- 03 Jul 2013 03:28
#14265439
When the Soviet Union started, it created several workers' councils, otherwise known as "soviets," which gave workers control over the means of production, just as socialists had always advocated. However, this didn't last long before the state stepped in and took command of the economy, implementing 5-year plans that directed what the soviets would produce through a centrally planned economy. This has often been criticized as a step away from socialism, and in many ways it was. But the idea behind it was that of socialist accumulation. The idea was to provide a counterbalance against capitalist primitive accumulation, so that instead of empowering private capitalists, it would empower the worker's state in order to achieve victory over capitalism. The Soviet worker's state needed to be able to compete against the capitalist west at its own game, and this central planning was the way they went about doing it.
While I have problems with the way the Soviet Union went about it, I think all socialists, including anarchists, need to consider socialist accumulation as a revolutionary strategy. One way this can be done is through worker co-ops. One of the competitive advantages of worker co-ops is they don't really need to earn a profit, because they just have to make enough for the workers to be compensated as part of overhead costs. However, co-ops could engage in profit-seeking ventures and put all their profit into some mutual aid society that would connect different co-ops and credit unions together. The accumulated funds of this mutual aid society could be used to help struggling co-ops get back on their feet, or to help finance new co-ops, thus spreading the network of co-ops and creating greater ruptures in the capitalist system.
This, of course, is just one more method of socialist accumulation to consider. I'm sure there are other possibilities as well.
While I have problems with the way the Soviet Union went about it, I think all socialists, including anarchists, need to consider socialist accumulation as a revolutionary strategy. One way this can be done is through worker co-ops. One of the competitive advantages of worker co-ops is they don't really need to earn a profit, because they just have to make enough for the workers to be compensated as part of overhead costs. However, co-ops could engage in profit-seeking ventures and put all their profit into some mutual aid society that would connect different co-ops and credit unions together. The accumulated funds of this mutual aid society could be used to help struggling co-ops get back on their feet, or to help finance new co-ops, thus spreading the network of co-ops and creating greater ruptures in the capitalist system.
This, of course, is just one more method of socialist accumulation to consider. I'm sure there are other possibilities as well.
Last edited by Paradigm on 03 Jul 2013 03:36, edited 1 time in total.
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