Come on now! China is totally communist! After all when Marx envisioned his ideal state is was an authoritarian police state with billionaires, massive wealth disparities, stock markets and an investor class, right?
I used to use this definition, but it has a few key issues. Modes of Production should be defined in a manner that is consistent. If we hold this definition for Socialism, then either it means a portion of the economy can be Socialist, ie USPS, or a worker cooperative, or it means an economy is only Socialist if all property has been collectivized.
For the former, this definition fails to take into account the context to which portions of the economy play in the broader scope, and therefore which class holds the power in society. A worker cooperative in the US, ultimately, must deal with Capitalist elements of the economy. Whether it be from the raw materials they use being from non-cooperatives, to the distributors they deal with, to the banks where they gain the seed Capital, they exist as a cog in a broader system dominated by Capitalists in the US. Same with USPS, which exists in a country where heavy industry and resources are privatized, it serves as a way to subsidize transport for Capitalists. The overall power in a system must be judged.
For the latter, this “one drop” rule, if equally applied, means Feudalism and Capitalism have never existed either. There is no reason Socialism should be judged any differently from Capitalism or Feudalism.
What Socialism ultimately is is a system where the Working Class is in control, and public ownership is the principle aspect of society. If a rubber ball factory is privately owned but the rubber factory is public, the public sector holds more power over the economy. In the Nordics, heavy industry is privatized for the most part, and social safety nets are funded through loans and ownership of industry in the Global South, similar to being a landlord in country form. In the PRC, heavy industry and large industry is squarely in the hands of the public, which is why Capitalists are subservient to the State, rather than the other way around.
As for the purpose of Socialism, it is improving the lives of the working class in material and measurable ways. Public ownership is a tool, one especially effective at higher degrees of development. Markets and private ownership are a tool, one that can be utilized more effectively at lower stages in development. Like fire, private ownership presents real danger in giving Capitalists more power, but also like fire this does not mean we cannot harness it and should avoid it entirely, provided the proper precautions are taken.
Moreover, markets are destined to centralize. Markets erase their own foundations. The reason public ownership is a goal for Marxists is because of this centralizing factor, as industry gets more complex public ownership increasingly becomes more efficient and effective. Just because you can publicly own something doesn’t mean the act of ownership improves metrics like life expectancy and literacy, public ownership isn’t some holy experience that gives workers magic powers. Public ownership and Private ownership are tools that play a role in society, and we believe Public Ownership is undeniably the way to go at higher phases in development because it becomes necessary, not because it has mystical properties.
Ultimately, it boils down to mindsets of dogmatism or pragmatism. Concepts like “true Socialism” treat Marx as a religious prophet, while going against Marx’s analysis! This is why studying Historical and Dialectical Materialism is important, as it explains the why of Marxism and Socialism in a manner that can be used for real development of the Working Class and real liberation. When taken consistently, AES states do in fact fit into the categorization of “Socialist,” even your original definition would categorize them as such.
I think we’re mixing up socialism and communism here.
Socialism is an economic system in which major industries are owned by workers rather than by private businesses. It is different from capitalism, where private actors, like business owners and shareholders, can own the means of production.
ok, then what’s communism?
It’s when you don’t shave or bathe and spend all your time wearing army-surplus jackets in coffee shops trying to pick up hippy chicks.
edit: forgot how many tankies are here and SUPER sensitive about being called out.
I’m a little out of the loop, why is a social democratic welfare state not socialism?
Social democratic welfare states re-distribute some of the surplus value extracted from the labor of workers back to them, but the fundamental functioning of the economy remains decision-making in firms owned and run by capitalist investors rather than workers.
That’s fair, but if the workers regulate the companies, control supply via subsidies and taxation, and cap the wealth of the investors then doesn’t it have the exact same effect as if a government office made all the business decisions while also allotting the freedom of the workers to create or retire businesses?
Pretty big but, though, I admit it would be asking a lot to accomplish that from the perspective of the world we live in.
That’s fair, but if the workers regulate the companies, control supply via subsidies and taxation, and cap the wealth of the investors then doesn’t it have the exact same effect as if a government office made all the business decisions while also allotting the freedom of the workers to create or retire businesses?
Not really - I feel like I should address this in parts, though it’s all one statement and I feel like it needed to be denied as a whole statement first.
That’s fair, but if the workers regulate the companies, control supply via subsidies and taxation, and cap the wealth of the investors
This is the ideal functioning of a social democratic welfare state. We… do not really have a fully ideally functioning social democratic welfare state right now (speaking even outside of the US, because we’re pretty fucked here), but this is a fundamentally good, or at least better, goal to aim for than our current situation.
then doesn’t it have the exact same effect as if a government office made all the business decisions
No, it does not. What you’ve proposed, as a social democratic welfare state, results in a government which restricts and encourages economic decisions which it believes will be in the best interest of the workers. The final decision-making power resides with independent firms mostly run by capitalist investors, even if their decisions are restricted by regulations, and invariably, the decision made within those restrictions will be the one which most benefits (or which the investors perceive as most-benefitting) the capitalist investors, not the workers, and not the firm.
What you describe is probably most comparable to French dirigisme
while also allotting the freedom of the workers to create or retire businesses?
This is a common misconception about socialism, or at least many forms of socialism. Under socialism, a worker running a business is not necessarily restricted - what is restricted is who, beyond the worker, can create or retire a business.
Under the loosest definition of socialism, or, if one prefers the more stringent definition of socialism as beyond simply modernist anti-capitalism, under generally anti-capitalist ideals, there is nothing preventing a worker from starting a business and selling their labor.
Where things get fuzzy is ownership of capital. The strictest socialists would say that all ownership of capital is anti-socialist - down to tools being communally shared. This is an extreme position, however. Most socialists accept that some amount of workers owning the tools they themselves use (or, for some who are insistent about ownership being verboten, workers having ‘exclusive rights to dictate the usage of their tools as long as the tools are in use by them’) is acceptable - what is important is that capital is not a tool to leverage control over others, but a tool to enable one’s own labor.
At its absolute loosest, a generalized anti-capitalism, a worker would be able to run a business, hire workers, buy and sell capital on behalf of the firm, etc, in a mostly recognizable way, even if his work was done on what we might regard as an executive level. The difference would be that the capital would belong to the firm he ran - the worker could not simply cash out and leave the other workers high and dry because it’s ‘his’ business. Nor would there be outside non-worker investors.
This is considered by many socialists to be insufficient to qualify as socialism, and many would insist further that a firm must include workers as a fundamental and major part of the decision-making process to be socialists - but even then, again, nothing in most of these conceptions stops a worker from starting a business and hiring workers. It’s simply that once other workers are involved, they must be involved in decision-making, in some form - whether by electing who runs the firm, or by worker-investor schemes, or by votes on major decisions.
There are a lot of conceptions of socialism out there, and a lot of different proposals for what we should be working for. About the only point of agreement is that capitalism is not the way forward - that investor-driven market economies have results which follow the iron law of institutions - decisions benefit the decision-makers, not the firms, and certainly not the workers.
This is a common misconception about socialism, or at least many forms of socialism. Under socialism, a worker running a business is not necessarily restricted - what is restricted is who, beyond the worker, can create or retire a business.
That statement doesn’t really parse. They’re either able to create a business or they are not. They’re either able to put goods onto an exchange market or fill requests even beyond or far below requested amounts, or they’re not. You will absolutely have people who start a business and make others do the work so long as the government does not directly manage the business, unless you completely disregard human nature which was already stretched pretty thin in the assumption that a worker owned government and by extension means of production were incorruptible.
That statement doesn’t really parse. They’re either able to create a business or they are not. They’re either able to put goods onto an exchange market or fill requests even beyond or far below requested amounts, or they’re not.
I think you’re misreading the statement. The statement is trying to say that workers can create businesses. In start-up businesses, there very often (though not always) is no difference between the founders and the workers - and management work is work, mind you.
You will absolutely have people who start a business and make others do the work so long as the government does not directly manage the business,
That’s just the thing - as mentioned here, the two, broadly speaking, ways that socialism addresses this would be either:
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The worker who started the firm does not have private ownership of the firm’s capital (and there are no outside investors which have ownership or part-ownership of the firm’s capital); if he is the only worker, the difference is purely formal, but if he is not the only worker, he does not have the right to, say, sell everything the firm has and take the proceeds to his bank account, the way a modern private company could. The worker who started the firm, in this case, would be in a position akin to a public corporation in which the executive(s) must answer to shareholders for financial decisions - only instead of shareholders, it’s the firm’s workers. Even if he sold the firm’s capital, the firm itself would still own the proceeds of the sales, and he could not simply regard it as ‘his’ and write it down on his personal income tax form as liquidation of capital gains.
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The worker who started the firm does not have exclusive executive control over the firm unless he is the only worker in the firm.
unless you completely disregard human nature which was already stretched pretty thin in the assumption that a worker owned government were incorruptible.
It’s not about corruption. Corruption isn’t even in the conversation here.
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What does it even mean to own the means of production? How are decisions made? Big decisions can go to a vote, but what about small ones? I don’t see how any organization can function without some kind of hierarchy. But the way you describe socialism implies that hierarchy can’t coexist with socialism.
The socialist democratically owned company would still elect a CEO or something like it to make those kinds of decisions, and if they don’t make good decisions they can be recalled by the employees to be replaced with someone else. The way I look at it it would be like how companies are currently but with all employees owning shares of the company rather then outside investors or the owner of the company. Atleast that’s how I interpret it but there’s probably a million different ways you could set it up while still having it be much more democratic then the modern structure.
That is capitalism
“Capitalism is when there’s management”?
Many of the contradictions and crises of Capitalism are still present even under worker coop models in a market economy. Surplus value is still extracted, that money must be reinvested in the business to remain competitive. Meaning the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall Remains, meaning capitalist crises remain. Imperialist incentives remain, and a worker coop nation-state would be equally imperialist as one with private corporations.
Many of the contradictions and crises of Capitalism are still present even under worker coop models in a market economy. Surplus value is still extracted, that money must be reinvested in the business to remain competitive.
Other than the end-state of communism, a stateless, moneyless society, I’m curious as to what you think counts as ‘not capitalist’?
Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall
Lord.
You run an explicitly anti-capitalist community and don’t believe in the TRPF?
Other than the end-state of communism, a stateless, moneyless society, I’m curious as to what you think counts as ‘not capitalist’?
I think socialism requires an explicitly anti-nationalist character and the elimination of the commodity form. This looks like production with quotas (use-value), probably labor vouchers (but its not a requirement) and some form of worker ownership, like workers councils.
You run an explicitly anti-capitalist community and don’t believe in the TRPF?
Marx himself regard the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as an incomplete aspect of his theories. It’s highly contested, and ultimately, while important to ‘scientific socialism’ conceptions of why capitalism must fall, is neither explanation nor justification for those of us who believe that capitalism should fall, but will not necessarily do so of its own inherent contradictions.
Marx was a brilliant theorist, and we are all deeply indebted to his contributions to socialist thought - that’s not the same as thinking that every idea he put forward, with the limited evidence available to him, and him operating as a positive trailblazer in the 19th century as an exile in a deeply hostile society, was absolutely incontrovertibly correct.
I think socialism requires an explicitly anti-nationalist character and the elimination of the commodity form. This looks like production with quotas (use-value), probably labor vouchers (but its not a requirement) and some form of worker ownership, like workers-councils.
I mean, again, though, that looks to me more like the end-state of communism. If that’s all you’re willing to accept as non-capitalist, that’s fine, I suppose, but that’s a very high bar to clear, and many want clearer intermediate steps which will create the conditions to implement that.
Upvoted for having a reasonable conversation, btw, this is what left discourse is for
Profit falling leading to imperialism seems like its because of profit/expansion driven leadership which isn’t impossible under a coop model but seems fairly unlikely and is more or less a certainty under a more undemocratic and authoritarian hierarchy under capitalist enterprises.
In fact, one of worker coop’s “weaknesses” is that they have a tendency to not grow at all, which has been suggested as a major reasons why they don’t dominate our economy despite tending to be more resilient than conventional firms.
Profit falling leading to imperialism seems like its because of profit/expansion driven leadership
Leadership is irrelevant. Firms MUST reinvest some surplus value back into the firm. This will lead to the increase of capital in the business, and lead to overaccumlation crises. Firms must find new markets for their goods, or face certain economic despair.
In order to compete and grow, sure, reinvestment is needed. But even within capitalism, when markets are saturated the lay offs only happen because of a desire for profit growth when faced with a ceiling and they just cannibalize their own company because of perverse incentives. Cooperatives often willingly just impose pay cuts and hour cuts across the board during lean times like a market saturation and then usually endure as a result without the brain drain with their workers still “employed” at the end of the tunnel. Even if new market growth never comes, coops would simply stabilize and become easier work if become fairly low paying work. Where as capitalists tend to sell off the husk of a barely functioning firm for one last quick buck just before its usually doomed to closure from being carved up and mismanaged by leadership that no longer gives a shit.
I’m a socialist but not a strict Marxist. Even if I agree with a lot of his work, in particular I think his analysis is correct about the unsustainable relationship between labor and capitalists because of exploitation for profit, alienation, lack of control over laborer’s own work, etc. That said, I find meta-narratives (by any economist or philosopher) fairly wrong headed and verging on mystical and the level of rigidity towards market’s functionality regardless of potential configuration (like say into a mutualistic market system of coops) similarly wrong-headed and “prophetic”. I meet that level of certainty with skepticism.
I do think that eventually a mutualist market would probably become sort of meaningless eventually and turn into something else.
Maybe the pirate ship system would work well.
Every man got the same share except the captain (2x) and quartermaster (1.5x) and the doctor (1.5x) any of that position can be replaced anytime by a vote
Genuinely curious about the standard by which you evaluate whether the means of production are collectively owned. For example, one person might say that it looks like a government, representing all workers on a national scale and making decisions based on votes or elected representatives, owning all the means of production. Another person might say it looks like each industry being controlled by a union representing the workers in said industry. A third could say that it means anytime a person operates a machine, they own it and can decide what to do with it, until they stop using it.
Is there any concievable physical reality in which it would be impossible to reasonably argue that the workers do not collectively control the means of production, because of a disagreement on which means of production should be owned by which workers and in what form? It seems like a very vague definition when you start looking beyond slogans into what it actually looks like.
For example, one person might say that it looks like a government, representing all workers on a national scale and making decisions based on votes or elected representatives, owning all the means of production.
That might be relevant if the USSR was actually democratic.
Is there any physical reality in which it would be impossible to reasonably argue that the workers do not collectively control the means of production, because of a disagreement on which means of production should be owned by which workers? It seems like a very vague definition when you start looking beyond slogans into what it actually looks like.
"Does socialism really MEAN anything?
"Really showing the libs, I see.
That might be relevant if the USSR was actually democratic.
Are bourgeoisie liberal states democratic? Curious your thoughts.
Are bourgeoisie liberal states democratic? Curious your thoughts.
To varying degrees. Certainly more than the USSR. Not really sure why anyone thinks “You can vote for the Party Approved candidate or not vote” is a real vote, other than a deep desire to throat authoritarian boots.
“You can vote for the Party Approved candidate or not vote”
I don’t really think its functionally different in the USA (or other liberal states). Democrats and Republicans are quite literally “Party Approved Candidates”. The presence of independents is incidental, and the USSR had independents in its parliament as well. This is why I view both the USA and USSR as “democratic”, but I would view neither as socialist.
I don’t really think its functionally different in the USA (or other liberal states). Democrats and Republicans are quite literally “Party Approved Candidates”.
Independents run in the US all the time. Democrats and Republicans both have party primaries, in which the ‘party-approved’ candidates are voted for and ran. I don’t even remember the last time there was an uncontested national election.
The presence of independents is incidental,
Why? Because it’s inconvenient to the point?
and the USSR had independents in its parliament as well.
The ‘independents’ were party-approved, and almost always elected uncontested as well. Contested elections, to my memory, were not even allowed between independents and Communist candidates until 8 fucking 9.
This is why I view both the USA and USSR as “democratic”, but I would view neither as socialist.
Neither the US nor the USSR are socialist, but the USA is much more democratic than the USSR. Fuck’s sake, 19th century Britain was more democratic than the USSR, and 19th century Britain was not very fucking democratic.
The difference is the state does not choose who their opposition is and you are actually allowed to replace the governing system as a whole in liberal states which was not permitted in the USSR.
The difference is the state does not choose who their opposition is
Are you sure about that?
and you are actually allowed to replace the governing system as a whole in liberal states which was not permitted in the USSR.
What does “replacing the governing system as a whole”, look like, in practice, exactly? How is this different from the USSR?
Yes, there is no branch of the government that chooses the opposing candidate to the state party candidate.
In theory in most liberal countries candidates can run on scrapping the current system and replacing it. For example you can run a socialist candidate in US elections that wants to legally and non-violently remove capitalist democracy and replace it with a socialist autocracy. You cannot run a candidate in Chinese elections that wants to remove the Chinese Communist party from power.
This is one of the most critical freedoms that the USSR lacked and China lacks.
No True Scotsman
No True Scotsman
I love how people use the term to mean “Words cannot have definitions”, which isn’t what the fallacy means at all.
But I bet it makes them feel real smart for a few seconds when they incorrectly use the term.
Lol yeah. No True Scotsman is against shifting/arbitrary definitions, but your definition of socialism here is rigid and clear.
The DPRK is, I’d argue, more or less an absolute monarchy that just uses different words to describe itself than traditional for that kind of system.
The People’s™ Absolute monarchy
Seriously it’s insane how people can unironically lie to themselves. Thy literally said “socialism is not for the workers” lmfaoo
I personally only know that as a westerner we know next to fuckall about North Korea, and withhold judgement accordingly.
If you want to reach that level of knowledge, try investigating where some particularly absurd claims about the DPRK came from.
Braindead take in all of these countries you do have the right to run a business collectively owned by the workers. Countries economics are not black or white its never 100% socialism or capitalism
Braindead take in all of these countries you do have the right to run a business collectively owned by the workers.
I mean, you can do that in the US too, but if anyone said the US was socialist I’d give them one hell of a long look.
