and isn't even really communism, its just a more weirdly shaped version of colonialism
This is the conclusion I've come to since reading the State and Revolution. The people who are capable of overthrowing the current system aren't likely to be the same people capable of keeping true to an approach that's legitimately socialist. There are problems with reformism as well, as it can result in an endless series of small concessions to distract from an equally endless series of measured power grabs.
If I take what I read of Marx and Engels as likely to be accurately predictive, my conclusion has to be that the circumstances they're discussing haven't occurred yet. Basically, Lenin jumped the gun with his support of imposing a revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat. The power structure it creates is too centralized to achieve its goals.
This would suggest to me that if Marx and Engels are correct, a spontaneous and universal proletariat uprising is probably still down the road somewhere. Basically, we see hints at this state reflected in the microcosm of revolution, but have yet to see the circumstances that cause an actual change of prioritization and autonomy rather than simply a changing of the guard.
Lenin wasn't a socialist. He was a transparently dishonest fraud who built a cult of personality. The best thing you can say is that he failed because if the results were a success, Lenin was a monster.
While Lenin was a flawed leader, and did some shady shit in the name of revolution, I don't think it's fair or honest to call him a fraud. Man was literally imprisoned because of his beliefs. Not saying we should follow him religiously like some people do, he definitely made mistakes. Now if this was Stalin we were talking about I could understand.
He was imprisoned for what he wrote about. His actions tell me that he was not a socialist, and that's what matters. He held an election, immediately enacted violence to change the outcome, immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place, purged people who didn't agree with him, and acted as an autocrat.
Anyone who thinks Lenin was a socialist is ignorant of history.
Edit: I can't actually see who replied to me because I blocked them 😂 tells me what I need to know about the people arguing with me.
immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place
That's insanely ahistorical. The socialist power structures that were in place, existed precisely BECAUSE of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. And soviets had a very high degree of government control all the way up until the death of Lenin. You're seriously mistaken about this
Showing to us all you haven't studied the figure of Lenin in an honest way in your life.
Lenin dedicated most of his life (in exile from the tsarist regime for doing so) to study, write on, and agitate against, the issues of the masses. He was openly against becoming a personality cult, he maintained his democratic ideals until the moment a civil war broke and terrorist attacks started to kill members of the party and attempted to kill him, and if you read any of his writings it's patently obvious that he's obsessed with the well-being of the working class.
The 1% cry about it way less than the 40+% of absolute troglodytes in this country who think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires and love their tacky prophet Donnie the douche
This is a problem of gutted education, not the individual. The ring class removed all class awareness from our education and replaced it with glorifying an oligarchy disguised as a meritocracy.
I think it's more a problem of intelligence, which can be mitigated by education but you'll always have a certain amount of people who can be told any given lie and they'll not care whether it's true or not, even if they know better.
douché
This cartoon makes some bad assumptions.
"the workers (aka the proletariat) own their own workplace" That's one way to do it, or you could have that happen indirectly where the workplace is owned by the government and the workers "own" it indirectly. Most firefighters don't work for a for-profit company, but it's also not a firefighter-owned company that goes and sells firefighting services to businesses that don't want to burn down. A worker-owned company might make sense in certain situations, say a clothing store. You wouldn't necessarily want a central government owning all garment manufacturing and sales. A worker-owned collective is probably a better match. You might have a worker-owned sports store that focuses on selling sports gear, and a worker-owned wedding gown store that focuses on that market. Most people are more familiar with the government-owned model, and that's also socialism.
"production is then planned by elected committees"... why? That's the communist way, but that's not necessarily how a socialist system has to operate. And, in many cases, an "elected committee" is absolutely the wrong way. In countries with state-provided healthcare, there's a government minister who is in charge of health, and their ministry hires the experts needed to run the healthcare system. I definitely don't think that system would be improved if an elected committee were in charge of running things. You might still have worker-representation in those setups. For example, the nurses could belong to a union, and a union rep would be part of decision making. But, an elected committee is a weird fit in many situations.
"increases in productivity continuously reduce the work week"... that's just not likely. People who have high paying jobs could sometimes demand a shorter work week, and occasionally they do. But, often they want a more luxurious life in their time off rather than a less luxurious life and lots of time off. I'm not talking about CEOs and other people who are workaholics and own multiple mansions. I'm talking about dentists and engineers who are willing to keep working a standard 40 hour week so that they can take trips around the world, or buy a nice cottage near a lake, or treat their kids to nice presents.
This way of presenting socialism is going to give people the wrong idea.
In countries with state-provided healthcare, there's a government minister who is in charge of health, and their ministry hires the experts needed to run the healthcare system. I definitely don't think that system would be improved if an elected committee were in charge of running things
Maybe not running things, but the input of local committees could be very welcome. Increasing the number of specialists of some kind because of popular desire, putting a clinic in X part of the neighborhood because there are a lot of reduced-mobility people who could benefit from it nearby, transparency meetings where the expenditure is explained to the people...
"increases in productivity continuously reduce the work week"... that's just not likely. People who have high paying jobs could sometimes demand a shorter work week, and occasionally they do. But, often they want a more luxurious life in their time off rather than a less luxurious life and lots of time off
Ideally, each worker would be able to decide what they want, and shift between different working hours on different stages of life. Construction worker who only wants to have the basics and a lot of leisure time? 20h workweek. Scientist crazy for research who wants to spend a lot of time in the lab? 40h workweek. Said scientist decides to have a kid and wants to reduce to 25h workweek? Done.
The idea is that workers would be able to make those decisions themselves instead of relying on the good-will of their corporate overlords, it doesn't mean everybody has to be present in every democratic decision if they don't want to, or that everyone needs to have identical working conditions.
Market socialism also exists, just to remind everyone.
If you Google "define socialism", you'll get a sentence saying socialism is when tve means of production are owned OR regulated by the people.
So you can still have what we have right now, no need for any sort of fundamental change, except proper regulation, meaning actually good labour laws and proper taxation for the wealthy.
Finland and other Nordics are arguably market socialist.
And yes, I know how many will disagree. Here in Finland, less so.
Finland and other Nordics are arguably market socialist.
Absolutely not, they are Social Democracies. They are not progressing towards more worker ownership, but less, Capitalism still drives the system and the bourgeoisie still drives the state.
By any reasonable dictionary (as well as classic definition), capitalism is defined by private property of the means of production. Socialism is defined by common/social ownership of the means of production, not "regulation". What you call "market socialism" is just regulated capitalism.
Nothing wrong with having any position, and we should strive for what's best instead of trying to correspond to certain terms, but what you suggest is not socialism.
And I kinda hate it when we move the goalposts, especially with American politician calling literally any bit of social policy "socialism". No it's not, and classics have outlined it very, very clearly.
Question. How can we be sure to trust that the elected committees do not turn society into an authoritarian regime? Would it work like standard western democracy, i.e. electing a party / parties to form a "government" (in this case committee; semantics)?
Edit: I truly appreciate everybody who takes the time to write elaborate answers pertaining to my question. I will read and respond once I have the opportunity and in that case, I hope eventual followup questions are welcomed. :)
The key is in one of the words you've said:
ELECTED committee
You don't have to trust that they won't turn authoritarian. If you see authoritarian tendencies and you don't like them, you vote them out.
Would it work like standard western democracy, i.e. electing a party / parties to form a "government"
That depends on who you ask. An anarchist will tell you no, a communist will tell you a different answer, etc. I'm a Marxist-Leninist so I'll answer to that as a Marxist-Leninist.
In a Marxist-Leninist state, there is only one party. In the same way that your country only have one justice system, your country only has one socialized system of healthcare (if at all), etc, there would be need only for one party: the party that represents the interests of the workers. This party would have a vanguard of communist intellectuals (liable to being removed from their position by popular vote), who would be in a constant back-and-forth democratic dialogue with the workers and their representation in worker-councils. The needs and demands of the workers would be translated to Marxist ideology, which is flexible depending on the circumstances, the culture, and the society it's applied to, and policy would be drafted, approved and adopted.
A good example of this in action is detailed in a book called "how the workers' parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution", by Pedro Ross. It details the immense level of popular participation in the drafting, approval, implementation and execution of policy in Cuba during the 1990s "periodo especial", a huge economic crisis precipitated by the dissolution of their biggest trading partner, the USSR. Literal millions of people, through their unions and through worker councils, participated democratically in deciding which sectors of the economy they wanted to preserve most, which ones least, which workers are redundant and which aren't, which goods and services should be prioritised in the planned economy, how to organize local organic farms everywhere (including workplaces) in order to minimize food imports... All of this happened in a back-and-forth, multi-year exercise, between the top representatives of the government, the specialists (e.g. economists, hospital directors, transit company directors, etc.), and the direct representatives of the people through the worker's councils. It's truly one of the most explicit and overwhelming examples of democracy that I've ever encountered.
gestures broadly at elected officials now
What's your point?
A good example of this in action is detailed in a book called "how the workers' parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution", by Pedro Ross.
That sounds like a fascinating book! I've always been interested in the nitty gritty of how the Cuban democratic process works, and this book seems accessible and is just under 200 pages (not including the appendices/bibliography) so I might actually get through it.
Rather than a dry, aseptic description of the Cuban institutions and form of government, the book reads as a historical account of the process that took place in the years of the Periodo Especial.
The second half of the book, for some reason, is a recount of the Cuban revolution and its historical causes, which you may or may not skip reading depending on what your purpose is with the book.
Thanks for providing a link!
Thanks for posting the link!
What do you think about people who claim only having one party is undemocratic? I do believe there should be a certain freedom to form parties of your own and eventually run for election, but this is standard in most western countries and I'm unsure if I'm missing some benefit to only having one party. Genuine question by the way.
I'm not the person you asked and they surely have a better answer, but I thought I'd throw some things out there:
A lot of what are understandably called "one party states" are not technically one party. The DPRK has like three other parties and I'm pretty sure there are countless parties all over the PRC. It's still reasonable to refer to these countries as one party states because they have some kind of constitutional provision preventing any other party from taking power at the highest levels, but they still use multiple parties as a means of representing diverse interests.
Our comrade VI evidently knows way more about Cuba than I, but something I happen to know is that, when you run for office in Cuba, you are not the candidate of any party, you are effectively independent. I think that they conceptualize what a party is in a very different way. In America, the political parties are literally private entities, with all the legal ramifications that entails, and are effectively companies pushing brands in order to get money from donors via held seats (that's a crude generalization, but I think it works well enough). In the "one party states" I know of, the "one party" is considered to be part of the governing apparatus itself, rather than something that exists outside it seeking to influence it. It's all a conjoined project that way.
I personally think that, assuming there is actual democracy in terms of the government needing to enact the popular will, a one party state is probably a more coherent way of having society united in its various projects, even if the proverbial ship needs to change course now and then for whatever reason. That's just my feeling though, and it's mainly informed by the overwhelming sense one gets if they follow American elections that they are engineered at every level to be anti-democratic.
Thanks for being open to discussion, I appreciate it. I'll start talking about the reality of multi-party systems and liberal democracy.
Generally, multi-party systems aren't democratic if we adhere to the definition that "the power of legislation is in the hands of the people", which I think would be a good premise for a parliamentary multi-party system. Ideally, you'd choose a platform in elections, which has a given program, or even create your own platform if you don't feel represented enough. Then, this platform supports its program in a Congress, and votes through representatives to pass legislation according to its program. Sounds good, but let's examine whether the policy that people want to enact is actually passed, and whether policy that people don't want to enact is passed.
We can start with the case of the US. The vast majority of Americans support an extended universal healthcare system of some sort. The technical details are a bit hazy, but the reality is that most people would support such a system as poll after poll shows. Yet, the years pass, and there's basically no progress in this direction, how is this democratic? How come if a majority of people support this, it's not pushed forwards and legislated? It's the same with abortion rights, a vast majority of Americans believe in legal abortion rights for women, yet no legislation is passed in that regard and many states actually go backwards. A majority would support increased taxes on the extra-wealthy and on big companies. Study after study show that public opinion is one of the worst predictors for policy, i.e., there's barely any correlation at all between polls on policy, and actual passing of policy. Can we say that there's an actual democracy in the US, when the interests of the people don't correlate with legislation?
I'll talk about Europe now, since I'm Spanish and it's a closer example to me. Recently we assisted to the outrageous example of Macron unilaterally skipping Congress to increase the retirement age against the desires of basically the entirety of France. Huge protests broke out, he was vilified in social media, and all polls showed that this was an extremely unpopular decision. Yet it passed. The same happened all over the EU during the 2010 Euro crisis. Austerity policy was enforced by the authorities everywhere: lowering expenditure on healthcare, education and public retirement pensions, reducing investment in infrastructure, increasing taxes such as VAT... Again, this was extremely unpopular and against the desires of most people. It's been a decade and a half since then, and these austerity policies are still in place. VAT is still higher than it was, expenditure in healthcare and education hasn't increased to the levels prior to the crisis... Yet another example of blatant anti-democracy. If the policy isn't carried out with the will of the people, the system isn't democratic.
I could go on giving examples of failed cases of policy in multi-party systems, but now I'll do the opposite and bring examples of multi-party systems that actually applied popular policy.
Salvador Allende was a Chilean leftist politician in the previous century, who was elected by a majority of citizens to carry out nationalizations of the mining industry (the heart of the economy of the country at the time), and to improve the welfare state. His term didn't last very long at all, because when popular policy started being actually enacted in a democratic fashion, a fascist coup murdered him and replaced him with a fascist dictator.
In the Spanish Second Republic, a similar thing happened. In the 30s, a very progressive leftist government was elected, and promised to carry out land reform, i.e. expropriation from big landowners and redistribution of land to the farmers in a country which was primarily agrarian. It suffered the same fate: a fascist coup, a bloody civil war, and almost 40 years of fascism.
In Iran, under the administration of Mosaddegh, a leftist secular politician who wanted to make sure that the Iranian oil was profiting the majority of Iranians instead of the Shah and a few British companies, nationalised the oil industry. This was met with economical blockade, with paid actors pretending to be communists destroying private property to agitate people, and fake protests organized by the mafia funded by the MI6 and the CIA ousting him from the government.
Now let's go to a period in which actually progressive policy was passed in Europe in a popular and democratic fashion: the post-WW2 period. Under the looming threat of a socialist revolution, and the high level of labour organization through unions, the governments of Europe were successfully pressured into passing meaningful legislation on the limit of working hours per week, on progressive tax systems, on welfare state (healthcare, education and pensions)...
So it seems to me, that the only way to make governments pass actually progressive and democratic policy that most people agree with, is through the organization of workers and the threat of a communist revolution. That, if people just vote socialists into power without organizing labor, they suffer coups, that if they vote social-democrats they get austerity and antidemocratic policy. What percentage of Europe agreed to increase the military budget after the start of the war in Ukraine? I'm not trying to argue whether that's a good or a bad policy, I'm just saying all polls showed it was an originally unpopular decision, yet it was carried out.
If the only way to enforce governments to enact popular, progressive and democratic policy, is through the organization of labor, then why would I want multi-party systems instead of a system of representation of workers in a single, unified, democratic structure?
I know it's a long answer, but I appreciate it if you made it to the end.
All committees are authoritarian regimes, if they have any power. Making any decisions with power to back it up is authoritarian.
The question is whether you want decisions made by 500 bankers and some military conteactors or by collective deliberative organs that respond to the needs of the people at large, and assuming the latter, how do you make them function robustly?
A smart approach would borrow from the successes of others while allowing a bit of experimentation. Most real-world sociakist systems have implemented both a bottom-up local governance system for some domains and top-diwo national level policies for other domains. There is a real-world practical need for both.
Re: The councils in this cartoon, they are referring to, more or less, workplace democracy. Practically speaking, this requires a similar system: workers deciding how to run their company but also there is a need for national/regional coordination, for capital investment, and to balance against the bourgeois tendencies of what is basically a wirkers' cooperative.
A key promise of socialism is not to immediately establish utopia, but to set the groundwork for how we may develop society for ourselves. There may be a form of workers' councils that you prefer but that I might critique as unworkable in the current world. But it would surely be something made possible by socialist steuggle over time, as the comic explains: we would work to decrease necessary work time, to live our lives more how we want to. Once free if, say, imperiakist wars and expensive dirty energy, perhaps local workers' council politics can adopt a simpler, more fair and autonomous form.
Basically, deconstructing oppressive systems would be an ongoing process that would have to be weighed against what is "more important" (e.g. not getting nuked), not one leap. So the form taken would depend on the context of how we win, what threats we face, borroeing from others' successes, and how our experiments go.
Yes and no. Most Marxists advocate for a form of Whole-Process People's Democracy, or Soviet Democracy. Essentially, the idea is that, rather than just having state, local, and federal elections (as a brief example), there are far more rungs you can directly elect and participate in. This ideally holds people accountable better than western democracies do.
I'll jump in with an extra question here if I may:
So say you have two companies, doing more or kess the same thing, company A and company B.
If the workers in those companies detain their respective means of production, why wouldn't they want to do what we see today:
"Hire" the best ones from the other company, grow so they all get more of it, intimidate concurrence etc? I mean it's not just because there are lots of bosses instead of just some, that it will solve those problems?
Also, if company A does well, won't people apply for work there, but ot for company B that (say) does less well? Wouldnt company A try to limit hired if they don't fall in line with what they are thinking/doing etc.?
I just see the same system but with artificial blocks for the most obvious things, blocks people (who want it, I mean those crazy prycopathic bosses will still be around, they're just not a CEO any more) will just work around.
I wonder if some common pitfalls like too much party control over committees, lying about quotas for financial gain, and the vulnerabilities of a society in revolt could be squeezed in, or perhaps covered in a second image.
Orthodox Marxism isn't always enough, and is not beyond revision and improvements (hence the many neo-marxists). Critical Theorists have addressed Marxism as well as Capitalism after all.
That said, the post is good and educational as is, and has my up vote.
See you at the first plenary session comarades!
After reading this, i now understand less about socialism.
What part is confusing?
This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I'm particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of political taxonomy and this is very very confusing.
But you know what, at least it's written in plain language. A mistake that communists often make is using their vocabulary (alienation, ideology, bourgeoisie) as if everyone knows what it means, i'm glad this isn't the case here
This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I'm particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.
That's the purpose of building up dual power via leftist orgs, so that when Workers do sieze control, there are pre-existing structures. It's difficult to put all of theory into a comic.
That’s the purpose of building up dual power via leftist orgs
Good example right there: i have less than no idea what this means. I'm more politicized than the average person, definitely way more than the average worker, but i have no idea what this means. There is honestly a pattern of communists being very immersed in theory to the point that they forget normies like me aren't on the same page and don't immediately get it.
It’s difficult to put all of theory into a comic
By god, don't. I'm not too sure if 'all of theory' is worth putting in a book, but it's definitely not worth putting in a comic.
I've been politically active for years without really knowing theory, all it takes is talking to people and a willingness to spend an afternoon cutting leaflets. It is my honest opinion that marxist theory is as relevant to real world activism as theology, and no less arcane.
If people who make things own them, who manages the "big picture" ideas? CEO pay tells me that requires the power of thousands of peasants workers.
Workers are perfectly good at self-organizing without them. "I'm the ideas guy" is stated by people who do little and should not be trusted.
That's my point: no "ideas man" is worth thousands of real workers.
Elected officials and councils.
I would love to see a policy where there is a variable tax rate on companies based on employees satisfaction.
If a company has a largely unhappy workforce they would be taxed most of their profits.
If a company has a extremely happy workforce then it can reduce the taxation rate below the standard rate. And employees can still vote on this 2 years after termination.
It incentivises companies to invest more in the employees wellbeing, and punishes companies that take practice in unsustainable hiring and mass layoffs later.
If it is unavoidable that a company needs to downsize, they would be incentivised to help employees find new employment.
I'm sure there is a large issue I'm not seeing with this but I'm pretty fond of the idea.
There is a simpler way to do this, and it's a worker cooperative. Workers own the business and they democratically decide what the business does. There is no separation between the leadership and the workforce. Maintaining that separation will always result in conflict because the interests of the owners will never be the same as those of the workers.
How is that simpler?
It sounds way more complex to logistically set up a system like that. Best case is a lot of regulation needed, worse case is a complete overhaul of the economy.
The major issue is that it has to compete on a global market that's exploitative.
100% agree with the exploitative global market.
Also, that was an interesting read and a great example of an ideal company's practice.
Though it was a bit vague on where the start up funding came from. Which is what I was most curious about (and my main reason I consider the practice complex to implement)
Mondragon seems to be founded by a generous man that created the company from the ground up with these principles in mind, but unfortunately most people with the resources to this kind of business do not have such great ideals (and for the most part, they have these resources because they don't have them and thus exploited workers)
How would a business take off the ground in this scenario without a selfless benefactor?
Also it's a much different beast to convert an already established company like amazon and convert that to the same system. Mainly in that the owners and shareholders do not want to give up their investment for nothing.
What are the options then? Steal the company from the amazon investors in spite of the capital they invested to the company? Or pay them off?(would be expensive if going by market value)
Stealing would still be dystopian. I have no love for amazon investors, but imagine a lovely small family-owned business that invested all their life savings into it, before being taken from them because they hired some teenagers to help them for the summer.
It's complex, and not likely compatible with the current economy (unless the rich bastard's hearts grow 3 sizes large), but it would be nice if this business type was more widespread.
I consider the tax rate suggestion a good way to integrate the employee vote with capitalism. it still "survival of the fittest" but the "fittest" would be a profitable company that looks after it's employees.
Yeah, it's not an easy problem to solve. As someone who is mainly versed in the socialist tradition I view class conflict as the primary impedement to social progress. And any system that incorporates competition will, in my view, generate class conflict. It's all or nothing: you can't have a cooperative structure operating within a competetive framework.
In practical terms, this has meant a lot of different things over the past few centuries. Nobody has found the correct answer. In the present system, the first step is unionization and increasing class consciousness among the labor force. The second step is coordinated action via targeted mass action (think cross-industry work stoppages that disrupt production and logistics). Essentially you cripple the owner class at large by disrupting their profits and force them to make concessions. You could have a gradual move towards cooperative ownership by forcing down the ratio of CEO to average worker pay. You could force the passage of the types of tax reform that you are arguing for. You could force the passage of social welfare reform.
But ultimately this movement would have to be worker-led, because the ruling class will always invent new ways to entrench themselves in power. John Maynard Keynes referred to the "euthenasia of the rentier class". In other words, they would humanely pass into the dust bin of history because they would no longer exist as a class, because the workers would not tolerate them.
i thought the crying guy was Hatsune Miku at first LOL
It surprises me so that any functioning democracy isn't automatically socialist.
It infuriates me that our countries are called „democracies“. Why is our economy not democratic than? The economy is mostly ruled like any feudal empire.
Well, it just goes back to the root of the word. Ancient Greece, where the word democracy comes from, was far from what we would call a democracy nowadays.
Not only did they own slaves (who obviously could not vote) but the only people that could vote, as far as I remember, were landed men. If you were not a man, or did not own land, you could not vote.
But yeah, I agree with your point.
That's the central question of Reform or Revolution, and why the majority of Leftists believe Reform to be too unlikely to outright impossible, and therefore Revolution the correct path. Rosa Luxemburg wrote about it in Reform or Revolution.
But why is reform not happening?
To greatly simplify a complex and still contested issue, Capitalist States are designed to prevent it. Using the US as an example, the two party FPTP system is designed to prevent third parties from winning, leaving the only 2 parties that can gain the bulk of Capitalist support. Even in the event of Leftists winning, the Military will often coup the leader with the help of the US, like Allende in Chile.
Because the bourgeois were happy to get power when they were excluded from it in the monarchy, but they are very much not happy to leave peasants get any power.
Francr history is very telling of this. The question of how the elections should be made was a hot topic. Representative democracy is something the bourgeoisie wants because it allows it to stay in power. Because the bourgeois are better armed to be elected than the people. Rousseau warned of this even before the first French revolution.
I'm sure the US revolution went the same way. The crazy US voting system looks very much like it was crafted for the bourgeois to stay keep all the power.
Most of them are, to limited degrees. America has the Post Office, interstate roadways, public education for children, public libraries, and many other government services that are fundamentally socialist in nature.
We don't call them that because of propaganda. And many in government (especially on the right) work very hard to destroy those systems because they are socialist and empower workers.
The idea of letting the "free market" manage these things is insane and always leads to bad outcomes, we have tried this before. People who say "economic planning doesn't work" only exist because economic planning allowed them to live freely and be educated enough to form those big words instead of being locked to the land they were born on as peasant workers.
Words I can agree to.
So it's all nice in theory, but I have questions...
the workers own their workplace
Based on previous discussions, I understand the commonly proposed model here would be a workers' collective of some sort. People involved in the collective's production share the proceeds - we made N number of tractors and took them to market and received X value units; we spent Y value units in the production process, so we can distribute (X - Y) value units among the members of the collective. The workers own the equipment and infrastructure used by the collective and share responsibility for production. If a worker moves from workplace A to workplace B for whatever reason, they cease to share in the proceeds and responsibility of workplace A's collective and take on the responsibilities of workplace B's collective and share in its proceeds.
(Aside: What if X is smaller than Y? Should members then add back the difference for the next production cycle, so production materials can be procured?)
Let's look at the (X - Y) part a bit more closely. This defines the benefit that members of the collective derive from the enterprise, so they are collectively incentivised to make the difference as big as possible - to benefit themselves rather than a capital owner. Let's assume that all collectives can procure production materials equally with no supply and demand market forces (unlikely). Let's further assume that the market value for the goods produced is fixed (questionable, but OK). So anyone involved in producing tractors pay the same number of value units for raw materials and components and can only ever sell tractors for the same number of value units as everyone else. This means that an individual collective is heavily incentivised to reduce the raw materials needed per tractor (production efficiency), make better tractors than other collectives (market attractiveness), or increase the number of tractors they take to market in a given time period (increased production). Each collective, and ultimately its members, thus stand to benefit from having the most skilled tractor builders, innovative tractor designers, and an all-round hardworking membership. A more successful collective would draw more workers with such beneficial traits and become even more successful in the process. It would also be in the interest of the collective to either push out members that do not contribute according to their full ability, or reduce their share of the proceeds. The former would result in some workers not being accepted into any collective after a while and thus not contributing to any production, the latter in performance-based remuneration that creates societal inequality.
Congratulations! You just created market forces in the labour market that will have winners and losers.
a.k.a the means of production
Can someone explain to me what this means in today's world, beyond factories making physical goods (such as tractors) using physical machines and manual human labour?
production is then planned by elected committees
There are some details missing here. Who elects these committees - workers, or society in general? What are the requirements for being electable for such a role? How are these committees held accountable for failures? Do they plan production at a society-wide level, each in a specific industry, or down to regions or specific production facilities? Do they serve only a planning role, or are they also responsible for execution?
What checks would be in place to prevent professional popularity contest participants (those we call politicians at the moment) from adopting a facade of ideological purity and getting elected on popularity rather than merit? How would they be insulated from outside influence by those affected by their decision making? Do we really need more tractors, or do they still have friends in Worker's Collective 631 that makes tractors?
Congratulations! You just created a managerial class (at best) or just the usual corrupt cabal that run things to their own benefit.
increases productivity as workers are more happy and committed
That's a big assumption. Anyone have any data from wide sampling across multiple industries to support this as a long-term sustained effect?
work to better ourselves and humanity
If you replace "humanity" with "our close community" this might be realistic. I don't think the "and humanity" has ever happened at a macro level.
Congratulations! You just created market forces in the labour market that will have winners and losers.
Yes. Market Socialism (which would have supply and demand and competing worker-owned firms) doesn't solve everything. I advocate for it because I think it's a good, achievable medium-term goal that would be a vast improvement over what we have now. Something we could see in my lifetime. Once we get things there, workers are in a better position to advocate for further changes, like dumping money altogether.
However, there's plenty of people who think we should jump right past that and into the Anarco-Communist end goal.
One of the ideals of being a cooperative is "cooperation among cooperatives" as dictated by the Rochdale Principles. So by definition worker co-ops shouldn't be competing with each other. Instead consolidation of corporations to force a sort of cooperation to increase profit we'll ideally have worker cooperatives working with producer co-ops for example.
Not entirely sure the implications of supply and demand market forces but I imagine its a step up from our current system. We'll have democratically controlled work places where workers dictact the direction of supply and not necessarily for the sole purpose of increasing profits. In any case what I think we need is a new systematic way of measuring the growth of an economy in conjunction with worker co-ops.
That would likely happen on its own. If the UAW took over everything at Ford and GM, they would likely merge the companies, because why not? Even in industries where unions don't straddle companies like that, it's only a matter of time.
But that happens after they take over.
achievable medium-term goal that would be a vast improvement over what we have now
Yup.
people who think we should jump right past that and into the Anarco-Communist end goal
Well good luck to them on getting that done in any society with a reasonably functional democracy.
Based on previous discussions, I understand the commonly proposed model here would be a workers' collective of some sort. People involved in the collective's production share the proceeds - we made N number of tractors and took them to market and received X value units; we spent Y value units in the production process, so we can distribute (X - Y) value units among the members of the collective. The workers own the equipment and infrastructure used by the collective and share responsibility for production. If a worker moves from workplace A to workplace B for whatever reason, they cease to share in the proceeds and responsibility of workplace A's collective and take on the responsibilities of workplace B's collective and share in its proceeds.
This is Market Socialism, not Marxism. Marxism is what is depicted in the above graphic. Marxists aim to satisfy the needs of the whole using the production of the whole, not just competing cooperatives.
Can someone explain to me what this means in today's world, beyond factories making physical goods (such as tractors) using physical machines and manual human labour?
All Capital, ie everything used in the commodity production process. If your aim is to get into the weeds about what is considered Capital, edge cases can be decided by committees.
There are some details missing here. Who elects these committees - workers, or society in general? What are the requirements for being electable for such a role? How are these committees held accountable for failures? Do they plan production at a society-wide level, each in a specific industry, or down to regions or specific production facilities? Do they serve only a planning role, or are they also responsible for execution?
The society in general is the workers. Requirements can be decided by the people. These committees are held accountable via election, and a recall election can be held at any time. There are multiple rungs of planning, from society wide to regional to facility levels, with committees for each. They can serve planning and execution, as workers participate.
What checks would be in place to prevent professional popularity contest participants (those we call politicians at the moment) from adopting a facade of ideological purity and getting elected on popularity rather than merit? How would they be insulated from outside influence by those affected by their decision making? Do we really need more tractors, or do they still have friends in Worker's Collective 631 that makes tractors?
Recall elections. Why would producing more tractors in collective 631 benefit that collective if the goal is to satisfy the whole from the whole?
Congratulations! You just created a managerial class (at best) or just the usual corrupt cabal that run things to their own benefit.
Managers are not a class, they are an extension of the workers.
That's a big assumption. Anyone have any data from wide sampling across multiple industries to support this as a long-term sustained effect?
Yes, across numerous studies worker participation in steering companies has resulted in higher satisfaction and stability.
If you replace "humanity" with "our close community" this might be realistic. I don't think the "and humanity" has ever happened at a macro level.
You're arguing against a chimera of random mish-mashed ideas from several different strains of Socialism that argue for different forms as though they are one and the same.
This is Market Socialism, not Marxism. Marxism is what is depicted in the above graphic.
The graphic with the big caption "SOCIALISM". But fair point on me not addressing the specific implementation suggested with the presence of the Marx and Lenin characters.
If your aim is to get into the weeds about what is considered Capital, edge cases can be decided by committees.
Well yea, the devil is in the detail so it can't just be waved away. The "commodity production process" still implies physical goods made from physical resources and that it's the production facilities and resources that should be seized. (Side note: this assumes all the underlying resources are present within the area controlled by the proletariat.) Not seen any ideas proposed beyond that, but perhaps I'm not hanging around in the right places... Hopefully the committees will have people available that can figure it out after the fact?
Requirements can be decided by the people. These committees are held accountable via election, and a recall election can be held at any time. There are multiple rungs of planning, from society wide to regional to facility levels, with committees for each. They can serve planning and execution, as workers participate.
Yea, you've clearly never worked in a "design by committee" or "management by consensus" situation. Nothing ever gets done, and when some decision is finally made on anything it tends to be the shittiest common denominator option that thinly and evenly spreads the collective responsibility. Not the best option, but the one that everyone can kind of agree on and thus be collectively accountable for. The exception might be when a very small number of people that are agreed on an end goal and share the same vision for reaching it work together. But I assure you, that does not scale - even if people are in full agreement on the end goal.
Why would producing more tractors in collective 631 benefit that collective if the goal is to satisfy the whole from the whole?
Because human beings.
Managers are not a class, they are an extension of the workers.
Fair point. I guess I was a bit caught in the popular narrative where managers are the enemy of the workers.
Yes, across numerous studies worker participation in steering companies has resulted in higher satisfaction and stability.
Of course, and I'm a fan. I'm not disputing that places where extensive consultation happens with the people responsible for delivering are nice places to work at. But that consultation process is usually very closely managed and the ideas to take forward are cherry picked to give enough "they listen to me" feel good vibes, while also not interfering too much with the business' priorities. Really taking the inputs of large employee groups seriously on the things that matter cannot happen outside of an adversarial setting, because the interests of the worker and those who benefit most from their labour are fundamentally in conflict. The point I'm rambling towards is that I doubt there are studies that looked at situations where employee inputs in decision making (beyond window dressing) was sustained over very long periods of time at a scale relevant to what you envision. (There are exceptions, but only in small groups of highly-aligned people in a horizontal structure that are deeply vested in the success of the venture.)
You’re arguing against a chimera of random mish-mashed ideas from several different strains of Socialism that argue for different forms as though they are one and the same.
I guess you're right on that, yes. The thing is that I've been thinking about details like these (and many more) for at least 25 years (beyond "edgy teenager" or "social media fad" or "my parents are fascists" stages), since I would prefer that the fruits of my labour (to at least some degree) benefit other people rather than feed a system that heavily incentivises the shittiest parts of human beings and is also inherently cruel. Over the years I've also read pretty widely on this topic - from the purist theoretical ideologies to the practical compromises to the counterpoints to the criticisms. (Hell, I even lived in what was basically a workers' collective for almost a year, but it only worked because it was a small community of ~100 people with close social and familial ties.) So in my mind the lines between specific flavours of socialism are pretty blurry these days, while the common fundamental challenges keep standing out.
What truly frustrates me is the constant arguments about which is the best flavour, while ignoring how to actually realistically practically progress towards something better. Spending the day fighting about which flavour of ice cream to buy instead of figuring out how to get to the ice cream shop on the other side of the city in the first place.
That, and I am yet to see something proposed that doesn't completely ignore predictable human reactions or result in some degree of authoritarianism. (Nordic-flavour (kind of but not really) Market Socialism is perhaps the closest to something that might work, but it also heavily relies on a fairly homogenous society with a culture that sees value in the interests of that society over total individualism.)
You're not liberating literal serfs that never knew personal agency from a literal monarch. You're trying to get people that are exploited by a system while also benefitting from it to willingly abandon that system for something that might be better (if it worked) or might not be - the plans for the "something" are fuzzy at best so who knows. The details matter, and interrogating the details is not reactionary behaviour.
Is that Lenin or Louis CK in the second panel?
Lenin.
Is a planned economy an inherent part of socialism? That seems like the biggest red flag (lol) in this comic. All sorts of incentive mismatches there.
"Democracy at work, too" is like the biggest pitch for socialism, "government deciding what businesses can exist" is the biggest pitch against. A tightrope to walk, for sure.
It's not, just read about Anarcho-Syndycalists, or Anarcho-Communists, to get different perspectives.
This is post is about ML specifically, only really the first and last panels are about socialism in general.
Why would a democratically planned economy be a bad thing? How is it more democratic that capitalist owners decide which businesses can exist, rather than the people collectively decide so?
The potential for regulatory capture and corruption, as well as the inherent inefficiency of having a limited number of decision makers. I wouldn't trust the 2028 Trump Administration to thoughtfully determine which businesses are allowed to exist for 4 years.
It's more democratic to let anyone start a business, rather than having a gatekeeper. But more importantly I think it makes more sense to let the capitalists take the losses if their business idea sucks, and then socializing the gains once we know it works.
I'm sad that when you use the word "democracy", the best future people can imagine is the modern American system of "democracy"...
My concern is that I cannot see a democratically planned economy implemented in a way which doesn't sacrifice individualism of people .
Democracy isn't strictly "freedom" on its own, but it is a powerful tool to protect our "individual freedoms" by ensuring our leaders act in our best interests.
But unless everyone has the exact same mind set that means that the majority will always drown out the minority and so the minority voices will be forced to conform to what the majority want.
We are mostly like-minded in things like what should be crimes/punishment/rights/etc(but note this wasn't always the case): but everyone has individual preferences, like colour of shirt, a specific brand of food, video games, etc which means they need an economy where products can be created by individuals rather than decided by the majority.
If 51% of people think wearing a t-shirt with a cute dog on it is a stupid waste of time then that t-shirt doesn't get made, and so the 49% people that did like the shirt lose out.
Also if 99% of people wanted the garbage collected, but no one wanted to work there, what happens then? Is someone forced to work there? That would be extreme, instead maybe there is more incentive to work there with more pay, but then what if lots of people wanted to work there due to this incentive who would decide who works there and therefore who owns the company?
Hyperbolic examples I know but i hope you see the point I'm trying to make.
Capitalism despite all it's flaws can allow a single person the chance seek funding to provide a good or service and if deemed profitable (either through high demand or cheap production) then the product gets made. People can also seek the obscure products they want rather than what's popular.
Your comment comes from a very flawed and limited understanding of what democratic planning of the economy could be. "51% of the population decided to wear a blue shirt so only blue shirts are made" isn't at all a good representation of the possibilities of democratic planning of the economy.
Look at Amazon. Amazon is already an insanely big centrally planned economy. They have at their disposal the best engineers and computer scientists that enable such central planning that makes them an indestructible behemoth of efficiency. As soon as one client so much as clicks on a product, computer algorithms calculate the likelihood of them buying the product, and send signals to their warehouses to prepare their products for delivery, and in turn they send signals to their distributor or the manufacturer to supply or produce some more, all in the blink of an eye. The power that we, as workers, could harness if we made that ours, is unimaginably strong. Imagine a planned economy where direct input from consumers modifies the manufacturing quantities of the goods produced, without Amazon selling your data and appropriating all the surplus value of all workers in the process.
Imagine wanting to open a small business, and instead of having to be rich from the start, going to the local council to see if the community is interested in having such a business, let's say a cafe. You make a pitch, they like they idea, and they fund your project because, after all, it will be good for the neighborhood, with a part of the money they're allocated by the state for such purposes. You run your business in a risk-free fashion, since the community is already interested and has funded the project, and the better it works, the more money you can earn since you have productivity bonuses.
Imagine facing climate change, and making collectively as a society a 20-year plan subdivided in 5-year intervals to decarbonise the main sectors of the economy responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, all with the collaboration of experts in the science of climate change, experts in said sectors working not to maximise the profit of shareholders but for the betterment of humanity, and computer programmers managing absurd amounts of data that allow for very precise estimations of the state of the economy in 5 years time.
That's the future I want, and it's doable. We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have the people. The only thing left is to eliminate the cancerous property structures of productive property.
"51% of the population decided to wear a blue shirt so only blue shirts are made" isn't at all a good representation of the possibilities of democratic planning of the economy.
I understand it doesn't highlight the benefits like better working conditions but I feel that it illustrates my point well in that individualism is affected negatively in a democratic planned economy and forced to conform to the majority.
While it would be nice for individuals to get funding for whatever businesses ideas they think are profitable, in reality it comes down to trying to sell a product you haven't produced yet.
Going by your cafe example, what if there was a Diner nearby that sold some coffee/tea on its menu. You have to convince the majority that your shop is a worthwhile investment with them never even tasting the product, and even if it is low cost enough that you would still make profit.
What if there was a sub-par cafe with lazy employees already in town and you want to make a cafe that takes pride in its work. Would people want two cafes in the same town? If not then you are competing with a store without even able to sell a product of your own.
It's ultimately the taxpayers that are taking the risk on your product instead of the individual so they won't want to pay for a service they won't use or care for. Even if the minority of people can make it profitable.
Maybe a hybrid system where company can be owned by both private and public funding, but the private would win as they exploit their workers to cut down costs.
Ultimately I believe people should be able to start a private business on a product they believe in, as there is more diversity in products and more freedom for creativity that way. While at the same time believe that employees should have a voice that can disrupt profitability if they are mistreated. Either via Union or otherwise.
Going by your cafe example, what if there was a Diner nearby that sold some coffee/tea on its menu. You have to convince the majority that your shop is a worthwhile investment with them never even tasting the product, and even if it is low cost enough that you would still make profit.
That problem still takes place in capitalism. It's just that, instead of having to convince people for funding, you risk going into bankruptcy when you try your business idea.
What if there was a sub-par cafe with lazy employees already in town and you want to make a cafe that takes pride in its work. Would people want two cafes in the same town?
Great, so you run you business in capitalism, and run the other cafe into bankruptcy because that's wonderful for everyone, very efficient and humane. How about the local council decides that the other cafe is shit, and they give a warning to the place that they need to improve the quality of their work?
It's ultimately the taxpayers that are taking the risk on your product instead of the individual so they won't want to pay for a service they won't use or care for. Even if the minority of people can make it profitable.
This can very easily be compensated by bigger, not so local, councils. Maybe specialized in more weird and experimental business ideas. Located in densely-populated ideas so that one of these weirder businesses can give cover to a high amount of population.
Really, you seem to be coming up with increasingly-complicated problems on the implementation on the spot. My point is that all of these problems can be outsourced to direct democracy instead of "consumer democracy", in a more efficient, fair, and risk-free way for everyone.
That problem still takes place in capitalism. It's just that, instead of having to convince people for funding, you risk going into bankruptcy when you try your business idea
Capitalism is still seeking funding, but there is more freedom in how to get it. You can self-fund or seek investors and the option to fund publicly via crowdsourcing.
Funds that are invested in a company is the only cost that you are liable for. E.g. If you invest £1000 the maximum you could lose is that £1000. (unless it is an LLP I think).
Bankruptcy is a protection of capitalism in that the owner cannot be liable for the debts of the company. Yes, there are scummy abusers of this protection, but it is a protection no the less
Great, so you run you business in capitalism, and run the other cafe into bankruptcy because that's wonderful for everyone, very efficient and humane. How about the local council decides that the other cafe is shit, and they give a warning to the place that they need to improve the quality of their work?
Lets assume that the council actually gives a crap on the quality actually issues this warning? This implies the council has the final say on how a business should be run, further proving that individualism is restricted.
What if it still doesn't improve?
I'm assuming they'd shut down the business for ignoring the warning?
So in this hypothetical there is no cafe and no jobs. When in capitalism there is at least a competing better store left over with presumably the same number of jobs.
Do they fire the manager and the staff and replace them? I suppose this is job neutral still and probably the quality improves, but ignoring the difficulties finding a replacement then it will be the same store and same equipment used. There is no development or improvement or creativity because there isn't any incentive or "freedom" to do so because the council has the final say on how your store is run.
This can very easily be compensated by bigger, not so local, councils. Maybe specialized in more weird and experimental business ideas. Located in densely-populated ideas so that one of these weirder businesses can give cover to a high amount of population.
I'd consider this worse as it widens the divide of urban and rural areas.
Again it is still the taxpayer that is taking this risk, and not the individual, so there is no reason why a council would bother with anything that isn't an easy win for the public approval (or a selfish grift done under the table).
For example: A council member that a approves a sex shop could easily be labelled a pervert by his opponent in the next election so why would he take the risk on it?
I'm sure there are other businesses too that are punished in this system as the need to go through government means it needs easily positive public approval before it is considered, and there is no option to do it on your own as private owned businesses aren't allowed.
Really, you seem to be coming up with increasingly-complicated problems
Have you considered that its maybe because it is an increasingly-complicated issue?
I could accuse you of giving increasingly-easy answers too. Though to be honest I don't think that. I think you have thought through the benefits in great detail but not reflecting on the negatives and who could get hurt.
My point is that all of these problems can be outsourced to direct democracy instead of "consumer democracy", in a more efficient, fair, and risk-free way for everyone
I don't think it is that simple. As I said before democracy is the will of the majority and thus only majority-approved cases are considered leaving little room for freedom of expression (or at least in terms creating a business and diversity of products)
Democracy is NOT "efficient", but it is "effective". It is a slow tedious process with 9001 rules, with the goal that the end of it, the only possible candidates are people that serve the majority's best interest.
It works well for governments (well...for the most governments) but it results in an economy only serving majority interests. Capitalism with all it's flaw still provides products to the minority as long as demand outweighs production. It is a fair, and risk-free way for the majority, not everyone
Saying that I don't think the current state of capitalism is acceptable in anyway. It has turned into large companies bullying smaller ones via mass produced goods/ large user bases/brand recognition/etc, and thus accumulating power and wealth in which no human should have.
Capitalism thrives with competition, as new ideas and higher quality products are a survival pressure for the businesses to thrive. However there is little/no survival pressure to treat employees well (aside from rare/ high skill jobs) and also large companies do not have any significant competition meaning they have no need to incentivise better consumer experiences. In fact it turns to the opposite where they try to squeeze value from customers instead. This is made worse with how public trading incentivises investing in a small company then demanding unsustainable growth until it is sold at the peak market price and left to rot.
"Pure" capitalism left us with this mess. But I think proper regulation to tweak these survival pressures are key to turning things around.
All employees should have the right to affect the profitability of a company, either through unions or otherwise. This incentivises a company to treat the employees well.
Investers in the stock market should be liable for selling "at risk" stock for up to 3 months since the transaction date and the buyer of this stock can then sue for any damages from the base price. This incentivises investors to invest in stable long-term businesses rather than "pump and dump" a new fad.
I'd argue that yes, it is, because markets entail private ownership, which goes against the basic notion of socialism
The closest you can get to socialism with the market system is worker's cooperative - but market forces do not stop accumulation of power in the form of land and capital, as well as mergers and acquisitions. At the end of the day, you just reset capitalism for a while if you give businesses a free reign.
If you want to maintain a market system under socialism you need to separate it from public production. We would need to democratically decide what is a public good (e.g. housing, food, medicine, etc.) and what is a market good (essentially luxury goods). The private market would also have to be heavily regulated to prevent capital accumulation and associated power concentration. It's a really difficult problem.
One of the reasons the Soviet economy failed is because computers were not advanced enough in the 1950s-80s to automate the kind of consumer goods production that a command economy would require to be able to compete with a market system. I think if we tried this again today we would have an easier time of it, and if you look at a large vertically integrated corporation like Walmart, they've more or less figured it out already.
I agree that automatization would greatly help.planned economies and that was one of the issues with Soviet economy in particular. Just too many variables to control manually. Nowadays, corporations do exactly that.
I wonder how can market be regulated in a way that doesn't create capital accumulation. Isn't that the very point of starting an enterprise?
Is a planned economy an inherent part of socialism? That seems like the biggest red flag (lol) in this comic. All sorts of incentive mismatches there.
For Marxists, absolutely. Marx heavily critiqued the profit motive and the dangers of producing to fulfil greed instead of need. For Syndicalists, Market Socialists, etc? Perhaps not.
"Democracy at work, too" is like the biggest pitch for socialism, "government deciding what businesses can exist" is the biggest pitch against. A tightrope to walk, for sure.
Workplace democracy is an improvement, but Marxists will argue insufficient alone in combatting class society.
What's your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?
What's your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?
I'm not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it's inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can't possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn't trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.
I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I'd think if we're theorizing, there's a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there's a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.
Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.
I'm not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it's inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can't possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn't trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.
Advocates of Central Planning advocate for rungs, not just 5 dudes and some excel spreadsheets. There would be factory level planners, local planners, regional planners, state planners, country planners, and international planners. Nobody will know everything, but they will know their own areas inputs and outputs.
I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I'd think if we're theorizing, there's a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there's a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.
Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine? Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths, it's better to have a cohesive whole that is thoroughly regulated and democratically controlled.
Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.
I recommend reading Wage Labor and Capital for more information on why the Profit Motive and Capitalist Production itself to be bad.
Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine?
It's more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.
I don't necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they're small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I'm not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.
Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths,
I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.
It's more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.
Why does that mean it cannot be accounted for democratically?
I don't necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they're small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I'm not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.
Nothing is static, they will eventually grow into monopoly and corruption.
I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.
The correct path is to avoid the problem entirely via Socialism.
That sounds like Market Socialism by another name.
Market Socialism has competing cooperatives, not central planning.
What’s your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?
billions dead of starvation every time its been attempted
Amazing.
You do know starvation rates lowered over time every time central planning has been put in place, right? You do know Capitalist countries also plan, correct?
I can haz Star Trek fyu cha?
Nice idea but it's very telling that there is no mention at all of how to make this come about. The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a "wouldn't it be nice if" pie-in-the-sky idea.
Fun fact: The expression pie-in-the-sky originates in an American socialist song. It's quite catchy.
A curious diversion but doesn't really contribute to the issue at hand.
The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a "wouldn't it be nice if" pie-in-the-sky idea.
Sorry, your argument is outdated by around 200 years. Engels already did an essay on the difference between scientific socialism and utopian socialism, because it was a common critique back then. It's called, well, "Socialism: scientific and utopian", and explains how Marxism isn't a utopian pipedream but rather a systematic way of analysing the economy and the social relations and historical events, reacting to them, and fighting for the rights of the workers above all else. Among other things, it allowed the Russian Revolution to triumph, and it allowed the Soviets to predict the second world war 10 years before it happened (which allowed the USSR to place most of its heavy industry east of the Urals, and in turn saved the country from losing against the Nazi invasion).
your argument
I haven't made an argument, I made a personal observation.
Engels already did an essay on the difference between ...
Revolution, which is an inevitability as Capitalism and by extension Imperialism continues to decay and disparity continues to rise. Marxists advocate for building dual-power so that when this revolution does occur, the former state can be replaced with democratic councils and unions that already exist.
which is an inevitability
What makes you say that?
Competition and improvements in production result in increasingly lowered rates of profit, which are countered by higher exploitation. Wages have largely stagnated with respect to productivity while disparity rises.
A system of government where the country's wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that's capitalism. I don't know how I got those two systems confused.
Genuine question. How would a transition to socialism work in practice?
Eating the billionaires and "nationalizing" publicly traded companies is the easy part. Saying "you can still possess your car" is also easy. The hard, and ultimately unpopular, part is everything else in between. Summer cottage? Family farm? What happens to pensions/retirement savings, land ownership, inheritance, small businesses, the apartment your are renting out to pay for your own rent...
Yeah, I know, these things tend to be out of reach for younger folks these days, precisely because of hyper wealth concentration. So with billionaires and mega corps out of the picture, the question still stands.
When socialists say they want to collectivize private property, they use a meaning of private property which equates to "means of production", or "capital". The goal is that there won't be owners of capital earning money simply by employing other people to work the capital and stealing a part of what they produce (surplus value).
In your example, summer cottages and family farms aren't means of production, so there's no reason to redistribute them. Pensions and retirement were guaranteed to everyone even in the USSR, where women retired at 55 and men at 60, so I can guarantee socialists want you to have a pension. Small businesses that employ other employees would have to be collectivized eventually, which could mean that the owner simply becomes one normal worker in the business, working alongside the previous employees instead of above them. Regarding the apartment, you don't need to rent out an apartment if the rent of your apartment costs 3-5% of your income (as was the case in the Soviet Union). Land ownership and inheritance are a bit grey. Obviously nobody wants to collectivize your nana's wedding dress, or your dad's funko pop collection. Obviously we would want to collectivize if you inherit a big factory, or 20 flats that your mom rented out. For things in the middle, it becomes a bit more grey, so there's no easy answer. I bet everyone would agree that uprooting people isn't generally a good thing.
One fairly straightforward plan is the nationalization of housing. If you own and occupy your primary residence, you may stay. If you have a secondary residence, you can keep it as a vacation home. If you own more than that, they're going to go to the state. Pick two. If you're a renter, and you occupy that place, it's now yours. Anytime someone is moving, the government has the right to first refusal, which it will always utilize. Effectively, the governments buys the house back each time, and then sells it again to someone new. If you die your home can go to a family member/designated person. No one may more than 2 homes, no one may sell a home to another individual directly, though the transfer/sale of a home to a specified individual can be arranged through the government. All rents/mortgages are income based, and payments end after 5 years.
Cuba has done this fairly successfully. Yugoslavia had a similar system. No, it's not the best system imaginable, nor is it super popular with the
fucking leechesowner class, but it's viable, doable, and simple enough to set up while insuring that all people may be homed.And time and time again this has lead to people in the government abusing this power and assuring for themselves and their families a completely different standard of living than the rest of the population. I've lived in a socialist country and the end was not pretty.
It sounds great on paper and has proven great on small scales (with the option to leave the community if you want), but on larger scales human nature always messes things up.
Sure, so let's try nothing, because the current system works so well. I mean, what with us having solved homelessness, having equality, and fixing the climate, I can't imagine why we should do something different.
I understand that you've had a bad experience, and I also understand that the real world examples of nation states claiming to be socialist have been less than ideal, but, as a species, we have to decide what is more important, because we're running out of time. I'm not a Soviet fan boy or a tankie, I'm an anti authoritarian, libertarian socialist. But it's a bit like the US election right now. I don't like Kamala, but I'll take her over Trump, and continue to work outside of that to achieve my actual goals. I don't like state socialism, but it's better than what we've got. If the biggest problem with socialist states has been corruption in the upper echelons of power, then that is excellent real world data to draw from when we considering alternatives to both our current system and the experiments of the past. Strict transparency, more citizen involvement, less concentration of power. Sure, again, not my ideal system, but it's something better. We have examples to draw from, both in failures and successes. Yugoslavia had a lot more personal freedoms than the USSR, and a strong focus on worker cooperatives. Cuba has managed to create one of the best healthcare systems in the world with shoestrings and belt buckles. The USSR gives us an example of just how quickly progress can be made in areas like industrialization, crucial information that could help us in the transition to renewable energy. The US and Western Europe have created citizenry that are unwilling to accept, at least in theory, authoritarian, iron-fist control. We absolutely can create something that blends these philosophies, but it is imperative that it's focus be on the creation of an egalitarian society that works towards ending tyranny, which includes the tyranny of workers, and seeks to solve the climate crises. We do not have a choice if we want to survive the next few decades.
Not where I was going with it. There are definitely a lot of things that should be done, especially in the US, which I wouldn't even call socialist, just common sense (like universal healthcare). But you can't tell people "you're not all equal" and suddenly they all believe it. That's why most socialist countries were also authoritarian. Maybe over many generations of progressive change things can go differently.
Most socialist states have been authoritarian because most of them of were authoritarian before their socialist movements. They are a product of their own cultures. In addition, most are authoritarian because they're attempting to recreate the successes of the Soviet revolution, and using their system as a baseline.
Also, my first paragraph in that comment was aggressive and I apologize for that. I should have come better than that. But the fact remains, socialism is not the problem. Authoritarianism is. They're not one and the same, nor is one required for the other.
Human nature? Which part of human nature? Humans are multifaceted. Also, there has never been an example of socialism in practice, even moderate social democracy that secured domestic mineral and oil resources for its own people, that hasn't come under direct attack, invasion, embargo, sanction, etc., by western capitalist powers. It usually isn't human nature messing things up, its direct capitalist imperialist intervention.
Also what model of human nature are you using? I prefer the dialectical construction of Benedict Spinoza in his book Ethics, have you ever considered what you mean by it or where you picked it up from? I see a lot of hand waving about human nature from people, but no description of what it actually is. How do you know you aren't using a flawed concept in your determination?
This is also the way it works in Singapore, where you essentially lease an abode for life
Do you have personal experience with it there? If so, how do you like it?
The way I heard it explained that made the most sense is personal vs private property. If it's something a person uses regularly. Personal property. Otherwise public property that can be leased short term for production and business use. But never owned by a large parasitic business/corporation that will horde resources and foul the land with no concern for others.
It works by encouraging union and co-ops, actually punishing companies that break laws, and providing social safety nets. Basically everything this comic points out.
So by "encouraging", I take that to mean a mixed system? I'm all for the Nordic model. I think a hard-line approach is ultimately too disruptive and unpalatable to a majority of people's current personal situation, and I feel like it's important to communicate that for buy in.
What is unpalatable to the people current personal situation tho? The problem is you are already seeing it from a capitalist point of view where you think most people have something to lose.
First, your second house or small business are not means of production.
Second, most people dont have a summer cottage, most people dont have a family farm, most people dont have land ownership, most people dont inherit shit, most people dont have apartments they are renting, most people dont have small business.
Most people have nothing to lose and everything to gain when we talk about people owning their workplace. If you think otherwise you are overstating what most people own, which is close to nothing. What most people think of is the idea that if they work hard enough they will someday have that apartment to rent, that summer house, that big money their sons will inherit, which for most of earth's population is just bullshit.
The sad thing about the Nordic model is that it relies on wealth and labour extraction from poorer countries as much as the rest of capitalist countries do. Being on the upper side of unequal exchange (I beg you to read on unequal exchange, even if only the Wikipedia article), makes it very nice for some lucky few in Europe / North America, and very hard for the rest who aren't on the upper side.
A mixed system which starts with changing the most socially egregious examples is probably the only politically viable transition; lots of people fear disruption, and it takes time and proving to them that the changes are beneficial.
I'd suggest beginning with something like Corbyn's Labor had proposed; if a capitalist business is sold or fails, the workers are given first right of refusal and a govt loan is given for them to purchase as a worker cooperative.
The problem is that capitalists will not tolerate a system that is made to remove them over time, and they will fight you to the death to keep you from passing reforms like that, as seen by Corbyn's campaign being sabotaged from all angles.
While I do agree these people exist, most people are some mixture of benefiting from, and being harmed by the status quo. To erode support for a mode of production takes both fighting those who are directly against your class interests, and convincing the majority of people that their class interests align with your actions. Often those who feel the most precarity under the current system are it's most ardent defenders, simply because their afraid of loosing what little status they have eked out for themselves.
Corbyn was sabotaged both by people who rightly saw him as a threat, and by those who didn't see the benefit he could bring them.
My point is that convincing people is not enough, because the system at base being plutocratic does not just mean the poorer suffer, but that the levers of power are controlled by the rich, so democratic efforts at revolutionary reform (such as would make the system not plutocratic) are doomed to fail from the outset.
Give it a few generations.
I'm not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.
Some postcapitalist policies include
- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI
@leftymemes
Pretty sure that qualifies as socialism for most people. Welcome onboard, my friend!
Most people think
Socialism = state central planning
@leftymemes
Some people think so. That doesn't make it a good academic definition. You get into the shitty definition of socialism that Dr. Wolff mocks:
"When the government that's a lot of stuff, that's socialism. And the more stuff it does, the more socialist it gets. And when it does a reeeeeal whole lot of stuff, then that's communism"
The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
@leftymemes
How do you define socialism?
Rhetorically, it doesn't matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.
The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
@leftymemes
True, it does not matter for your point. I was just interested. Thanks for your answer.
Wealth tax and taxing inheritance. You know it works because the capitalists flee the fucking country as soon as you inplement it (or rather before, when they buy information from a corrupt official or legally from a politician).
So then how is that supposed to work? Tax something that can walk across the border tomorrow?
The capitalists subverting liberal democracies like this is precisely one of the reasons we call them dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. Fortunately, since absolute democratic control should be held by the people, we can just seize their assets for the public through exit taxes, but they will find ways around these as well, so preferrably retroactively.
Now, this would surely tank foreign investment capital in our countries and people might say that is going to "ruin the economy". However, national control over resources is a necessary step in combatting global economic imperialism, and even though Western economies would suffer somewhat, it is precisely because they are on the top of the food chain of exploitation and frankly deserve to.
The majority of people should see a rise in material conditions and in freedom, as this makes them free to own their means of production and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
family farms are practically non-existent (i admire romanticism lol). Pensions get paid, land is not owned, homes inheritance is on the right-of-first-refusal of undefined-length lease, small businessman become paid position in agreement with employed workers, rent is asset depreciation no more no less. You can afford asset depreciation on 200 million mansion? 50 people together probably can
A worker coop is an example of joint self-employment. The workers are not employees, and the employer-employee relationship is abolished in worker coops
@leftymemes
The others have given more concrete examples, so I'll skip that and simply say that contradictions are resolved through practice. As in we can talk about the problems and solutions all day, but it only when we start to actually make the changes, do we create and engage with the problems and develop solutions in response.
Translation:
"You know, it'll just buff out bro we build the bridge in front of us as we walk across it bro"
Is what humans have always done. Capitalism has so many contradictions, we have entire legal and regulatory systems and social programs in place to make it viable, and governments still have to bail it out with our tax dollars every 10 years or so.
The small business part of the transition is "easy" (or at least, not any harder than maintaining a capitalist business), people have been and are currently doing this already. They are known as worker-owned cooperatives, and are often extremely liberating to those who make the effort. Depending on the industry (and the government you live under), it's not even that difficult, roughly on the order of forming a freelancing agency. There are also entire organizations dedicated to assisting with corporate transition to cooperative structure.
Here are some good examples of resources in the US to start learning that process:
It is really funny (read: not funny but sad) that you think our current system is working. This post has such big "I have not thought about this at all and am out of ideas" energy that I can't engage with it seriously.
Do you own a summer cottage right now? What percentage of people do? Will not owning that cottage impact anyone's life in a meaningful way?
But yea, sure, let's have a few hundred people own more wealth and thus influence than the rest of the world as a whole! It's the best way to make sure the people a step or two below those few hundred get to have a summer cottage! This really makes society the best it can be!
These are still paid. Socialism is concerned with the means of production, not what amount to bank accounts.
If it's a personal residence, it's cool. If it's a business's privately-owned land, it's up for grabs if the local community has a better use for it
See the above distinctions. Money is secondary and personal property is fine, private property is liable to be taken.
Either the cost of your rent is dramatically reduced or your housing is turned into some type of cooperative, so there's no need to exploit someone else to make rent.
I would like to encourage you to read Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific".
The exact plan is something that would be developed based on the political-economic situation that led to the revolution in the first leave and the needs that arose. There can be no perfect prescription because one cannot predict the exact situation we will inherit.
Immediately following revolution in the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks had to fight a war against invading capitalist forces and domestic capitalist revanchists. They implemented forms of fatm collectivization that were largely restorative of traditional practice but without feudal lords and while also attempting to industrialize. This went less efficiently than needed so they adopted the NEP, then abandoned it for further central planning once its purpose was fulfilled. They ensured housing for all, placed doctors, cafes, and housing at factories, invested heavily in infrastructure and education, promoted women as part of the workforce and larger society against patriarchal attitudes, and prepared for the inevitable further invasion by capitalists, this time the fascists. They built based on their ability to control the means of production by and for those who work and based on the conditions they faced. They faced poverty, landlordism, a poor level of industrialization and infrastructure, joblessness, external military threats, etc. They implemented many policies over time attempting to work around hurdles, most of them imposed by capitalist countries trying to destroy them.
In China, they faced an even greater level of landlordism, of petty landowners that would routinely exercise inordinate control over people's lives and abuse them. China was even poorer than the Russian Empire, being a colonized country forced to subjugate its economy to foreign capitalusts. China had to fight a war against Japanese invaders and developed in the context of not just a liberatory nationalism but a betrayal of the communists by the KMT. They similarly had to industrialize, to deal with poverty, to deal with foreign aggression from capitalists that promptly encircled them and instituted sanctions. They achieved transformatiobs never before seen, of skyrocketing life expectancy, an end to famines, industrialization without stealing through colonialism.
When revolution comes to your country, what state will it be in? Will you have to kill neofascists that started a civil war? Will you need to rebuild a militant labor movement? Will there be an economic underclass most poised to contribute and then make demands of the transition?
Basically, when the working class has a liberatory victory, it can now more directly demand change. What changes will be a product of what is needed for the working class's own interests. In Cuba many villages had no doctor and essential medical care required a group of people to carry the sick for a day or more. So they built hospitals and trained doctors. They now have the best medical system in the world for a country with their size and wealth.
Anyways with that said I'll try to answer your specific questions.
lol who cares? A second home in a country full of homeless people!? I cannot be asked to care. Most likely it will be ignored because socialists are far too kind.
If you live in a rich, Western country these no longer exist. Farms are large agribusinesses owned by companies. Pappy had to sell his farm to them in the 70s and 80s.
These are numbers on a spreadsheet that are currently held by a bank or government. Their purpose is to guarantee retirement. During any real revolution the banks in question will be seized and repurposed, possibly even abolished depending on conditions, as they are the organ of society most antagonistic to us. There is no guarantee that the accounts will have anything in them nor that the government would have had any legitimacy to guarantee retirement before we won. They will try to take the money and run. They don't care about your pension, lol. It's just capital for them to lend out and make profits from.
Traditionally, socialists have simply guaranteed retirement via the state. An actual guarantee. And because socialists have also traditionally made so much of life available at no or low direct cost to the individual (housing, healthcare, transportation, food), this mostly just means you get to live your life exactly the same but just don't have to work.
If the socialists are competent they will make the state the owner of all land and then figure out how to use previously corporate land for the public good and find a reasonable compromise on personal land. But it really depends on the conditions of revolution. Is land reform a revolutionary promise? What land and for what purpose?
Should probably be largely abolushed but this also depends on the revolution. Nobody is coming for granny's keepsakes but you don't get to inherit the slave plantation.
This is a term used for tax purposes in certain rich Western countries. It's not really meaningful for when to expropriate and plan, for example. Many industries should not even exist, they are parasitic, and this includes many small businesses. Smart socialists will not make decisions based solely on a tax bracket aside from needing to be practical about how to allocate transitions and planning resources. For example, China institutes more control over businesses as they become larger, both via government oversight and worker control.
If you're doing that you're a financial idiot lol. Much better for the state to allocate your housing and keep you away from such decisions.
Socialists have traditionally guaranteed housing via various mechanisms, starting with building enough of it and ensuring it exists where people should be for economic activity. Connect it to transit, make it available bear industry and retail, etc.
Basically everything you mentioned is out of reach for the vast majority of humanity due to the capitalsti system. You're describing things that only the petite bourgeouis in impeeialist countries even think about. This us a very small number of privileged people even in those countries.
It doesn't stand at all, you are just unfamiliar with two centuries of working class political struggle and geopolitics. This is understandable, as Western educations do their very best to ignore most of it and misinform about the rest. One of the things they teach is the cartoonish impracticality of socialist systems that they describe with fanciful and false stories, basically fairy tales to appease reactionary capitalists that promote such propaganda in the first place and, for example, dictate what textbooks the Texas Board of Education buys and therefore the content in classrooms nationwide.
The untold reality is that socialists are actually very practical and realistic people that build from the needs of the wider working class and have traditionally tracked commodity prices and investments and military funding allocations and run and led worker revolrs and run and led wars of liberation. We are practical to a fault and endeavor to understand the world as it is and what is needed to liberate ourselves from an oppressive system and offer a vision of: what if we built this world for ourselves and not bankers or a noncorporeal profit-generating machine?
Generally, Leftists believe it can only happen via revolution. The general idea is to organize and build dual power, so that when an inevitable revolution arises, the working class is already organized and can replace the former state.
You're working off the mindset of maintaining Capitalism and piece-by-piece Socializing it, which is not what Leftists generally propose.
I suggest reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, if you're genuinely interested.
I'm an outsider and I don't really know much about Leftist thought. I'm curious what the general belief among Lefists is for why this revolution hasn't happened? (In the capitalist West that is?)
Marxists believe it is due to Imperialism, also known as Unequal Exchange. Western Capitalist countries export the vast bulk of their poverty to foreign countries with cheaper labor to make a wider proportion of profit, similar to the idea of countries functioning as Bourgeoisie and Proletarian.
Whether you agree with Lenin's analysis of the State and Revolutionary methods, I have yet to find a Leftist that disagrees with his arguments in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
What we are seeing is an increase in Anti-Western sentiment among the Global South, as conditions deteriorate and expropriation increases. As this revolutionary pressure builds, the weakest links pop, so to speak, weakening Western Hegemony and driving their own Proletariat closer to revolution.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "imperialism" here but regardless, what is the solution to imperialism according to Marxists?
I elaborated on it later, it's the concept of exporting the bulk of industrial production to foreign countries to super-exploit for super-profits.
Imperialism defeats itself in much the same way Capitalism does, it increases in severity and exploitation until a boiling point is reached, and the country in the Global South moves towards domestic production and nationalization of their resources and products, rather than serving as an outsourced factory for wealthy Capitalists abroad.
I don't think we're communicating. I asked what Marxists' solution to imperialism is. I can't see any solution in what you've written here.
What do you specifically mean? I just said Imperialism defeats itself, and people in the Global South can act against it by protecting their own production and resources.
So you're saying Marxists have no solution to imperialism?
They do. Supporting movements in the Global South against Imperialism by the Global North. Looking at the nature of Imperialism dialectically, it appears to be deteriorating as exploitation increases, so these movements are gaining momentum. This is what I mean when I say Imperialism defeats itself, as exploitation increases (as it must to counter the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall), it also increases pressure against itself from those it exploits.
We're not communicating. That's not a "solution" as I understand it.
Why not?
If imperialism defeats itself why is it still around?
I'm specifically referring to Capitalism as it turns to Imperialism, also known as Unequal Exchange. A
I don't follow. You haven't answered my question.
Capitalist Imperialism has been around for about 2 centuries.
Decade by decade, have more things be run by the government rather than for-profit enterprises.
For example, in the 2020s, the US could transition to a Swiss-style healthcare system. In that kind of system, everybody would have insurance provided by a private company, but the most basic plan would be very cheap and offered by every company, and there were subsidies available so nobody in the country was uninsured, no matter what their financial situation. The US could also have a government owned bank that operated out of every post office that provided extremely basic banking services with zero fees. Private banks would still be able to compete with that, but they'd have to compete on extra services that the government bank didn't offer.
In the 2030s you could tackle education and housing. All state-owned universities could offer education with a $0 tuition and all textbooks available digitally for free. Maybe for some majors you'd have to agree to provide some public service to offset the cost of that education. Like, a doctor might have to agree to serve for 5 years in a remote area that typically doesn't have good medical coverage. Or, a lawyer might have to spend 5 years working as a public defender. For housing, the government could buy and own housing. Any citizen could get an apartment and pay a low monthly rent directly to the government. Subsidize that rent so that if someone couldn't afford to pay any rent, they could still live there. Private homes could still exist, and would be more spacious and more luxurious, but everybody would at least be able to start with something decent.
Then you could tackle transportation. Tax private vehicles and use that to fund public transit. As transit got better, fewer and fewer people would feel the need for the luxury of their own vehicle, but those who did could continue to subsidize public transit for the rest (instead of the current situation where cities subsidize drivers).
Then you could look into food. Maybe everyone gets the equivalent of food stamps. Maybe instead of throwing money at private farmers to grow corn, making corn so cheap that it's almost free, resulting in awful things like high fructose corn syrup in everything, the government could be responsible for some basic crops, and allow private farmers to grow specialty things / luxuries.
Media would be easy -- just set up something like the BBC but for the US. Most other countries in the world have something similar.
Bit by bit, just chip away at all the for-profit things and allow the government to either take it over entirely, or to provide a bare-bones version that was available to everybody, while allowing people to keep running their own private for-profit ones that offer a more luxurious experience for people who want to pay more.
Who has these things happen and how?
I'm not a proponent of socialism due to the whole 'state' aspect, but I'd say universal healthcare and unconditional UBI would be the actual first steps toward the moneyless and stateless goal put forth in this comic.
“But what if one day I get generational wealth? I better vote against anything that might reduce poverty and wealth inequality!” - republican voters
This is really just a very specific type of socialism, as indicated by Lenin being here; an authoritarian who killed other socialists. This is about ML.
The first and last panels are right, but, for example, according to this post Anarcho-Communists don't exist. They don't believe in "evolving to a point" as the third panel says, they believe in jumping straight to that point. Also, Libertarian Socialists wouldn't really be fond of "elected committees" controlling things, as the second panel talks about; maybe electing people into leadership positions inside of a company/cooperative, or maybe even having unions make those decisions, but nothing above that.
They included a picture of Picard too, should I assume this is ML-utopianism and just shut down listening completely?
Also, I'm an anarchist and don't believe in "jumping to the point." We're not all teenagers with no concept of how societies work. We're opposed to the State and any form of imposed hierarchy. That I'm opposed to the State today doesn't mean I don't vote or that I'm just waiting around for the spirit of Good Anarchism to posses every person on Earth suddenly.
Like any reasonable person with an ideology, I make plans to spread my ideas to more people over time. The capitalist state isnt going to auddenly collapse into anarchy and if it did it woukd be terrible because other parts of the collapsing state are going to form monarchies, fascist authoritarian fortresses, and many other balkanized microstates. It would be the worst possible outcome for anarchists!
No, our goal is to enact socialism. Then to whither away the state apparatus into communism. Then to whither away the global hierarchy in favor of self-determination and negotiation.
In no universe do serious people think: Step 1: destroy all governance. Step 2: ????. Step 3: Anarchist utopia.
Good comment. Whether Marxist or Anarchist, goals must be built towards, and cannot be vibed into existence.
Then, by definition, you're a Marxist, you're literally summarising Marxist theory. Anarchists don't believe in going through that middle step.
If you want to see how an anarchist revolution works, go look up Catalonia and the CNT-FAI, Anarchist Ukraine or the Zapatistas.
ML would be about a vanguard party. That kind of elected council with central planning can happen without it. That vanguard party is where ML goes all wrong and tends to devolve into cult-like behavior. Edit: and not just the big one's in Russia/China/N. Korea. Lots of smaller ML groups devolve into cult-like behavior, too.
I do agree, though, that the second panel is still too specific. There are many ways to organize the workers, and that second panel is far too narrow.
It is very clear that it's about Socialism, so leaving AnComms out is fair.
AnComms are socialists, though. As are communists, and all anarchists who are not AnCaps, but those aren't even really anarchists.
Socialism is just about workers controlling the means of production; how you get there, the styles and forms of leadership, and all other things, are where all subgroups differ. The same way that in capitalism you can have Soc-Dems, Liberals, Libertarian Capitalists, Fascists, etc.
AnComms are under the socialist umbrella, but the comic isn't delving into every single thing that's under that umbrella, because it's not 600 pages long.
Vanguard politics consistently lead to a new different hierarchy that is just as bad as the current hierarchy is my problem. Leninism just sucks. The peers who said he sucked were right. Leninism leads to Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot, etc. When people try to scare the shit out of us by acting like socialism is more dangerous than capitalism we have Lenin to blame for thinking anyone could have the strength to wield power without being depraved by it.
Hierarchical societies just don't work. And I won't apologize for saying Bolshevism sucks and isn't even really communism, its just a more weirdly shaped version of colonialism
This is the conclusion I've come to since reading the State and Revolution. The people who are capable of overthrowing the current system aren't likely to be the same people capable of keeping true to an approach that's legitimately socialist. There are problems with reformism as well, as it can result in an endless series of small concessions to distract from an equally endless series of measured power grabs.
If I take what I read of Marx and Engels as likely to be accurately predictive, my conclusion has to be that the circumstances they're discussing haven't occurred yet. Basically, Lenin jumped the gun with his support of imposing a revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat. The power structure it creates is too centralized to achieve its goals.
This would suggest to me that if Marx and Engels are correct, a spontaneous and universal proletariat uprising is probably still down the road somewhere. Basically, we see hints at this state reflected in the microcosm of revolution, but have yet to see the circumstances that cause an actual change of prioritization and autonomy rather than simply a changing of the guard.
Lenin wasn't a socialist. He was a transparently dishonest fraud who built a cult of personality. The best thing you can say is that he failed because if the results were a success, Lenin was a monster.
While Lenin was a flawed leader, and did some shady shit in the name of revolution, I don't think it's fair or honest to call him a fraud. Man was literally imprisoned because of his beliefs. Not saying we should follow him religiously like some people do, he definitely made mistakes. Now if this was Stalin we were talking about I could understand.
He was imprisoned for what he wrote about. His actions tell me that he was not a socialist, and that's what matters. He held an election, immediately enacted violence to change the outcome, immediately dismantled the socialist power structures that were in place, purged people who didn't agree with him, and acted as an autocrat.
Anyone who thinks Lenin was a socialist is ignorant of history.
Edit: I can't actually see who replied to me because I blocked them 😂 tells me what I need to know about the people arguing with me.
That's insanely ahistorical. The socialist power structures that were in place, existed precisely BECAUSE of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. And soviets had a very high degree of government control all the way up until the death of Lenin. You're seriously mistaken about this
Showing to us all you haven't studied the figure of Lenin in an honest way in your life.
Lenin dedicated most of his life (in exile from the tsarist regime for doing so) to study, write on, and agitate against, the issues of the masses. He was openly against becoming a personality cult, he maintained his democratic ideals until the moment a civil war broke and terrorist attacks started to kill members of the party and attempted to kill him, and if you read any of his writings it's patently obvious that he's obsessed with the well-being of the working class.
The 1% cry about it way less than the 40+% of absolute troglodytes in this country who think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires and love their tacky prophet Donnie the douche
This is a problem of gutted education, not the individual. The ring class removed all class awareness from our education and replaced it with glorifying an oligarchy disguised as a meritocracy.
I think it's more a problem of intelligence, which can be mitigated by education but you'll always have a certain amount of people who can be told any given lie and they'll not care whether it's true or not, even if they know better.
douché
This cartoon makes some bad assumptions.
"the workers (aka the proletariat) own their own workplace" That's one way to do it, or you could have that happen indirectly where the workplace is owned by the government and the workers "own" it indirectly. Most firefighters don't work for a for-profit company, but it's also not a firefighter-owned company that goes and sells firefighting services to businesses that don't want to burn down. A worker-owned company might make sense in certain situations, say a clothing store. You wouldn't necessarily want a central government owning all garment manufacturing and sales. A worker-owned collective is probably a better match. You might have a worker-owned sports store that focuses on selling sports gear, and a worker-owned wedding gown store that focuses on that market. Most people are more familiar with the government-owned model, and that's also socialism.
"production is then planned by elected committees"... why? That's the communist way, but that's not necessarily how a socialist system has to operate. And, in many cases, an "elected committee" is absolutely the wrong way. In countries with state-provided healthcare, there's a government minister who is in charge of health, and their ministry hires the experts needed to run the healthcare system. I definitely don't think that system would be improved if an elected committee were in charge of running things. You might still have worker-representation in those setups. For example, the nurses could belong to a union, and a union rep would be part of decision making. But, an elected committee is a weird fit in many situations.
"increases in productivity continuously reduce the work week"... that's just not likely. People who have high paying jobs could sometimes demand a shorter work week, and occasionally they do. But, often they want a more luxurious life in their time off rather than a less luxurious life and lots of time off. I'm not talking about CEOs and other people who are workaholics and own multiple mansions. I'm talking about dentists and engineers who are willing to keep working a standard 40 hour week so that they can take trips around the world, or buy a nice cottage near a lake, or treat their kids to nice presents.
This way of presenting socialism is going to give people the wrong idea.
Maybe not running things, but the input of local committees could be very welcome. Increasing the number of specialists of some kind because of popular desire, putting a clinic in X part of the neighborhood because there are a lot of reduced-mobility people who could benefit from it nearby, transparency meetings where the expenditure is explained to the people...
Ideally, each worker would be able to decide what they want, and shift between different working hours on different stages of life. Construction worker who only wants to have the basics and a lot of leisure time? 20h workweek. Scientist crazy for research who wants to spend a lot of time in the lab? 40h workweek. Said scientist decides to have a kid and wants to reduce to 25h workweek? Done.
The idea is that workers would be able to make those decisions themselves instead of relying on the good-will of their corporate overlords, it doesn't mean everybody has to be present in every democratic decision if they don't want to, or that everyone needs to have identical working conditions.
Market socialism also exists, just to remind everyone.
If you Google "define socialism", you'll get a sentence saying socialism is when tve means of production are owned OR regulated by the people.
So you can still have what we have right now, no need for any sort of fundamental change, except proper regulation, meaning actually good labour laws and proper taxation for the wealthy.
Finland and other Nordics are arguably market socialist.
And yes, I know how many will disagree. Here in Finland, less so.
Absolutely not, they are Social Democracies. They are not progressing towards more worker ownership, but less, Capitalism still drives the system and the bourgeoisie still drives the state.
By any reasonable dictionary (as well as classic definition), capitalism is defined by private property of the means of production. Socialism is defined by common/social ownership of the means of production, not "regulation". What you call "market socialism" is just regulated capitalism.
Nothing wrong with having any position, and we should strive for what's best instead of trying to correspond to certain terms, but what you suggest is not socialism.
And I kinda hate it when we move the goalposts, especially with American politician calling literally any bit of social policy "socialism". No it's not, and classics have outlined it very, very clearly.
Question. How can we be sure to trust that the elected committees do not turn society into an authoritarian regime? Would it work like standard western democracy, i.e. electing a party / parties to form a "government" (in this case committee; semantics)?
Edit: I truly appreciate everybody who takes the time to write elaborate answers pertaining to my question. I will read and respond once I have the opportunity and in that case, I hope eventual followup questions are welcomed. :)
The key is in one of the words you've said:
You don't have to trust that they won't turn authoritarian. If you see authoritarian tendencies and you don't like them, you vote them out.
That depends on who you ask. An anarchist will tell you no, a communist will tell you a different answer, etc. I'm a Marxist-Leninist so I'll answer to that as a Marxist-Leninist.
In a Marxist-Leninist state, there is only one party. In the same way that your country only have one justice system, your country only has one socialized system of healthcare (if at all), etc, there would be need only for one party: the party that represents the interests of the workers. This party would have a vanguard of communist intellectuals (liable to being removed from their position by popular vote), who would be in a constant back-and-forth democratic dialogue with the workers and their representation in worker-councils. The needs and demands of the workers would be translated to Marxist ideology, which is flexible depending on the circumstances, the culture, and the society it's applied to, and policy would be drafted, approved and adopted.
A good example of this in action is detailed in a book called "how the workers' parliaments saved the Cuban Revolution", by Pedro Ross. It details the immense level of popular participation in the drafting, approval, implementation and execution of policy in Cuba during the 1990s "periodo especial", a huge economic crisis precipitated by the dissolution of their biggest trading partner, the USSR. Literal millions of people, through their unions and through worker councils, participated democratically in deciding which sectors of the economy they wanted to preserve most, which ones least, which workers are redundant and which aren't, which goods and services should be prioritised in the planned economy, how to organize local organic farms everywhere (including workplaces) in order to minimize food imports... All of this happened in a back-and-forth, multi-year exercise, between the top representatives of the government, the specialists (e.g. economists, hospital directors, transit company directors, etc.), and the direct representatives of the people through the worker's councils. It's truly one of the most explicit and overwhelming examples of democracy that I've ever encountered.
gestures broadly at elected officials now
What's your point?
That sounds like a fascinating book! I've always been interested in the nitty gritty of how the Cuban democratic process works, and this book seems accessible and is just under 200 pages (not including the appendices/bibliography) so I might actually get through it.
Here's a temporary download if anyone wants to grab it (it's also just on libgen if you prefer to find it yourself)
Rather than a dry, aseptic description of the Cuban institutions and form of government, the book reads as a historical account of the process that took place in the years of the Periodo Especial.
The second half of the book, for some reason, is a recount of the Cuban revolution and its historical causes, which you may or may not skip reading depending on what your purpose is with the book.
Thanks for providing a link!
Thanks for posting the link!
What do you think about people who claim only having one party is undemocratic? I do believe there should be a certain freedom to form parties of your own and eventually run for election, but this is standard in most western countries and I'm unsure if I'm missing some benefit to only having one party. Genuine question by the way.
I'm not the person you asked and they surely have a better answer, but I thought I'd throw some things out there:
A lot of what are understandably called "one party states" are not technically one party. The DPRK has like three other parties and I'm pretty sure there are countless parties all over the PRC. It's still reasonable to refer to these countries as one party states because they have some kind of constitutional provision preventing any other party from taking power at the highest levels, but they still use multiple parties as a means of representing diverse interests.
Our comrade VI evidently knows way more about Cuba than I, but something I happen to know is that, when you run for office in Cuba, you are not the candidate of any party, you are effectively independent. I think that they conceptualize what a party is in a very different way. In America, the political parties are literally private entities, with all the legal ramifications that entails, and are effectively companies pushing brands in order to get money from donors via held seats (that's a crude generalization, but I think it works well enough). In the "one party states" I know of, the "one party" is considered to be part of the governing apparatus itself, rather than something that exists outside it seeking to influence it. It's all a conjoined project that way.
I personally think that, assuming there is actual democracy in terms of the government needing to enact the popular will, a one party state is probably a more coherent way of having society united in its various projects, even if the proverbial ship needs to change course now and then for whatever reason. That's just my feeling though, and it's mainly informed by the overwhelming sense one gets if they follow American elections that they are engineered at every level to be anti-democratic.
Thanks for being open to discussion, I appreciate it. I'll start talking about the reality of multi-party systems and liberal democracy.
Generally, multi-party systems aren't democratic if we adhere to the definition that "the power of legislation is in the hands of the people", which I think would be a good premise for a parliamentary multi-party system. Ideally, you'd choose a platform in elections, which has a given program, or even create your own platform if you don't feel represented enough. Then, this platform supports its program in a Congress, and votes through representatives to pass legislation according to its program. Sounds good, but let's examine whether the policy that people want to enact is actually passed, and whether policy that people don't want to enact is passed.
We can start with the case of the US. The vast majority of Americans support an extended universal healthcare system of some sort. The technical details are a bit hazy, but the reality is that most people would support such a system as poll after poll shows. Yet, the years pass, and there's basically no progress in this direction, how is this democratic? How come if a majority of people support this, it's not pushed forwards and legislated? It's the same with abortion rights, a vast majority of Americans believe in legal abortion rights for women, yet no legislation is passed in that regard and many states actually go backwards. A majority would support increased taxes on the extra-wealthy and on big companies. Study after study show that public opinion is one of the worst predictors for policy, i.e., there's barely any correlation at all between polls on policy, and actual passing of policy. Can we say that there's an actual democracy in the US, when the interests of the people don't correlate with legislation?
I'll talk about Europe now, since I'm Spanish and it's a closer example to me. Recently we assisted to the outrageous example of Macron unilaterally skipping Congress to increase the retirement age against the desires of basically the entirety of France. Huge protests broke out, he was vilified in social media, and all polls showed that this was an extremely unpopular decision. Yet it passed. The same happened all over the EU during the 2010 Euro crisis. Austerity policy was enforced by the authorities everywhere: lowering expenditure on healthcare, education and public retirement pensions, reducing investment in infrastructure, increasing taxes such as VAT... Again, this was extremely unpopular and against the desires of most people. It's been a decade and a half since then, and these austerity policies are still in place. VAT is still higher than it was, expenditure in healthcare and education hasn't increased to the levels prior to the crisis... Yet another example of blatant anti-democracy. If the policy isn't carried out with the will of the people, the system isn't democratic.
I could go on giving examples of failed cases of policy in multi-party systems, but now I'll do the opposite and bring examples of multi-party systems that actually applied popular policy.
Salvador Allende was a Chilean leftist politician in the previous century, who was elected by a majority of citizens to carry out nationalizations of the mining industry (the heart of the economy of the country at the time), and to improve the welfare state. His term didn't last very long at all, because when popular policy started being actually enacted in a democratic fashion, a fascist coup murdered him and replaced him with a fascist dictator.
In the Spanish Second Republic, a similar thing happened. In the 30s, a very progressive leftist government was elected, and promised to carry out land reform, i.e. expropriation from big landowners and redistribution of land to the farmers in a country which was primarily agrarian. It suffered the same fate: a fascist coup, a bloody civil war, and almost 40 years of fascism.
In Iran, under the administration of Mosaddegh, a leftist secular politician who wanted to make sure that the Iranian oil was profiting the majority of Iranians instead of the Shah and a few British companies, nationalised the oil industry. This was met with economical blockade, with paid actors pretending to be communists destroying private property to agitate people, and fake protests organized by the mafia funded by the MI6 and the CIA ousting him from the government.
Now let's go to a period in which actually progressive policy was passed in Europe in a popular and democratic fashion: the post-WW2 period. Under the looming threat of a socialist revolution, and the high level of labour organization through unions, the governments of Europe were successfully pressured into passing meaningful legislation on the limit of working hours per week, on progressive tax systems, on welfare state (healthcare, education and pensions)...
So it seems to me, that the only way to make governments pass actually progressive and democratic policy that most people agree with, is through the organization of workers and the threat of a communist revolution. That, if people just vote socialists into power without organizing labor, they suffer coups, that if they vote social-democrats they get austerity and antidemocratic policy. What percentage of Europe agreed to increase the military budget after the start of the war in Ukraine? I'm not trying to argue whether that's a good or a bad policy, I'm just saying all polls showed it was an originally unpopular decision, yet it was carried out.
If the only way to enforce governments to enact popular, progressive and democratic policy, is through the organization of labor, then why would I want multi-party systems instead of a system of representation of workers in a single, unified, democratic structure?
I know it's a long answer, but I appreciate it if you made it to the end.
All committees are authoritarian regimes, if they have any power. Making any decisions with power to back it up is authoritarian.
The question is whether you want decisions made by 500 bankers and some military conteactors or by collective deliberative organs that respond to the needs of the people at large, and assuming the latter, how do you make them function robustly?
A smart approach would borrow from the successes of others while allowing a bit of experimentation. Most real-world sociakist systems have implemented both a bottom-up local governance system for some domains and top-diwo national level policies for other domains. There is a real-world practical need for both.
Re: The councils in this cartoon, they are referring to, more or less, workplace democracy. Practically speaking, this requires a similar system: workers deciding how to run their company but also there is a need for national/regional coordination, for capital investment, and to balance against the bourgeois tendencies of what is basically a wirkers' cooperative.
A key promise of socialism is not to immediately establish utopia, but to set the groundwork for how we may develop society for ourselves. There may be a form of workers' councils that you prefer but that I might critique as unworkable in the current world. But it would surely be something made possible by socialist steuggle over time, as the comic explains: we would work to decrease necessary work time, to live our lives more how we want to. Once free if, say, imperiakist wars and expensive dirty energy, perhaps local workers' council politics can adopt a simpler, more fair and autonomous form.
Basically, deconstructing oppressive systems would be an ongoing process that would have to be weighed against what is "more important" (e.g. not getting nuked), not one leap. So the form taken would depend on the context of how we win, what threats we face, borroeing from others' successes, and how our experiments go.
Yes and no. Most Marxists advocate for a form of Whole-Process People's Democracy, or Soviet Democracy. Essentially, the idea is that, rather than just having state, local, and federal elections (as a brief example), there are far more rungs you can directly elect and participate in. This ideally holds people accountable better than western democracies do.
I'll jump in with an extra question here if I may:
So say you have two companies, doing more or kess the same thing, company A and company B.
If the workers in those companies detain their respective means of production, why wouldn't they want to do what we see today:
"Hire" the best ones from the other company, grow so they all get more of it, intimidate concurrence etc? I mean it's not just because there are lots of bosses instead of just some, that it will solve those problems?
Also, if company A does well, won't people apply for work there, but ot for company B that (say) does less well? Wouldnt company A try to limit hired if they don't fall in line with what they are thinking/doing etc.?
I just see the same system but with artificial blocks for the most obvious things, blocks people (who want it, I mean those crazy prycopathic bosses will still be around, they're just not a CEO any more) will just work around.
I wonder if some common pitfalls like too much party control over committees, lying about quotas for financial gain, and the vulnerabilities of a society in revolt could be squeezed in, or perhaps covered in a second image.
Orthodox Marxism isn't always enough, and is not beyond revision and improvements (hence the many neo-marxists). Critical Theorists have addressed Marxism as well as Capitalism after all.
That said, the post is good and educational as is, and has my up vote.
See you at the first plenary session comarades!
After reading this, i now understand less about socialism.
What part is confusing?
This comic makes a ton of logical leaps, by which i mean that it assumes that the reader is already familiar with certain information and leaves it implied. More broadly, it seems to assume that the audience already agrees that communism is the best. I'm particularly annoyed at the second pannel describing a command economy in a very short and unconvincing way, as if the audience already knows and agrees.
I have a rudimentary knowledge of political taxonomy and this is very very confusing.
But you know what, at least it's written in plain language. A mistake that communists often make is using their vocabulary (alienation, ideology, bourgeoisie) as if everyone knows what it means, i'm glad this isn't the case here
That's the purpose of building up dual power via leftist orgs, so that when Workers do sieze control, there are pre-existing structures. It's difficult to put all of theory into a comic.
Good example right there: i have less than no idea what this means. I'm more politicized than the average person, definitely way more than the average worker, but i have no idea what this means. There is honestly a pattern of communists being very immersed in theory to the point that they forget normies like me aren't on the same page and don't immediately get it.
By god, don't. I'm not too sure if 'all of theory' is worth putting in a book, but it's definitely not worth putting in a comic.
I've been politically active for years without really knowing theory, all it takes is talking to people and a willingness to spend an afternoon cutting leaflets. It is my honest opinion that marxist theory is as relevant to real world activism as theology, and no less arcane.
If people who make things own them, who manages the "big picture" ideas? CEO pay tells me that requires the power of thousands of
peasantsworkers.Workers are perfectly good at self-organizing without them. "I'm the ideas guy" is stated by people who do little and should not be trusted.
That's my point: no "ideas man" is worth thousands of real workers.
Elected officials and councils.
I would love to see a policy where there is a variable tax rate on companies based on employees satisfaction.
If a company has a largely unhappy workforce they would be taxed most of their profits.
If a company has a extremely happy workforce then it can reduce the taxation rate below the standard rate. And employees can still vote on this 2 years after termination.
It incentivises companies to invest more in the employees wellbeing, and punishes companies that take practice in unsustainable hiring and mass layoffs later.
If it is unavoidable that a company needs to downsize, they would be incentivised to help employees find new employment.
I'm sure there is a large issue I'm not seeing with this but I'm pretty fond of the idea.
There is a simpler way to do this, and it's a worker cooperative. Workers own the business and they democratically decide what the business does. There is no separation between the leadership and the workforce. Maintaining that separation will always result in conflict because the interests of the owners will never be the same as those of the workers.
How is that simpler?
It sounds way more complex to logistically set up a system like that. Best case is a lot of regulation needed, worse case is a complete overhaul of the economy.
It already exists. See for example Mondragon
The major issue is that it has to compete on a global market that's exploitative.
100% agree with the exploitative global market.
Also, that was an interesting read and a great example of an ideal company's practice.
Though it was a bit vague on where the start up funding came from. Which is what I was most curious about (and my main reason I consider the practice complex to implement)
Mondragon seems to be founded by a generous man that created the company from the ground up with these principles in mind, but unfortunately most people with the resources to this kind of business do not have such great ideals (and for the most part, they have these resources because they don't have them and thus exploited workers)
How would a business take off the ground in this scenario without a selfless benefactor?
Also it's a much different beast to convert an already established company like amazon and convert that to the same system. Mainly in that the owners and shareholders do not want to give up their investment for nothing.
What are the options then? Steal the company from the amazon investors in spite of the capital they invested to the company? Or pay them off?(would be expensive if going by market value)
Stealing would still be dystopian. I have no love for amazon investors, but imagine a lovely small family-owned business that invested all their life savings into it, before being taken from them because they hired some teenagers to help them for the summer.
It's complex, and not likely compatible with the current economy (unless the rich bastard's hearts grow 3 sizes large), but it would be nice if this business type was more widespread.
I consider the tax rate suggestion a good way to integrate the employee vote with capitalism. it still "survival of the fittest" but the "fittest" would be a profitable company that looks after it's employees.
Yeah, it's not an easy problem to solve. As someone who is mainly versed in the socialist tradition I view class conflict as the primary impedement to social progress. And any system that incorporates competition will, in my view, generate class conflict. It's all or nothing: you can't have a cooperative structure operating within a competetive framework.
In practical terms, this has meant a lot of different things over the past few centuries. Nobody has found the correct answer. In the present system, the first step is unionization and increasing class consciousness among the labor force. The second step is coordinated action via targeted mass action (think cross-industry work stoppages that disrupt production and logistics). Essentially you cripple the owner class at large by disrupting their profits and force them to make concessions. You could have a gradual move towards cooperative ownership by forcing down the ratio of CEO to average worker pay. You could force the passage of the types of tax reform that you are arguing for. You could force the passage of social welfare reform.
But ultimately this movement would have to be worker-led, because the ruling class will always invent new ways to entrench themselves in power. John Maynard Keynes referred to the "euthenasia of the rentier class". In other words, they would humanely pass into the dust bin of history because they would no longer exist as a class, because the workers would not tolerate them.
i thought the crying guy was Hatsune Miku at first LOL
It surprises me so that any functioning democracy isn't automatically socialist.
It infuriates me that our countries are called „democracies“. Why is our economy not democratic than? The economy is mostly ruled like any feudal empire.
Well, it just goes back to the root of the word. Ancient Greece, where the word democracy comes from, was far from what we would call a democracy nowadays.
Not only did they own slaves (who obviously could not vote) but the only people that could vote, as far as I remember, were landed men. If you were not a man, or did not own land, you could not vote.
But yeah, I agree with your point.
That's the central question of Reform or Revolution, and why the majority of Leftists believe Reform to be too unlikely to outright impossible, and therefore Revolution the correct path. Rosa Luxemburg wrote about it in Reform or Revolution.
But why is reform not happening?
To greatly simplify a complex and still contested issue, Capitalist States are designed to prevent it. Using the US as an example, the two party FPTP system is designed to prevent third parties from winning, leaving the only 2 parties that can gain the bulk of Capitalist support. Even in the event of Leftists winning, the Military will often coup the leader with the help of the US, like Allende in Chile.
Because the bourgeois were happy to get power when they were excluded from it in the monarchy, but they are very much not happy to leave peasants get any power.
Francr history is very telling of this. The question of how the elections should be made was a hot topic. Representative democracy is something the bourgeoisie wants because it allows it to stay in power. Because the bourgeois are better armed to be elected than the people. Rousseau warned of this even before the first French revolution.
I'm sure the US revolution went the same way. The crazy US voting system looks very much like it was crafted for the bourgeois to stay keep all the power.
Most of them are, to limited degrees. America has the Post Office, interstate roadways, public education for children, public libraries, and many other government services that are fundamentally socialist in nature.
We don't call them that because of propaganda. And many in government (especially on the right) work very hard to destroy those systems because they are socialist and empower workers.
The idea of letting the "free market" manage these things is insane and always leads to bad outcomes, we have tried this before. People who say "economic planning doesn't work" only exist because economic planning allowed them to live freely and be educated enough to form those big words instead of being locked to the land they were born on as peasant workers.
Words I can agree to.
So it's all nice in theory, but I have questions...
Based on previous discussions, I understand the commonly proposed model here would be a workers' collective of some sort. People involved in the collective's production share the proceeds - we made N number of tractors and took them to market and received X value units; we spent Y value units in the production process, so we can distribute (X - Y) value units among the members of the collective. The workers own the equipment and infrastructure used by the collective and share responsibility for production. If a worker moves from workplace A to workplace B for whatever reason, they cease to share in the proceeds and responsibility of workplace A's collective and take on the responsibilities of workplace B's collective and share in its proceeds.
(Aside: What if X is smaller than Y? Should members then add back the difference for the next production cycle, so production materials can be procured?)
Let's look at the (X - Y) part a bit more closely. This defines the benefit that members of the collective derive from the enterprise, so they are collectively incentivised to make the difference as big as possible - to benefit themselves rather than a capital owner. Let's assume that all collectives can procure production materials equally with no supply and demand market forces (unlikely). Let's further assume that the market value for the goods produced is fixed (questionable, but OK). So anyone involved in producing tractors pay the same number of value units for raw materials and components and can only ever sell tractors for the same number of value units as everyone else. This means that an individual collective is heavily incentivised to reduce the raw materials needed per tractor (production efficiency), make better tractors than other collectives (market attractiveness), or increase the number of tractors they take to market in a given time period (increased production). Each collective, and ultimately its members, thus stand to benefit from having the most skilled tractor builders, innovative tractor designers, and an all-round hardworking membership. A more successful collective would draw more workers with such beneficial traits and become even more successful in the process. It would also be in the interest of the collective to either push out members that do not contribute according to their full ability, or reduce their share of the proceeds. The former would result in some workers not being accepted into any collective after a while and thus not contributing to any production, the latter in performance-based remuneration that creates societal inequality.
Congratulations! You just created market forces in the labour market that will have winners and losers.
Can someone explain to me what this means in today's world, beyond factories making physical goods (such as tractors) using physical machines and manual human labour?
There are some details missing here. Who elects these committees - workers, or society in general? What are the requirements for being electable for such a role? How are these committees held accountable for failures? Do they plan production at a society-wide level, each in a specific industry, or down to regions or specific production facilities? Do they serve only a planning role, or are they also responsible for execution?
What checks would be in place to prevent professional popularity contest participants (those we call politicians at the moment) from adopting a facade of ideological purity and getting elected on popularity rather than merit? How would they be insulated from outside influence by those affected by their decision making? Do we really need more tractors, or do they still have friends in Worker's Collective 631 that makes tractors?
Congratulations! You just created a managerial class (at best) or just the usual corrupt cabal that run things to their own benefit.
That's a big assumption. Anyone have any data from wide sampling across multiple industries to support this as a long-term sustained effect?
If you replace "humanity" with "our close community" this might be realistic. I don't think the "and humanity" has ever happened at a macro level.
Yes. Market Socialism (which would have supply and demand and competing worker-owned firms) doesn't solve everything. I advocate for it because I think it's a good, achievable medium-term goal that would be a vast improvement over what we have now. Something we could see in my lifetime. Once we get things there, workers are in a better position to advocate for further changes, like dumping money altogether.
However, there's plenty of people who think we should jump right past that and into the Anarco-Communist end goal.
One of the ideals of being a cooperative is "cooperation among cooperatives" as dictated by the Rochdale Principles. So by definition worker co-ops shouldn't be competing with each other. Instead consolidation of corporations to force a sort of cooperation to increase profit we'll ideally have worker cooperatives working with producer co-ops for example.
Not entirely sure the implications of supply and demand market forces but I imagine its a step up from our current system. We'll have democratically controlled work places where workers dictact the direction of supply and not necessarily for the sole purpose of increasing profits. In any case what I think we need is a new systematic way of measuring the growth of an economy in conjunction with worker co-ops.
That would likely happen on its own. If the UAW took over everything at Ford and GM, they would likely merge the companies, because why not? Even in industries where unions don't straddle companies like that, it's only a matter of time.
But that happens after they take over.
Yup.
Well good luck to them on getting that done in any society with a reasonably functional democracy.
This is Market Socialism, not Marxism. Marxism is what is depicted in the above graphic. Marxists aim to satisfy the needs of the whole using the production of the whole, not just competing cooperatives.
All Capital, ie everything used in the commodity production process. If your aim is to get into the weeds about what is considered Capital, edge cases can be decided by committees.
The society in general is the workers. Requirements can be decided by the people. These committees are held accountable via election, and a recall election can be held at any time. There are multiple rungs of planning, from society wide to regional to facility levels, with committees for each. They can serve planning and execution, as workers participate.
Recall elections. Why would producing more tractors in collective 631 benefit that collective if the goal is to satisfy the whole from the whole?
Managers are not a class, they are an extension of the workers.
Yes, across numerous studies worker participation in steering companies has resulted in higher satisfaction and stability.
You're arguing against a chimera of random mish-mashed ideas from several different strains of Socialism that argue for different forms as though they are one and the same.
The graphic with the big caption "SOCIALISM". But fair point on me not addressing the specific implementation suggested with the presence of the Marx and Lenin characters.
Well yea, the devil is in the detail so it can't just be waved away. The "commodity production process" still implies physical goods made from physical resources and that it's the production facilities and resources that should be seized. (Side note: this assumes all the underlying resources are present within the area controlled by the proletariat.) Not seen any ideas proposed beyond that, but perhaps I'm not hanging around in the right places... Hopefully the committees will have people available that can figure it out after the fact?
Yea, you've clearly never worked in a "design by committee" or "management by consensus" situation. Nothing ever gets done, and when some decision is finally made on anything it tends to be the shittiest common denominator option that thinly and evenly spreads the collective responsibility. Not the best option, but the one that everyone can kind of agree on and thus be collectively accountable for. The exception might be when a very small number of people that are agreed on an end goal and share the same vision for reaching it work together. But I assure you, that does not scale - even if people are in full agreement on the end goal.
Because human beings.
Fair point. I guess I was a bit caught in the popular narrative where managers are the enemy of the workers.
Of course, and I'm a fan. I'm not disputing that places where extensive consultation happens with the people responsible for delivering are nice places to work at. But that consultation process is usually very closely managed and the ideas to take forward are cherry picked to give enough "they listen to me" feel good vibes, while also not interfering too much with the business' priorities. Really taking the inputs of large employee groups seriously on the things that matter cannot happen outside of an adversarial setting, because the interests of the worker and those who benefit most from their labour are fundamentally in conflict. The point I'm rambling towards is that I doubt there are studies that looked at situations where employee inputs in decision making (beyond window dressing) was sustained over very long periods of time at a scale relevant to what you envision. (There are exceptions, but only in small groups of highly-aligned people in a horizontal structure that are deeply vested in the success of the venture.)
I guess you're right on that, yes. The thing is that I've been thinking about details like these (and many more) for at least 25 years (beyond "edgy teenager" or "social media fad" or "my parents are fascists" stages), since I would prefer that the fruits of my labour (to at least some degree) benefit other people rather than feed a system that heavily incentivises the shittiest parts of human beings and is also inherently cruel. Over the years I've also read pretty widely on this topic - from the purist theoretical ideologies to the practical compromises to the counterpoints to the criticisms. (Hell, I even lived in what was basically a workers' collective for almost a year, but it only worked because it was a small community of ~100 people with close social and familial ties.) So in my mind the lines between specific flavours of socialism are pretty blurry these days, while the common fundamental challenges keep standing out.
What truly frustrates me is the constant arguments about which is the best flavour, while ignoring how to actually realistically practically progress towards something better. Spending the day fighting about which flavour of ice cream to buy instead of figuring out how to get to the ice cream shop on the other side of the city in the first place.
That, and I am yet to see something proposed that doesn't completely ignore predictable human reactions or result in some degree of authoritarianism. (Nordic-flavour (kind of but not really) Market Socialism is perhaps the closest to something that might work, but it also heavily relies on a fairly homogenous society with a culture that sees value in the interests of that society over total individualism.)
You're not liberating literal serfs that never knew personal agency from a literal monarch. You're trying to get people that are exploited by a system while also benefitting from it to willingly abandon that system for something that might be better (if it worked) or might not be - the plans for the "something" are fuzzy at best so who knows. The details matter, and interrogating the details is not reactionary behaviour.
Is that Lenin or Louis CK in the second panel?
Lenin.
Is a planned economy an inherent part of socialism? That seems like the biggest red flag (lol) in this comic. All sorts of incentive mismatches there.
"Democracy at work, too" is like the biggest pitch for socialism, "government deciding what businesses can exist" is the biggest pitch against. A tightrope to walk, for sure.
It's not, just read about Anarcho-Syndycalists, or Anarcho-Communists, to get different perspectives.
This is post is about ML specifically, only really the first and last panels are about socialism in general.
Why would a democratically planned economy be a bad thing? How is it more democratic that capitalist owners decide which businesses can exist, rather than the people collectively decide so?
The potential for regulatory capture and corruption, as well as the inherent inefficiency of having a limited number of decision makers. I wouldn't trust the 2028 Trump Administration to thoughtfully determine which businesses are allowed to exist for 4 years.
It's more democratic to let anyone start a business, rather than having a gatekeeper. But more importantly I think it makes more sense to let the capitalists take the losses if their business idea sucks, and then socializing the gains once we know it works.
I'm sad that when you use the word "democracy", the best future people can imagine is the modern American system of "democracy"...
My concern is that I cannot see a democratically planned economy implemented in a way which doesn't sacrifice individualism of people .
Democracy isn't strictly "freedom" on its own, but it is a powerful tool to protect our "individual freedoms" by ensuring our leaders act in our best interests.
But unless everyone has the exact same mind set that means that the majority will always drown out the minority and so the minority voices will be forced to conform to what the majority want.
We are mostly like-minded in things like what should be crimes/punishment/rights/etc(but note this wasn't always the case): but everyone has individual preferences, like colour of shirt, a specific brand of food, video games, etc which means they need an economy where products can be created by individuals rather than decided by the majority.
If 51% of people think wearing a t-shirt with a cute dog on it is a stupid waste of time then that t-shirt doesn't get made, and so the 49% people that did like the shirt lose out.
Also if 99% of people wanted the garbage collected, but no one wanted to work there, what happens then? Is someone forced to work there? That would be extreme, instead maybe there is more incentive to work there with more pay, but then what if lots of people wanted to work there due to this incentive who would decide who works there and therefore who owns the company?
Hyperbolic examples I know but i hope you see the point I'm trying to make.
Capitalism despite all it's flaws can allow a single person the chance seek funding to provide a good or service and if deemed profitable (either through high demand or cheap production) then the product gets made. People can also seek the obscure products they want rather than what's popular.
Your comment comes from a very flawed and limited understanding of what democratic planning of the economy could be. "51% of the population decided to wear a blue shirt so only blue shirts are made" isn't at all a good representation of the possibilities of democratic planning of the economy.
Look at Amazon. Amazon is already an insanely big centrally planned economy. They have at their disposal the best engineers and computer scientists that enable such central planning that makes them an indestructible behemoth of efficiency. As soon as one client so much as clicks on a product, computer algorithms calculate the likelihood of them buying the product, and send signals to their warehouses to prepare their products for delivery, and in turn they send signals to their distributor or the manufacturer to supply or produce some more, all in the blink of an eye. The power that we, as workers, could harness if we made that ours, is unimaginably strong. Imagine a planned economy where direct input from consumers modifies the manufacturing quantities of the goods produced, without Amazon selling your data and appropriating all the surplus value of all workers in the process.
Imagine wanting to open a small business, and instead of having to be rich from the start, going to the local council to see if the community is interested in having such a business, let's say a cafe. You make a pitch, they like they idea, and they fund your project because, after all, it will be good for the neighborhood, with a part of the money they're allocated by the state for such purposes. You run your business in a risk-free fashion, since the community is already interested and has funded the project, and the better it works, the more money you can earn since you have productivity bonuses.
Imagine facing climate change, and making collectively as a society a 20-year plan subdivided in 5-year intervals to decarbonise the main sectors of the economy responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, all with the collaboration of experts in the science of climate change, experts in said sectors working not to maximise the profit of shareholders but for the betterment of humanity, and computer programmers managing absurd amounts of data that allow for very precise estimations of the state of the economy in 5 years time.
That's the future I want, and it's doable. We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have the people. The only thing left is to eliminate the cancerous property structures of productive property.
I understand it doesn't highlight the benefits like better working conditions but I feel that it illustrates my point well in that individualism is affected negatively in a democratic planned economy and forced to conform to the majority.
While it would be nice for individuals to get funding for whatever businesses ideas they think are profitable, in reality it comes down to trying to sell a product you haven't produced yet.
Going by your cafe example, what if there was a Diner nearby that sold some coffee/tea on its menu. You have to convince the majority that your shop is a worthwhile investment with them never even tasting the product, and even if it is low cost enough that you would still make profit.
What if there was a sub-par cafe with lazy employees already in town and you want to make a cafe that takes pride in its work. Would people want two cafes in the same town? If not then you are competing with a store without even able to sell a product of your own.
It's ultimately the taxpayers that are taking the risk on your product instead of the individual so they won't want to pay for a service they won't use or care for. Even if the minority of people can make it profitable.
Maybe a hybrid system where company can be owned by both private and public funding, but the private would win as they exploit their workers to cut down costs.
Ultimately I believe people should be able to start a private business on a product they believe in, as there is more diversity in products and more freedom for creativity that way. While at the same time believe that employees should have a voice that can disrupt profitability if they are mistreated. Either via Union or otherwise.
That problem still takes place in capitalism. It's just that, instead of having to convince people for funding, you risk going into bankruptcy when you try your business idea.
Great, so you run you business in capitalism, and run the other cafe into bankruptcy because that's wonderful for everyone, very efficient and humane. How about the local council decides that the other cafe is shit, and they give a warning to the place that they need to improve the quality of their work?
This can very easily be compensated by bigger, not so local, councils. Maybe specialized in more weird and experimental business ideas. Located in densely-populated ideas so that one of these weirder businesses can give cover to a high amount of population.
Really, you seem to be coming up with increasingly-complicated problems on the implementation on the spot. My point is that all of these problems can be outsourced to direct democracy instead of "consumer democracy", in a more efficient, fair, and risk-free way for everyone.
Capitalism is still seeking funding, but there is more freedom in how to get it. You can self-fund or seek investors and the option to fund publicly via crowdsourcing. Funds that are invested in a company is the only cost that you are liable for. E.g. If you invest £1000 the maximum you could lose is that £1000. (unless it is an LLP I think).
Bankruptcy is a protection of capitalism in that the owner cannot be liable for the debts of the company. Yes, there are scummy abusers of this protection, but it is a protection no the less
Lets assume that the council actually gives a crap on the quality actually issues this warning? This implies the council has the final say on how a business should be run, further proving that individualism is restricted.
What if it still doesn't improve? I'm assuming they'd shut down the business for ignoring the warning? So in this hypothetical there is no cafe and no jobs. When in capitalism there is at least a competing better store left over with presumably the same number of jobs.
Do they fire the manager and the staff and replace them? I suppose this is job neutral still and probably the quality improves, but ignoring the difficulties finding a replacement then it will be the same store and same equipment used. There is no development or improvement or creativity because there isn't any incentive or "freedom" to do so because the council has the final say on how your store is run.
I'd consider this worse as it widens the divide of urban and rural areas.
Again it is still the taxpayer that is taking this risk, and not the individual, so there is no reason why a council would bother with anything that isn't an easy win for the public approval (or a selfish grift done under the table).
For example: A council member that a approves a sex shop could easily be labelled a pervert by his opponent in the next election so why would he take the risk on it?
I'm sure there are other businesses too that are punished in this system as the need to go through government means it needs easily positive public approval before it is considered, and there is no option to do it on your own as private owned businesses aren't allowed.
Have you considered that its maybe because it is an increasingly-complicated issue?
I could accuse you of giving increasingly-easy answers too. Though to be honest I don't think that. I think you have thought through the benefits in great detail but not reflecting on the negatives and who could get hurt.
I don't think it is that simple. As I said before democracy is the will of the majority and thus only majority-approved cases are considered leaving little room for freedom of expression (or at least in terms creating a business and diversity of products)
Democracy is NOT "efficient", but it is "effective". It is a slow tedious process with 9001 rules, with the goal that the end of it, the only possible candidates are people that serve the majority's best interest. It works well for governments (well...for the most governments) but it results in an economy only serving majority interests. Capitalism with all it's flaw still provides products to the minority as long as demand outweighs production. It is a fair, and risk-free way for the majority, not everyone
Saying that I don't think the current state of capitalism is acceptable in anyway. It has turned into large companies bullying smaller ones via mass produced goods/ large user bases/brand recognition/etc, and thus accumulating power and wealth in which no human should have.
Capitalism thrives with competition, as new ideas and higher quality products are a survival pressure for the businesses to thrive. However there is little/no survival pressure to treat employees well (aside from rare/ high skill jobs) and also large companies do not have any significant competition meaning they have no need to incentivise better consumer experiences. In fact it turns to the opposite where they try to squeeze value from customers instead. This is made worse with how public trading incentivises investing in a small company then demanding unsustainable growth until it is sold at the peak market price and left to rot.
"Pure" capitalism left us with this mess. But I think proper regulation to tweak these survival pressures are key to turning things around.
All employees should have the right to affect the profitability of a company, either through unions or otherwise. This incentivises a company to treat the employees well.
Investers in the stock market should be liable for selling "at risk" stock for up to 3 months since the transaction date and the buyer of this stock can then sue for any damages from the base price. This incentivises investors to invest in stable long-term businesses rather than "pump and dump" a new fad.
I'd argue that yes, it is, because markets entail private ownership, which goes against the basic notion of socialism
The closest you can get to socialism with the market system is worker's cooperative - but market forces do not stop accumulation of power in the form of land and capital, as well as mergers and acquisitions. At the end of the day, you just reset capitalism for a while if you give businesses a free reign.
If you want to maintain a market system under socialism you need to separate it from public production. We would need to democratically decide what is a public good (e.g. housing, food, medicine, etc.) and what is a market good (essentially luxury goods). The private market would also have to be heavily regulated to prevent capital accumulation and associated power concentration. It's a really difficult problem.
One of the reasons the Soviet economy failed is because computers were not advanced enough in the 1950s-80s to automate the kind of consumer goods production that a command economy would require to be able to compete with a market system. I think if we tried this again today we would have an easier time of it, and if you look at a large vertically integrated corporation like Walmart, they've more or less figured it out already.
I agree that automatization would greatly help.planned economies and that was one of the issues with Soviet economy in particular. Just too many variables to control manually. Nowadays, corporations do exactly that.
I wonder how can market be regulated in a way that doesn't create capital accumulation. Isn't that the very point of starting an enterprise?
For Marxists, absolutely. Marx heavily critiqued the profit motive and the dangers of producing to fulfil greed instead of need. For Syndicalists, Market Socialists, etc? Perhaps not.
Workplace democracy is an improvement, but Marxists will argue insufficient alone in combatting class society.
What's your issue with Central Planning, other than vibes?
I'm not a theorist obviously, but it seems like it's inherently going to be a limited number of decision makers who can't possibly know everything, and they become a bottleneck to business creation at best, a corruption machine at worst. I know I wouldn't trust the government of half (or more but my point is, Republicans) the current US states to decide what business are allowed to exist.
I know the retort is of course that we have corruption now, but I'd think if we're theorizing, there's a better way to reduce extant corruption than introducing a new vector for even more corruption. And there's a way to harness the power of people starting small businesses freely without letting those businesses become unregulated behemoths.
Like just set the criteria you would be telling the Central Planning Authority to prioritize, and do that with regulation. Set an ownership tax so that as a business gets bigger the ownership moves away from the founder and into the public trust.
Advocates of Central Planning advocate for rungs, not just 5 dudes and some excel spreadsheets. There would be factory level planners, local planners, regional planners, state planners, country planners, and international planners. Nobody will know everything, but they will know their own areas inputs and outputs.
Why would it be more corrupt? Why do you believe Small Businesses are fine? Markets themselves inevitably result in those unregulated behemoths, it's better to have a cohesive whole that is thoroughly regulated and democratically controlled.
I recommend reading Wage Labor and Capital for more information on why the Profit Motive and Capitalist Production itself to be bad.
It's more concentrated power. The opportunity for more corruption. Sure, they could be philosopher kings at first but having the control means someone can have the control corruptly.
I don't necessarily believe all small businesses are fine, but their interests compete with each other, and they're small, by definition. And we already have regulations that apply to all businesses, there is democratic control in some sense. So I'm not worried about how the corruption of one small business owner would warp society or national interest.
I agree with this premise and then not the conclusion. Inevitably, all behemoths were once small businesses. But is the correct intervention to stop the small businesses from forming in the first place, or to prevent the ones that get big from utilizing that size in an asocial way? You could socialize businesses of a certain size, for example. You could set rules for worker-elected board members, or whatever.
Why does that mean it cannot be accounted for democratically?
Nothing is static, they will eventually grow into monopoly and corruption.
The correct path is to avoid the problem entirely via Socialism.
That sounds like Market Socialism by another name.
Market Socialism has competing cooperatives, not central planning.
billions dead of starvation every time its been attempted
Amazing.
You do know starvation rates lowered over time every time central planning has been put in place, right? You do know Capitalist countries also plan, correct?
I can haz Star Trek fyu cha?
Nice idea but it's very telling that there is no mention at all of how to make this come about. The more I learn about Marx, the more he seems like Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project, just a "wouldn't it be nice if" pie-in-the-sky idea.
Fun fact: The expression pie-in-the-sky originates in an American socialist song. It's quite catchy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave
A curious diversion but doesn't really contribute to the issue at hand.
Sorry, your argument is outdated by around 200 years. Engels already did an essay on the difference between scientific socialism and utopian socialism, because it was a common critique back then. It's called, well, "Socialism: scientific and utopian", and explains how Marxism isn't a utopian pipedream but rather a systematic way of analysing the economy and the social relations and historical events, reacting to them, and fighting for the rights of the workers above all else. Among other things, it allowed the Russian Revolution to triumph, and it allowed the Soviets to predict the second world war 10 years before it happened (which allowed the USSR to place most of its heavy industry east of the Urals, and in turn saved the country from losing against the Nazi invasion).
I haven't made an argument, I made a personal observation.
I don't understand any of this.
Revolution, which is an inevitability as Capitalism and by extension Imperialism continues to decay and disparity continues to rise. Marxists advocate for building dual-power so that when this revolution does occur, the former state can be replaced with democratic councils and unions that already exist.
What makes you say that?
Competition and improvements in production result in increasingly lowered rates of profit, which are countered by higher exploitation. Wages have largely stagnated with respect to productivity while disparity rises.
I don't follow.
You might want to read Wage Labor and Capital then.
I don't want to read that.
Then what, specifically, are you having trouble with understanding?
What you're talking about.
The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall.
The Price of Tea in China.
It's clear you don't actually care.
Socialism
A system of government where the country's wealth is concentrated into a small, ruling class of billionaires, who use the media they own to keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they . . . the rich . . . run off with all the farking money.
Oh wait. that's capitalism. I don't know how I got those two systems confused.