Why communal ownership?

[ContrarianLemming]

If offered the choice between private ownership socialism, where the workers own the means of production that they alone work at, or communal ownership, where we have workers control but community ownership, why do we choose the latter?

[Broletariat]

Because the previous form sounds a bit like market socialism, and we all know what happens to markets. If that's not what you were alluding to, do correct me.

[The Ben G]

Because if there is private ownership in a socialist society, it turns that socialist society on a road back to Capitalism.

[Zanthorus]

There is no such thing as "private ownership socialism". A system of private ownership means a system of producers not connected through any kind of common plan who have to exchange their goods on the market. The presence of market exchange implies the corrolary existence of commodity production and hence wage-labour. And where wage-labour exists capital is sure to be not that far behind.

Although I guess this could depend on wether you view the destruction of capital as the goal of socialism or simply "worker control of the means of production".

[ContrarianLemming]

Because the previous form sounds a bit like market socialism, and we all know what happens to markets. If that's not what you were alluding to, do correct me.

nope, no market, just worker owned.

[ContrarianLemming]

There is no such thing as "private ownership socialism".Socialism being a state of society where we are not forced to sell ourselves for wage labour and a bourgeoisie does not extract surplus value from your work. Private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism. Or you can call socialism workers control.



Because if there is private ownership in a socialist society, it turns that socialist society on a road back to Capitalism. why?

[this is an invasion]

destroy ownership

[ContrarianLemming]

destroy ownership

Sounds like crimethInc.

[Broletariat]

nope, no market, just worker owned.
So if there's no market exchange system, but each worker could own his/her own workplace then how do we distribute goods in this system?

[Thirsty Crow]

Private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism.
What then is the defining point of capitalism, in your view?

[Broletariat]

What then is the defining point of capitalism, in your view?
Yea... I was under the impression that the separation from Capitalism and Socialism is the definition of property. Capitalism being defined on Neo-lockesian jus ad rem principles, or ownership based on title/merit alone and Socialism property would be defined on a Lockesian jus in rem principle, or ownership based on use and occupancy. Anything beyond that was just a modification to the Capitalist/Socialist means of organisation.

[gorillafuck]

Socialism being a state of society where we are not forced to sell ourselves for wage labour and a bourgeoisie does not extract surplus value from your work. Private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism. Or you can call socialism workers control.
You're contradicting yourself. You say that private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism, but you also said that you can eliminate capitalism without necessarily having communal ownership.


Capitalism being defined on Neo-lockesian jus ad rem principles and Socialism property would be defined on a Lockesian jus in rem principle.
I have no idea what "just ad rem" or "just in rem" mean and I'm sure that a lot of other people don't, too.

[ContrarianLemming]

I'm not arguing for private ownership, I want solid facts as to how is is superior.

[ContrarianLemming]

You say that private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism, but you also said that you can eliminate capitalism without necessarily having communal ownership.

not a contradiction.

[this is an invasion]

Sounds like crimethInc.

So does your mom.

It just means that everything is owned by everyone, so that the idea of ownership doesn't mean anything.


communisation, if you will.

[Broletariat]

I have no idea what "just ad rem" or "just in rem" mean and I'm sure that a lot of other people don't, too.
Ahh right sorry.

[ContrarianLemming]

So does your mom.

It just means that everything is owned by everyone, so that the idea of ownership doesn't mean anything.


communisation, if you will.

communal ownership doesnt mean everyone owns everything, It specifically means communal ownership of the means of production.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

The sort of thing the OP is talking about doesn't guarantee an equal distribution of goods. Although you say it isn't a market system it will degenerate into a market system due to the competitive aspect of different groups of workers owning the means of production without any collaboration in terms of resource distribution.

[Robocommie]

I think an economy which consisted primarily of cooperatives, where the workers control and own their own workplaces, along with a worker's state which has as it's mandate the dictatorship of the proletariat could make for a very stable and affluent socialist society. In other words, a compromise between syndicalism and state socialism.

For example, a textile factory under this system would be owned directly by the workers, each worker in the factory would have exactly one share of the cooperative, which they cannot sell, and which they surrender if they stop working there. Only workers in the cooperative are shareholders, and no worker owns any more shares than any other. Therefore dividends are only paid to the workers, there will be no exploitation of labor because the workers receive the surplus value of their labor directly. Nor will there be any concern of capital flight, because since the company belongs to the workers, nobody gets laid off, the cooperative can't get outsourced or sold off to foreign investors. The cooperative as a whole will have full worker's democracy - they will vote on what they want to make, with what materials, they can as a collective decide to hire specialists or engineers to design new machinery or products for manufacture, they can decide democratically how labor is to be organized and who performs what tasks, so on and so forth.

Meanwhile, the rights of the individual worker would be protected by a central government, a worker's state. There would be a worker's bill of rights, to ensure that workers are guaranteed a minimum standard of just treatment by their collectives, which will also enforce the principle of "one worker, one vote, one share." Because one of the principles of this worker's bill of rights would be the right to work, it would also be the mandate of the central government to develop the economy and ensure that everyone has employment by engaging in initiatives to expand industry or agriculture to provide jobs, which will be turned into more cooperatives. The nature of this new industry or agriculture can also be tailor-designed by the central state to meet shortfalls in supplies of certain resources. At the same time, groups of workers who wish to engage in a new venture and form their own cooperative can do so by petitioning a central state bank, which could offer developmental loans, with interest rates only high enough to cover the bank's operating costs.

Therefore, this would be a sort of middle ground between a purely planned economy, and a more chaotic, unplanned market socialism. Furthermore, certain resources which everyone has a universal need for - electricity, gas, water, healthcare, education, will all be nationalized and freely provided by the worker's state to the population - the operating costs for this will be paid for by taxes collected from the cooperatives.

In this way, everyone will have free access to all the vital essentials of day-to-day existence, but there will still be freedom of the consumer to decide whether they want to purchase this pair of jeans or that pair of sneakers, instead of having to purchase goods which are designed and sold by a central state planning commission. And since the production process will be largely decentralized, and yet still socialized in nature, there will be a great democracy of production, with a wide variety of goods - which I should add, people will have more wealth to purchase since they are no longer being forced to support a parasitic capitalist class.

Criticisms?

[Psy]

The problem is making production for use. When you have independent producers they have to exchange products meaning you have to deal with exchange value for example a refinery would have to have to figure out the exchange value of the production and transportation of crude oil its consumes to produce diesel it producers (thus would have to figure out the exchange value of diesel).

When you have centralized production you can totally ignore exchange value and focus on utility allowing for example easily planning of the benefits of electrification of transportation as you can focus on how society would benefit and at what cost as we don't have to care about making equivalent exchanges in the market since the whole market would be dictated by the plan thank to centralized production. If we want to give electricity away for free (that is a long term goal of Communism) we can because producers all along the production chain of electricity is controlled by the plan meaning they charge what the plan tells them to charge (so if they are told to charge nothing by the plan they charge nothing for what they produce).

[Old Man Diogenes]

nope, no market, just worker owned.

Like Collectivist Anarchism, that doesn't have markets, does it?

[Blake's Baby]

D'oh! loads of people posted while I was writing this...


Aeon, I think we're all having difficulty working out what you're talking about. So let me lay out what it seems you're saying and then you can correct it.

One form of saocialism you talk about is what we all think of as socialism/communism, the whole community owns the means of production, the workers in the community work at that factory. That seems strightforward enough.

Your other form of 'socialism' seems to be like a workers' co-op, where the workers themselves, not the wider community, not any other workers, own that factory, and therefore its products too. These are then - somehow - distributed, traded, swapped or bartered or whatever for the products of other worker-owned enterprises.

Two immediate problems; firstly, there's no 'in the morning I'm a farmer, in the afternoon a bicycle maker, in the evening a nuclear physicist' in this future, because multiple 'jobs' would entail multiple but partial ownership of social products. So one would be a member of the agricultural, bicycle repair and energy production co-ops. How would I be 'paid' by these co-ops without money (or is there money)? How would my 'ownership' be expressed in a partial but difused way? Or would I be 'stuck' in one job where I was a part of the bicycle making co-op until such time as I could move to another co-op? In that case, it's not so much that I own the co-op, but that the co-op owns me.

Second; if these worker-owned enterprises are trading with each other, then there must be some level of barter or price fixing. Money again? Not necessarily; but what if the bicycle making co-op says to the energy co-op 'we'll give you 365 bicycles if you keep or lights on' but the energy co-op says 'no we want 450 bicycles'. It would be better for the bicycle-making co-op, in the long run, to produce a surplus above what it actually thought it needed, to trade with other co-ops... in other words, to produce commodities for a market.

Bajinga, we have capitalism.

[Zanthorus]

Private ownership is not a defining point of capitalism.

Yes it is and I just explained to you why. Private ownership of the means of production would imply also commodity production. Now you said yourself:


Socialism being a state of society where we are not forced to sell ourselves for wage labour

And what is wage-labour other than labour which has been made into a commodity?


and a bourgeoisie does not extract surplus value from your work.

You are thinking of the bourgeoisie in too narrow a sense as merely the owners of industrial means of production who hire wage-labourers. The bourgeoisie more generally are those who live from the profit of capital which also includes things like financiers who would still exist in this hypothetical private-ownership "socialism" again because of the persistence of commodity production.


Or you can call socialism workers control.

This is why I prefer the "communist" label.

[Spawn of Stalin]

destroy ownership

More like destroy sloganeering.

[this is an invasion]

More like destroy sloganeering.

moar like destroy leninists.

[Robocommie]

Two immediate problems; firstly, there's no 'in the morning I'm a farmer, in the afternoon a bicycle maker, in the evening a nuclear physicist' in this future

And who the hell has the energy to do all three of those things in one day? Who on earth has the time to dedicate themselves to furthering their skills and expertise in all three of those areas? Making bicycles is a skill, farming is a skill, nuclear physics is a skill. Part of the benefits of urbanized society was specialization, which enabled some people to specialize in certain professions or trades in order to reach new levels of excellence. A lot of professionals, such as doctors or dentists, spend a significant portion of their time reading professional journals just to keep up to date on more recent developments, in addition to the hours necessary to actually practice medicine or dentistry. I realize the division of labor is a concern for Marxists but I don't see how completely obliterating specialization is a good thing. If I'm going to a surgeon, I want him to be totally fixed on being the best surgeon he can be. I don't want him distracted by his concerns over the wheat harvest while he's working on my faulty heart valve.

I don't see how this is in any way necessary for socialism. Such an extreme abolition of the division of labor seems fantastical and silly. If you want to be a nuclear physicist who also fixes up bikes and maybe owns a tiny shop which you run in your spare time, and then also garden, then great. Maybe that garden is even a large community garden which grows vegetables that everyone else in the community can enjoy. Even better. But it doesn't hold as practical that rocket scientists also work in a steel mill and also work in a bakery.



Second; if these worker-owned enterprises are trading with each other, then there must be some level of barter or price fixing. Money again? Not necessarily; but what if the bicycle making co-op says to the energy co-op 'we'll give you 365 bicycles if you keep or lights on' but the energy co-op says 'no we want 450 bicycles'.

Other co-ops don't really need bicycles. That's the utility of money as a unit of exchange, and why barter was eventually done away with historically. It's far more efficient to keep cash than to keep a warehouse full of these bartered goods which represent the value of whatever they were bartered for - particularly if your concern is to see that commodities get placed with consumers for their use-value, instead of their commodity-value.

Private citizens can use money they earn from their labor to more flexibly buy whatever they want. The inequality of currency comes from the inequality of distribution, which can actually be dealt with in a socialist state if things are simply arranged to work that way.

[Robocommie]

moar like destroy leninists.

Well, you and your five guys come meet us in the town square and we'll see who's left.

Wait, this is silly.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah, obviously you're right and Marx is wrong. Who cares about being a whole person? From now on I want to be called 'Printy McCo-op' because that's all I can be or ever aspire to! Hurray! Socialism more dehumanising than capitalism!

[Robocommie]

Yeah, obviously you're right and Marx is wrong. Who cares about being a whole person? From now on I want to be called 'Printy McCo-op' because that's all I can be or ever aspire to! Hurray! Socialism more dehumanising than capitalism!

Oh for fuck's sake, try not to dissolve into histrionics. Under this concept of socialism you could very well be and aspire to be anything you had it within yourself to accomplish - it's not like you wouldn't be able to get free education, so the only thing that would keep you out of medical school or grad school is whether or not you can get the grades. How is that more dehumanizing than capitalism? It's completely absurd and histrionic to say things like that just because I think the idea of a wheat-farming brain surgeon and train conductor is ridiculous - just as ridiculous as the idea that you can't actually be truly happy unless you CAN in fact be that wheat-farming brain surgeon and train conductor.

As I said, whatever you want to do in your spare time to "complete" your humanity and be a "whole person" is completely up to you, and under this co-op system you'd have the free time and resources to do so. I mean hell, there really aren't many limits to what could be done under this model. For example, I have an interest in film-making, as do many of my friends, and under this system we could theoretically set up a sort of state repository of advanced film-making equipment which anybody could check out for themselves, like books at a library, so that anyone and everyone could participate in creating cinema. That doesn't mean everybody would make GOOD films, but certainly nobody would be held back from the opportunity simply because they don't have the ample amount of capital needed for such equipment.

By the way, making sarcastic comments about Marx being wrong makes it sound like you think it is in fact impossible for Marx to be wrong. Marxism is a living breathing ideology which is constantly adapting and changing, and only fundamentalists would be uncomfortable with discussing ideas that are non-orthodox.

[Psy]

Other co-ops don't really need bicycles. That's the utility of money as a unit of exchange, and why barter was eventually done away with historically. It's far more efficient to keep cash than to keep a warehouse full of these bartered goods which represent the value of whatever they were bartered for - particularly if your concern is to see that commodities get placed with consumers for their use-value, instead of their commodity-value.

Private citizens can use money they earn from their labor to more flexibly buy whatever they want. The inequality of currency comes from the inequality of distribution, which can actually be dealt with in a socialist state if things are simply arranged to work that way.
You probably missed the whole law of value thing Marx was talking about. You can not consume both use and exchange value thus you can't base production around both use and exchange value you have to pick one or the other.

If you base production around use value you can't have producers selling their products for other products they have to manufacture their products to be used.

If you base production around exchange value then you are stuck with the same contradictions in value Marx spoke of and you can't have it both ways.

[Robocommie]

If you base production around use value you can't have producers selling their products for other products they have to manufacture their products to be used.

If you base production around exchange value then you are stuck with the same contradictions in value Marx spoke of and you can't have it both ways.

Could you explain these contradictions to me? Serious question.

I'm basing a lot of this off of what I've read and studied in the recovered factories movement in Argentina. A lot of these workers had a great deal of excitement, and a feeling of personal investment in their work, a resolution of personal alienation, and they also had a chance to actually benefit themselves with their labor instead of some wealthy capitalist, or a bureaucrat as became the case in the Soviet Union. I would like to see that spirit preserved and extended. To me, asking workers to commit themselves to hard labor to benefit society at large as an abstract whole, instead of their communities, or they and their families and their coworkers and their families, who they know personally, is just exchanging one form of alienation for another. It's too distant.

Particularly because how is this supposed to be organized? Through a central bureaucracy?

[Psy]

Could you explain these contradictions to me? Serious question.

As you increase productivity you lower exchange value as the labor value is spreads across more units of the products. For example if we are trying to house everyone on Earth the closer we get to that goal the less exchange value homes would have just as we get better at building homes then they would lose value due to over production (too many homes on the market for the exchange market to absorb).

On the other hand with production for use you simply order workers to erect homes and they will keep erecting homes till there is no need to erect more as exchange value would play no role in workers erecting homes.



Particularly because how is this supposed to be organized? Through a central bureaucracy?
Through central planning so workers know what to built without market signals.

[Zanthorus]

Although I agree with Blake's Baby on the undesirability of Robocommie's "compromise between syndicalism and state socialism" (Which is more like a compromise between market socialism and state socialism since Syndicalism as far as I am aware has always been in favour of a democratically planned economy) he is being dogmatic in his references to the one-sidedness of labour under any kind of technical division of labour. Remember that the reason Marx refers to production by animals as "one-sided" is that they produce for purely physical needs while man can produce for spiritual, theoretical, philosophical in other words non-physical needs. The "many-sidedness" of production under communism IMO consists in the unity of physical and mental production and the bridging of the division of labour between mental and manual workers.


By the way, making sarcastic comments about Marx being wrong makes it sound like you think it is in fact impossible for Marx to be wrong. Marxism is a living breathing ideology which is constantly adapting and changing, and only fundamentalists would be uncomfortable with discussing ideas that are non-orthodox.

Um, the idea of communism as the truely human community in contrast to the false community of capitalism is pretty fundamental to Marx's thought.


Could you explain these contradictions to me? Serious question.

The increase in productive forces generating a tendency for the rate of profit to fall so that increased investment in production leads to declining profit, overproduction and crises.


To me, asking workers to commit themselves to hard labor to benefit society at large as an abstract whole, instead of their communities, or they and their families and their coworkers and their families, who they know personally, is just exchanging one form of alienation for another. It's too distant.

Ok, but why does this necessitate a market system? What about participatory planning?

[Blake's Baby]

Oh for fuck's sake, try not to dissolve into histrionics...

Not real histrionics, just sarcasm.

I promise not to take the piss out your arguments.

Now, you promise not to totally miss the point of other people's.

'But co-ops don't need 450 bicycles...' for fuck's sake. Because that was seriously advanced as an economic theory of socialism. Oh no, sarcasm again. I was setting up a model, the exact details of which really aren't that important, because we were trying to get at what Aeon was talking about. Heuristic device not workable blueprint for the future. I was furthermore trying to give Aeon a way out of having 'money' in his co-operative experiment, if he didn't want it, as he seemed concerned that we were saying his system would qquickly revert to capitalism.

'Who has the time or ability to become a brain surgeon and a pilot? (I paraphrase)' - again, more about demonstrating a point than actually plotting a viable life-path under socialism. I don't even believe we'll have nuclear power plants under socialism, if we do I'm sure as fuck not going to work in one or live anywhere near one, even on a part-time basis. I do believe however that some people will want to do one thing for a long time - maybe dedicate their whole life to it - while others will want to be able to change what they do as a 'job'.

So after all that, what are we left with? I suggest that Aeon wants self-managed capitalism, and you said you did too. Money and enterprises, even if owned by the workers, doesn't have to even 'revert' to capitalism as it is capitalism already. Sadly, I spent years in the co-operative movement, and concluded some time ago that I'd wasted nearly a decade on a dead-end reformist strategy that would be incapable of implementing socialism.

None of the fundamental points I raise (how am I paid? How is my 'ownership' expressed? What happens when I want to change 'job'? What prevents money becoming capital? What happens when exchange leads to commodity production?) have been answered at all. Because there only answer is that capitalist relations are restored - but this time, with self-managed capitalism.

[Zanthorus]

Sadly, I spent years in the co-operative movement, and concluded some time ago that I'd wasted nearly a decade on a dead-end reformist strategy that would be incapable of implementing socialism.

It only took me a couple of libcom articles on the shitty working conditions at Mondragon and the quote by Bordiga in my sig to knock the idea of self-managed capitalism out of my head :D

[Blake's Baby]

Strangely enough it was associating with left-communists and reading about Mondragon that did the same for me. Oh, and hearing about the IWW organising inside the co-operative movement in Britain. That was before LibCom however, I've been co-op free since America started bombing Afghanistan in 2001. The Co-op movement in the UK is affiliated to the Labour Party and I tried to push a resolution condemning the war through my local branch - '...there is no such thing as a co-operative war'. They wouldn't even discuss it, so I resigned. Then most of them left 18 months later over the Iraq War.

Bordiga was dead right though. 'The mines for the miners' only makes sense if 'we're all miners now'.

[Robocommie]

As you increase productivity you lower exchange value as the labor value is spreads across more units of the products. For example if we are trying to house everyone on Earth the closer we get to that goal the less exchange value homes would have just as we get better at building homes then they would lose value due to over production (too many homes on the market for the exchange market to absorb).

On the other hand with production for use you simply order workers to erect homes and they will keep erecting homes till there is no need to erect more as exchange value would play no role in workers erecting homes.

Okay, I'm following you. In other words, the quandary presented by basing price on supply and demand, and the reason why there are both foreclosed, empty houses and homeless people. That is a legitimate problem with my model. Thank you, that was the kind of criticism I was looking for.



Through central planning so workers know what to built without market signals.

I respect that, but isn't central planning terribly ponderous and top-heavy? I mean, the great paradox of central planning is that, if in theory, the state is supposed to wither away into the higher stage of communism after the lower stage has been completed, how is this even possible if the lower stage relies on a central planning body to even exist?

[Robocommie]

Ok, but why does this necessitate a market system? What about participatory planning?

Participatory planning seems ludicrously complex and overly involved. I don't want to spend half my life in meetings voting on how many potato chips I'm going to be eating over the next month.

It just seems like applying the cell-phone minutes phenomenon to every single kind of good.

And it still doesn't seem to resolve the alienation issue. Because if workers are working to meet a quota, it's not real autonomy.

[Psy]

I respect that, but isn't central planning terribly ponderous and top-heavy? I mean, the great paradox of central planning is that, if in theory, the state is supposed to wither away into the higher stage of communism after the lower stage has been completed, how is this even possible if the lower stage relies on a central planning body to even exist?
That assumes central planning would be a state institution. Basically there would be no need for a state apparatus to enforce the plan once the state withers away. Also you will have communities partaking on the planning process thus the central plan would not be something imposes from high above communities it would be a plan made by all the communities with the resources of all communities behind the plan.

As for it being top-heavy central plans have the advantage of economy of scale, take the oil spill in the gulf it is doubtful a bunch of workers communities alone could do much better but a united effort of all the workers of the world would have better chance due to having the resources of Earth behind it if the non-engineers workers of the world basically tell engineers of the world of the world to stop the leak regardless of the labor cost and they have the entire industrial capacity of Earth at their collective command to stop the leak.

[ContrarianLemming]

I'm more confused then I was at the start.

However, private ownership worker co-op based anarchism entailes competition, which is not in our interests..

ok we're done here folks

[DaComm]

If offered the choice between private ownership socialism, where the workers own the means of production that they alone work at, or communal ownership, where we have workers control but community ownership, why do we choose the latter?

Private ownership necessarily implicates that there is a class system where a certain class is controlling the means of production. This means that there is another group that must actually perform the labor, and do nothing but perform, as the controlling class is the one that controls how the production process will function. The working class has no input outside actually performing the labor, they are not using their intellect or better judgment in their work, thus the workers are prohibited from self-actualization, fulfilling their interests, in the workplace. Private ownership necessarily implicates something other than Socialism, and thus when "private ownership" and "socialism" are put together as a term, we now have a contradiction.