The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.
It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.
So my main questions are:
- Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?
- If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?
You’re proposing socialism.
Communism wants central authority.
communism is literally the final goal of socialism.
isn’t that anarchy?
yes, anarchists want communism straight away without going through socialism first.
mostly because they identify the state itself as the main problem, not capitalism or imperialism per se. socialists view this the other way around.
That’s two different definitions of Communism. Anarchist Communism can be likened to Commune-ism, ie a decentralized network of communes, while Marxists want Communism as a fully publicly owned and planned global economy, one that requires centralization.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks so much for clearing that up for me.
No problem! It’s a common misconception, even among Marxists and Anarchists, that both want the same exact society on a different time scale, when in reality it’s not really the same thing at all. Both are responses to Capitalism, but in different directions.
I mean kind of yes but most people would not call them synonymous
Thats so funny because you have it completely backwards. Communism, the end goal, is a moneyless, classless, stateless society in which hierarchy has ceased to exist. State socialism or “the dictatorship of the proletariat” is a interim step on the path to communism that aims to eliminate class and the social structures that perpetuate it.
Hierarchy would exist even in Communism, at least in Marxist conceptions. Class would not exist, but it won’t be until an extremely developed, extremely late-stage Communism where all distinctions in the division of labor can genuinely be moved beyond, well after class has been abolished.
I think long term we could find a place for those who wish to live in a decentralized commune free of hierarchy. I understand that the centralized vision of communist human progress essentially requires hierarchy but I think we will progress to a point where that becomes undesirable for a large amount of people. Eventually we will reevaluate what it means to even progress.
It’s more that eventually, in the far far future, as technology advances we may be able to erase it once and for all, but there’s no basis for being able to do so without it.
Imagine believing you can defeat capitalism without central authority.
Imagine not recognizing that central authority is the problem.
Central authority is a tool. In different hands it does different things, but if you disarm yourself you’ll lose.
If you do not choose your leaders they will choose themselves. We tried the whole leaderless, decentralized anti-authority thing throughout the 2010s. At best you might be able to collapse the central authority of the currently existing government regime, but what comes after that is always much much worse: civil war, invasion, or an even more repressive government regime. But, more likely, the movement will just collapse because it lacks the structure to actually sustain itself.
We need to be centralized and we need to be ready to assert our authority when the old one is destroyed, or we will lose.
You know how a certain faction in the USA keeps screaming about "states rights?”
In my view, central and decentralized authority have their issues. And here come the down votes. The way the Russian voting system was explained to me by the good people of .ml makes a lot of sense and circumvents the worst issues of both.
Russian meaning Soviet, or Russian meaning the current electoral system? Very different.
Thanks for holding my feet to the fire. I believe current, but I could be mistaken, it’s been a long time since I read it, so forgive my sketchiness, but each region having elections until one person wins a final vote, to represent their constituency. I just checked Wikipedia and didn’t remember the representative voting part, so maybe my bad memory. Is there a post somewhere that compares and contrasts Soviet and Russian models?
Not sure about a post comparing the two, but the Soviet model was more comprehensively democratic, and functioned like this:
Thank you; as always, you’re very generous and informative. I have a friend in the mood to chat here, I will read and probably ask dumb questions later.
No worries! I’ve been less active lately so it might be a while before I see any response anyways.
Ok so lets say you get rid of the central authority in one fell swoop. What happens when the millions of people who really really benefitted from that authority or atleast believe themselves to benefit decide they want it back. Can a decentralized stateless society truly win political or military battles against them? I can tell you from history that everyone who has tried this eventually resorted to their own centralized authority in order to survive, failed, or both. Communist do not see centralized authority as good, we see it as a means to survive.
Therefore, socialism should be the ultimate aim.
It can’t be, really, as Socialism either progresses to Communism or backslides to Capitalism.
I truly believe a mixed economy is the answer.
All economies are mixed, the difference in designation of “Capitalist,” or “Socialist” depends on which aspect of the economy is principle, private or public. Communism is a post-Socialist society, a highly developed form of Socialism where private ownership becomes redundant and economically unviable.
Socio democracy and I’m onboard.
Edit: all socialist & communist dictatorship losers can go live in North Korea IMO. Read a history book ffs.
Social Democracy is just Capitalism with welfare, all of the “good” Social Democracies in the eyes of Social Democrats like the Nordic Countries depend on Imperialism to function and are seeing sliding welfare and worker protections as a function of being dominated by Private ownership.
America chose the route of social security and a mandated minimum wage instead of the state seizing the assets of robber barons and returning them to the communities that were responsible for their success.
You can see today exactly how well that worked out for the working class: minimum wage is below the poverty line and hasn’t been a living wage since the 70s, social security is being undone, and the government regulations that mandated a standard of living for working class Americans have been entirely dismantled.
This is the result of leaving the power within the capitalist class and allowing them to get away with their abuses without punishment: they do it again as soon as they get the chance.
Socialism IS democratic production, thus the political systems can reflect as such. Maybe more regional control, as I’m led to understand the Swiss cantons function like. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The Swiss model isn’t Socialist, but I may be misunderstanding your comment.