I don’t mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you don’t actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. There’s no M-C-M’ circuit in place, there’s no competition, and there’s no ownership. You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didn’t actually answer my questions, I’ll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
What is my approach?
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
What will my “utopia” look like?
Marxists aren’t Utopian. We don’t think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You don’t design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Why is this a good thing?
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the World’s largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the world’s largest elimination in poverty in history.
Why will Communism come to be?
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We can’t know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalism’s centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We can’t predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze “unresolved problems” and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We don’t work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.
You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
There’s a reason: you do need someone to take charge of management tasks and redistribution. Your argument would be like saying that there’s no reason to elect public officials, nor for the workers to allow them to take the roles they take and “accumulate profits” (they would only accumulate the profits that the State/Workers allow, btw, because the redistribution includes them, and it has to also be overseed / agreed by State/Workers).
You can call the owners “administrators” if you want… but that’s more of a semantic problem. Because at the end of the day, it’s not the document of ownership what really matters. I would not mind if you call me “administrator” of my building if it were the case that even though I have a paper that says I’m own it, I’m were to not be allowed to execute changes to it without the agreement of the rest of the people living on it.
And yes, it might be that there’s no competition (although that does not necessarily have to be true), but this is why I was telling you that the problem is NOT that capitalism evolves into a monopoly, the problem is making sure the owner has specific obligations and responsibilities that must be always aligned with State/Worker.
Again, I wanna keep things short so I don’t want to go one by one through your points just yet, because the comments are becoming long enough as they are, and I feel most (all?) of what you wrote is not in conflict with my point and it only relates to superfluous misinterpretations of what I was meaning to communicate. I don’t want to engage in double guesses trying to understand what you think that I think and why you think the point you are making challenges mine.
You can have administrators that don’t own the industry. Managers and administrators are not owners. CEOs, for example, frequently don’t have ownership and instead ownership is handled by investors even within Capitalism. The purpose of individual ownership is profit. What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Other than the idea of individuals being independent from the state (separation of power), it doesn’t add anything and it doesn’t remove anything.
This is exactly my point. We do not gain anything from taking away private ownership in a situation in which the real control / power is in the State / Workers and the owners are just independent individuals at the service of the State/Workers.
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Which statement I made is specifically challenged by this?
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
In my proposed State, they would not necessarily need to (ie. they could delegate to a manager that does that job), but the responsibility towards the State/Workers in relation to the use of the facility would still be with the owner. So if the State/Workers are not happy about this arrangement for whatever reason (maybe they think the distribution of services is not being held with the benefit of the State/Workers in mind, or don’t think it’s fair for the owner to not take action himself), they can vote him out and elect a different one.
Individuals being separate from government isn’t a “sepparation of power.” It’s shifting power from the workers to the hands of the owners. If you’re playing a purely semantical game, then no, an owner without any ownership is not an owner.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The Workers is not a power, it’s a community.
What I’m talking is an executive power, one that needs to be overseen by other entities and that has to abide by regulations. I feel the more independent from the ones setting those regulations and from those who are judging the execution of those rules, the least chances of corruption.
Do you believe in division of power?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
What rules? where’s the quote? I still don’t understand what you think that I’m thinking.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
Having an eyepatch does make a functional difference though, it obstructs vision.
A better example to your point would be a society decides they want it to be spelt “color” (vs “colour”, lets assume that really makes no functional difference)… then a bunch of people show up and argue that the spelling of “color” is the cause of problems so they want to make it so it’s spelt “colour” instead… and just on the side maybe try and fix problems that they think were caused by the spelling… even though the measures to fix them can also be done with the same spelling in place.
My position is that the spelling of the word is not relevant… what’s relevant is the measures that should be taken to fix the problems, which would continue to happen if the only thing you change is the spelling of the word.
If the government is democratically owned and controlled by the workers, ie the entirety of society, what purpose does having people distinct from the rest of society serve? If they don’t actually have power, then they aren’t owners and are just administrators. If they do have power, said power works against the workers.
Individual ownership of industry will not exist in an economy where the reason for its existence has disappeared.
What powers would these owners have that requires them be distinct from society at large? What is the purpose of retaining class distinctions?
I think you misunderstand. It’s not like they are a completely separate kind of person.
They are as distinct as an executioner who needs to cut someone’s head is distinct from the person whose head needs to be cut.
The minute executive officials become friends with the officials redacting rules and/or the officials organizing the push towards kicking them out, my trust in the system decreases. Because now you can’t trust the ones pushing for rules to make them in a way that benefits the one executing them… or that the ones judging the rules do not get swayed in favor or letting malpractices slip.
Why does this need ownership? Why are you attached to that idea? Why would individual ownership exist in a system that has moved beyond the reason for individual ownership’s existence? You haven’t answred that.
Take a look at how Soviet Democracy functioned. The existence of individual owners would work against that system, but administrators still existed:
I don’t mean to be dismissive of you outright, but I asked the questions I did for a reason, to highlight why we are speaking past each other. For example, I have said many times that Communists are not utopian, but you are operating on the assumption that we have the same approach, ie thinking of a perfect society and trying to twist towards it. As a consequence, you don’t actually grasp the how or why of Socialism and Communism.
As an example, the positions you describe are just administrators without ownership. There’s no M-C-M’ circuit in place, there’s no competition, and there’s no ownership. You call them owners, but there’s no actual reason for them to own it nor for the workers to allow them to own it and accumulate profits.
Since you didn’t actually answer my questions, I’ll answer them from my POV so you can see why I asked them very specifically.
As a Marxist, my approach is to analyze present society, how it came to be, and where it appears to be trending towards. We have seen that, historically, Feudalism has chsnged to Capitalism with the rise of industrialization, and Capitalism works towards centralization, going from widespread competition to ownership in the hands of the few and increased barriers to entry. This indicates that the next Mode of Production will rely on democratizing said structures and publicly owning and planning in a cooperative manner, as competition has killed itself.
Marxists aren’t Utopian. We don’t think of an ideal and try to force it into existence, but iteratively improve on existing systems based on our knowledge of how the real world functions. You don’t design a computer by thinking of a super computer and trying to create it from nothing, you iteratively develop and adapt as things change. Marxists have predictions for Communism based on the contradictions within Capitalism resolving, ie problems being corrected, not because Communism itself was designed in a lab from scratch.
Because this approach works. AES states have seen incredibly strides in worker rights and quality of life, we have proven data. By analyzing present society and its trajectories, we can master the laws that govern societal development. The PRC is a good example, by clearly analyzing the purpose and role various tools like markets and planning play in historical progression, they have gone from a country equal to Haiti in wealth a century ago to the World’s largest economy adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity, developed mass infrastructure, and had the world’s largest elimination in poverty in history.
I touched on this earlier, but because we analyze the contradictions within society and their trajectories. We can’t know what it will look like, all we will know is that as we move along history, Capitalism’s centralization will give rise to public ownership and planning as it becomes inherently more efficient, and that eventually class antagonisms will be confrontend and resolved until there is no more class. Without class, there becomes no need for borders or repressive police states, as there is no more competition, only production on a cooperative basis. We can’t predict the exact makeup or how that transition will look, but we can analyze “unresolved problems” and know that they must be resolved.
Does that help explain why we are talking past each other? You try to pick and end and work towards it, while Marxists are concerned with analyzing the present and taking mastery over that trajectory. We don’t work towards public ownership because it is a good thing, but because Capitalism itself creates the conditions for it, and being aware of that process makes it the obvious next step.
There’s a reason: you do need someone to take charge of management tasks and redistribution. Your argument would be like saying that there’s no reason to elect public officials, nor for the workers to allow them to take the roles they take and “accumulate profits” (they would only accumulate the profits that the State/Workers allow, btw, because the redistribution includes them, and it has to also be overseed / agreed by State/Workers).
You can call the owners “administrators” if you want… but that’s more of a semantic problem. Because at the end of the day, it’s not the document of ownership what really matters. I would not mind if you call me “administrator” of my building if it were the case that even though I have a paper that says I’m own it, I’m were to not be allowed to execute changes to it without the agreement of the rest of the people living on it.
And yes, it might be that there’s no competition (although that does not necessarily have to be true), but this is why I was telling you that the problem is NOT that capitalism evolves into a monopoly, the problem is making sure the owner has specific obligations and responsibilities that must be always aligned with State/Worker.
Again, I wanna keep things short so I don’t want to go one by one through your points just yet, because the comments are becoming long enough as they are, and I feel most (all?) of what you wrote is not in conflict with my point and it only relates to superfluous misinterpretations of what I was meaning to communicate. I don’t want to engage in double guesses trying to understand what you think that I think and why you think the point you are making challenges mine.
You can have administrators that don’t own the industry. Managers and administrators are not owners. CEOs, for example, frequently don’t have ownership and instead ownership is handled by investors even within Capitalism. The purpose of individual ownership is profit. What does individual ownership add over public ownership if this role of management and administration is held by someone who has just as much ownership as any other worker?
Profit only exists through exchange, ie for the purpose of sale so that you can use a greater quantity of money to produce a greater quantity of commodities, in a Money -> Commodity -> Greater Money circuit. This process inevitably results in competition, centralization, and death of competition. It isn’t a static, motionless system. Markets suffocate themselves.
Let me ask you this: does the manager of your local publicly owned facility, be it a Post Office or school, own said facility? Would they need to?
Other than the idea of individuals being independent from the state (separation of power), it doesn’t add anything and it doesn’t remove anything.
This is exactly my point. We do not gain anything from taking away private ownership in a situation in which the real control / power is in the State / Workers and the owners are just independent individuals at the service of the State/Workers.
Which statement I made is specifically challenged by this?
In my proposed State, they would not necessarily need to (ie. they could delegate to a manager that does that job), but the responsibility towards the State/Workers in relation to the use of the facility would still be with the owner. So if the State/Workers are not happy about this arrangement for whatever reason (maybe they think the distribution of services is not being held with the benefit of the State/Workers in mind, or don’t think it’s fair for the owner to not take action himself), they can vote him out and elect a different one.
Individuals being separate from government isn’t a “sepparation of power.” It’s shifting power from the workers to the hands of the owners. If you’re playing a purely semantical game, then no, an owner without any ownership is not an owner.
What does “independence from the workers” do to help accountability for the workers?
The statement you made that contradicted it was believing individual ownership would last in a system where those rules no longer apply.
Your proposed role of ownership is functionally no different from an administrator and doesn’t consist of actual ownership. There’s no reason nor benefit for it, like, you could have a society where everyone has to wear an eyepatch, but that doesn’t make any sense and would never happen.
The Workers is not a power, it’s a community.
What I’m talking is an executive power, one that needs to be overseen by other entities and that has to abide by regulations. I feel the more independent from the ones setting those regulations and from those who are judging the execution of those rules, the least chances of corruption.
Do you believe in division of power?
What rules? where’s the quote? I still don’t understand what you think that I’m thinking.
Having an eyepatch does make a functional difference though, it obstructs vision.
A better example to your point would be a society decides they want it to be spelt “color” (vs “colour”, lets assume that really makes no functional difference)… then a bunch of people show up and argue that the spelling of “color” is the cause of problems so they want to make it so it’s spelt “colour” instead… and just on the side maybe try and fix problems that they think were caused by the spelling… even though the measures to fix them can also be done with the same spelling in place.
My position is that the spelling of the word is not relevant… what’s relevant is the measures that should be taken to fix the problems, which would continue to happen if the only thing you change is the spelling of the word.
If the government is democratically owned and controlled by the workers, ie the entirety of society, what purpose does having people distinct from the rest of society serve? If they don’t actually have power, then they aren’t owners and are just administrators. If they do have power, said power works against the workers.
Individual ownership of industry will not exist in an economy where the reason for its existence has disappeared.
What powers would these owners have that requires them be distinct from society at large? What is the purpose of retaining class distinctions?
I think you misunderstand. It’s not like they are a completely separate kind of person.
They are as distinct as an executioner who needs to cut someone’s head is distinct from the person whose head needs to be cut.
The minute executive officials become friends with the officials redacting rules and/or the officials organizing the push towards kicking them out, my trust in the system decreases. Because now you can’t trust the ones pushing for rules to make them in a way that benefits the one executing them… or that the ones judging the rules do not get swayed in favor or letting malpractices slip.
Why does this need ownership? Why are you attached to that idea? Why would individual ownership exist in a system that has moved beyond the reason for individual ownership’s existence? You haven’t answred that.
Take a look at how Soviet Democracy functioned. The existence of individual owners would work against that system, but administrators still existed:
Individual Ownership adds nothing.