Taking the means of production into public ownership - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14934660
What do we mean by taking ownership of the means of production?
Publicly traded corporations offer for sale ownership and profit sharing in the form of stocks in their companies. To take ownership in an equitable manner, one simply purchases stock ownership in a company.

Do you think we could use such a mechanism for government-held stocks? Would this be a valid form of income for our government in addition to normal taxation?
#14934684
No, we mean that the state should nationalise and run the means of production directly. The state itself is of course run by a vanguard party who represent the will of the working class, at the apex of this vanguard is the general secretary of the party who channels the will of the working class as surely as his holyness channels the will of god.
#14934719
AngleWyrm wrote:Do you think we could use such a mechanism for government-held stocks? Would this be a valid form of income for our government in addition to normal taxation?


When you buy treasury's you are effectively buying non-voting stock in the government.
#14934740
AngleWyrm wrote:I'm not so sure that government-run companies would be superior to privately run companies. Isn't public-private partnerships all about delegation to those best able to perform a given task?

If the government run companies mess up, the public wails. The government usually moves quickly ( eg, before the next election) to make amends.

If public companies make a cock-up in a tin hat of things, they walk away from the project (and the financial loss) and the public taxpayer works to fix it/redo it.
#14934754
Stormsmith wrote:If the government run companies mess up, the public wails. The government usually moves quickly ( eg, before the next election) to make amends.


Maybe, but politicians also have a habit of doing things that only benefit in the short term at the expense of the longer term.
#14934806
Fuck the state owning the means of production. Workers' councils should own the means of production, hire managers, and decide how much goes to workers and how much is reinvested. Workplace democracy legally enforced and protected. Worker/manager salary ratios to be legally limited. Worker councils alone to hire and fire workers and managers. No one not employed by a firm should be allowed ownership participation, and no firms should own other firms (either in whole or part) - an exception is that the state would be allowed 25% ownership position in return for start-up capital. Firms should compete in a regulated market and allowed to fail, with a base of universal benefits such that firm failure allows stranded workers to transition to other firms or create their own. State may provide capital for startups, in return for a 25% non-voting ownership participation.

EDIT: the above was off the top of my head. In thinking about it more, there needs to be some mark-to-market in order to fix a price per share. Firms with govt participation should be able to buy back their shares at this market price. Fired, quitting, or retiring workers should have their shares liquidated at market price and receive the proceeds. So let's say 10% of shares publicly available on the market, to be made available to savers and funds - they need to be non-voting so there's no possibility of leveraged buy-outs or other outrages.
#14934808
AngleWyrm wrote:I'm not so sure that government-run companies would be superior to privately run companies. Isn't public-private partnerships all about delegation to those best able to perform a given task?


Nope, public private partnerships exist to funnel tax payers money into the private sector the the idle rich can spend it on champagne, caviar and snorting coke off high class hookers tits.
#14935466
Decky wrote:No, we mean that the state should nationalise and run the means of production directly. The state itself is of course run by a vanguard party who represent the will of the working class, at the apex of this vanguard is the general secretary of the party who channels the will of the working class as surely as his holyness channels the will of god.

I've often wondered if you were just taking the piss.
#14935612
Another variant of this idea is a notion based on the idea that unions provide most of the leverage for the working class people: Have unions participate in the purchase and ownership of company stock, so that they have a voting say in how things are done. This would redirect some of the desire to please the shareholders into the workforce.

Again, purchases/sales would be based on number of people employed in a city.
#14937183
Decky wrote:No, we mean that the state should nationalise and run the means of production directly. The state itself is of course run by a vanguard party who represent the will of the working class, at the apex of this vanguard is the general secretary of the party who channels the will of the working class as surely as his holyness channels the will of god.

That was tried several times and failed each time. It failed to change the relationship of worker to management.
#14937279
Senter wrote:That was tried several times and failed each time. It failed to change the relationship of worker to management.


Failed eh? That's news to me. When the working class stormed into Berlin under the banner of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to put an end to you right wingers it seemed to work quite well.
#14937383
Decky wrote:Failed eh? That's news to me. When the working class stormed into Berlin under the banner of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to put an end to you right wingers it seemed to work quite well.

Psssst! Hey Decky. I'm a socialist.

You spoke of the working class ruling through their party. That would mean that the party's struggle to establish socialism succeeded, was finished, stabilized, and was functioning with the party ruling via true and reliable actual control in fact, not just in name. But what happened only got as far as the implementation of a strategy to attempt the establishment of socialism. Socialism never was, in fact, established. And the effort degenerated into state capitalism before it could finish and succeed. The strategy failed. The effort failed. And we are still trying to come up with a strategy that actually reaches the goal.
#14937389
Decky wrote: champagne, caviar and snorting coke off high class hookers tits.


This sounds pretty fun actually. You have just removed the last remaining vestige of sympathy I may have had for Socialism.

Though with one qualifier.....i'd snort the coke off my wife's tits.

I'm not a degenerate after all.
#14939100
Victoribus Spolia wrote:This sounds pretty fun actually. You have just removed the last remaining vestige of sympathy I may have had for Socialism.

Though with one qualifier.....i'd snort the coke off my wife's tits.

I'm not a degenerate after all.


That's one thing I like about you VS; you show that a Christian man can be virile and red blooded as any other, (perhaps even more embracing of life) once everything has been put in it's proper order decreed by God.

Ah, a wife's breasts are a gift from God to her husband for sure :D

Not sure that non-socialist Christians have all the fun though, lol
#14939553
annatar1914 wrote:That's one thing I like about you VS; you show that a Christian man can be virile and red blooded as any other, (perhaps even more embracing of life) once everything has been put in it's proper order decreed by God.

Ah, a wife's breasts are a gift from God to her husband for sure

Not sure that non-socialist Christians have all the fun though, lol


:lol:

I like to think I major on the majors and minor on the minors.

I like champagne, caviar, and snorting coke off my wife's tits just sounds like good wholesome fun. :lol:
#14942190
quetzalcoatl wrote:
Fuck the state owning the means of production. Workers' councils should own the means of production, hire managers, and decide how much goes to workers and how much is reinvested. Workplace democracy legally enforced and protected. Worker/manager salary ratios to be legally limited. Worker councils alone to hire and fire workers and managers. No one not employed by a firm should be allowed ownership participation, and no firms should own other firms (either in whole or part) - an exception is that the state would be allowed 25% ownership position in return for start-up capital. Firms should compete in a regulated market and allowed to fail, with a base of universal benefits such that firm failure allows stranded workers to transition to other firms or create their own. State may provide capital for startups, in return for a 25% non-voting ownership participation.

EDIT: the above was off the top of my head. In thinking about it more, there needs to be some mark-to-market in order to fix a price per share. Firms with govt participation should be able to buy back their shares at this market price. Fired, quitting, or retiring workers should have their shares liquidated at market price and receive the proceeds. So let's say 10% of shares publicly available on the market, to be made available to savers and funds - they need to be non-voting so there's no possibility of leveraged buy-outs or other outrages.



While all of this is nominally unobjectionable, I often wonder -- when I see this kind of line -- why certain comrades are content to retain the status quo economics of abstract valuations, and even market-exchanges, as the material-economic system for a transitional-to-post-capitalist society.

I do understand that this whole treatment is most likely meant for the 'socialism'-phase / workers-state transitional period out of capitalist social relations, and so would resemble a workers regime of 'radical reformism' / nationalization / socialization of all economic activity, but I'd like to impress the point that the necessarily-'hands-off' market mechanism should be transcended and laid to rest as quickly as is practically possible, due to its 'realm' of exchange values. This realm of exchange values, if retained, would directly compete alongside the *socialist*-minded politics and sentiment of a societal operation based on *use* values, to supply to all human need.

In other words, even a *workers* state shouldn't be *dependent* on supplies of capital, because the collective -- by definition -- is already in a dominant political position to *de-legitimize* the *use* of capital, and money in general, in favor of discrete 'hands-on' decisions / judgments over any given social matter.

I'm really not convinced that holding onto conventional / traditional economic practices from capitalism would be advantageous to the workers state in any sort of way, at any point in time. It would be better to collectively adopt 'best practices' types of policies to cover most realistic scenarios / situations, so that a commonly understood social norm takes hold, with most decisions then being socio-politically uncontroversial and doable by just about anyone, based on prevailing revolutionary sentiments and mass-supported guidelines.

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