Thinking through the problems facing the US, I was considering the path to socialism and how to get from here to there. I’m not a big theory reader, but I’ve read some so I was hoping someone with better chops in that regard could give me an answer to why these ideas would/wouldn’t work.
- Wealth tax -> Public capital buyout
This one is pretty simple. Enact a wealth tax at the local/state/federal level, whichever is possible, and use that tax to fund buyouts of capital to turn it over to public control. The downside of this is you are still giving money to those who control capital, and the incentive to sell is reduced because your profits from selling a company will likely themselves be taxed.
- Progressive Democratization tax
This is a more complex idea. My thought was that there should be a tax on private control of a company, that scales up based on the ratio of number of employees to number of controlling interests. My thought was this allows for investment and individuals transforming industries or implementing a personal vision, but as the company grows and gains a more impactful role on society you start acruing penalties for having a sole owner, and the best solution is for the owner to transfer ownership to a employee collective.
So yeah, there are my shower reform ideas. Will you tell me why they suck or how they could be better? Both ideas I think would be most effective starting at a more local level, or targeting first industries that are essential for survival. Let the capitalists play with their AI girlfriends while the country quietly regains control of their food, housing, and healthcare then move on to more industries.
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The crux of why these reforms, and reformism in general, doesn’t work is because the state is not a neutral actor but a part of class struggle. Nationalizing industry at a significant scale in a way that benefits the working classes requires a dictatorship of the proletariat. In a vacuum, these ideas could be improvements in a capitalist system, but without siezure and replacement of the state capitalists will walk them back, prevent them outright, or twist them in a way that benefits them.
Yeah capitalists have proven how insufferable they can be in perverting things meant to deter them, into weapons in their own arsenal. I guess the assumption my ideas would rest on is enough of a movement to make these changes, but not enough to immediately break capitalist control. So it doesn’t really do anything to get us there
If you can get these reforms through, you can get a lot more, most likely.
its not that the reforms themselves are bad or wouldnt work, its that the capitalist state would never implement such reforms because it is not in the interest of the capitalist class. you would need mass mobilizations that have the power to shut down an economy, and if you are already at that point, why not demand everything?
I see what you mean. The conditions necessary for these reforms are close to the conditions in which they are entirely irrelevant
I recall an important note from the first paragraph of Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxembourg.
In it, she states clearly that reforms are not fundamentally in opposition to revolution. This is something a lot of people mistake or forget. The key is whether the reforms are the goal in and of themselves, A La Bernstein, or if the reforms are a means towards revolution.
I’m not sure to what end a wealth tax or a tax which attempts to convert more companies into so called nonprofits would forward either to be honest, but I feel like these could very easily be mistaken as ends rather than means. I don’t see how either of these directly meets a concrete need for working class people (who live in the Untied Snakes of Amerikkka of course) or make a dent in imperialism or unequal exchange. From an ecosocialist point of view, I think rapidly shifting the housing stock and transportation/energy infrastructure to being less capital intensive is an incredibly important step which can happen now, because as the rate of profit falls, it will become increasingly impossible to house and transport people, which are some very useful forms of propaganda as they address concrete problems with concrete solutions.
In it, she states clearly that reforms are not fundamentally in opposition to revolution
Very good point. I guess the ideal is reform that furthers revolution, culturally or materially. Something that delivers more control to the people and the workers.
I’m not sure to what end a wealth tax
The wealth tax is admittedly the less thought out and generally worse idea, but leveraging that tax to buy out capital would in essence be a seizure of billionaires funds to then deliver industry capital to the workers control
tax which attempts to convert more companies into so called nonprofits
My thought wasn’t so much converting them to nonprofits, but implementing a tax designed to lead to worker ownership. Costs escalate the more important the business is, gauged roughly by how many people it employs and can be addressed by increasing the number of people power over the company is distributed between.
The thought was to drive a natural lifecycle in which enterprising individuals could begin ventures that they think will make the world better or that they think can sustain themselves without a tax burden, but once you employ more than yourself you begin to pay tax for being the sole controller. Its a reform idea to softly push in the direction of democratized workplaces where every worker has an equal say, but also allow a vision to be established by an individual unhindered. With increased employee ownership, hopefully the imperialist aggression would also abate when there is lower incentive to colonize a people, but imperialism wasn’t in the forefront when I was thinking about this.
Read this. Economism.
The US can just print money.
You might say that would lead to crisis but it might lead to crisis no matter whether the money comes from the FED or taxes.
What is Elon supposed to do with his trillion dollars after the buyout if he isn’t allowed to own US companies? Buy another country? I don’t think you get around at least dispossessing billionaires.
Yeah, it is definitely a dispossession for billionaires, but it would be a more gradual one. If the resulting economy doesn’t offer him a billionaires worth of things to spend his buyout cash on then that sucks for him in the end.
And you don’t think that makes it unlikely to happen?
Like you have those people with hundreds of billions of cash that they can’t invest, you plan to slowly drain that away and you don’t expect them to fund a private army or other forms of power to secure their wealth?
The Economists and the root, namely, subservience to spontaneity, with which we dealt in the preceding chapter as a general phenomenon and which we shall now examine in relation to its effect upon political activity and the political struggle. At first sight, our assertion may appear paradoxical, so great is the difference between those who stress the “drab everyday struggle” and those who call for the most self sacrificing struggle of individuals. But this is no paradox. The Economists and the terrorists merely bow to different poles of spontaneity; the Economists bow to the spontaneity of “the labour movement pure and simple”, while the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole.
V. I. Lenin, What is to be done?
Thank you this has been a good read.
The task of the Social-Democrats, however, is not exhausted by political agitation on an economic basis; their task is to convert trade-unionist politics into Social-Democratic political struggle, to utilise the sparks of political consciousness which the economic struggle generates among the workers, for the purpose of raising the workers to the level of Social-Democratic political consciousness.
This section suggests to me that the reforms aren’t purposeless, but that they are a good tool in helping people become more revolutionary. Something like: Convince people its reasonable -> try and get it passed -> capital overreacts and quashes it -> People see capital will squash even moderate measures -> Molotov’s
Yup. These groups should be led by the Vanguard Party whose members will educate the members of these orgs and help them develop class-consciousness. In other words, trade unions and cooperatives are not an end but a means to an end.
