I think a lot of people think capitalism literally means commerce. The sanctions usually imposed on socialist/ communist countries fuels this idea by directly restricting commerce in those countries and sabotaging them.
Capitalism requires private, profit based ownership of the means of production. Not all worker owned businesses are profit seeking, or any profit they obtain beyond operating/wage costs is redistributed to the workers/voted on for how to use it. Without a profit motive and private ownership you’re cutting out a huge portion of what makes capitalism so destructive.
So capitalism but every company of a certain size operates as a not for profit coop? (Is that still capitalism?) I’m being serious here. I would like more collective ownership of capital but I don’t know what it looks like and I don’t trust the government to do it centrally. We’d need to nail down details like how big a company has to grow before it must distribute and how the original owners or investors are compensated for that loss of control. We wouldn’t want a system where no one tries to do anything cool because it would ultimately be taken away as soon as it succeeded.
Not ‘every company of a certain size’, all of the means of production would be worker owned. In practice what this would mean is that if you run a business you can’t continue to extract profit from workers without compensating them or allowing them a collective voice in what the profits are used for. Whether they want to run that as a co-op (which can include consumers and not just workers, eg REI) is up to them. There isn’t a central government directing this under communism, as the eventual goal is for the state to no longer be necessary. I think that part is unlikely to happen naturally and communists are pretty vague about it IME, I’m more of the opinion that capitalism needs to be legislated out of existence and kept that way with a strong government. But implementing more widespread adoption of worker-owned companies is going to be necessary if we want to get out of this goddamned mess, because letting one guy (or a board of guys) decide what quality of life tens of thousands of people have clearly isn’t working.
I don’t believe the owners of a company should be compensated, because they’ve already been vastly overcompensated by the wealth they extracted from the workers and they should count themselves lucky if they’re not in an Ayn Rand situation afterwards. Because the thing is, if you’re actually wanting to do something cool, you don’t care if it’s going to make you rich as long as it’s not tanking the company. Think about how many scientists, engineers, artists, etc have been held back or had incredible projects canceled because some CEO decided that x% profit on it wasn’t a good enough return. Do you imagine that would happen with nearly as much frequency if, say, the organization was entirely owned and run by the highly skilled professionals actually doing the work and interested in it?
i think markets do provide signals about local preferences and efficencies that centralized economies lose. personally i think socialism > comunism because of that, in which the workers own the factories but markets still operate on competition;
i am also open to something like georgism which is capitalism but all rent-seeking activities are 100% taxed and give back in form of services and UBI to the population
Markets are not a function of capitalism; feudalism, mercantilism, etc. all had markets. There would be and have been markets in communist governments. Marx himself held the same sentiment about markets being effective for similar reasons you listed.
Communism (not DemSoc) is an economic system where a government essentially owns the population ruled by an autocrat, under the veil of a single union. The ML way of democratic centralism completely fails when the opposition is blocked from voting which assures total enforced hegemony.
Communism (not DemSoc) is an economic system where a government essentially owns the population ruled by an autocrat, under the veil of a single union.
Every single piece of information Marx Lenin Mao Stalin points to: the replacement of power of any method a worker has, in a capitalist democracy and migrate it after the revolution to a state held apparatus above which the flawed democratic-centralism takes grasp to hold absolute power. At which point strengthening a secret police is all that’s needed to let fascism in from the back door. At least Mussolini stated his intentions from the beginning.
The whole mass of the people must take part in it. Otherwise, socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.
Sorry I should have used effectively, being ideological about democratic centralism is nice until you find yourself organising a workers demonstration against one.
Why isn’t communism scalable in your mind? “Well regulated capitalism” is still by definition exploitation.
I think a lot of people think capitalism literally means commerce. The sanctions usually imposed on socialist/ communist countries fuels this idea by directly restricting commerce in those countries and sabotaging them.
Would you want this administration to own the means of production?
Psst: workers own the means of production under communism.
How do they own it?
Presumably the same way worker owned businesses work now.
So market capitalism but all businesses are publicly traded or coops?
Capitalism requires private, profit based ownership of the means of production. Not all worker owned businesses are profit seeking, or any profit they obtain beyond operating/wage costs is redistributed to the workers/voted on for how to use it. Without a profit motive and private ownership you’re cutting out a huge portion of what makes capitalism so destructive.
So capitalism but every company of a certain size operates as a not for profit coop? (Is that still capitalism?) I’m being serious here. I would like more collective ownership of capital but I don’t know what it looks like and I don’t trust the government to do it centrally. We’d need to nail down details like how big a company has to grow before it must distribute and how the original owners or investors are compensated for that loss of control. We wouldn’t want a system where no one tries to do anything cool because it would ultimately be taken away as soon as it succeeded.
Not ‘every company of a certain size’, all of the means of production would be worker owned. In practice what this would mean is that if you run a business you can’t continue to extract profit from workers without compensating them or allowing them a collective voice in what the profits are used for. Whether they want to run that as a co-op (which can include consumers and not just workers, eg REI) is up to them. There isn’t a central government directing this under communism, as the eventual goal is for the state to no longer be necessary. I think that part is unlikely to happen naturally and communists are pretty vague about it IME, I’m more of the opinion that capitalism needs to be legislated out of existence and kept that way with a strong government. But implementing more widespread adoption of worker-owned companies is going to be necessary if we want to get out of this goddamned mess, because letting one guy (or a board of guys) decide what quality of life tens of thousands of people have clearly isn’t working.
I don’t believe the owners of a company should be compensated, because they’ve already been vastly overcompensated by the wealth they extracted from the workers and they should count themselves lucky if they’re not in an Ayn Rand situation afterwards. Because the thing is, if you’re actually wanting to do something cool, you don’t care if it’s going to make you rich as long as it’s not tanking the company. Think about how many scientists, engineers, artists, etc have been held back or had incredible projects canceled because some CEO decided that x% profit on it wasn’t a good enough return. Do you imagine that would happen with nearly as much frequency if, say, the organization was entirely owned and run by the highly skilled professionals actually doing the work and interested in it?
Psst: that’s socialism.
i think markets do provide signals about local preferences and efficencies that centralized economies lose. personally i think socialism > comunism because of that, in which the workers own the factories but markets still operate on competition;
i am also open to something like georgism which is capitalism but all rent-seeking activities are 100% taxed and give back in form of services and UBI to the population
Markets are not a function of capitalism; feudalism, mercantilism, etc. all had markets. There would be and have been markets in communist governments. Marx himself held the same sentiment about markets being effective for similar reasons you listed.
Communism (not DemSoc) is an economic system where a government essentially owns the population ruled by an autocrat, under the veil of a single union. The ML way of democratic centralism completely fails when the opposition is blocked from voting which assures total enforced hegemony.
This doesn’t sound like a good idea.
No it’s not.
Every single piece of information Marx Lenin Mao Stalin points to: the replacement of power of any method a worker has, in a capitalist democracy and migrate it after the revolution to a state held apparatus above which the flawed democratic-centralism takes grasp to hold absolute power. At which point strengthening a secret police is all that’s needed to let fascism in from the back door. At least Mussolini stated his intentions from the beginning.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch06.htm
This word is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, lmao.
Sorry I should have used effectively, being ideological about democratic centralism is nice until you find yourself organising a workers demonstration against one.
You shouldn’t have commented at all, lol.
Classic Stazi - yes any form of criticism of Marx’s socialism must be stamped out and silenced
Me thinking you said something stupid is secret police?
Wow, 2 for 2.