Politics So I guess when the shit hits the fan, everyone's a socialist

[Johnny Bananas]

None of those things are socialism. The company or business or co-op remains privately owned and run (and not State owned and run), and it operates for a profit (or for the benefit of the workers/ owners of the company).

You seem to be conveniently ignoring that businesses that are not charities are run for profit, including state-owned corporations. Being run for a profit does not disqualify something from being socialist.

That is NOT socialism. That is just a company, owned privately, and run for profit for the people (private individuals) that work for and own it.

The difference is, cooperatives work on a one member, one vote system, rather than voting power being contingent on the number of shares owned. The means of production are therefore not controlled based on the amount of capital that each individual has invested. Therefore this constitutes collective ownership amongst all members, and is fundamentally different to shareholder capitalism. If the co-operative is a worker co-operative, then the decision making power is equal amongst all workers involved in producing the product. That is fundamentally what socialism is, no matter what the OED defines the term as.

 

[Big Papa Ted]

You seem to be conveniently ignoring that businesses that are not charities are run for profit, including state-owned corporations. Being run for a profit does not disqualify something from being socialist.


The difference is, cooperatives work on a one member, one vote system, rather than voting power being contingent on the number of shares owned. The means of production are therefore not controlled based on the amount of capital that each individual has invested. Therefore this constitutes collective ownership amongst all members, and is fundamentally different to shareholder capitalism. If the co-operative is a worker co-operative, then the decision making power is equal amongst all workers involved in producing the product. That is fundamentally what socialism is, no matter what the OED defines the term as.

Even if company is a worker co-op has 10,000 workers each with an equal vote, it's still privately owned. You understand that right? Like unless the entire society/polis owns a part of a business, its still privately owned. It might be extensive private ownership, but it's still private ownership.

Just to drive the point home, there's a city with 500,000 people, with five co-ops of 100,000 people each. Those co-ops produce the same products and compete for market share. If one is more successful and makes more money for its co-op owners, the others make less. This still sound like socialism to you?

 

[kranky al]

Even if company is a worker co-op has 10,000 workers each with an equal vote, it's still privately owned. You understand that right? Like unless the entire society/polis owns a part of a business, its still privately owned. It might be extensive private ownership, but it's still private ownership.

Just to drive the point home, there's a city with 500,000 people, with five co-ops of 100,000 people each. Those co-ops produce the same products and compete for market share. If one is more successful and makes more money for its co-op owners, the others make less. This still sound like socialism to you?

More: The Push to Create Co-ops Is Energizing a New Generation of Socialists

<<<
The following is an excerpt from economist Richard D. Wolff’s new book Understanding Socialism, which is available for purchase here.
Socialism is a yearning for something better than capitalism. As capitalism has changed and as experiments with socialism have accumulated — both good and bad — socialist yearnings, too, have changed. However, a bizarre disconnect surfaces as capitalism’s gross dysfunction during and since its 2008 crash brings socialism again into public discussion. Large numbers of people debate the pros and cons of socialism as if what it is in the 21st century wereidentical to what it was in the 20th. Is it reasonable to presume that the last century’s two purges, the Cold War, the implosion of the USSR, and the explosive emergence of the People’s Republic of China inspired no critical reflections on socialism by socialists themselves? No. The remarkable lack of awareness of new and different definitions of socialism since 1945, their elaborations, and their implications reflects the fact that sustained engagement with socialism was taboo in the US for decades. That people are now mostly unaware of socialism’s evolution in theory, practice, and self-criticism over the last half century is therefore no surprise.

The taboo against socialism resulted in a mass retreat from engaging with developments in socialism and connecting these developments to the problems of modern capitalism. Socialism rather became one of two things in the minds of most.

On the one hand, many politicians, academics, and media pundits portrayed socialism as coinciding with Soviet efforts to subvert global capitalism. Socialism for such people meant moving from private to state-owned and -operated workplaces and from market to centrally planned distributions of resources and products. These same people equated opposing capitalism with opposing democracy and freedom. This equation was then repeated endlessly in an effort to make it “common sense.”

On the other hand, socialism was the name adopted by Western European — and especially Scandinavian — “welfare-state” governments, which aimed to regulate markets comprised still mostly of private capitalist firms. This led many people to associate socialism with robust public spending and government intervention in the marketplace.

Consequently, socialism was viewed as more or less extreme, depending on whether it involved state-owned and -operated firms with central planning at one end or merely welfare-state policies with market regulation on the other. The words “communist” and “socialist” sometimes designated the more and less extreme versions, respectively. 

As a result of these wooden definitions of socialism, its evolution and diversity were obscured. Socialists themselves were struggling with what they viewed as the mixed results of the first major, enduring experiments in constructing socialist societies (USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.). To be sure, these socialist experiments achieved remarkable and admirable economic growth. Such growth enabled mutual assistance among socialist societies, which was crucial to their defense and survival. Socialism thereby established itself globally as capitalism’s chief rival and likely successor. In the Global South, socialism arose virtually everywhere as the alternative development model to a capitalism weighed down by its colonialist history and its contemporary problems of inequality, instability, and injustice.

Yet socialists also struggled with some negative aspects of these first experiments in socialism, particularly the emergence of strong central governments that often used their concentrated economic power to achieve political dominance in very undemocratic ways. Many socialists agreed with critical denunciations of political dictatorship, even though some of these criticisms ignored the parallel dictatorships within capitalist megacorporations. Struggles of workers in socialist societies against internal exploitation and oppression likewise affected socialists’ thinking.

One strain of somewhat superficial socialist self-criticism stressed socialism’s inadequate recognition and institutionalization of democracy. This self-criticism acknowledged and accommodated socialism’s critics, many of whom asserted the absence of political democracy in socialist societies. Such thinking also sharpened the struggle within socialism between communist tendencies and social-democratic tendencies. The latter usually functioned within parliamentary systems, where socialists — even when they held elected power — had to govern democratically. These social democrats advertised their democratic credentials against socialists from countries where communist parties ruled. Thus, when Eastern European socialist regimes dissolved after 1989, many socialists in these countries sought transitions to Western European-type socialisms. In some cases — for instance, in Hungary and Poland — their hopes were badly disappointed.

Socialists who called for political democracy to be added to the socialist economic system confronted several questions and problems. First, how is that to be done? Merely adding multiple political parties and elections was surely not the answer. Socialists knew better than most how wealth, income, and economic power tended to concentrate in capitalist corporate hands, thereby rendering parties and elections formalities with little democratic substance. Why should socialists think that parallel concentrations in state-owned and -operated workplaces would yield a different outcome? 

A larger problem for the project of merging socialism with democracy concerned the question of where such a merger was to occur. Was democracy to be located in relations between the state, individual workplaces, and individual citizens; between different people inside workplaces; or in both? Would workplaces be counted like individuals in liberal democracies: one vote each, regardless of wealth, size, and so on? Would democracy be institutionalized inside every workplace so that all employees, with one vote each, could decide democratically what, how, and where the workplace produces and what is done with output and revenues? If so, how would such workplace democracy interact in a democratic manner with those affected outside a given workplace — for instance, customers or others in the surrounding communities? Capitalism never faced, let alone solved, these problems, so figuring out how socialism might do so proved difficult for the socialists who undertook the task.

A growing number of socialists have come to focus on worker cooperatives as a means to achieve tangible economic democracy.
Increasingly after the 2008 crash of capitalism, however, many socialists grasped the deeper issue of inadequate and incomplete democracy, both in conventional socialisms and in capitalisms, whether private or state. To invoke transition from communism to capitalism in the name of democracy — as was widely done before and even more so after 1989 — was to demote democracy from substance to formality. What struck growing numbers of socialists was that the absence of real, substantial democracy had undermined both traditional capitalisms and traditional socialisms. In the former, collaboration of the wealthiest and most powerful private capitalists with the state apparatus resulted in an undemocratic social and political oligarchy. In the latter, collaboration of the wealthiest and most powerful state and private economic enterprises with the state political apparatus resulted in much the same.

The effort to incorporate democracy into socialist frameworks taught those engaged in the project that the same task applied to capitalism. Systemic differences had blinded the 20th century to some basic similarities between capitalism and conventional socialisms. One key similarity is the internal structure or organization of workplaces and the related nature of the relationship between workplaces and the state. In both systems — recognizing all their variations — workplaces are organized in a starkly undemocratic manner. As socialists moved toward democratizing workplaces, socialism itself changed, resulting in the emergence of a major new socialist tendency at the close of the 20th century.

Through these lessons, a growing number of socialists have come to focus on worker cooperatives as a means to achieve tangible economic democracy. Such socialists reject master/slave, lord/serf, and employer/employee relationships because these all preclude real democracy. Socialist proponents of worker cooperatives seek to construct alternative workplaces that specifically avoid all such dichotomies. They do so in the name of ending the inequalities these dichotomies have always fostered and promoting the democracy such dichotomies have always refused. The goal is a transition away from all employer/employee workplace organizations toward those in which employees are also — simultaneously and collectively — employers. This new kind of socialism thus champions worker cooperatives where workers function democratically as their own employers. 

An economy based on worker co-ops would revolutionize the relationship between the state and the people. In their capacity as a self-employed collectivity, workers would occupy the spot traditionally held by the workplace in state-workplace relations and interactions. The former go-between in the state-workplace relationship — the employers — would be subsumed by the collective of worker-owners. The workers would collectively and democratically hold the purse strings to which the state would have to appeal. The state would thus depend on citizens and workers rather than the other way around. The state would depend on citizens in the usual residence-based public arena of elections and voting (or their equivalents). The state would also depend on workers in the other social arena: state-workplace interactions. In both arenas, real democracy would have taken giant steps forward. The state would no longer pretend to occupy the role of neutral arbiter in struggles between master and slave, lord and serf, employer and employee. The state would have fewer ways and means to impose its own momentum and goals upon citizens or workplaces. To that extent, the state’s “withering away” would become more immediately achievable than in any other variety of socialism known thus far.>>>

 

[Big Papa Ted]

More: The Push to Create Co-ops Is Energizing a New Generation of Socialists

<<<
The following is an excerpt from economist Richard D. Wolff’s new book Understanding Socialism, which is available for purchase here.
Socialism is a yearning for something better than capitalism. As capitalism has changed and as experiments with socialism have accumulated — both good and bad — socialist yearnings, too, have changed. However, a bizarre disconnect surfaces as capitalism’s gross dysfunction during and since its 2008 crash brings socialism again into public discussion. Large numbers of people debate the pros and cons of socialism as if what it is in the 21st century wereidentical to what it was in the 20th. Is it reasonable to presume that the last century’s two purges, the Cold War, the implosion of the USSR, and the explosive emergence of the People’s Republic of China inspired no critical reflections on socialism by socialists themselves? No. The remarkable lack of awareness of new and different definitions of socialism since 1945, their elaborations, and their implications reflects the fact that sustained engagement with socialism was taboo in the US for decades. That people are now mostly unaware of socialism’s evolution in theory, practice, and self-criticism over the last half century is therefore no surprise.

The taboo against socialism resulted in a mass retreat from engaging with developments in socialism and connecting these developments to the problems of modern capitalism. Socialism rather became one of two things in the minds of most.

On the one hand, many politicians, academics, and media pundits portrayed socialism as coinciding with Soviet efforts to subvert global capitalism. Socialism for such people meant moving from private to state-owned and -operated workplaces and from market to centrally planned distributions of resources and products. These same people equated opposing capitalism with opposing democracy and freedom. This equation was then repeated endlessly in an effort to make it “common sense.”

On the other hand, socialism was the name adopted by Western European — and especially Scandinavian — “welfare-state” governments, which aimed to regulate markets comprised still mostly of private capitalist firms. This led many people to associate socialism with robust public spending and government intervention in the marketplace.

Consequently, socialism was viewed as more or less extreme, depending on whether it involved state-owned and -operated firms with central planning at one end or merely welfare-state policies with market regulation on the other. The words “communist” and “socialist” sometimes designated the more and less extreme versions, respectively. 

As a result of these wooden definitions of socialism, its evolution and diversity were obscured. Socialists themselves were struggling with what they viewed as the mixed results of the first major, enduring experiments in constructing socialist societies (USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.). To be sure, these socialist experiments achieved remarkable and admirable economic growth. Such growth enabled mutual assistance among socialist societies, which was crucial to their defense and survival. Socialism thereby established itself globally as capitalism’s chief rival and likely successor. In the Global South, socialism arose virtually everywhere as the alternative development model to a capitalism weighed down by its colonialist history and its contemporary problems of inequality, instability, and injustice.

Yet socialists also struggled with some negative aspects of these first experiments in socialism, particularly the emergence of strong central governments that often used their concentrated economic power to achieve political dominance in very undemocratic ways. Many socialists agreed with critical denunciations of political dictatorship, even though some of these criticisms ignored the parallel dictatorships within capitalist megacorporations. Struggles of workers in socialist societies against internal exploitation and oppression likewise affected socialists’ thinking.

One strain of somewhat superficial socialist self-criticism stressed socialism’s inadequate recognition and institutionalization of democracy. This self-criticism acknowledged and accommodated socialism’s critics, many of whom asserted the absence of political democracy in socialist societies. Such thinking also sharpened the struggle within socialism between communist tendencies and social-democratic tendencies. The latter usually functioned within parliamentary systems, where socialists — even when they held elected power — had to govern democratically. These social democrats advertised their democratic credentials against socialists from countries where communist parties ruled. Thus, when Eastern European socialist regimes dissolved after 1989, many socialists in these countries sought transitions to Western European-type socialisms. In some cases — for instance, in Hungary and Poland — their hopes were badly disappointed.

Socialists who called for political democracy to be added to the socialist economic system confronted several questions and problems. First, how is that to be done? Merely adding multiple political parties and elections was surely not the answer. Socialists knew better than most how wealth, income, and economic power tended to concentrate in capitalist corporate hands, thereby rendering parties and elections formalities with little democratic substance. Why should socialists think that parallel concentrations in state-owned and -operated workplaces would yield a different outcome? 

A larger problem for the project of merging socialism with democracy concerned the question of where such a merger was to occur. Was democracy to be located in relations between the state, individual workplaces, and individual citizens; between different people inside workplaces; or in both? Would workplaces be counted like individuals in liberal democracies: one vote each, regardless of wealth, size, and so on? Would democracy be institutionalized inside every workplace so that all employees, with one vote each, could decide democratically what, how, and where the workplace produces and what is done with output and revenues? If so, how would such workplace democracy interact in a democratic manner with those affected outside a given workplace — for instance, customers or others in the surrounding communities? Capitalism never faced, let alone solved, these problems, so figuring out how socialism might do so proved difficult for the socialists who undertook the task.

A growing number of socialists have come to focus on worker cooperatives as a means to achieve tangible economic democracy.
Increasingly after the 2008 crash of capitalism, however, many socialists grasped the deeper issue of inadequate and incomplete democracy, both in conventional socialisms and in capitalisms, whether private or state. To invoke transition from communism to capitalism in the name of democracy — as was widely done before and even more so after 1989 — was to demote democracy from substance to formality. What struck growing numbers of socialists was that the absence of real, substantial democracy had undermined both traditional capitalisms and traditional socialisms. In the former, collaboration of the wealthiest and most powerful private capitalists with the state apparatus resulted in an undemocratic social and political oligarchy. In the latter, collaboration of the wealthiest and most powerful state and private economic enterprises with the state political apparatus resulted in much the same.

The effort to incorporate democracy into socialist frameworks taught those engaged in the project that the same task applied to capitalism. Systemic differences had blinded the 20th century to some basic similarities between capitalism and conventional socialisms. One key similarity is the internal structure or organization of workplaces and the related nature of the relationship between workplaces and the state. In both systems — recognizing all their variations — workplaces are organized in a starkly undemocratic manner. As socialists moved toward democratizing workplaces, socialism itself changed, resulting in the emergence of a major new socialist tendency at the close of the 20th century.

Through these lessons, a growing number of socialists have come to focus on worker cooperatives as a means to achieve tangible economic democracy. Such socialists reject master/slave, lord/serf, and employer/employee relationships because these all preclude real democracy. Socialist proponents of worker cooperatives seek to construct alternative workplaces that specifically avoid all such dichotomies. They do so in the name of ending the inequalities these dichotomies have always fostered and promoting the democracy such dichotomies have always refused. The goal is a transition away from all employer/employee workplace organizations toward those in which employees are also — simultaneously and collectively — employers. This new kind of socialism thus champions worker cooperatives where workers function democratically as their own employers. 

An economy based on worker co-ops would revolutionize the relationship between the state and the people. In their capacity as a self-employed collectivity, workers would occupy the spot traditionally held by the workplace in state-workplace relations and interactions. The former go-between in the state-workplace relationship — the employers — would be subsumed by the collective of worker-owners. The workers would collectively and democratically hold the purse strings to which the state would have to appeal. The state would thus depend on citizens and workers rather than the other way around. The state would depend on citizens in the usual residence-based public arena of elections and voting (or their equivalents). The state would also depend on workers in the other social arena: state-workplace interactions. In both arenas, real democracy would have taken giant steps forward. The state would no longer pretend to occupy the role of neutral arbiter in struggles between master and slave, lord and serf, employer and employee. The state would have fewer ways and means to impose its own momentum and goals upon citizens or workplaces. To that extent, the state’s “withering away” would become more immediately achievable than in any other variety of socialism known thus far.>>>

Good read and appreciate you for sharing, but it doesn't really outline how you deal with the tension if competing co-ops, which is ultimately what they would be doing. In a population of one million, what if one co-op of 10,000 gains a monopoly over the majority of markets? They would thereby hold the purse strings and as a voting bloc hold a greater proportion of power amongst society.

I understand what this article is getting at, but I don't think co-ops in the manner Wolff's outlining them constitutes socialism.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

Even if company is a worker co-op has 10,000 workers each with an equal vote, it's still privately owned. You understand that right? Like unless the entire society/polis owns a part of a business, its still privately owned. It might be extensive private ownership, but it's still private ownership.

Just to drive the point home, there's a city with 500,000 people, with five co-ops of 100,000 people each. Those co-ops produce the same products and compete for market share. If one is more successful and makes more money for its co-op owners, the others make less. This still sound like socialism to you?

Lol no, good try but cooperative ownership is distinct from private ownership.

And yes, a successful co-op is socialism if it is a worker cooperative. Socialism is about the means of production being controlled by the workers who invest their labour into the production. That doesn't preclude competition, markets or profitability. That's one reason why market socialism exists as a concept.

 

[Big Papa Ted]

Lol no, good try but cooperative ownership is distinct from private ownership.

And yes, a successful co-op is socialism if it is a worker cooperative. Socialism is about the means of production being controlled by the workers who invest their labour into the production. That doesn't preclude competition, markets or profitability. That's one reason why market socialism exists as a concept.

So you just want capitalism but every company has a collective ownership structure?

 

[Johnny Bananas]

So you just want capitalism but every company has a collective ownership structure?

Good grief, what a jump to a conclusion. Why don't you ask me an open question about what I want instead of this assumption?

What I want is state ownership of natural monopolies and critical infrastructure (power, water, roads, railway track etc). For most other industries, I recognise the power of markets to meet the demands of the population, and so competition is best in those. In many of them (like supermarkets, banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals) I want at least one of those competitors to be state-owned.

Amongst the other competitors, I prefer worker co-operatives, and sometimes consumer co-operatives or community co-operatives, to private enterprise. I don't want to outlaw private enterprise in those industries though, I just want them to be heavily regulated and appropriately taxed. You can call that capitalism if you want, I call it a mixed economy featuring state and collective ownership.

 

[Malifice]

1. Mondragon, a federation of worker co-operatives.

Alki - The federation of Worker cooperatives

12ft

12ft.io

2. Community cooperative-owned businesses and infrastructure, such as this wind farm in England.

Westmill Solar | Westmill Solar Co-operative | Solar Park in Shrivenham Wiltshire

Westmill Solar Park is located near to Watchfield in Wiltshire, the site consists of 30 acres of over 20,000 polycrystalline PV panels generating 4.8GWhr/yr

www.westmillsolar.coop

3. Any football club owned by its members.

All three are privately owned, just like a corporation or partnership is.

 

[Malifice]

You seem to be conveniently ignoring that businesses that are not charities are run for profit, including state-owned corporations. Being run for a profit does not disqualify something from being socialist.

No, what disqualifies something from being socialist is when it's not owned and controlled by the State.

If the entities ownership and control is in private hands (being a corporation, a sole trader, a partnership, a co-operative or whatever form it takes) it's not socialism.

'Profit' doesnt come into the definition of 'socialism'. Socialism is 'control and ownership of the means of production by the State'. Whether the means of production are run for profit or not is not relevant to that definition.

I can privately own a charitable co-operative. Run for profit or not, in each case that's not socialism.

The State can seize control and ownership of all Transporation in a country and run it for profit (or simply run it for the social good of the country). In each case, that's socialism.

 

[Malifice]

Not to mention PPP arrangements where the state not only has a controlling interest (but not sole interest) in an organisation, but the provides a regulatory framework within the same industry as a means of artificially inducing some form of competition into that sector.

Regulation of the market is not socialism. It's liberalism. Ownership and control of the markets is in private hands and at the whim of market forces.

Regulated does not mean 'controlled by'. You're regulated by the State on the roads when driving (and in every other aspect of life) via laws, but that's not the same thing as saying the State controls you.

Adam Smith (arguably the granddaddy of capitalism and a liberal) advocated strongly for market regulation (specifically to combat cartels and monopolies and similar unfair market practices) in his book the Wealth of Nations.

Conservatives like to try and misquote him as promoting unregulated full laissez-faire unregulated free markets, but he quite strongly advocated for the exact opposite, being extremely aware of the potential for cartels and monopolies to imbalance and negate the free market, and the operation of the 'invisible hand' and remove the ability of market forces to do what they do.

A contemporary example is when only one food provider is allowed in at the footy. They can charge what they want without any competition. See also, the efforts of big chain Supermarkets to kill any smaller competition. Market forces get thrown out of kilter.

Remember liberals believe the State can only (and indeed has an obligation to) restrict a person's liberty via law making or regulation when that behavior could reasonably harm another person and can (and must) only do so in a proportionate manner to that harm.

Liberals support regulating markets (unfair trade practices, consumer protection laws, residential tenancy laws etc) to protect people from harm, in the same manner they support road traffic laws to regulate the roads (and protect people from harm).

It's not 'illiberal' that your freedom to drive pissed at 200kms an hour on the wrong side of the road is removed and controlled by the State. It's actually a clear example of liberalism.

Ditto regulation of markets. Do what you want, as long as it doesnt harm others. The State sets the rules for what happens if you do (the laws) with road rules, registration and insurance requirements and so forth.

 

[kranky al]

No, what disqualifies something from being socialist is when it's not owned and controlled by the State.

If the entities ownership and control is in private hands (being a corporation, a sole trader, a partnership, a co-operative or whatever form it takes) it's not socialism.

'Profit' doesnt come into the definition of 'socialism'. Socialism is 'control and ownership of the means of production by the State'. Whether the means of production are run for profit or not is not relevant to that definition.

I can privately own a charitable co-operative. Run for profit or not, in each case that's not socialism.

The State can seize control and ownership of all Transporation in a country and run it for profit (or simply run it for the social good of the country). In each case, that's socialism.

In the 1920’s there was socialists advocating for workers to get shares as part of their wages and to buy shares in the companies they worked at. The great depression killed this aspect of socialist thought off at the time.

Socialism isnt one narrow thing the same as capitalism isnt one narrow thing. Theres a whole spectrum.

 

[Malifice]

In the 1920’s there was socialists advocating for workers to get shares as part of their wages and to buy shares in the companies they worked at.

Still not socialism (no State ownership). Even if the workers owned all the shares in the company they work for, the company is still privately owned.

FWIW, I think share ownership by employees is a great idea. It makes the workers work harder, knowing they'll directly benefit in the form of dividends.

If I ran a company, I'd set up something similar (with shares also being used to gather capital in an equal proportion).

 

[Big Papa Ted]

Good grief, what a jump to a conclusion. Why don't you ask me an open question about what I want instead of this assumption?

That's fair, apologies for making the assumption.

What I want is state ownership of natural monopolies and critical infrastructure (power, water, roads, railway track etc). For most other industries, I recognise the power of markets to meet the demands of the population, and so competition is best in those. In many of them (like supermarkets, banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals) I want at least one of those competitors to be state-owned.

Amongst the other competitors, I prefer worker co-operatives, and sometimes consumer co-operatives or community co-operatives, to private enterprise. I don't want to outlaw private enterprise in those industries though, I just want them to be heavily regulated and appropriately taxed. You can call that capitalism if you want, I call it a mixed economy featuring state and collective ownership.

Yeah tbh that's capitalism with collective ownership structures for private enterprise, and certain/key industries nationalised.

For what it's worth, I'd love the same system (particularly the parts about nationalised key infrastructure, but also include natural resources in that mix). I just think we should be cautious about mislabelling things as socialism because:

A) It's not correct and can lead to misunderstandings when advocating for things like the above.

B) The term socialism still has bogeyman status for alot of people, so mislabelling the nationalisation of key infrastructure and advocating for collective private ownership models as socialism can be weaponised by those trying to oppose it.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

That's fair, apologies for making the assumption.

Thank you, apology accepted.

Yeah tbh that's capitalism with collective ownership structures for private enterprise, and certain/key industries nationalised.

This feels a bit like the one-drop rule for race, in that any private ownership at all immediately makes something "capitalism". I maintain that it's a spectrum with pure capitalism on one end, pure socialism on the other and many shades of mixed economy in between, and it's reductive to try and put everything into one box or the other.

For what it's worth, I'd love the same system (particularly the parts about nationalised key infrastructure, but also include natural resources in that mix).

I can agree with that. I see no reason why most natural resources should ever have been open to exploitation by the private sector. Gas is the most obvious example where profiteering has run contrary to the national interest, as we have to suffer high prices domestically because almost all our gas is contracted to be sold overseas.

I just think we should be cautious about mislabelling things as socialism because:

A) It's not correct and can lead to misunderstandings when advocating for things like the above.

Once again, not everything can be neatly dropped into one box or the other. If this is a reference to Malifice, their understanding of socialism is incredibly narrow because they refuse to read any actual literature beyond the first line.

B) The term socialism still has bogeyman status for alot of people, so mislabelling the nationalisation of key infrastructure and advocating for collective private ownership models as socialism can be weaponised by those trying to oppose it.

What if it was actually normalising the concept of socialism to the ordinary person? Bernie Sanders has done a lot in that regard, and partly due to his work, studies show that the young are far less hostile to the concept of "socialism" (however they define it) than the old. And the more that the right histrionically shriek that anything more interventionist than total laissez-faire capitalism is SOCIALISM!!!, like they did with Obama, the more it starts to make people think, "Hey, this socialism thing isn't so bad!" when they experience a regulated free market.

 

[Johnny Bananas]

No, what disqualifies something from being socialist is when it's not owned and controlled by the State.

Okay Malifice, arbiter of all that is socialist. Clearly Lenin had it wrong when he said "the system of civilized cooperators is the system of socialism".

 

[kranky al]

Still not socialism (no State ownership). Even if the workers owned all the shares in the company they work for, the company is still privately owned.

FWIW, I think share ownership by employees is a great idea. It makes the workers work harder, knowing they'll directly benefit in the form of dividends.

If I ran a company, I'd set up something similar (with shares also being used to gather capital in an equal proportion).

You are mistaking communism with socialism.

Socialism is a far broader church.

 

[Big Papa Ted]

Thank you, apology accepted.

Np

This feels a bit like the one-drop rule for race, in that any private ownership at all immediately makes something "capitalism". I maintain that it's a spectrum with pure capitalism on one end, pure socialism on the other and many shades of mixed economy in between, and it's reductive to try and put everything into one box or the other.

To me the distinction and line in the sand is pretty clear (read below for further explanation).

I can agree with that. I see no reason why most natural resources should ever have been open to exploitation by the private sector. Gas is the most obvious example where profiteering has run contrary to the national interest, as we have to suffer high prices domestically because almost all our gas is contracted to be sold overseas.

Once again, not everything can be neatly dropped into one box or the other. If this is a reference to Malifice, their understanding of socialism is incredibly narrow because they refuse to read any actual literature beyond the first line.

But to me the distinction is fairly clear, are the means of production owned by society? For a cooperative, the answer is no. It's still s bunch of individual, private firms vying against each other in the market place.

As soon as you exclude anyone in society from ownership (even just one person), the means of production aren't owned by society. Hence stuff like cooperatives doesn't fit the bill as being socialism

What if it was actually normalising the concept of socialism to the ordinary person? Bernie Sanders has done a lot in that regard, and partly due to his work, studies show that the young are far less hostile to the concept of "socialism" (however they define it) than the old. And the more that the right histrionically shriek that anything more interventionist than total laissez-faire capitalism is SOCIALISM!!!, like they did with Obama, the more it starts to make people think, "Hey, this socialism thing isn't so bad!" when they experience a regulated free market.

Truthfully I don't know enough about Bernie's work to comment, but if him branding his stuff as socialism helps get a stronger social safety net, I've got no issues with it.

 

[kranky al]

Np

To me the distinction and line in the sand is pretty clear (read below for further explanation).



But to me the distinction is fairly clear, are the means of production owned by society? For a cooperative, the answer is no. It's still s bunch of individual, private firms vying against each other in the market place.

As soon as you exclude anyone in society from ownership (even just one person), the means of production aren't owned by society. Hence stuff like cooperatives doesn't fit the bill as being socialism

Truthfully I don't know enough about Bernie's work to comment, but if him branding his stuff as socialism helps get a stronger social safety net, I've got no issues with it.

Socialism is when the workers own the means of production.

Not society as a whole - that’s headed more at communism.

Theres many schools of thought in socialism

Under a socialist society that worker owned whatever would still be expected to contribute via taxation to a social safety net and also be expected to do so without dodging tax like multinationals do.

 

[Malifice]

You are mistaking communism with socialism.

Socialism is a far broader church.

I've literally provided the OED definition of socialism. Multiple times.

If the means of production (and by extension your company, co-op, partnership etc) is privately owned and run, it's not socialism.

That's the literal definition.

It's not me that's confusing the definition here. It's you guys.

 

[kranky al]

I've literally provided the OED definition of socialism. Multiple times.

If the means of production (and by extension your company, co-op, partnership etc) is privately owned and run, it's not socialism.

That's the literal definition.

It's not me that's confusing the definition here. It's you guys.

I've literally provided the OED definition of socialism. Multiple times.

If the means of production (and by extension your company, co-op, partnership etc) is privately owned and run, it's not socialism.

That's the literal definition.

It's not me that's confusing the definition here. It's you guys.

Is there only one model of capitalism?

 

[Malifice]

Okay Malifice, arbiter of all that is socialist. Clearly Lenin had it wrong when he said "the system of civilized cooperators is the system of socialism".

Lenin? The dude who literally directly advocated for a single party (proletariat) dictatorial State (the Soviets):

In chapter five of The State and Revolution (1917), Lenin describes the dictatorship of the proletariat as:

the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. ... An immense expansion of democracy, which, for the first time, becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich ... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the 'transition' from capitalism to communism.[15]

Concerning the disenfranchisement from democracy of the capitalist social class, Lenin said: "Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."[16] The dictatorship of the proletariat was effected with soviet constitutionalism, a form of government opposite to the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies.

Leninism - Wikipedia

Leninism is literally founded, predicated and based on the creation and dominance of a Socialist State that controls the means of production (as opposed to private ownership of the same).

That's its core thesis FFS!

 

[kranky al]

Different types of socialism - Economics Help

Definition and explanation of different types of socialism. democratic, welfare, utopian, Communism, Marxism, social democratic and anarcho-socialism.

www.economicshelp.org

​

Different types of socialism​

Socialism is an economic and political ideology concerned with greater equality of distribution and proposing solutions which involve greater co-operation and social solutions. Socialism is often associated with the concept of state ownership of the means of production. The aim is to run industry in the interests of society rather than in the interests of a few property owners. However, there are many variants of socialism from the Command economy of State-Communism (e.g. Soviet Union) to libertarian socialism which advocates voluntary councils of workers taking responsibility for their local business.

Traditional economic theory is based on principles of individual ownership of property and a free market, where individuals and business are free to take actions to maximise their utility. From an economic perspective, this is considered to be a method which leads to an efficient allocation of resources. Different types of socialism all offer a critic of this free-market economy, arguing that it leads to inequality and abuse of monopoly power. Socialism is a challenge to this market economy.

Anarcho-socialism​

This is a form of socialism that rejects the state, religion and ownership of property. It grew out of a philosophy of Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin proposed that the means of production should be collectivised and workers paid according to their input. This is in contrast to Marxist Socialism which advocated a much greater role for the state in overseeing the means and products of labour.

Utopian socialism​

Anarcho-socialism is a close relation to utopian socialism. In utopian socialism, adherents downplay the role of class warfare and argue people of all classes can voluntarily come together to promote socialist ideals of shared ownership and working for the common good. cooperative socialism. It is based on the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen.

Utopian socialism is a type of ethical socialism which requires a certain ethics of those living in the community. Utopian socialism is a challenge to the conventional economic model of rational choice – the idea that individuals seek to maximise their individual utility. Under utopian socialism, it assumes that individuals will be able to put selfish ends to one side to consider the common good.

Aspects of Utopian-socialism

• No state ownership of means of production
• Advocates co-operation between owners and workers – rather than adversarial workers vs capitalist /trade unions
• Local decentralisation of decision-making process.
• Market forces harnessed but emphasis on considering common good rather than selfish ends

State-Communism​

Under state communism (e.g. Marxist-Leninist) , the Communist State gains control over the means of production and decides – what to produce? How to produce? and for whom? Examples include the Soviet Union and Eastern European states. Under state communism, there is a high degree of centralisation with production targets set by central committees and local officials being responsible for meeting these targets. States with a Centrally planned economy have frequently involved considerable degrees of political control. In the 1930s and 40s, the Soviet Union had periods of rapid industrial expansion and economic growth. However, the system increasingly became bureaucratic, wasteful and lacking in incentives. Towards the end of the Soviet Union, the economic system was increasingly broken with major shortages of key goods and services.

Aspects of state communism

• Political control/censorship
• State ownership of all major industries
• Production decided by central committees
• Prices set by government committees
• Limited or no role for private enterprise and free-market forces

Democratic socialism​

Democratic socialism differs from state communism in that the state is not all-powerful, and the political system remains democratic. Democratic socialism is associated with the Socialist parties of western Europe. They generally propose a mixed economy – with state ownership of key industries, like coal, electricity, water and gas, but allow private enterprise to operate in the rest of the economy. Democratic socialism proposes a progressive tax system to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor – through the provisions of a welfare state. Democratic socialism is often associated with the Nordic countries – where the government takes approximately 50% of GDP, but also there is a thriving market economy, giving a high standard of living.

Aspects of Democratic socialism

• Advocates nationalisation of key industries (often the natural monopolies, like electricity, water)
• Prices set by the market mechanism, except public goods, such as health and education.
• Provision of a welfare state to provide income redistribution
• Support for trade unions in wage bargaining
• Use of minimum wages and universal income to raise low-income wages
• Progressive tax and provision of public services. For example, marginal income tax rates of 70%. Tax on wealth

Social democratic socialism​

Under social democratic socialism, there is a greater willingness to use market forces. For example, under social democracy, certain state-owned industries may be privatised because it is more efficient. But, then the tax system may be used to distribute high profits from the privatised companies. Social democracy is related to more right-wing socialist parties, such as the Labour Party under Tony Blair. For example, under Labour, the party didn’t renationalise privatised industries, but they did implement a ‘windfall tax’ on the privatised utilities who had made high profits.

Aspects of social democratic socialism

• Greater willingness to harness market-forces
• No commitment to nationalisation of industries.
• Use of minimum wages and universal income to raise low-income wages
• Socialist aims achieved through progressive tax and provision of public services

Libertarian socialism​

Libertarian socialism rejects a powerful state involved in the management of the economy and labour market relations. Instead, it prefers local collectives voluntarily coming together to promote socialist values of co-operations.

Christian socialism​

Christian socialism aims to provide an ethical background to socialism. It gives a Christian motive to redistribution and offering public services such as health and education. It also retains political and economic liberty and avoids the excess of Communism

Market Communism​

e.g. China

• The economy mixture of free-market enterprise and state control
• Communist party is a one-party political state
• e.g. China

Related

• Capitalism vs Socialism
• Socialism vs Communism

 

[Malifice]

Is there only one model of capitalism?

It's not a question of 'modes'

If a States trade and industry are owned and controlled by private owners, it's a Capitalist State.

If a States trade and industry are owned and controlled by the State (on behalf of the people), its a Socialist State.

That said, virtually all States operate in a combination of the above to some degree, with some industries or sectors State owned, and others in private hands. We're really looking at the overarching policy.

Australia for example is not 'Socialist' even though some industries are State owned, as the majority of industry and commerce is in private hands (and dictated to by the market). The Nazi regime was a lot closer to socialism (Hitler didn't want to go full socialist control though, because he didnt want to piss off the wealthy Prussian Junker class and the old aristocracy by seizing their land and wealth, and he needed the wealthy corporate business leaders on his side as well. Ultimately, he ended up purging the more socialist minded members of the Nazi party). Cuba, the USSR etc went full blown socialism, with next to all industry owned and controlled by the State.

 

[Malifice]

Socialism is often associated with the concept of state ownership of the means of production. The aim is to run industry in the interests of society rather than in the interests of a few property owners.

From your own link.

In Australia, right now, a group of people could form a co-op, live on communal land, and pool resources, for the mutual benefit of all.

That might resemble socialism (and feel free to call it socialism), but absent control and ownership of that property and co-op by the State, it's not socialism.

It's the same way as if the same group of people were subject to the whims and orders of a single person at that commune who has absolute authority to lead and make decisions for that commune, without any consultation from others at the commune. While that system would resemble a dictatorship (and you could call it a dictatorship) it's not actually a dictatorship.

 

[Malifice]

If you're curious, my issue (as a liberal) with socialism (control of the means of production by the State) is this:

1) In a Capitalist (liberal) State, there is literally nothing stopping people from forming a co-op, sharing wealth equally, having communal property, and living (for all intents and purposes) in a socialist manner.

2) In a Socialist State, the opposite is not true. There are laws that stop people from plying their trade for profit. The State tells you what to do, what you can (and cannot) own, what you can (or cannot) earn for a living. It controls every aspect of your life.

Hand control of the means of production over to the State, and the State becomes a single party tyranny. It's happened literally every, single, time.