Honestly I don’t think you actually can have socialism that isn’t a functioning democracy. Ownership implies power over something, and a government by its nature must have power over the things within it’s borders. If society at large, ie the people, don’t control the government, then regardless of who owns things on paper, whatever smaller group of people actually control the government effectively own whatever is in that country, and therefore their effect is fundamentally similar to the effect that a wealthy capitalist class has in a capitalist society. Anything where the people aren’t actually in charge that calls itself socialist, is just using the terminology and aesthetics to gain support without actually setting up the socialized ownership structure that the name implies.
I agree 100%, that’s why they never have an example of one that has worked, there isn’t one. I appreciate the goal, but the practicality of it is nil as a stand alone for anything country size.
I’ve known people that made it work as a living situation, but they all had outside jobs and were bringing resources from outside the community. I’ve heard of it working as a small commune in Norway where they grow their own food and such, but that’s it.
There has to be some sort of trade with a world this size, we currently use ephemeral numbers that we trade and some times paper. If it was a commune, they would still have to trade labor, carrots, chickens or whatever. Capitalism will always be there in some form or another.
I mean this sincerely, because I don’t know everything about economics. Is it?
A blacksmith with 5 apprentices is a capitalist, right? An artist like Da Vinci had apprentices, so he was a capitalist. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to go too far from trading chickens to get to capitalism.
There’s a difference between capitalism and just having markets and money, to be fair.
I mean this sincerely, because I don’t know everything about economics. Is it?
No it is not.
Currency is 3000 years old. Money and Markets preexist the capitalist system.
A core concept of Karl Max book was how local markets can influence prices in distant markets; resulting famine due to prices not availability. That was his literal moral justification for regulating the economy.
I’m not sure I understand your point. Capitalism is still capitalism under different names.
Currency is 3000 years old. Money and Markets preexist the capitalist system.
A core concept of Karl Max book was how local markets can influence prices in distant markets; resulting famine due to prices not availability. That was his literal moral justification for regulating the economy.
It’s a matter of scale I think, I don’t think I would consider a blacksmith having a handful of apprentices to be capitalism, especially considering the implication of an apprenticeship meaning that those guys will eventually become blacksmiths themselves. Maybe if he owned a whole bunch of blacksmiths shops and the associated tools and just paid the actual smiths a certain amount to use them, but if a small shop like that is capitalism, then every economic system from the dawn of trade to now is capitalism, and that isn’t how I generally see people use the term.
Well, if we use the term in the way people generally use the term, I don’t think we could go back to non-capitalism.
I don’t know anyone that could build every component of a computer. I do know people who could from parts, but not make the actual parts.
So, let’s say all of the employees owned every factory they worked in, that would be socialism, right? I could get on board with that. Has it worked anywhere where one person didn’t take it over like a mob boss after a certain amount of time?
Edit: On that last question, I’m hoping that’s a yes.
I feel like you might be confusing capitalism for market economies in general. A market economy is when private entities buy and sell things. Capitalism specifically is a market economy where the means of production, the equipment that makes things, are owned by investors who do not themselves participate in production.
What you describe in that last paragraph is called market socialism. You still have private entities buying and selling things, that’s the market part, but instead of being owned by investors those entities are collectively owned by the employees doing the production, that’s the socialism part.
This system preserves the strengths of markets, namely efficient specialization and price discovery, while eschewing the liabilities of capitalism, namely the siphoning of value from those who create it to investors.
I have never personally worked in a worker co-op or employee owned corporation to give an anecdote about how they feel day to day, but I do know that they exist.
I haven’t either, but I’ve been to one. It’s sales only though. https://artistcraftsman.com/employment/ They are very helpful and better than most retail stores.
I just don’t know how our country could switch. I never thought lockdown or trump would happen, so that doesn’t mean much.
ah, well, designing a different system is a whole different problem to gaining the influence and political will to implement it once designed. And probably a harder one, seeing as it requires finding a way to convince a lot of other people to use what levers of power they have to push your idea, and changing peoples minds requires more than just thinking through an idea of what could be. (edit: I mean the latter as the harder one, Im realizing that I didnt exactly write it in a way that implies what I intended to mean)
Honestly I don’t think you actually can have socialism that isn’t a functioning democracy. Ownership implies power over something, and a government by its nature must have power over the things within it’s borders. If society at large, ie the people, don’t control the government, then regardless of who owns things on paper, whatever smaller group of people actually control the government effectively own whatever is in that country, and therefore their effect is fundamentally similar to the effect that a wealthy capitalist class has in a capitalist society. Anything where the people aren’t actually in charge that calls itself socialist, is just using the terminology and aesthetics to gain support without actually setting up the socialized ownership structure that the name implies.
I agree 100%, that’s why they never have an example of one that has worked, there isn’t one. I appreciate the goal, but the practicality of it is nil as a stand alone for anything country size.
I’ve known people that made it work as a living situation, but they all had outside jobs and were bringing resources from outside the community. I’ve heard of it working as a small commune in Norway where they grow their own food and such, but that’s it.
There has to be some sort of trade with a world this size, we currently use ephemeral numbers that we trade and some times paper. If it was a commune, they would still have to trade labor, carrots, chickens or whatever. Capitalism will always be there in some form or another.
There’s a difference between capitalism and just having markets and money, to be fair.
I mean this sincerely, because I don’t know everything about economics. Is it?
A blacksmith with 5 apprentices is a capitalist, right? An artist like Da Vinci had apprentices, so he was a capitalist. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to go too far from trading chickens to get to capitalism.
No it is not.
Currency is 3000 years old. Money and Markets preexist the capitalist system.
A core concept of Karl Max book was how local markets can influence prices in distant markets; resulting famine due to prices not availability. That was his literal moral justification for regulating the economy.
I’m not sure I understand your point. Capitalism is still capitalism under different names.
It’s a matter of scale I think, I don’t think I would consider a blacksmith having a handful of apprentices to be capitalism, especially considering the implication of an apprenticeship meaning that those guys will eventually become blacksmiths themselves. Maybe if he owned a whole bunch of blacksmiths shops and the associated tools and just paid the actual smiths a certain amount to use them, but if a small shop like that is capitalism, then every economic system from the dawn of trade to now is capitalism, and that isn’t how I generally see people use the term.
Well, if we use the term in the way people generally use the term, I don’t think we could go back to non-capitalism.
I don’t know anyone that could build every component of a computer. I do know people who could from parts, but not make the actual parts.
So, let’s say all of the employees owned every factory they worked in, that would be socialism, right? I could get on board with that. Has it worked anywhere where one person didn’t take it over like a mob boss after a certain amount of time?
Edit: On that last question, I’m hoping that’s a yes.
I feel like you might be confusing capitalism for market economies in general. A market economy is when private entities buy and sell things. Capitalism specifically is a market economy where the means of production, the equipment that makes things, are owned by investors who do not themselves participate in production.
What you describe in that last paragraph is called market socialism. You still have private entities buying and selling things, that’s the market part, but instead of being owned by investors those entities are collectively owned by the employees doing the production, that’s the socialism part.
This system preserves the strengths of markets, namely efficient specialization and price discovery, while eschewing the liabilities of capitalism, namely the siphoning of value from those who create it to investors.
I have never personally worked in a worker co-op or employee owned corporation to give an anecdote about how they feel day to day, but I do know that they exist.
I haven’t either, but I’ve been to one. It’s sales only though. https://artistcraftsman.com/employment/ They are very helpful and better than most retail stores.
I just don’t know how our country could switch. I never thought lockdown or trump would happen, so that doesn’t mean much.
ah, well, designing a different system is a whole different problem to gaining the influence and political will to implement it once designed. And probably a harder one, seeing as it requires finding a way to convince a lot of other people to use what levers of power they have to push your idea, and changing peoples minds requires more than just thinking through an idea of what could be. (edit: I mean the latter as the harder one, Im realizing that I didnt exactly write it in a way that implies what I intended to mean)