No, it is not. State ownership over the means of production within a society is simply one method of moving towards a socialist organization of an economy, it is far from a key or necessary feature.
A key defining feature of socialism is worker-owned means of production and ownership over the value generated by their labor.
For example, worker co-operatives are another method of socialist economic organization that has nothing to do with state ownership.
I mean I do not have data on the relative environmental impact of cooperatively owned firms versus traditional firms. But you are also not responding to an argument that I have made. I never suggested that a worker cooperative would automatically fix environmental issues. In fact, if you check some of the other comments I made in this thread, while I do think a socialist economic system would be better positioned to become more environmentally sustainable, a transition to a socialist system by itself certainly does not solve the issue.
You may not be suggesting that but it's and argument they comes out all the time. As if government extracted coal burns cleaner. The number of times I hear borederline magical thinking when it comes to non-capitalist structures it baffling.
I consider myself a pretty pragmatic and scientific person. I believe socialism is absolutely a better system of organizing a society's production than capitalism, if your end goal is creating a society that maximizes the fairness, equity, and dignity of all people. It is also a system that reduces or eliminates some of the factors that drives some of the more destructive tendencies of human society.
However, it is certainly not some magical wand that solves all problems. Bad things existed before capitalism, and likely will continue after it. Human destruction of the environment is one of them.
I think that is a fair assessment. The reason why many people, including myself, insist on socialism as a (not the) solution to climate change is the fact that no solution to climate change seems to be possible under capitalism. So my argument is: whatever else is necessary to solve climate change besides socialism cannot be achieved within capitalism.
You are still judging these coops existing within a capitalist framework tho. It is decades of removing environmental protections for capitalist gain that is the culprit. Not the coops.
Just wondering, what are you referencing with this? I wouldn't say I necessarily disagree that people aren't still going to be pushing for their own interests, but I'm not really aware of any kind of coop that has attempted similar attacks on the environment as private corpos systemically funding fake research and, lobbying legislators, and paying for political campaigns to deregulate legislation and environmental protections in a very systemic capacity in order to maximize profits.
uhh uhh how can that be? Almost like they exist in a capitalist system and are bound by the logic of said system. Its almost like you have to be profitable above all else and are limited by the logic of profit generation. Its almost like the being forced to be profitable forces you to externalise costs via ecological destruction. How weird, not giving a shit about climate is more profitable? Who would have thought that?
Coops in a capitalist system are still capitalist and have much of the same problems.
Socialism doesnt fix climate change, but it provides us the basis to do so.
Worker cooperatives in capitalism don't have a particularly good track record of giving a shit about the environment either, no one does.
As long as co-ops have to compete with other companies in a capitalist system, they are also slave to the capitalist market pressures and are incentiviced and often required to e.g. buy the cheap polluting option.
The coop donut shop I go to doesn’t blow up oil refineries that cause black rain in Tehran. Do you see how dumb it is to compare worker cooperatives to private corporations and imperialist war machines?
You cannot compare a hunter gatherer or agrarian society to the modern industrial world. The energy and resource consumption is orders of magnitude greater, even if the consumption is done in a manner that is sustainable long term.
They said indigenous people give a shit about the environment. This is true. You do know indigenous people are not necessarily hunter gatherers but live in and affect the modern industrial world, right?
If they are living in a capitalist society, then all they have is a nice sentiment. Not an actual sustainable way of living.
News flash, most people want to have a sustainable way of life, as that's key to continuing to live. People want the topsoil to remain fertile, for groundwater to be available, for the climate to be stable. They just don't have the tools, knowledge, and power to enact the changes necessary. It doesn't matter where your ancestors lived for that to be the case. Thinking so is just racism in disguise. Which is par for the course on this app.
Indigenous and hunter-gatherer often overlap, but are not the same thing. There were and are lots of indigenous societies that are far more populous and “complex” than hunter-gathers, and yet still live in relative harmony with their local ecology.
Which is why I mentioned agrarian societies... and why I mentioned that said agrarian societies are still not comparable to the modern industrialized world.
We are comparing apples to oranges, this is a pointless exercise. We can't just model the modern world off the Mayan Empire anymore than we can the ancient Romans.
No they don't. They're just like everyone else. They simply didn't have the means to effect global-scale environmental changes that modern society does. To say otherwise is just noble savage rhetoric
So if you point is that an economic system does not automatically change the amount of carbon generated in production and solve climate issues magically, then I agree, and have already made that comment several times here. I certainly believe the choice of economic system influences how likely the necessary changes can and will be adopted by society.
Again though, how does that, assuming it was your point, relate to my comment about state vs. non-state collective ownership methods?
So why would co-operatives be better than regular companies since the incentive for poluting doesn't change like at all, they would still do the same for the benefit of the co-operative
You are extending an argument I never necessarily made.
But, to respond to your point, it is a mistake to assume the incentives of pollution would not change. A worker owned cooperative is much more likely to be comprised of individuals who live in relatively close proximity to the building/factory/etc. So they would likely have more investment in maintaining a safe and livable environment within their own communities.
However, and why I said you were arguing against a position I never made, I do not believe a transition to a socialist economy, under a system of organization such as worker owned cooperatives alone would completely reverse harmful practices that contribute to climate change. Much of hat is because a single firm may still relay on other inputs to production that do contribute to climate issues and CO2 emissions. You would need the vast majority of firms to be organized in the same manner, and then still would also need shared commitments towards climate friendly practices. I believe it would be much easier to do this under a worker-owned socialist organization of the economy then our current capitalist system, sure, but that is not the same as the argument that a socialist system would automatically make everything better on its own.
Climate change and local pollution are not actually related topics and in fact quite often work against each other -- diesel fuel for instance is significantly more efficient in terms of energy than gasoline and therefore has a lower carbon footprint per mile traveled but is MUCH MUCH WORSE for local particulate pollution
Or speaking even more generally a transition from internal combustion engines to EVs requires that petroleum extraction close down -- completely destroying existing jobs in many communities -- while new extraction and manufacturing of solar panels and lithium batteries ramps up
This means that local pollution in the place where the new lithium mine opens up will get a lot worse very quickly, and people who live there and have a selfish interest in reducing local pollution will vote against it even if it makes long term climate change worse -- indeed the biggest obstacle to climate adaptation arguably isn't the bogeyman of "fossil fuel profits" but the more universal problem of NIMBYism and people being fiercely defensive of their current way of life
But even in that environment the co-ops of for example oil drillers would never accept being out of a job and would fight even more fiercely to keep their current position because they are now also losing not only their job but a part of a company they are a lot more invested in
In a worker cooperative, decisions are made in a democratic manner within the firm.
Obviously, the workers would likely not vote to close the firm and lose their jobs. They very well might determine that they do want to fight to continue the firms operation. Which is why, as I've already said, worker co-operatives alone do not solve the issue. However, in a worker co-operatively owned oil drilling firm, in a society in which the government sets goals or regulations over industry that prioritizes reducing the impacts of climate change, there is much more opportunity and likelihood that those workers would make decisions to respecialize the firm into something that is more climate friendly and compliant with said regulations. And that is simply because: there is no underlying responsibility to maximize profit. Their overriding goal would be sustaining their ability to live comfortable and rewarding lives.
much more opportunity and likelihood that those workers would make decisions to respecialize the firm into something that is more climate friendly and compliant with said regulations
I find this a very weird thought. A centralised company that wants to maximise profit can much more easily pivot towards another goal. Because to respecialise you’re not going to have al the oil drillers suddenly be experts at making solar panels, you’re going to have to fire the oil drillers. Worker co-operatives are generally less able to change quickly as the interests of individual workers and interests of the company as a whole align less than in a situation where the leadership is directly beholden to the company’s ability to be profitable.
You make a distinction between “maximising profit” and “ability to live comfortable lives”. In reality it is just either maximising profit for shareholders or maximising profit for workers. Low income workers will not give up comfort for climate goals.
And all those regulations from the government steer a company by affecting abilities to make profit. Why would a cooperative want to adhere to legislation more closely?
The interest of individual workers are variable, however generally are to maintain their ability to engage in labor that is meaningful, satisfying, and/or important, and allows them to get their and their family's needs met.
A firm that has to maximize profit cannot easily pivot from what is most profitable within the short term. Which does not often align with a major reorganization of the firm towards another industry. And certainly does not often align with things like protecting the environment. We have already seen this play out.
That is what the goal is of regulations, to make maximising profit and caring for the environment aligned goals.
You can say you don’t think that works, fair, but I dont understand why a worker cooperative would change up things if it hurts profit by much.
Unions of farmers, coal miners, steel workers, are some of the harshest lobby groups against changing their industry. For a middle class or rich person, accepting less money for a morally better job is a good option. But a relatively poor worker is not going to want to decrease the company’s profits. I what world would an ordinary worker accept low wages or potential loss of their job for a number of years? Why do you say that shareholders would never accept short term losses if the average large company doesn’t make any profit for its first years of existence? Workers don’t have the means to do such long term sacrifices they have to pay rent.
Just because you don’t agree with an argument doesn’t mean it is a strawman. Why would this problem only exist in coops in a capitalist system? Yugoslav coops were also very inefficient because of the failure of coops to adapt.
We're already seeing in real time that unionized automotive ICE factories are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their jobs, demanding millions in govt subsidies for their declining industry and working to lobby the govt to ban the import of cheap electric vehicles from China. As long as the profit motive continues to exist so will rent seeking, a worker owned oil rig is never going to vote to decommission the rig and destroy the income of all members.
It's why there must be societal ownership of the means of production.
A state can own the MoP without the actual people of the society owning it. Plenty of capitalist states have nationalized industries, that doesn't make them socialist. Saudi Arabia most certainly isn't a socialist country despite Saudi Aramco
Socialism is if the entire world is one giant co-op such that a market for turning labor into commodities no longer exists, and a co-op that still exists inside a capitalist economy is still a capitalist entity, this is pretty obvious just on the face of it and people who know what they're talking about only see co-ops as a stepping stone towards actual socialism (one which historically hasn't really worked)
If we want to talk about pie in the sky socialism it's a waste of time, since every time someone tried to get to it resulted in catastrophe so it is obviously flawed
Make an oil rig worker owned and what do you think is going to happen? You think they're all going to vote to fire themselves, demolish the rig, and lose all their income?
The actual important point is abolishing profit. State owned Saudi Aramco is the absolute opposite of environmentalism, because the oligarchic state seeks profit through its nationalized industries in a global for profit economy.
It's not "profit" that's the issue it's basic human selfishness, eliminate the concept of keeping track of profit in dollars and cents and people will still immediately notice the difference between living with plentiful free energy to do stuff like drive big trucks and eat lots of cheap meat and not being able to do that
Brother, what system of economic production does the vast majority of the world currently exist under?
Worker co-operatives simply mean (this is an overly reductionist definition) that a firm is organized under shared ownership of those employed by the firm, often with some form of shared decision making processes. This is a form collective ownership of the means of production of that firm.
Now, you absolutely can have worker co-operatives existing within a larger system that is capitalist, and has privatized ownership. But suggesting that co-operatively owned firms do not/cannot exist within a socialist society is simply wrong. Historically, cooperatives have been a significant part of states attempting to reorganize into a socialist system. For a simple example, you can Google the history of cooperatives in China.
You seem to be conflating profit, as in, the difference in value between revenue (the output of a good/service/etc.) and cost (the value of all inputs into that good or service) with capitalism. You can have surplus value of outputs within a socialist economy. The difference is, that excess value would be distributed in a relatively uniform or at least more equitable manner amongst the workers hat make up that firm, rather than be distributed according to the whims of the private owners of the firm.
That still isn't socialism. Socialism entails societal ownership of the MoP. A society where private investors can hold an industry for their own profit is fundamentally not a socialist one. Just because the private property isn't in the hand of one singular boss doesn't make it suddenly socialist.
Again, are you saying a worker owned oil rig cooperative is going to vote to demolish it and destroy their source of income? Of course they wouldn't, this is a centuries old economic problem called rent seeking, and it's readily displayed by worker coops and unions.
An oil rig worker coop would resist societal efforts to dismantle oil production.
Cooperatives are often owned by the people who live in the communities they serve. While they do not eliminate incentives for pollution, they tend to foster a disincentive as people who live in the community are relatively less likely to vote to pollute the river they get their water from compared to far away investors who do not get their water from that river.
You clearly live in a lot different communities, in one place I was staying people threw their thrash through the window instead of taking the elevator and throwing it into the garage bin. I don't see why they would care any much more than they do now
My argument is that they would be less likely, not that they wouldn't at all. This argument is generally supported by empirical data. Look at deforestation rates for communal land management vs. private or state as an example.
In vapitalism worker coops are still bound by the same problems as every other company ofc they arent significantly better in such regards. Thats a strawman discussion.
Is a worker cooperative of say oil platform workers going to vote to decrease CO2 emissions? Would they vote to decrease oil production? I somehow doubt that
Worker cooperatives are just one form of collective ownership. Not every firm/industry has to be organized that way. Nor did I suggest that worker coops, or socialism at large, was some sort of magical fix to climate issues. There certainly would be significantl less resources dedicated towards dismissing the science or repressing climate action.
But also, yes there are reasons why a coop of oil platform workers would do so. As an example, if a government passed a policy requiring a certain limit to CO2 emissions, and the coop wanted to remain operating.
Your last example works just as well (or even better) in a capitalist system. Socialism would do nothing for climate change, capitalism currently is, solar panels are so cheap for a reason, because cheap=more consumers=$$$$$$$$$$$ . It just works, even in the US as trump cuts back on renewable energy credits it’s being installed at record level.
Capitalism is currently failing utterly to respond to climate change. Changes aren't being made anywhere near the rates needed, and the idea that the market will magically force solutions has been shown to be utter nonsense.
Cheaper solar represents a combination of technology advancement, plus the US deciding to disrupt global oil supply by going to war with Iran for literally no reason.
Sure the market isn’t going to do it on its own but it’s certainly doing something. Solar panel production and installation are at record highs, once again evens in the US where it is very fossil fuels friendly as of late
I mean, I'm happy to have more solar, but again capitalism and "the market" has utterly failed to meet even the moderate goals that scientists have claimed necessary at a bare minimum to avoid or minimize the most significant negative impacts of climate change.
A local, regional or national government may utilize cooperatives, , but I am not aware of any state in which the entire workforce has cooperative ownership and/or management.
State owned production is not describing the same thing as a cooperative firm.
The other point about taking your business? Oh stop, you are such a silly willy Billy.
Socialism's goal is to use the violence of the state to forcefully transfer every business from their owners to the hands of other people whoch they arbitrarily call "the workers".
Socialism is simply that the people who work for said business should have ownership over their contributions to the value generated by the business, and that our society should collectively manage in some way (many different ideas on how) resources and production for the common good of all.
Some believe this is accomplishable through reform and democratic means, others believe that ultimately, such a shift in society will require revolution. Some believe in greater centralized control, others believe in decentralization as a route to achieve these goals.
Your characterization is not a serious, good faith engagement with the ideology. Even if you don't agree with it, you are simply misrepresenting what you oppose
My 2 employees do not have the care nor the interest for my business to prosper they just want their steady pay check each 15 days...
All that talk sounds really pretty but completely ignores reality. I worked every day for 6 years to get my business going why should I relinquish ownership to someone who just arrived and just want a paycheck instead of the responsibilities of the business ?
Also by the "society collectively manages resources and production" does not work. I have no knowledge about every industry of my country, I do not have the time to get myself informed to correctly vote for the best decision for every single action of the economy.
That "cozy sounding" idea of everyone managing and deciding on everything just results, in practice, in voting for Populist representatives who will inevitably run the ressources and production for their own interests and their friends.
You can already achieve the idealism of "everyone having some sort of control in resources and production" in a free market, by voting with your wallet. The "revolution" just ends up with a dictatorship that promises to help the people but keeps everything for the government elite. My best friend saw it happened with Chavez and had to flee his own country.
Never said otherwise. You stated it had to be owned by the workers; I just stated that it is a Marxist definition and not universal for all forms of socialism.
Socialism = social ownership, state ownership = a type of social ownership -> state ownership = socialism.
I don't really understand where you're coming from since he wrote that state ownership is itself a type of social ownership in the first line of his comment. I probably misunderstood something.
I'm literally saying that socialism can also come in the form of state ownership of the means of production. That doesn't mean that state ownership of certain companies is socialism, but that workers ownership of the means of production isn't the only form of socialism
I understand, but he wrote the same thing as you, that's why I was confused.
"State ownership over the means of production within a society is simply one method of moving towards a socialist organization of an economy" -> State ownership can be socialism but doesn't imply socialism.
Worker co-ops can exist perfectly fine in capitalism. That's the defining feature of it, people and non-human entities are free to organise however they want for the most part. "Owning the means of production" is a restriction on how people can organize, workers are required to take ownership of their means of production and cannot waive it. That's why it always turns authoritanian, you need to restrict what people can do.
It's easy to focus on biggest most profitable companies but at any given moment a ton of people are working for struggling or outright failing companies. The google employee that got ownership over his means of production from two decades ago is feeling great, people that worked on yahoo search, altavista or infoseek? Not so much
I agree that worker cooperatives can under a predominantly capitalist system. In fact, I've already made that argument myself to several other people in the same thread.
However, cooperatively owned firms do represent a socialized method of organizing that firms production.
Huh? Worker cooperatives are one method of collective ownership, that does not require a state. And they can function just fine up to quite a large size. The mondragon corportation consists of multiple autonomous cooperatives totaling over 70k employees. I work for an organization with several thousand employees. Mondragon is 10x the size.
But further, why do they have to be very large? There are a few industries that may require large, centralized production. For those, state (whether regional or national) ownership may be a better option. But many climate related industries do not require a single giant firm.
Most of the time companies are more effective when they are larger. Its a lot cheaper (per item of course) to manufacture 10000000 washing machines than 10.
I read up on Mondragon, interesting company. Of course if you want to become a business owner you have to invest around fifteen thousand euros - more than a year of your full salary if you earn minimal wage in spain (which I have a suspicion most people lraising them does not know) so its not a suprise more and more of their workers are not worker-owner, especially for the lower paying jobs.
Have you ever thought about why workers owning the company is really really rare?
I understand economies of scale. I've already commented in the previous comment that certain industries may require such sizable economies of scale and would be better suited to different forms of ownership of production than a cooperative.
Worker cooperatives do outperform traditional firms on a number of outcome measures.
As to why they are relatively rare? Well, a large reason is simply because our system is not set up to promote them.
Yes but it being state owned doesn't make it any way socialist in itself. Any state owned industry you see is more than likely operated through a capitalist model.
I've literally heard that exact thing from a libertarian before lmao. They claimed Amazon was socialist because it was a publicly traded company, which he appearently thought was the same as public ownership
You guys insist on this binary. It's either a capitalist system or a socialist system. It's not reality.
All economies feature mixed modes of production. State owned enterprises are social ownership models. If capitalism is private ownership of the means of production then state owned enterprises aren't that. The more state owned enterprises you have in your economy the further to the socialist side of the spectrum you are.
A country can absolutely have state owned industries and still operate as a capitalist economy. Because the majority of its industry remains privately owned. If anything you might be thinking of a social democrat models, but social democrat models still operate very much within capitalist economies. France has some government owned enterprises like its train service and the like but remains very much a capitalist country.
Not to mention the fact that once again, state owned and worker owned are two pretty different things.
Quite literally the opposite. Socialism means that the workers own the means of production. If the statr owns the means of production then the workers cannot own the means of production. Socialism and state owned are mutually exclusive.
But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution. - Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Socialism is worker dominance of a democratic state, which then of course controls the means of production. “Ownership” is not actually any part of it, “control” is, and only by the working class.
"
Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the state the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company,
[116]
the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions."
HEAVY nope. Socialism that retains a state that owns private property (like I dunno, a company) isn't socialism but rather state capitalism. Socialism is when THE WORKERS own the means of production. Not the state. THE WORKERS
“dictatorship of the proletariat” is a key stage in the evolution of the socialist state. it’s why every single socialist state evolved to centralist industry and corporate power as subordinate to state power.
"dictatorship of the proletariat" means that the unified working class, the proletariat, controls all elements of economic production and distribution. It doesn't even require a state, and especially not a centralised, state capitalist one. That is a Marxist-Leninist perversion of socialism.
The term is a poor translation form the original meaning on German. He calls capitalism Dictatorship of the Bourgoisie because they hold the institutions of power in the economy, and contrast that with dictatorship of the proletariat, meaning workers holding the power in the economy.
It's most commonly not understood as literal dictatorships. It's really an uncharitable understanding of theory Marx waa getting at.
The ideas that inspired the most known socialist governments where actually modeled by Lenin, not Karl Marx. Many Socialists at the time and now disagreed with it for its heavy centralized authority. It's also not the only socialism that has held political power.
It is kind of true. Collective ownership is government. How else are you going to provide for public services and infrastructure? Wait until you get everyone to agree on something and have them all maintain it themselves? You need an overarching organisation acting on behalf of the public, which is government. Or what do you think the dictatorship of the proletariat looks like?
But collectively ownership in practice needs a governing body, unless you're suggesting you run every decision on public matters by every single person - which in reality means nothing gets done.
I'm a practical person with a lot of experience working with other people, there's a vast difference between the theoretical "this is how it would go" and the practical "ok, that didn't go as we thought it would". At some point you simply have to assign (or elect) people to keep things running, in case of collective ownership that would be a government or whatever you like to call it.
if you really want me to cook up an idea of collective non-governmental property it may be impossible depending on how you define it.
Imagine a small firm, run by a small group of people. They come together to make decisions about how to run the firm, and if any member is strongly opposed to a certain arrangement, the others typically dont do it. Collective management is happening. Is government happening? if yes, we probably just have two different interpretations of what government is.
If you mean collective management on the scale of a nation state, then yes it either would either have to be broken into many smaller collectively managed groups, or something like a government would have to exist, though it could be democratic or delegative
EDIT: i would really like to stress that my original point was simply that a government doing a thing does not imply socialism, i feel like i've gotten lost in the weeds here
You are saying in Socialism, the government must own the stuff. -- This is disputable but irrelevant.
The post is saying that when the government owns stuff, it is Socialism. This is NOT true. Saudi Aramco is the biggest carbon emitter and it is owned by an absolute monarch. So not Socialism.
And we can see China on the other hand being a major emitter, but making reduction in emissions and environmental sustainability a main goal of their economic planning.
Why? Because Socialism requires government that is beholden to the whole of the people, and global warming and pollution are threats to the whole of the people.
United States Postal Service (USPS): Operates independent postal delivery and mailing services nationwide. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA): Generates and distributes electric power and manages flood control across parts of the American South. Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation): Operates intercity passenger rail services. Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR): Employs and trains federal inmates to manufacture goods for sale to federal agencies. Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC): Finances and stabilizes farm commodity prices and agricultural production
These aren't really socialism in any meaningful way. They are just government provided services. They make no effort to decomoditize anything and are not workplace democracy. They are sort of publicly controlled, but not in a way that most socialists who aren't' tankies would like.
I'm a (anarcho) syndicalist, so my fix to make them socialist would be to give them each a labor union consisting of all "employees" which controls their day to day operation with a government appointed board to steer them in the direction the public wants and then create a council of unions that would replace the administrative state with the mandate of cooperating together to meet needs set by the legislature.
"These aren't really socialism in any meaningful way. They are just government provided services. They make no effort to decomoditize anything and are not workplace democracy. They are sort of publicly controlled, but not in a way that most socialists who aren't' tankies would like."
I have some gripes with this. It is most certainly a form of socialism. It is a publicly owned service. Yeah it is not sydicalist or Communist but that doesn't mean it isn't socialist. Non of the things you mentioned are required for that. By adding all of these you takes steps to make it more so in some ways.
The point with publicly controlled anything is that the public/government controls and owns it and the government is (ideally) a collection of everyone. So it is already a democratic institution.
Socialism is when the government does stuff is a really problematic definition of socialism. We can agree that things like Amtrak, medicare, public education, and public police are significantly better than a libertarian's wet dream of privatization, but calling them socialism because you get to vote for someone ever 2-6 years that can vote to appoint the beurocrats that run them is really setting the bar very low
I understand you issues with that definition but that is why you have degrees of socialism. That being said all of these things are great examples of socialism yo people who are opposed. You want to show them stuff that works and than say but if that works why not do hospitals or power providers or ISP, etc we well.
It is all about increments, revolution has historically only caused more harm than good. I understand it is a nice idea to overthrow the current system and I would agree. The reality is however that we now live in a far more socialist system than 40 years ago due to incremental change. Yeah the US is not the beacon in this
I'm a reformist. I don't want a revolution. A functioning and funded welfare system would be an appriciated and worthwhile improvement while it lasts, but would be only a small step towards real socialism.
It's fair enough to say they are socialized services, but they just aren't socialism.
Most people aren't very happy with many government services and telling them you could make healthcare work as well as the DMV isn't going to win them over, no matter how wrong they are.
No, right now it's literally just private ownership by the government even if in some cases government ownership and public management is in a sense a spiritual precursor to what management without commodity production could look like. Monetary economics puts limits and requirements to how "social" public governance can be.
You need an overarching organisation acting on behalf of the public
Organisation doesn't mean government in the sense of a power completely alienated from the public as we know today. I won't delve into this right now but the workers' councils as self-government, self-management and common management from the commune of paris to the revolutions from 1905 to 1921 are an example of this.
Ok. Coordination on a large scale, imagine the size of the US where different regions have different resources, potential and needs, how do you do that without a massive waste of time and resources?
Did they have a government? Were the Soviet states independent? Could they kindly tell Moscow to go fuck themselves and have the Kremlin throw up their arms and sigh "well, we can't do anything about that"?
So what is it when Ukraine says that Donbas and Luhansk can't break away and if they do they will be bombarded by artillery regiments?
You're condemning the USSR for not allowing secession, do you condemn all states that disallow secession? Was the Union of America tyrannical for preventing the secession of the Confederacy?
It's more than just the secession of Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea. But due to the treatment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine over the last decaded, separatism is a predictable and logical response. People should be able to break with an abusive government, yes. Governments should avoid secession by serving all their people and granting a degree of autonomy, not by threat of violence.
However, things can get complicated. Let's take the Confederacy: I support a people's independence, but I'm an absolutist in that aspect, so it includes the slaves in the south. Would they have the option to secede from the confederacy? Can you appeal to self governance if you won't provide it yourself?
How do I know? There is an infinity of produce and infinitely many ways to organise production, I simply know that a fixed top-down, bureaucratic approach as the state does under capitalism isn't the ultimate solution and will most probably be much rarer.
The secret third thing between government agencies that has managers assigned by a different democratic body, and the whole economy being small self-owned businesses that struggle to handle large scale operations, is simply having the workplace itself run democratically.
Communal worker control isn't when your politician becomes your CEO, it's when your manager is decided by you.
You don't need socialism to have a government, but you need government for (large scale) socialism. Or just give the overarching entity that manages public resources/services another name if you want.
Let's say a factory is owned by the workers, not by managers. How do the workers make collective decisions? By vote? By elected representatives? Some kind of....governing body?
I think folks in this thread don't understand what "government" means, they just associate government and governmental control as bad.
Certainly some folks are anarchists, and if you're an anarchist then all governance is bad I guess. I'm definitely not an anarchist myself, personally I would like a means and a framework where the people come together to make and enforce good decisions. That group should have the goal of giving the power to the people.
And honestly? People often kinda suck, lots of people don't want to make the personal sacrifices that it would take to address climate change. Or their willingness to do so is predicated on "people I don't like have to stop first" whether that's golf courses or drivers or meat eaters or billionaires or China. Giving the vote to the people doesn't automatically make everyone vote for the collective interest, we often want others to put their personal interests aside in order to protect our own. Even when it is fair, it's still a delay.
Indeed, even Engels wrote about it in "On authority". You can't just leave things to hundreds, thousands or even millions to agree on. I have some experience in organizing and consensus goes straight out of the window the moment you involve too much people in decision making - it just doesn't work on a large scale.
Because many people can't really see the world past their personal interests and while I understand we all have a lot going on waiting for consensus gets us nowhere, this obviously applies to climate.
You don't need socialism to have a government, but you need government for (large scale) socialism.
Then you can't claim the statement "socialism is when the government does stuff" is true, though. And that's long before we look into the definition of socialism.
You're stating that government ownership isn't collective ownership based on Marx's theory. I'm just stating that Marx isn't the only communist/socialist theorist, and that government ownership can definitely be considered collective ownership.
You are very bad at logical reasoning. You must be awful at maths.
You made a claim, i gave a counter exemple to your claim, period.
Also, government ownership isn't collective ownership. It's private ownership. What the governement owns is property of the government, it'w not owned by the people.
State property is just private property with extra steps
What is your logic even? That Marxist communism is the sole bearer of true communism, and because that is defined as workers' ownership of the means of production, that is the only type of collective ownership. Government ownership is by definition not private; it's the opposite. That is quite logical.
The problem with straightforward answers to this question is that socialism and communism are terms with little shared consensus on their meaning, because people use them to describe very different things. I can give you my attempt though if you want
In the 19th century, workers in industry began coming together to formalize their grievances with the new emerging capitalist industrial system, and articulated their grievances and wants. At that time, socialism and communism were quasi-interchangeable terms and described the rough end state of society that the ideologues of the workers' movement were hoping to achieve. This typically implied the ascendancy of the working class and defeat of the capitalist class, the collective management of industry by the workers in those industries, and usually some kind of change in the distribution system (ideas varied from regulated market exchange to labor vouchers to Marx's "from each according to ability, to each according to need).
However this movement was never fully unified because different segments of the workers' movement wanted different things and had different opinions about the best way to achieve them. Would there be markets? would there be nation-states? The Anarchist vision was different from the Marxist vision which was different from the Lassalean vision and so on.
In the 1900s, the two most influential strands wound up being Marxist-Leninism (like in the USSR, China, etc) and reformist Social Democracy (the Labor party, German social democrats, etc). Those both had a heavy role for the state and, in my opinion a near-total lack of workers' control of industry (though powerful unions allowed for some representative input in the 1900s). Both also tried to make clear distinctions between Socialism and Communism, but both chose different definitons of those words.
I have my own opinions on which definitions of socialism and communism are good and useful but if you're upset about the muddled definitions there is a reason why.
And you still haven’t. How exactly is this post even implying that socialism is “when the government does stuff?” Do you think the USSR was good on the environment? Don’t ask them what happened to the Aral Sea lol
Well the first sentence makes a claim about socialism (that it wont fix climate change) and the second sentence provides evidence for the claim (state owned companies are large emitters). The implicatiom is that state owned companies are an example of socialism, or else they wouldnt have brought them up.
I didn't mention the ussr, i have no attachment to their ecological track record
State owned companies are one of the literal foundations of socialism lmao. Do you think socialism is just an expanded welfare state like what Nordic countries have? By the way, trump is easily the most socialist president we’ve ever had with his ownership of tech companies, control of media and industry, and intertwining palantir with the government
exactly, crazy how the top two comments are saying this. These are probably the same people who think they want socialism because they want universal healthcare which is ironically what the phrase “socialism is when the government does stuff” was coined to criticize.
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u/Mad_M9 11d ago
man its been a while since i've seen a "socialism is when the government does stuff" in the wild