🚫 Tax the rich and redistribute some of their wealth
👉 Gulag the rich and redistribute all of their wealth
The best things you can do to advance Socialism personally is to get organized and read theory. Join a union, party, or other working class org, and do your best to study Leftist theory and historical applications of theory so we can learn from what worked well, improve what almost worked well, and prevent making the same mistakes.
If you want to get started, I have an introductory Marxist reading list.
Suppose we replace all capitalists with worker cooperatives. What happens when two worker cooperatives compete in free market? We’ll still be at capitalism, wont we?
Good question!
Under Marxist analysis, kinda, essentially. Worker cooperatives change the relation from Proletarian/bourgeois to entirely Petite Bourgeoisie. The worker-owners of each firm are, by ownership, more interested in their own firm’s success than the success of the broader economy. This is the main critique of Market Socialism from a Marxian analysis.
Now, that doesn’t mean Market Socialism isn’t an improvement on Capitalism, it certainly helps reduce exploitation, but you don’t actually gain the benefits of collectivized ownership and common planning that allows Humanity to truly take mastery over Capital. The benefits of moving from competition to cooperation is massive.
Realistically, cooperatives can serve as a good basis of a transitional Socialist state, alongside traditional markets and a robust public sector, as long as strong central planning is employed and gradually the cooperatives and traditional private firms are folded into the Public Sector over time as they develop to the level that public ownership and planning becomes more efficient than market forces.
Thanks, Cowbee! It seems to me, that in practice (as opposed to theory, not game), if socialism is 5 steps away on the chessboard, then market socialism has to be step 1, simply because that’s where we are (1. markets aren’t going away tomorrow, and 2. everyone currently has to engage in the economy one way or another). It’s what is the ‘adjacent next’. Changing everyone’s minds all at once seems mathematically impossible. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that all our collective energies might be better spent focusing on just step 1.
No problem! As for your analysis, it depends on if you agree with Marx, and Marxists, or not. If we hold to Marxian analysis, we need to tweak a few things here. As a Marxist, I am going to do my best to stick with that.
- What is Socialism?
Socialism is a transitional stage to Communism. It is characterized by, above all, an economy where public ownership and central planning is primary. There’s really no such thing as a pure system untainted by what came before it or what will come next, which is where Dialectical and Historical Materialism come into play as philosophical aspects of Marxism. The reason this is important is because Socialism isn’t 5 steps away, it’s simply one revolution away, and such a system can’t abolish Private Property or enforce full worker cooperatives overnight as the infrastructure for that hasn’t been developed.
Put another way, if the company you work at right this instant turned into a worker cooperative, production would grind to a halt as everyone tried to figure out how to change organizational structures, responsibilities, and how to run things. This extends further when you add in the incredible complexity of logistics, supply lines, who your company trades with for machinery and raw materials, etc.
- Why cooperative property?
If we hold Marxian analysis, it is through market competition that companies centralize and prepare themselves better for central planning. Wal-mart, Amazon, etc all develop and employ incredibly complex forms of internal market planning that can simply be adjusted after folding into the public sector. Whether this company is cooperative or private makes no difference on its ability to shift to public ownership and central planning.
In other words, Market Socialism is nice in that it removes exploitation, but is no nearer to Communism than Capitalism. The leap to public ownership is no closer, just the relations of exploitation are removed.
- How do we get to Communism, and what role can worker cooperatives play in that?
The solution is to perform a revolution and establish a Proletarian State. This is a hard requirement to begin with, otherwise you can’t simply accomplish Market Socialism, the bourgeoisie would never allow it. This process will be entirely different in every country, but most will have certain constants.
What will this new Socialist State do? First, highly developed and critical industries will be nationalized and planned. The remaining industries will retain private property and cooperatives, but with heavy involvement in planning from the government. This becomes a sort of Socialist Market Economy, where the Public Sector is primary, and markets are heavily controlled but allowed in order to develop the Productive Forces to the point that they can be harvested and folded into the Public Sector. Where applicable, cooperatives can help reduce the levels of exploitation in the interim between private ownership and public ownership, especially in the agricultural sector where farming isn’t as industrialized. Gradually, class struggle is heightened and eventually full public ownership is achieved.
Does this all make sense?
Workers coops is still capitalism since it is still about maximizing profits for them. Socialism is when the means of productions are own for everyone through nationalization, and through a Marxist Leninist party.
What would that look like in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania?
It starts with mass worker organization, usually a nation-wide revolutionary party allying with local worker unions and other organizations. Eventually, the working class becomes well-organized and politically aware, and the contradictions between the organized working class and the Capitalists sharpen, resulting in revolution. What follows is a replacement of the existing State with the organizations built up by the working class, and the beginning of conscious planning in production taking priority over the competition of markets in driving the economy.
That is a massive oversimplification, though.
Sorry, where’s the part where the means of production gets seized by labourers? What does THAT look like in Punxsutawney? What are we taking, from whom, how?
The revolution. One of the necessary lessons from the Paris Commune is that you can’t simply lay hold of the Means of Production, but must replace the Bourgeois state with a Proletarian one. By taking control of the state, the Proletariat can wrest from the Bourgeoisie their Capital and begin producing along a common plan for the good of all.
You can’t just sieze production in Punxsutawney without doing so nationally, at the federal level. Otherwise, the state will come in and break up the rising worker movement with force, as it has done many times in the past.
Don’t you know that we shouldn’t question the wisdom of dead white guys, ever?
Both, both is good
One precludes the other from happening in the first place though. If the means of production are publicly owned, then the problem of capital accumulation goes away entirely.
But if you only just now seize them, the rich still have all the money and personal property they already accumulated.
Yes, which you can appropriate by siezing control. The Proletarian State can oppress the bourgeoisie the same way the bourgeoisie oppresses the poletariat.
Y’all already got a computer, now go produce the next facebook or amazon.
Bit of a non-sequitor to compare individual production to large, mass-scale corporations, no? People are suggesting changing ownership from private to public and producing along a common plan for the common good, rather than the profits of a few individuals.
i already own my tools though.
Production by individuals does provide a chance to get ahead, but ultimately individuals cannot compete with massive corporations that fill every crack and crevice available. It makes more sense to try to work towards cooperative production along a common plan as production itself becomes more complicated and large-scale.
You do realize that ‘the means of production’ are all in China right now?
Gottem!
No, its not in gottem. I checked a few months ago
( gottem is a place in belgium: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9qFUiUz46K1m4bNm6 )Augh! Hoisted by my own petard!
Are the pharmaceuticals, health care, transportation, technology, and information industries not means to be seized?
China may produce the bulk of the physical products we use, but we produce thought and systems capitalists use for the benifut of the few. The means are for the many imo
And the means of means of production is in Mexico
Not all of the means of production, but most of the means of industrial production.
