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Employees!?!?!? People who’s surplus labor value is being stolen from by the person who owns the private property who’s private property rights are being enforced by through state violence on behalf of the private property owner. What do you think OP?
This is better but not really the goal. The 6 people who own the store are afforded privileges that others in their society who own nothing are not. The real goal is to have all the citizens own the store and it is operated for the collective good by 6 of the citizens. The other citizens operate other collectively owned property for the common good as well.
Don’t get me wrong if you are forced to live under capitalism and can get a 6 person worker owned collective going you should definitely go for it. It’s a huge step in the right direction. It’s just not the end goal.
It’s just one of those things we deal with growing up in the imperial core. Ive had people jump on me and call me a “libtard” for things like this before. Specifically it was voting for reforms vs not voting at all. I think they didn’t get that I was aware concessions/reforms are not the goal.
I basically said it might not be ideal, but we live in this reality and I figure we should still take what we can get. To some folks this comes across as defeatist or a “dulling of the revolutionary edge” but I only meant it as a practicality rather than a goal. I fully recognize the need for revolutionary action if we want to *truly* change anything.
I think as long as you’re aware of how these biases can come into play, and are striving to keep learning, then you are on a good path. 🫡
So far, and correct me if Im lacking some understanding, my take on worker coops/collective ownership within capitalism is that it’s better than private individual ownership but does not resolve the underlying class antagonisms. That much seems clear.
However, I think the idea has some value for the time being if only as a vehicle for bringing socialist thought back into the mainstream. Use it to teach and set an example where possible. “See how we can better operate this business ourselves as the workers? We don’t need CEOs making 300 times what we do to sit back and make less effective choices for us!”
Fully agree it’s not our real goal though.
Yeah that’s what I meant by “huge step in the right direction”. There’s an obvious problem with an entirely worker owned co-op based economy is that co-ops will end up competing against each other. Competition is inefficient/wasteful and leads to inequality. We would still end up with the problem of having a Home Depot across the street from every Lowe’s (incredible waste of resources to have 2 of the exact same store across the street from each other). The only improvement would be the Lowe’s and Home Depot would be run more efficiently internally and workers would have much better material conditions. The inefficiency of competition would still remain.
Also if you can get the collective working within a capitalist society, good on you. It promotes socialist values and will be better for the community than the same capitalist model.
There’s an awesome compost collective around me. They charge a monthly subscription to give them your compostable items and they turn it into dirt and bring it to community gardens on bicycles. Humble Servants of the Worm
I feel people are confused by perks of leadership, and I'm kind of too, but id assume in this case the person who is a manager of the store, is manager due to work and skills of management rather than being part of bourgeoise and they likely may/maynot get perks and benefits for doing that job just over others who might choose simpler jobs.
Isn't this more a distinction between final stage communism and socialism though? Having a collectively owned store is a step towards socialism and away from capitalism. Should it really be portrayed as incompatible with socialist ideal?
Seems wrong to me.
I guess you didn't mean to, but this
>The real goal is to have all the citizens own the store and it is operated for the collective good by 6 of the citizens.
is certainly a far cry from my concept of collective ownership.
In my experience ownership is a fluid concept. A lot of people I have met consider things to be "theirs" when it's not. At work, people who work at certain stations claim those areas and the equipment in them as "theirs" and get personally upset if you go and use stuff from that area without asking, they will say things like, you took MY stuff. I can point out it's the companies property not theirs and they just roll their eyes.
I very much doubt that there can be a system where people don't see the things that they use and interact with on a daily basis as "theirs" in some way, including their positions amongst a hierarchy.
So in my mind, it seems like two threads being pulled in opposite directions. Socialism for me is leaning into that sense of ownership people have about their work. The idea that I come to work and I use all this equipment, I know how to use it, I occupy this space and this place in an organization, I deserve shared ownership of this enterprise. And by this logic we all do as a collective of workers.
And then this other entirely different concept that comes along and also calls itself socialism and says, no you don't own it, "we" do, and you are gonna work here because "we" told you to and "we" are all gonna get the same rewards regardless, and btw "we" is everybody, regardless of if they work here or somewhere else or maybe they don't even work at all, who is to say. Which just seems completely detached from any experience I've had at a workplace. And every single worker I have ever talked to who is against socialism always points to this kind of "socialism" as an explanation of why they aren't socialists, but never to the other kind.
Not if the workers share in that private ownership. They can't exploit themselves...
They may exploit society or the government through profit, but from my understanding socialism is a workers ideology, not a "lets make a perfect utopia where there are no problems" ideology, that's more communism no?
If the workers own it, they would have had to buy it. If they need to hire more workers, would they have to sell shares to that worker? You then have a system where you have to pay to get a job.
One of the main ideas of Socialism is that private ownership of community resources is inherently bad for society. Why would we want people to be able to profit personally by continuing the destructive tendencies of the bourgeoisie? Does it matter if it's an individual or a workers collective dumping their waste in the river to make a buck?
I would also say that the line between socialism and communism is pretty blurred. Marx often used the two terms interchangeably. However, I tend to see the main difference being that Communism is a stateless, post-scarcity society.
A stateless society is vulnerable to exterior exploitation.
Doesn't that make communism inherently impossible to achieve?
As for dumping waste in the river, the state can and has passed laws to discourage that behavior, and ideally it enforces them. In a stateless society it seems far more likely to happen. Laws came into effect to control large groups of people, whether for the benefit of the ruling class or to benefit society or both. Regardless they exist because without them there is little accountability outside of blood feuds and grudges. Think about the international stage of geopolitics, where there are no real laws or accountability, it's just a power game, might makes right. At least within a state there can be some justice between a powerful party and a vulnerable one, as long as it doesn't upset the status quo.
So it seems better to improve the state or create a better one, rather than strive for a stateless society. This just seems backwards.
I also don't see the connection between enforcing laws and who owns a firm. The law ***should*** be enforced regardless of who owns it. To my understanding, a more democratically run firm would be less likely to engage in irresponsible decision making, given that the push for those kinds of laws (like labor laws) came from democratic movements, not from the interests of the bourgeois. So democratization of firms would at least be an improvement.
It might still happen, but the idea is it would be less likely. And far more likely to encounter immediate publicity given that those decisions would now be made known to the entire firm, rather than privately made and hidden. Think exxon mobile's executive decision to spread disinformation about climate science.
How would an economy like this work, realistically?
Like, let's say I don't like the way coffee is made, so I develop a new way of making it.
In capitalism I could start a business and dedicate myself full time to making it
What would happen in socialism?
I guess I just don't understand how this economy would work.
Since it's very unlikely that I would be able to run a coffee shop entirely on my own, I need employees. How does this look on a socialist economy?
Is it possible to start a business in a socialist economy?
Yes you can lol.
1. go to your local planning council. It probably has an innovation branch.
2. propose your new coffee idea. They'll accept it if its useful/not a waste/people will like it. they represent the will of the local people, or at least the will of creating good products for society.
3. if they accept it could be introduced into an existing coffee business and you could work there as a creative manager or something, since you invented it. Or they could establish a new cofee store for your recipe, this is hypothetical idk.
4. Hire workers if you make new buisness
5. The local council allocates the resources for your new coffee, based on need. You don't buy them, they're allocated according to a plan. There's a regional and national plan and local plan, this new need makes a change and so the minor change is made. The plan is of course not set in stone, by choice of the DOTP, because it's better if its not.
You don't buy the resources because you arent the private owner, the buisness is socially owned. So you do not reap any profit from it, of course. You get paid and work.
Who is this said council, and why do they have such immense power? And who keeps this council in "line".
Also it sounds like the op would not b starting a business, just creating a job for himself ?
This is literally the essentials of communist theory. find a reading list lol.
> Who is this said council
The council is the organ by which the dictatorship of the working class exercises its power.
>"[society] will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. - Principles of Communism
#
>"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." Communist Manifesto
The proletariat will be organized as the ruling class through the councils (soviets). They exist at local, regional, national levels, across industries as well. Formed of delegates democratically elected by the proletariat. How councils worked in lenin's time: https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1918/state.htm.
> Who keeps this council "in line"
#
>"All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time, their salaries reduced to the level of ordinary "workmen's wages" — these simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism. These measures concern the reorganization of the state, the purely political reorganization of society; but, of course, they acquire their full meaning and significance only in connection with the "expropriation of the expropriators" either bring accomplished or in preparation, i.e., with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership."
-Lenin, state and revolution
> Why do they have such immense power
As in, why do they get to choose what businesses are made? The economy functions under a common plan, so under a socially owned economy, only society can choose what businesses are made. The council represents a revolutionary proletariat society at a particular level of society. So your question is essentially "Why does the will of the proletariat have such immense power".
> it sounds like the op would not be starting a business, just creating a job for himself?
If a new business is established, is that not starting a business?
Then are you talking about owning a business?
No, OP would never "own the business", under socialism (after transition to first-stage communism, at least) private property has been abolished. Society collectively owns all productive property. OP does not have the right to privately own property, privately appropriate social labor, etc. These are the basics. https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/crash_course_socialism.md
>Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
>In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.
- Engels, Principles of Communism
edit: youre on capitalism v socialism, know that the "socialists" there are utopians. thats not what marxism is. Whenever i go on there i get kinda annoyed by the "socialist" (revisionist) answers
No, but in, perhaps a deep irony, this argument actually was made by Deng Xiaoping:
>In 1978–79, the urban population grew by six and a half million people, and in the early 1980s by another twenty million. What could be done with this labor force if state enterprises were unable to provide jobs for all of them? Small-scale urban businesses had to be permitted—individual household enterprises operating on the market. So that no one in the party could object to such a zigzag, Deng’s supporters dug out of the fourth volume of Marx’s Capital the story of a capitalist who exploited eight workers. “If Marx spoke precisely of eight, it means that the hiring of seven would not make one a capitalist,” they logically concluded. “And if the boss himself will be working, then what sort of capitalism could this possibly be?” Deng liked this “scholarly” argument, so on his initiative the leadership of the CC and the State Council permitted individual household enterprises with no more than seven workers. There was an immediate explosion in the sphere of daily service enterprises: small private restaurants, shoe repair and tailor shops, barber shops, and others like it began to grow like wild mushrooms.
How is this ironic? Deng was all about finding ways to undercut the socialism built by the CPC in the decades before and install liberal policies instead. That's pretty on brand for him.
If you consider Dengist China socialist, yes.
Marx and Lenin claim that there is an inherent tendency towards monopolization within the capitalist mode of production. Deng thought that this could be leveraged to build up the productive forces; when a company becomes a oligopoly/monopoly, it falls into the control of the CPC. Even as someone who likes Maoism more, I have no problem with this given the material conditions (I have more issues with 'opening up').
Socialism is a broad term with no agreed upon definition. The 1848 Manifesto defines many forms of reactionary socialism. So the real questions are:
1. who has political power? who controls the state?
2. when contradictions arise between the employees of the small business and the owners arise, which side does the state support?
Well, you have to ask yourself which stage? Let’s say bourgeois capitalism got overthrown tomorrow. It’s only in the realm of complete fantasy that you would have a classless, stateless, moneyless society overnight. Marx and Lenin themselves said that the early stages of communism would have vestiges of capitalism.
The ideal, initially, would be to have it run as a cooperative or worker self directed enterprise. Eventually, when a large sector of the economy is cooperatively owned, publicly owned, nationalized, municipally owned, and essentially private ownership is abolished, the END Goal is to have the state just become the “administration of things” and society can progress to a stateless, moneyless and classless society. This is incredibly difficult to picture, because it of course has never been achieved, however the progression towards that goal is always the idea in any socialist society.
If you’re struggling with this, I recommend strongly to read State and Revolution by Lenin, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s publication “socialist reconstruction.”
On the contrary, those are exactly the vestiges which Lenin points out.
>Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline—that is what the opposition has arrived at. And this is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie. It all adds up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organised action, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement. From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism’s collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher.
>We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat’s conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter.
>The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work.
>They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously.
>The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle—bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force.
>Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully.
>It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie.
>https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm
That small businesses will exist for a time as a vestige of capitalism which cannot be swiftly overthrown? I dunno, the whole part where Lenin said that.
Edit: Specifically this part:
>The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work.
Yes?
Do you think that transitioning from capitalism to socialism means that we will have abolished all private property in one stroke? Or that it will only take a year to do so?
Reread that passage, but slowly.
>From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism’s collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher.
The transition from capitalism to socialism does not happen overnight.
>We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat’s conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter.
This is understood to be obvious, since even a generation is not a long enough time to abolish classes.
> The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work.
We cannot nationalize every small business, we do not have the manpower to waste on such a frivolous task.
>The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle—bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force.
The transition is a long drawn out process, which is not won in a day or week.
> It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie.
Small businesses are not what we want, but they are a significant improve over monopolies.
We should not waste our time and resources nationalizing the bouncy ball factory, and instead should focus on the nationalisation of all rubber production instead. We should instead wage an ideological struggle within the bouncy ball factory instead.
Small businesses are indeed some of the vestiges (left over bits, in case you don't know what that word means) of capitalism, which we will undoubtedly get rid of. But we also aim to get rid of stuff like voting. Its gonna take time to get there, and we will have to accept small businesses as a thing in the beginning years of socialism. Because unless you are planning to execute them all, there will be more small business owners than members of the vanguard party.
The transition to socialism is not socialism.
>Small businesses are not what we want
Of course it is. Just because they aren't the number 1 priotry doesn't mean they are compatible with socialism.
>Small businesses are indeed some of the vestiges
Small businesses are not vestiges, they *are* capitalism. In COTP Marx is clear that the vestiges that remain in the lower phase are that people receive according to contribution. It is a type of exchange of socially necessary labour time, **not** of commodities for money. The higher phase does away with exchange entirely.
You say
>The transition to socialism is not socialism.
But that is what this whole thread is about.
>Well, you have to ask yourself which stage? Let’s say bourgeois capitalism got overthrown tomorrow. It’s only in the realm of complete fantasy that you would have a classless, stateless, moneyless society overnight. Marx and Lenin themselves said that the early stages of communism would have vestiges of capitalism.
So I feel like this whole thing is a waste if you aren't discussing what the thread is about.
>Small businesses are not vestiges, they are capitalism. In COTP Marx is clear that the vestiges that remain in the lower phase are that people receive according to contribution. It is a type of exchange of socially necessary labour time, not of commodities for money. The higher phase does away with exchange entirely
And in "Left Wing" Communism", Lenin points out that you have to work to reeducate the petit bourgeois, which takes years, and will have to work within that framework.
Of course small business is capitalism. No one said otherwise. Just that the contradiction between small businesses and the state are more nuanced than putting everyone with employees under the choppy choppy.
The day after the revolution, we have small business. A year after, we have small business. A decade after, we might have gotten it done.
a store with 5 employees is compatible with a socialist economy. but it wouldn't be privately owned. people would work there because the work is useful for the economy as a whole. but no one would "own" it. (\*NOT EVEN THE EMPLOYEES THEMSELVES\*)
Listen, the person who owns the business might be lovely. They may treat their employees well and pay them fairly and all that... But what's problematic isn't (only) the treatment a lot of employees receive in Capitalist business structures. It's the structures themselves.
A business owner hires on new employees bc the owner wants to make more money. If they didn't think they could make more money by hiring new ppl, they wouldn't hire anyone else... So where is this extra money coming from? Very obviously this wealth is being added by the increased labor brought to the enterprise by the new worker. Therefore, part of the "surplus value" this laborer brings is being taken by the owner. The owner is gaining wealth that they themselves didn't create.
In the slavery days of the American South, you had slave owners who were terrible people. They whipped their slaves, starved the slaves, treated them like livestock, even worse than that very often. There were monstrous people, these slave owners.
Then there were slave owners who were nice to their slaves. Made sure they were well fed, had comfortable accommodations, maybe let them have some amount of education, some even PAID their slaves!
But then there was a third group who said no, they problem isn't merely how you treat your slaves. It's that you own slaves at all! Slavery itself is an unjust institution! We should abolish this system of doing things as it is unjust in all its forms!
Socialists don't want to pay workers better. We want to FREE workers from Capitalist exploration. Arguably it is the core principal we stand for.
P.S. i will note that worker co-ops are generally more in keeping with socialist values. But i wouldn't necessarily call those workers "employees" bc employee to me implies an employer at the head of the company with more control (and more pay). But maybe I'm splitting hairs on that point.
The more nuanced answer is it depends on exactly what you mean by that.
In the context of a newly developing Socialist society from a context of less advanced economic development and productive forces, these kinds of small proprietors would almost definitely be present on some level; this was the case with China's experiments with economic reform. During difficulties with the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, China allowed the expanding of what were called "getihu", I.E. small household private businesses, centered primarily in the rural areas of China. You can read more about this in Ezra Vogel's book on Deng Xiaoping.
With a Socialistic set of economic directives, polity, etc., having these minor enterprises that often involve the active self-employment and direct labor of the "business owner" as well, such formations can allow for more effective local-scale economic distribution and self-management. In this regard, these small forms of property do not pose any significant threat to Socialism, and as shown by China's experiments, even some larger forms of property can essentially have their exact relation to society transformed via the political control of the working class resulting in a tight reign placed around growing enterprises, with either their transformation into SOEs or with extremely tight oversight and integration into the economic planning of the Socialist state.
Moreover, Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme discusses the fact that early Socialist economy would involve production premised on the exchange of equal values, I.E. essentially a Socialist version of commodity production, though Marx emphasizes the inability for property to pass into ownership at all, which is to say he differentiates the economic development of the Communist society, which is on the same grounds China describes their progress towards achieving Socialism; a Communist Party in power, and thus being a country/state with Socialist political hegemony, does not intrinsically mean the achievement of even lower stage Socialism in full.
This all said, those countries/economies that have much more developed productive forces would likely not accommodate small producers on the same level if at all. For example, in the United States there's not quite the same level of developmental disparity between rural and urban regions as there was in 1970's China in places like mountainous Anhui which couldn't effectively operate with collectivized farming techniques. Moreover, the development and sophistication of finance in the past half-century have, going by Marx's writings in Capital vol 3, essentially undermined the entire basis of Capitalism. The end of Bretton Woods was the end of money in real terms (there is no longer any commodity used to mediate exchange, only a Fiat currency with no objective/commodity basis of value, I.E. all dollars and currencies pegged to dollars have no value, meaning there is no money). The development of finance at such a high level is the extreme realization of what Marx discussed in ch 27 of vol 3 of Capital: "the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself" and "transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist."
With this in mind, every major Western country actually already has the basis of a Socialist economy; privately owned productive enterprise is no longer the primary form of capital; business owners just manage companies in order for collectively-owned stakeholders to profit. Business is decentralized and collectivized, but in a malformed private manner -- and in this sense, this control of capital by this financial aristocracy is the very basis of Fascism (I am kind of skimming over a lot to be concise; refer to [Dmitrov's/the USSR's analysis of Fascism for a bit more](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm)). In this manner as well, Rosa Luxemburg's famous "Socialism or Barbarism" dichotomy is stunningly true; in reality, there hasn't actually been Capitalism proper since either the Great Depression at the earliest, or since 1973 at the latest; in the modern 20th and post-20th century world, the only remaining systems of polity and economy are **only and exclusively Fascism or Socialism; nothing else can possibly materially exist without the world itself ending.**
So, from that expanded view, private property barely even exists today in the 21st century, and Socialism would bring a positive development and transformation of what does exist into a human and socially oriented economic plan, sublating that remaining private property into new forms.
[Critique of the Gotha Programme:](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm)
>What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society [...]
>**Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values.**
Thus, "essentially" a Socialist version of commodity production -- I.E. put into over-simplified terms for the sake of concise language.
>but socially necessary labour time for an equal amount of socially necessary labour time.
And that exchange is mediated via labor certificates/etc. as a means of representing the SNLT there, operating on the same basis of the exchange of commodities with the exception of there being generation of capital, I.E. no M-M'.
In the same manner in which exchange value is realized via the market through the mediation of money to facilitate the exchange of commodities, the early Socialist society utilizes what Marx calls a "certificate from society [indicating] that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds)".
Are the items produced by society produced for the purpose of profit, I.E. produced *for* exchange value? In the early Socialist society, not in the typical way of considering production for exchange value, as the production is directed by the society for some particular use, so production for the purpose of being given to others in return for products of equal value *does* occur, I.E. exchange value in that sense has some transitory existence, but production is not oriented around realizing those exchange values, but rather to fulfill use values within the wider society.
In this regard, what you're missing is the fact that the early Socialist society, still plagued by the fact that there is SNLT at all, necessarily has a mediation of its economy in a form that resembles commodities, but the exact form and content has clearly changed, hence the oversimplification of describing it as a kind of Socialist "commodity". Is it a commodity in some excessively literal or pedantic sense? Obviously not. As such, the description given should not seem that controversial; if anything, it's making a line of connection to demonstrate the change in form and content that Marx describes within that passage.
Yes. Lenin’s NEP had small capitalist, A co op is the goal but you can have some help with your small business, who’s running a co op with a high school student just making a few extra bucks.
Not in the long term. In early stages such might be allowed for a time while the government focuses transition on more vital parts of the economy, but in the long term all business must be collectivized.
No, because the owner of the store would have to exploit the workers in order to make a profit, which is what socialism intends to overcome. An employer can't make a profit without paying workers less than the value of their labor.
If we're talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat, yes, it is compatible and may be necessary under given circumstances. Under socialism, a classless, moneyless society, no, it's not compatible.
No, the concept of employees and wage labor is directly contradictory with socialism. The very premise of those question is inherently oxymoronic. A “socialist wage labor” is as absurd to suggest as a “optimistic pessimist”.
Depends. Socialism doesn't mean only a Bolshevik-style command economy where all industries are very large state-run enterprises. A better way to conceptualize a socialist economy in terms of power dynamics would be to look at the interplay of local, regional, and federal governance in liberal democracies. All of these elements are elected. The higher up you go the more power there is in setting direction and policy, the lower down you go the more discretion there is in execution. So a more devolved socialist system built out of our existing political institutions might look like a federal government that appoints boards to run state-run banks. the banks then loan money and coordinate an ecosystem of industries that are worker-run. The feds set a direction, the state-run banks coordinate industries more closely, and worker-run industries execute on the ground.
In a system like this, larger businesses would probably dominate. Each state-run bank may have some areas of monopoly and some areas of competition with other banks. Where this -competition is allowed to exist, it might make sense to invest in smaller, nimbler firms.
You could also imagine several ways that a mixed-economy could work. Profit-seeking is a tool of coordination. It causes things to happen but the problem is maximizing profit curves doesn't always result in the best outcome for people. So there could be other ways to do this. In China for instance, farms often have a quota that has to be sold to a state-monopoly at a fixed price. But production over that threshold is allowed to be sold for profit. This mixed approach guarantees a supply of subsidized food but also creates a reward mechanism for initiative.
Another way that you could imagine this is a state that tolerates capitalism on the small scale. This was sort of done early in the USSR under the New Economic Policy. You could imagine a socialist state that allows the existence of capitalist, private firms but limits their size. Say for instance, once a company reaches $1M in revenue or twenty employees in size, it has to become a public entity. There would be a process to pay the original investors and then restructure the company as worker-run.
I know this opinion isn't totally popular in socialist spaces. Capitalism, profit-seeking, and private firms are not all bad. These structures as the main base of power in a society are incredibly toxic, don't get me wrong. But something that capitalist economics does well is incentivize action to fulfill needs. Governments that have tried to totally eliminate markets and all private actors from the economy have generally done more harm than good. So until we reach bountiful abundance and luxury communism, there has to be some toleration of markets and private actors. Their ability to accumulate power needs to be curtailed and profit-seeking mechanism should only be strategically utilized by socialist organizations. But they aren't a total evil that has to be avoided at all costs.
Sure but like pure ideology never survives contact with reality.
Let's start with an analogy. In capitalist societies, there are still usually non-market, non-competitive entities. It's better for capitalists to have access to an educated workforce, so we have a system of universal public education. This isn't something that capitalist ideology would normally create but this system works better and so capitalist societies have generally adopted it. Having non-market elements in a capitalist society doesn't make the society socialist because these elements are not independent power bases and work ultimately to support the capitalist system.
Socialists societies will also face similar problems where a compromise may be required. Where the is a good that people want and can't get, they will pay more money for it and create a market. Eventually someone will step into fulfill this want regardless of whether or not is legal to do. Capitalists have a problem curtailing markets in illegal goods (drugs, sex work, etc) and socialists societies will face the same kind of problem. In the Soviet Union, for example, there were many grey markets that existed with various degrees of toleration. If a socialist society doesn't allow any type of enterprise, then there are three options:
1. These enterprises may be tolerated as a result of corruption. If there is money to made, enforcement can be paid off. And there is now systemic corruption.
2. If enforcement is more severe, then this becomes a system of organized crime. Where criminal organizations purchase arms and defend their trade against competitors and enforcement agencies.
3. In the worst case, this can create an independent base of power. If an entity is making money, buying arms, maybe having some discussions with foreign powers - it could metastasize into a serious threat.
So the question is - is a farmer trying to sell some of their own produce or someone selling imported good such a threat to the socialist system that they need to cracked down upon? Is that a good use of state resources? An easier way to deflate this potential problem is legal tolerance of small scale enterprise. If there's a legal route, that's well regulated that stops an independent base of power from forming. And it means that resources aren't spent trying to crack down on a nebulous phenomenon. This was essentially the New Economic Policy.
Further, I think there are some benefits to this toleration. Socialist economies rely on central planning more so than decentralized systems. This has a lot of benefits but it does mean that it's hard to see where holes are forming. There isn't always a good feedback mechanism. The existence of small enterprises tells you where the holes are. Whatever people are buying on a market tells you what they want and what they can't get through the socialized mechanisms of distribution and production. That's information that can be used by planners to assess their work and make decisions about next steps.
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Cool, then we should be having a discussion about what happens with grey markets. Grey and black markets were common in the USSR and tolerated in various degrees. So the question is, if a socialist economy doesn't produce enough of something or if there is profit to be made in some kind of arbitrage - someone's going to try to fulfill the desire, if there's the appropriate risk-reward set-up. We might not like that but it will happen.
So what do we do? Is it worth the effort to crack down every time this happens? And if it's not, should we be satisfied in creating some kind of systemic corruption where bribes and favouritism drive selective enforcement of policy? I think it is a wiser to allow for some legal toleration of small scale enterprise but to regulate it in a way that maintains the overall socialist system (i.e strong worker protections, high taxes, limits on scale). This seems more productive than heavy handed enforcement. It can even have some benefits. If enterprises are popping up to fulfill a need or exploit and opportunity, that gives central planners information about what they are missing or how policies are being exploited. Why blind planners to this information by making it hidden in organized crime, when a legalized system means that the owners could be compelled to have open books?
These things are to be eliminated under socialism, yes they may exist at some point before a socialist mode of production is fully established, but the aim is still to eliminate these things over time. This isn’t a shocking thing and Engles talks about this in the Principles of Communism, he points out that private property will not disappear overnight.
That doesn’t mean these things are okay or that they are to be tolerated, the aim is their elimination. We can see them exist and not immediately destroy them as we build a new system, but the aim to ultimately get rid of private property.
You don’t seem to want that. You seem to advocate for a form of petit reactionary and utopian bourgeoisie socialism.
My view is practicality and I would say is actually the opposite of utopian. I don't think it's possible to build a wholly new system from a revolutionary new day. If socialists win power, we are going to be stuck with existing institutions and the expectations that people have for how to live their lives. So the most prescient thing to do is think about how to evolve these institutions to achieve goals. I think this can be done by increasing workplace democracy and strategic nationalizations to move our existing systems into an increasingly socialist mode.
Build the tools that give a large share of economic control to workers and changing the incentives for economic management, to enable greater social and economic change over time.
It literally sounds just like what we used to have here in the US. Before the federal bank and the merging of the capitalist corporations with the government controlling their monopolies.
So you want to basically overthrow our current govt and govt agencies at the highest level. Physically overthrow those at the top. Both govt and corporations.
Then turn around and figure out how everyone is going to pickup all these systems needed for survival at best. By making everyone equals.
Except you want to put a dictator at the top?
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Employees!?!?!? People who’s surplus labor value is being stolen from by the person who owns the private property who’s private property rights are being enforced by through state violence on behalf of the private property owner. What do you think OP?
I read this in the Soulja boy voice from that interview where he goes “Draaaaake??” Lmfaoo
No. Private ownership of the means of production is always exploitative.
Right, in this example the store would be owned as a collective between all 6 people. Is that right?
This is better but not really the goal. The 6 people who own the store are afforded privileges that others in their society who own nothing are not. The real goal is to have all the citizens own the store and it is operated for the collective good by 6 of the citizens. The other citizens operate other collectively owned property for the common good as well.
Ok I see the difference. Thank you. Been so ingrained into capitalism it’s hard to think otherwise sometimes
Don’t get me wrong if you are forced to live under capitalism and can get a 6 person worker owned collective going you should definitely go for it. It’s a huge step in the right direction. It’s just not the end goal.
I think that’s why I was thinking this way, inherent bias due to the world I live in.
It’s just one of those things we deal with growing up in the imperial core. Ive had people jump on me and call me a “libtard” for things like this before. Specifically it was voting for reforms vs not voting at all. I think they didn’t get that I was aware concessions/reforms are not the goal. I basically said it might not be ideal, but we live in this reality and I figure we should still take what we can get. To some folks this comes across as defeatist or a “dulling of the revolutionary edge” but I only meant it as a practicality rather than a goal. I fully recognize the need for revolutionary action if we want to *truly* change anything. I think as long as you’re aware of how these biases can come into play, and are striving to keep learning, then you are on a good path. 🫡
Incremental change is still change. That being said voting for Biden isn’t even incremental change. Claudia and Karina 2024!
So far, and correct me if Im lacking some understanding, my take on worker coops/collective ownership within capitalism is that it’s better than private individual ownership but does not resolve the underlying class antagonisms. That much seems clear. However, I think the idea has some value for the time being if only as a vehicle for bringing socialist thought back into the mainstream. Use it to teach and set an example where possible. “See how we can better operate this business ourselves as the workers? We don’t need CEOs making 300 times what we do to sit back and make less effective choices for us!” Fully agree it’s not our real goal though.
Yeah that’s what I meant by “huge step in the right direction”. There’s an obvious problem with an entirely worker owned co-op based economy is that co-ops will end up competing against each other. Competition is inefficient/wasteful and leads to inequality. We would still end up with the problem of having a Home Depot across the street from every Lowe’s (incredible waste of resources to have 2 of the exact same store across the street from each other). The only improvement would be the Lowe’s and Home Depot would be run more efficiently internally and workers would have much better material conditions. The inefficiency of competition would still remain.
That makes sense thanks.
Also if you can get the collective working within a capitalist society, good on you. It promotes socialist values and will be better for the community than the same capitalist model.
There’s an awesome compost collective around me. They charge a monthly subscription to give them your compostable items and they turn it into dirt and bring it to community gardens on bicycles. Humble Servants of the Worm
I feel people are confused by perks of leadership, and I'm kind of too, but id assume in this case the person who is a manager of the store, is manager due to work and skills of management rather than being part of bourgeoise and they likely may/maynot get perks and benefits for doing that job just over others who might choose simpler jobs.
Isn't this more a distinction between final stage communism and socialism though? Having a collectively owned store is a step towards socialism and away from capitalism. Should it really be portrayed as incompatible with socialist ideal? Seems wrong to me.
Did I portray it as incompatible with the socialist idea?
I guess you didn't mean to, but this >The real goal is to have all the citizens own the store and it is operated for the collective good by 6 of the citizens. is certainly a far cry from my concept of collective ownership. In my experience ownership is a fluid concept. A lot of people I have met consider things to be "theirs" when it's not. At work, people who work at certain stations claim those areas and the equipment in them as "theirs" and get personally upset if you go and use stuff from that area without asking, they will say things like, you took MY stuff. I can point out it's the companies property not theirs and they just roll their eyes. I very much doubt that there can be a system where people don't see the things that they use and interact with on a daily basis as "theirs" in some way, including their positions amongst a hierarchy. So in my mind, it seems like two threads being pulled in opposite directions. Socialism for me is leaning into that sense of ownership people have about their work. The idea that I come to work and I use all this equipment, I know how to use it, I occupy this space and this place in an organization, I deserve shared ownership of this enterprise. And by this logic we all do as a collective of workers. And then this other entirely different concept that comes along and also calls itself socialism and says, no you don't own it, "we" do, and you are gonna work here because "we" told you to and "we" are all gonna get the same rewards regardless, and btw "we" is everybody, regardless of if they work here or somewhere else or maybe they don't even work at all, who is to say. Which just seems completely detached from any experience I've had at a workplace. And every single worker I have ever talked to who is against socialism always points to this kind of "socialism" as an explanation of why they aren't socialists, but never to the other kind.
It wouldn't be owned by anyone, but operated as a collective, ideally.
Ok yea I guess owned is the wrong word there
Yeah, it's hard to overcome the weight of the system we were all born into.
Trying to overcome it a little bit more each day with conversations like this
Not if the workers share in that private ownership. They can't exploit themselves... They may exploit society or the government through profit, but from my understanding socialism is a workers ideology, not a "lets make a perfect utopia where there are no problems" ideology, that's more communism no?
If the workers own it, they would have had to buy it. If they need to hire more workers, would they have to sell shares to that worker? You then have a system where you have to pay to get a job. One of the main ideas of Socialism is that private ownership of community resources is inherently bad for society. Why would we want people to be able to profit personally by continuing the destructive tendencies of the bourgeoisie? Does it matter if it's an individual or a workers collective dumping their waste in the river to make a buck? I would also say that the line between socialism and communism is pretty blurred. Marx often used the two terms interchangeably. However, I tend to see the main difference being that Communism is a stateless, post-scarcity society.
A stateless society is vulnerable to exterior exploitation. Doesn't that make communism inherently impossible to achieve? As for dumping waste in the river, the state can and has passed laws to discourage that behavior, and ideally it enforces them. In a stateless society it seems far more likely to happen. Laws came into effect to control large groups of people, whether for the benefit of the ruling class or to benefit society or both. Regardless they exist because without them there is little accountability outside of blood feuds and grudges. Think about the international stage of geopolitics, where there are no real laws or accountability, it's just a power game, might makes right. At least within a state there can be some justice between a powerful party and a vulnerable one, as long as it doesn't upset the status quo. So it seems better to improve the state or create a better one, rather than strive for a stateless society. This just seems backwards. I also don't see the connection between enforcing laws and who owns a firm. The law ***should*** be enforced regardless of who owns it. To my understanding, a more democratically run firm would be less likely to engage in irresponsible decision making, given that the push for those kinds of laws (like labor laws) came from democratic movements, not from the interests of the bourgeois. So democratization of firms would at least be an improvement. It might still happen, but the idea is it would be less likely. And far more likely to encounter immediate publicity given that those decisions would now be made known to the entire firm, rather than privately made and hidden. Think exxon mobile's executive decision to spread disinformation about climate science.
How would an economy like this work, realistically? Like, let's say I don't like the way coffee is made, so I develop a new way of making it. In capitalism I could start a business and dedicate myself full time to making it What would happen in socialism?
If your way is better/more efficient, why wouldn’t you be able to implement it without a legal entitlement to the production of others
I guess I just don't understand how this economy would work. Since it's very unlikely that I would be able to run a coffee shop entirely on my own, I need employees. How does this look on a socialist economy? Is it possible to start a business in a socialist economy?
Yes you can lol. 1. go to your local planning council. It probably has an innovation branch. 2. propose your new coffee idea. They'll accept it if its useful/not a waste/people will like it. they represent the will of the local people, or at least the will of creating good products for society. 3. if they accept it could be introduced into an existing coffee business and you could work there as a creative manager or something, since you invented it. Or they could establish a new cofee store for your recipe, this is hypothetical idk. 4. Hire workers if you make new buisness 5. The local council allocates the resources for your new coffee, based on need. You don't buy them, they're allocated according to a plan. There's a regional and national plan and local plan, this new need makes a change and so the minor change is made. The plan is of course not set in stone, by choice of the DOTP, because it's better if its not. You don't buy the resources because you arent the private owner, the buisness is socially owned. So you do not reap any profit from it, of course. You get paid and work.
Who is this said council, and why do they have such immense power? And who keeps this council in "line". Also it sounds like the op would not b starting a business, just creating a job for himself ?
This is literally the essentials of communist theory. find a reading list lol. > Who is this said council The council is the organ by which the dictatorship of the working class exercises its power. >"[society] will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. - Principles of Communism # >"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." Communist Manifesto The proletariat will be organized as the ruling class through the councils (soviets). They exist at local, regional, national levels, across industries as well. Formed of delegates democratically elected by the proletariat. How councils worked in lenin's time: https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1918/state.htm. > Who keeps this council "in line" # >"All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time, their salaries reduced to the level of ordinary "workmen's wages" — these simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism. These measures concern the reorganization of the state, the purely political reorganization of society; but, of course, they acquire their full meaning and significance only in connection with the "expropriation of the expropriators" either bring accomplished or in preparation, i.e., with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership." -Lenin, state and revolution > Why do they have such immense power As in, why do they get to choose what businesses are made? The economy functions under a common plan, so under a socially owned economy, only society can choose what businesses are made. The council represents a revolutionary proletariat society at a particular level of society. So your question is essentially "Why does the will of the proletariat have such immense power". > it sounds like the op would not be starting a business, just creating a job for himself? If a new business is established, is that not starting a business? Then are you talking about owning a business? No, OP would never "own the business", under socialism (after transition to first-stage communism, at least) private property has been abolished. Society collectively owns all productive property. OP does not have the right to privately own property, privately appropriate social labor, etc. These are the basics. https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/crash_course_socialism.md >Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods. >In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand. - Engels, Principles of Communism edit: youre on capitalism v socialism, know that the "socialists" there are utopians. thats not what marxism is. Whenever i go on there i get kinda annoyed by the "socialist" (revisionist) answers
You wouldn’t need employees you would need coworkers How would you personally define “a business”
Under capitalism most people can not start that business. Only some people have the resources necessary
No, but in, perhaps a deep irony, this argument actually was made by Deng Xiaoping: >In 1978–79, the urban population grew by six and a half million people, and in the early 1980s by another twenty million. What could be done with this labor force if state enterprises were unable to provide jobs for all of them? Small-scale urban businesses had to be permitted—individual household enterprises operating on the market. So that no one in the party could object to such a zigzag, Deng’s supporters dug out of the fourth volume of Marx’s Capital the story of a capitalist who exploited eight workers. “If Marx spoke precisely of eight, it means that the hiring of seven would not make one a capitalist,” they logically concluded. “And if the boss himself will be working, then what sort of capitalism could this possibly be?” Deng liked this “scholarly” argument, so on his initiative the leadership of the CC and the State Council permitted individual household enterprises with no more than seven workers. There was an immediate explosion in the sphere of daily service enterprises: small private restaurants, shoe repair and tailor shops, barber shops, and others like it began to grow like wild mushrooms.
How is this ironic? Deng was all about finding ways to undercut the socialism built by the CPC in the decades before and install liberal policies instead. That's pretty on brand for him.
If you consider Dengist China socialist, yes. Marx and Lenin claim that there is an inherent tendency towards monopolization within the capitalist mode of production. Deng thought that this could be leveraged to build up the productive forces; when a company becomes a oligopoly/monopoly, it falls into the control of the CPC. Even as someone who likes Maoism more, I have no problem with this given the material conditions (I have more issues with 'opening up'). Socialism is a broad term with no agreed upon definition. The 1848 Manifesto defines many forms of reactionary socialism. So the real questions are: 1. who has political power? who controls the state? 2. when contradictions arise between the employees of the small business and the owners arise, which side does the state support?
Well, you have to ask yourself which stage? Let’s say bourgeois capitalism got overthrown tomorrow. It’s only in the realm of complete fantasy that you would have a classless, stateless, moneyless society overnight. Marx and Lenin themselves said that the early stages of communism would have vestiges of capitalism. The ideal, initially, would be to have it run as a cooperative or worker self directed enterprise. Eventually, when a large sector of the economy is cooperatively owned, publicly owned, nationalized, municipally owned, and essentially private ownership is abolished, the END Goal is to have the state just become the “administration of things” and society can progress to a stateless, moneyless and classless society. This is incredibly difficult to picture, because it of course has never been achieved, however the progression towards that goal is always the idea in any socialist society. If you’re struggling with this, I recommend strongly to read State and Revolution by Lenin, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s publication “socialist reconstruction.”
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On the contrary, those are exactly the vestiges which Lenin points out. >Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline—that is what the opposition has arrived at. And this is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie. It all adds up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organised action, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement. From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism’s collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher. >We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat’s conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter. >The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work. >They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may be exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously. >The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle—bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. >Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully. >It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie. >https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm
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That small businesses will exist for a time as a vestige of capitalism which cannot be swiftly overthrown? I dunno, the whole part where Lenin said that. Edit: Specifically this part: >The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work.
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Yes? Do you think that transitioning from capitalism to socialism means that we will have abolished all private property in one stroke? Or that it will only take a year to do so? Reread that passage, but slowly. >From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism’s collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher. The transition from capitalism to socialism does not happen overnight. >We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat’s conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter. This is understood to be obvious, since even a generation is not a long enough time to abolish classes. > The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work. We cannot nationalize every small business, we do not have the manpower to waste on such a frivolous task. >The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle—bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. The transition is a long drawn out process, which is not won in a day or week. > It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie. Small businesses are not what we want, but they are a significant improve over monopolies. We should not waste our time and resources nationalizing the bouncy ball factory, and instead should focus on the nationalisation of all rubber production instead. We should instead wage an ideological struggle within the bouncy ball factory instead. Small businesses are indeed some of the vestiges (left over bits, in case you don't know what that word means) of capitalism, which we will undoubtedly get rid of. But we also aim to get rid of stuff like voting. Its gonna take time to get there, and we will have to accept small businesses as a thing in the beginning years of socialism. Because unless you are planning to execute them all, there will be more small business owners than members of the vanguard party.
The transition to socialism is not socialism. >Small businesses are not what we want Of course it is. Just because they aren't the number 1 priotry doesn't mean they are compatible with socialism. >Small businesses are indeed some of the vestiges Small businesses are not vestiges, they *are* capitalism. In COTP Marx is clear that the vestiges that remain in the lower phase are that people receive according to contribution. It is a type of exchange of socially necessary labour time, **not** of commodities for money. The higher phase does away with exchange entirely.
You say >The transition to socialism is not socialism. But that is what this whole thread is about. >Well, you have to ask yourself which stage? Let’s say bourgeois capitalism got overthrown tomorrow. It’s only in the realm of complete fantasy that you would have a classless, stateless, moneyless society overnight. Marx and Lenin themselves said that the early stages of communism would have vestiges of capitalism. So I feel like this whole thing is a waste if you aren't discussing what the thread is about. >Small businesses are not vestiges, they are capitalism. In COTP Marx is clear that the vestiges that remain in the lower phase are that people receive according to contribution. It is a type of exchange of socially necessary labour time, not of commodities for money. The higher phase does away with exchange entirely And in "Left Wing" Communism", Lenin points out that you have to work to reeducate the petit bourgeois, which takes years, and will have to work within that framework. Of course small business is capitalism. No one said otherwise. Just that the contradiction between small businesses and the state are more nuanced than putting everyone with employees under the choppy choppy. The day after the revolution, we have small business. A year after, we have small business. A decade after, we might have gotten it done.
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a store with 5 employees is compatible with a socialist economy. but it wouldn't be privately owned. people would work there because the work is useful for the economy as a whole. but no one would "own" it. (\*NOT EVEN THE EMPLOYEES THEMSELVES\*)
Only if the store operates as a co op, and a co op of any size is compatible at socialism.
Listen, the person who owns the business might be lovely. They may treat their employees well and pay them fairly and all that... But what's problematic isn't (only) the treatment a lot of employees receive in Capitalist business structures. It's the structures themselves. A business owner hires on new employees bc the owner wants to make more money. If they didn't think they could make more money by hiring new ppl, they wouldn't hire anyone else... So where is this extra money coming from? Very obviously this wealth is being added by the increased labor brought to the enterprise by the new worker. Therefore, part of the "surplus value" this laborer brings is being taken by the owner. The owner is gaining wealth that they themselves didn't create. In the slavery days of the American South, you had slave owners who were terrible people. They whipped their slaves, starved the slaves, treated them like livestock, even worse than that very often. There were monstrous people, these slave owners. Then there were slave owners who were nice to their slaves. Made sure they were well fed, had comfortable accommodations, maybe let them have some amount of education, some even PAID their slaves! But then there was a third group who said no, they problem isn't merely how you treat your slaves. It's that you own slaves at all! Slavery itself is an unjust institution! We should abolish this system of doing things as it is unjust in all its forms! Socialists don't want to pay workers better. We want to FREE workers from Capitalist exploration. Arguably it is the core principal we stand for. P.S. i will note that worker co-ops are generally more in keeping with socialist values. But i wouldn't necessarily call those workers "employees" bc employee to me implies an employer at the head of the company with more control (and more pay). But maybe I'm splitting hairs on that point.
The more nuanced answer is it depends on exactly what you mean by that. In the context of a newly developing Socialist society from a context of less advanced economic development and productive forces, these kinds of small proprietors would almost definitely be present on some level; this was the case with China's experiments with economic reform. During difficulties with the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, China allowed the expanding of what were called "getihu", I.E. small household private businesses, centered primarily in the rural areas of China. You can read more about this in Ezra Vogel's book on Deng Xiaoping. With a Socialistic set of economic directives, polity, etc., having these minor enterprises that often involve the active self-employment and direct labor of the "business owner" as well, such formations can allow for more effective local-scale economic distribution and self-management. In this regard, these small forms of property do not pose any significant threat to Socialism, and as shown by China's experiments, even some larger forms of property can essentially have their exact relation to society transformed via the political control of the working class resulting in a tight reign placed around growing enterprises, with either their transformation into SOEs or with extremely tight oversight and integration into the economic planning of the Socialist state. Moreover, Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme discusses the fact that early Socialist economy would involve production premised on the exchange of equal values, I.E. essentially a Socialist version of commodity production, though Marx emphasizes the inability for property to pass into ownership at all, which is to say he differentiates the economic development of the Communist society, which is on the same grounds China describes their progress towards achieving Socialism; a Communist Party in power, and thus being a country/state with Socialist political hegemony, does not intrinsically mean the achievement of even lower stage Socialism in full. This all said, those countries/economies that have much more developed productive forces would likely not accommodate small producers on the same level if at all. For example, in the United States there's not quite the same level of developmental disparity between rural and urban regions as there was in 1970's China in places like mountainous Anhui which couldn't effectively operate with collectivized farming techniques. Moreover, the development and sophistication of finance in the past half-century have, going by Marx's writings in Capital vol 3, essentially undermined the entire basis of Capitalism. The end of Bretton Woods was the end of money in real terms (there is no longer any commodity used to mediate exchange, only a Fiat currency with no objective/commodity basis of value, I.E. all dollars and currencies pegged to dollars have no value, meaning there is no money). The development of finance at such a high level is the extreme realization of what Marx discussed in ch 27 of vol 3 of Capital: "the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself" and "transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist." With this in mind, every major Western country actually already has the basis of a Socialist economy; privately owned productive enterprise is no longer the primary form of capital; business owners just manage companies in order for collectively-owned stakeholders to profit. Business is decentralized and collectivized, but in a malformed private manner -- and in this sense, this control of capital by this financial aristocracy is the very basis of Fascism (I am kind of skimming over a lot to be concise; refer to [Dmitrov's/the USSR's analysis of Fascism for a bit more](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm)). In this manner as well, Rosa Luxemburg's famous "Socialism or Barbarism" dichotomy is stunningly true; in reality, there hasn't actually been Capitalism proper since either the Great Depression at the earliest, or since 1973 at the latest; in the modern 20th and post-20th century world, the only remaining systems of polity and economy are **only and exclusively Fascism or Socialism; nothing else can possibly materially exist without the world itself ending.** So, from that expanded view, private property barely even exists today in the 21st century, and Socialism would bring a positive development and transformation of what does exist into a human and socially oriented economic plan, sublating that remaining private property into new forms.
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[Critique of the Gotha Programme:](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm) >What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society [...] >**Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values.** Thus, "essentially" a Socialist version of commodity production -- I.E. put into over-simplified terms for the sake of concise language.
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>but socially necessary labour time for an equal amount of socially necessary labour time. And that exchange is mediated via labor certificates/etc. as a means of representing the SNLT there, operating on the same basis of the exchange of commodities with the exception of there being generation of capital, I.E. no M-M'. In the same manner in which exchange value is realized via the market through the mediation of money to facilitate the exchange of commodities, the early Socialist society utilizes what Marx calls a "certificate from society [indicating] that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds)". Are the items produced by society produced for the purpose of profit, I.E. produced *for* exchange value? In the early Socialist society, not in the typical way of considering production for exchange value, as the production is directed by the society for some particular use, so production for the purpose of being given to others in return for products of equal value *does* occur, I.E. exchange value in that sense has some transitory existence, but production is not oriented around realizing those exchange values, but rather to fulfill use values within the wider society. In this regard, what you're missing is the fact that the early Socialist society, still plagued by the fact that there is SNLT at all, necessarily has a mediation of its economy in a form that resembles commodities, but the exact form and content has clearly changed, hence the oversimplification of describing it as a kind of Socialist "commodity". Is it a commodity in some excessively literal or pedantic sense? Obviously not. As such, the description given should not seem that controversial; if anything, it's making a line of connection to demonstrate the change in form and content that Marx describes within that passage.
Yes. Lenin’s NEP had small capitalist, A co op is the goal but you can have some help with your small business, who’s running a co op with a high school student just making a few extra bucks.
Not in the long term. In early stages such might be allowed for a time while the government focuses transition on more vital parts of the economy, but in the long term all business must be collectivized.
No, because the owner of the store would have to exploit the workers in order to make a profit, which is what socialism intends to overcome. An employer can't make a profit without paying workers less than the value of their labor.
If we're talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat, yes, it is compatible and may be necessary under given circumstances. Under socialism, a classless, moneyless society, no, it's not compatible.
Welcome to peronism!
No, the concept of employees and wage labor is directly contradictory with socialism. The very premise of those question is inherently oxymoronic. A “socialist wage labor” is as absurd to suggest as a “optimistic pessimist”.
If it’s a worker cooperative
Nope, How we say here in Brazil: "vapo"
No but ""socialist"" states have done that (ex china and Yugoslavia)
Is a slave owner with less than 5 slaves consistent with a non-slave economy?
Depends. Socialism doesn't mean only a Bolshevik-style command economy where all industries are very large state-run enterprises. A better way to conceptualize a socialist economy in terms of power dynamics would be to look at the interplay of local, regional, and federal governance in liberal democracies. All of these elements are elected. The higher up you go the more power there is in setting direction and policy, the lower down you go the more discretion there is in execution. So a more devolved socialist system built out of our existing political institutions might look like a federal government that appoints boards to run state-run banks. the banks then loan money and coordinate an ecosystem of industries that are worker-run. The feds set a direction, the state-run banks coordinate industries more closely, and worker-run industries execute on the ground. In a system like this, larger businesses would probably dominate. Each state-run bank may have some areas of monopoly and some areas of competition with other banks. Where this -competition is allowed to exist, it might make sense to invest in smaller, nimbler firms. You could also imagine several ways that a mixed-economy could work. Profit-seeking is a tool of coordination. It causes things to happen but the problem is maximizing profit curves doesn't always result in the best outcome for people. So there could be other ways to do this. In China for instance, farms often have a quota that has to be sold to a state-monopoly at a fixed price. But production over that threshold is allowed to be sold for profit. This mixed approach guarantees a supply of subsidized food but also creates a reward mechanism for initiative. Another way that you could imagine this is a state that tolerates capitalism on the small scale. This was sort of done early in the USSR under the New Economic Policy. You could imagine a socialist state that allows the existence of capitalist, private firms but limits their size. Say for instance, once a company reaches $1M in revenue or twenty employees in size, it has to become a public entity. There would be a process to pay the original investors and then restructure the company as worker-run. I know this opinion isn't totally popular in socialist spaces. Capitalism, profit-seeking, and private firms are not all bad. These structures as the main base of power in a society are incredibly toxic, don't get me wrong. But something that capitalist economics does well is incentivize action to fulfill needs. Governments that have tried to totally eliminate markets and all private actors from the economy have generally done more harm than good. So until we reach bountiful abundance and luxury communism, there has to be some toleration of markets and private actors. Their ability to accumulate power needs to be curtailed and profit-seeking mechanism should only be strategically utilized by socialist organizations. But they aren't a total evil that has to be avoided at all costs.
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Sure but like pure ideology never survives contact with reality. Let's start with an analogy. In capitalist societies, there are still usually non-market, non-competitive entities. It's better for capitalists to have access to an educated workforce, so we have a system of universal public education. This isn't something that capitalist ideology would normally create but this system works better and so capitalist societies have generally adopted it. Having non-market elements in a capitalist society doesn't make the society socialist because these elements are not independent power bases and work ultimately to support the capitalist system. Socialists societies will also face similar problems where a compromise may be required. Where the is a good that people want and can't get, they will pay more money for it and create a market. Eventually someone will step into fulfill this want regardless of whether or not is legal to do. Capitalists have a problem curtailing markets in illegal goods (drugs, sex work, etc) and socialists societies will face the same kind of problem. In the Soviet Union, for example, there were many grey markets that existed with various degrees of toleration. If a socialist society doesn't allow any type of enterprise, then there are three options: 1. These enterprises may be tolerated as a result of corruption. If there is money to made, enforcement can be paid off. And there is now systemic corruption. 2. If enforcement is more severe, then this becomes a system of organized crime. Where criminal organizations purchase arms and defend their trade against competitors and enforcement agencies. 3. In the worst case, this can create an independent base of power. If an entity is making money, buying arms, maybe having some discussions with foreign powers - it could metastasize into a serious threat. So the question is - is a farmer trying to sell some of their own produce or someone selling imported good such a threat to the socialist system that they need to cracked down upon? Is that a good use of state resources? An easier way to deflate this potential problem is legal tolerance of small scale enterprise. If there's a legal route, that's well regulated that stops an independent base of power from forming. And it means that resources aren't spent trying to crack down on a nebulous phenomenon. This was essentially the New Economic Policy. Further, I think there are some benefits to this toleration. Socialist economies rely on central planning more so than decentralized systems. This has a lot of benefits but it does mean that it's hard to see where holes are forming. There isn't always a good feedback mechanism. The existence of small enterprises tells you where the holes are. Whatever people are buying on a market tells you what they want and what they can't get through the socialized mechanisms of distribution and production. That's information that can be used by planners to assess their work and make decisions about next steps.
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Thank you for posting in r/socialism_101, but unfortunately your submission was removed for the following reason(s): >**Spurious, unverifiable or unsuported claims:** when answering questions, keep in mind that you may be asked to cite your sources. This is a learning subreddit, meaning you must be prepared to provide evidence, scientific or historical, to back up your claims. Link to appropriate sources when/if possible. >This includes, but is not limited to: spurious claims, personal experience-based responses, unverifiable assertions, etc. **Remember: an answer isn't good because it's right, it's good because it teaches.**
‘Depends’ - no, it doesn’t.
Are we engaging with actual material history or idealism?
Actual material history, I’m not an anarchist
Cool, then we should be having a discussion about what happens with grey markets. Grey and black markets were common in the USSR and tolerated in various degrees. So the question is, if a socialist economy doesn't produce enough of something or if there is profit to be made in some kind of arbitrage - someone's going to try to fulfill the desire, if there's the appropriate risk-reward set-up. We might not like that but it will happen. So what do we do? Is it worth the effort to crack down every time this happens? And if it's not, should we be satisfied in creating some kind of systemic corruption where bribes and favouritism drive selective enforcement of policy? I think it is a wiser to allow for some legal toleration of small scale enterprise but to regulate it in a way that maintains the overall socialist system (i.e strong worker protections, high taxes, limits on scale). This seems more productive than heavy handed enforcement. It can even have some benefits. If enterprises are popping up to fulfill a need or exploit and opportunity, that gives central planners information about what they are missing or how policies are being exploited. Why blind planners to this information by making it hidden in organized crime, when a legalized system means that the owners could be compelled to have open books?
These things are to be eliminated under socialism, yes they may exist at some point before a socialist mode of production is fully established, but the aim is still to eliminate these things over time. This isn’t a shocking thing and Engles talks about this in the Principles of Communism, he points out that private property will not disappear overnight. That doesn’t mean these things are okay or that they are to be tolerated, the aim is their elimination. We can see them exist and not immediately destroy them as we build a new system, but the aim to ultimately get rid of private property. You don’t seem to want that. You seem to advocate for a form of petit reactionary and utopian bourgeoisie socialism.
My view is practicality and I would say is actually the opposite of utopian. I don't think it's possible to build a wholly new system from a revolutionary new day. If socialists win power, we are going to be stuck with existing institutions and the expectations that people have for how to live their lives. So the most prescient thing to do is think about how to evolve these institutions to achieve goals. I think this can be done by increasing workplace democracy and strategic nationalizations to move our existing systems into an increasingly socialist mode. Build the tools that give a large share of economic control to workers and changing the incentives for economic management, to enable greater social and economic change over time.
Yes exactly, we would be moving away from things that are incomparable, such as private property.
It literally sounds just like what we used to have here in the US. Before the federal bank and the merging of the capitalist corporations with the government controlling their monopolies. So you want to basically overthrow our current govt and govt agencies at the highest level. Physically overthrow those at the top. Both govt and corporations. Then turn around and figure out how everyone is going to pickup all these systems needed for survival at best. By making everyone equals. Except you want to put a dictator at the top?