[Cartertonian]

In one of his more pedantic moments, Ingliz corrected..

...etc., by the proletariat, and their administration or distribution in the interests of the proletariat.

I figure you have a point in leaping to correct Erebus and chuck in the 'p'-word. You're obviously being too subtle for me, so just in case there are others reading this who are equally as unable to grasp your point as I am, could you clarify why it was so important to you to do that...?

[Potemkin]

I figure you have a point in leaping to correct Erebus and chuck in the 'p'-word. You're obviously being too subtle for me, so just in case there are others reading this who are equally as unable to grasp your point as I am, could you clarify why it was so important to you to do that...?

Ingliz has fetishised the class struggle and expects it to go on forever. This means he is unable to grasp the concept of a classless society, and his 'Communism' consists merely of inverting the present-day class hierarchy to put the proletariat on top. The idea that the historic mission of the proletariat might be to liquidate itself as a class is alien to him.

[ingliz]

Socialism is class antagonistic - the historic mission of the proletariat is not to liquidate itself. The whole point of socialism is to liquidate the bourgeoisie as a class thereby liquidating the proletariat as a class in the process. As the bourgeoisie is the ruling class in the capitalist state the proletariat will be the ruling class in the socialist state.

ps. Communism isn't socialism

pps. The point of correcting Erebus was to show why, or at least why I thought, Potemkin disapproved of a Blanquist coup d'etat.

[drose]

Socialism is direct control of the workers over the means of production. It is followed by collective ownership (NOT government ownership) over social institutions, such as education, health, welfare etc., as well as over the generation of credit.

[dixon76710]

What happens if the "workers" decide to be capitalist? I suspect this worker controled economy would be in name only, with a state that drastically regulates that control.

[jaakko]

What happens if the "workers" decide to be capitalist?

This is indeed what is likely to happen with the more profitable enterprises in a system built on the group ownership of the means of production by the workers. The growing economic interests of those with growing economic power will eventually overpower any "socialist" government regulation.

Replacing the capitalists' ownership with workers' ownership is actually the least imaginable step to eliminate capitalist exploitation, which it will but only temporarily. When workers take the capitalists' place, these working entrepreneurs will sooner or later find themselves as a petty-bourgeois stratum squeezed between a growing mass of labour reserve and those willing to hire them - the embryonic proletariat and bourgeoisie.

This doesn't happen by magic but by the fundamental economic laws inherited from the capitalist system, from which the new "socialist" system would only differ in the initial absence of personified capitalists. If the workers of each enterprise take over the means of production and leave basically everything else intact, they have an economic system regenerating capitalism every minute. So the least you must do is to add to that a "socialist" government banning the hiring of workers without giving them equal share in ownership. There you have a time-bomb; a socio-economic formation in which the political superstructure is in an irreconcilable contradiction with its economic base, and no prospects of moving forward.

Within this "socialist" economic system, means of production remain commodities and profit regulates production. Some enterprises will be more profitable and the worker-entrepreneurs of these will become richer than those of the less profitable enterprises. Some enterprises would go bankrupt and their workers become unemployed. Other, growing enterprises might be eager to hire these unemployed people, but would often not have the incentive to do so due to the legislation banning exploitation. And there you have it; an essentially petty-bourgeois stratum willing to do away with the government legislation hindering their growth into capitalists. At the bottom of the society there would be the unemployed - an embryonic new proletariat.

What could the government do to prevent this class-polarisation, when the government itself was set up to maintain an economic system with the DNA of capitalism?

[John08]

What happens if the "workers" decide to be capitalist? I suspect this worker controled economy would be in name only, with a state that drastically regulates that control.

What he just advocated is basicly RAM Philosophy. So, no there would be no 'state that drastically regulates that control'.

Drose, feel free to PM me about RAM Philosophy, so might like it more then traditional Socialism.

[dixon76710]

What could the government do to prevent this class-polarisation, when the government itself was set up to maintain an economic system with the DNA of capitalism?

Usually a dictatorial central government that controls every aspect of the economy. Worker control is in name only. The central government controls all.

[ingliz]

John:

Proudhon was not a socialist!
RAM philosophy is not socialism, mutualism is not socialism. Please explain why you think a 'shareholder' society is socialist?

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems.

ps. I've asked the above question before but you don't answer it.

Potemkin:

You continue, wilfully, to misrepresent my position. I have said, in this thread, that socialism is the transitional stage before communism and not an end in itself. It's purpose is to supplant the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words to overthrow by revolution the existing class rule and install the proletariat as the ruling class. This is necessary in order for the proletariat to use state power to introduce law that oppresses it's class enemies and liquidates the bourgeoisie as a class. Without the need for class domination there is no need for a state and it can be allowed to wither away.

Actually, there are still anatagonistic social classes even under the dictatorship of the proletariat - this is why the dictatorship of the proletariat is needed and will exist. The laws of such a proletarian dictatorship will therefore not benefit all of society, but will benefit the proletariat at the expense of its class enemy. The end result of this system will of course be the liquidation of the bourgeoisie as a class and the corresponding liquidation of the proletariat as a class, and the creation of a classless society. This will render the state apparatus, as an instrument of class domination, unnecessary and it will wither away. This classless, stateless society without oppression or exploitation will be Communism

We agree on the need to liquidate the bourgeoisie as a class.

The proletariat was created by the bourgeoisie and only continues to exist as a class as defined against the bourgeois class. There can be no bourgeoisie without a proletariat, and there can be no proletariat without a bourgeoisie. If you liquidate the bourgeoisie as a class, then you are also and necessarily liquidating the proletariat as a class

And not:

The idea that the historic mission of the proletariat might be to liquidate itself as a class ....

We agree that the liquidation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie or the proletariat liquidating itself before the bourgeoisie is liquidated as a class, as suggested in certain bourgeois idealist socialist systems, is untenable.

You mean a society dominated by the petty-bourgeois making the transition to a socialist or communist society? This cannot happen. The Soviet leaders knew it couldn't happen too, which is why Stalin abolished the NEP (which was very close to the economic system you are describing) and instituted state ownership of the means of production and centralised state planning of the economy.

We agree that all states are oppressive.

The state never "upholds justice". The state is always and everywhere an instrument of class domination over the rest of society. It is always and everywhere an oppressive institution. It must disappear if we are to have a just and truly human society.

I don't understand why you made this peevish post:

Ingliz has fetishised the class struggle

Seeing as we were in perfect agreement why did you make a jibe against yourself. If we are not in accord what has changed? Why do you now feel the need to turn your argument on it's head?

We disagree on the mechanics of revolution. I take a pragmatic view that installing a sympathetic government, actively working towards a socialist state, is more important than a principle - Principles are essential after the revolution is won and not before. I recognise my revolution is bourgeois not socialist but if that is the compromise which leads to the socialist state what does it matter?

[Cartertonian]

You'll appreciate from my horrific naivete that I'm not particularly accomplished as a political scholar. Perhaps you will indulge me with another fascile question?

You talk a lot about 'liquidating' people.

Is this the bald euphemism for 'killing' people that I take it to be on face value?

[Potemkin]

You talk a lot about 'liquidating' people.

Is this the bald euphemism for 'killing' people that I take it to be on face value?

Actually, no. We are referring only to the liquidation of certain classes of people (including the working class, I might add) as classes. This happened during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, as I recall. The English peasantry were liquidated as a class. This does not mean the evil capitalists killed them all off (well, not all of them, at least), merely that the peasants moved into the cities and became the urban working class, a different class. Liquidating a social class can, in principle at least, be achieved without shedding any blood at all.

[Erebus]

That is why Potemkin disapproves of my revolution because it is bourgeois and economically my revolutionary state is state capitalist not socialist. It would not be a ' dictatorship of the proletariat' but a dictatorship of the proletariat by the party at least for a time.

But then it still is a dictatorship of the proletariat, just temporarely of the party.

[John08]

Proudhon was not a socialist!
RAM philosophy is not socialism, mutualism is not socialism. Please explain why you think a 'shareholder' society is socialist?

Never said he was, never said it is, not even sure what mutualism is. Not sure what a 'shareholder' society is either.

By the way, Autogestion is a general name for any theory in which the workers run the company they work at. Which I think is better then the State controlling it, since the major form of exploitation that exists now, is that the voices of the worker is not represented. Therefor, nationalising industry would not end that form of exploitation.

[Erebus]

Autogestion is just another way of phrasing workers' self-management.

Worker self-management (or autogestion) is a form of workplace decision-making in which the employees themselves agree on choices (for issues like customer care, general production methods, scheduling, division of labour etc.) instead of the traditional authoritative supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it. Examples of such self-management include the Spanish Revolution during the Spanish Civil War, Titoist Yugoslavia, the "recovered factories" movement in Argentina (in Spanish, fábrica recuperada), the LIP factory in France in the 1970s, the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation which is the Basque Country's largest corporation, US AK Press, etc.

[John08]

I think of it as a more general term, but that's just me.

[ingliz]

You are advocating cooperativism, John?

A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically controlled by its employees. There are no outside or consumer owners in a worker cooperative -- only the workers own shares of the business.

Erebus:

But then it still is a dictatorship of the proletariat

No, it is a dictatorship of the party albeit temporary.

[Erebus]

And that's always the case, ingliz?

[Red Star]

Red Star Note: Can we less one-line posts please?

[Potemkin]

Red Star Note: Can we less one-line posts please?

Don't you mean fewer one-line posts?

[Red Star]

Red Star Note: Yeah, I do. But I am a dirty foreigner. You could have also pointed out my post was a one-line post. I should really delete yours because it is both off-topic and a one-liner...but that would obviously seem like an abuse of power.

So from now, fewer one-line posts...well, none really. And no-one should point out that my grasp of the English language is tenuous at best.