Your opinion wanted.

[SiCo15]

Hello

Can I have your views on this, From what I know Marxism is about moving the power of the means of production from the owners to the working class.

Well what is the problem with people just working together in a business where all the staff are the owners, Is that not a workable solution and does not need the majority of voters to accomplish?

(also if this post is in the wrong area I apologise and feel free to move it?

[Broletariat]

The problem there is that, we want to fundamentally remodel how society looks. If all we do is give ownership to everyone in a company we haven't really changed THAT much compared to what we'd like to do. We'd like to completely end production for exchange-value in favour of production for use-value. We'd be getting rid of the entire finance and advertising sects of the economy. The sort of step you're proposing might be some sort of extreme concession the bourgeoisie might make to fend off revolution for a little bit longer, but it is not our end-goal.

[Muzk]

Because the staff does not work but gains part of the worker's labour. It's that simple. :) (Same with owners)

[Manic Impressive]

It's not a solution but I've been thinking about it a lot recently as a possible tool of revolution. A factory opened in a town which has been abandoned by the government which is owned and run by the workers with a socialist goal could be used to gather support for a revolution people are not inspired by books and science that can be hard to understand and go against everything they have been taught their whole lives but if they have something that improves their lives and they can see it and touch it and live within it then they will fight to defend it. The problem with most businesses that are run communally is that they are not run with a socialist motive and are usually set up by high skilled workers (I'm thinking of the companies set up by computer programmers) they also do not allow workers who join later to become equal share holders this would obviously be different. The next stage would be to expand, I would expand geographically by buying businesses in the same town and having them run in the same way communally, without hierarchy and with better working conditions. The town would gradually become one business owned and run by the workers. You would then stand a representative in elections for that area. Giving greater autonomy for the people of that area. Repeat this method until you have many areas under the control of workers and then seize political power. The commune would obviously be run democratically, I envisage a 4 day week with the 5th day being used as a day for deciding on the direction of the company. The reason I've said to start with a factory is it is important to re-industrialize in my country and the former industrial towns have been destroyed by the out sourcing of jobs to other countries.

I see this as more realistic than workers picking up non existent machine guns and fighting the police and army or the police and army joining our movement. Yes I realize it is capitalism to defeat capitalism and yes the workers labour would be exploited by themselves to progress the cause and to ensure it actually leads somewhere and does not stagnate. But I believe it could be a possible way to progress a revolution.

This is just an idea and this is the first time I've written it down or actually tried to explain it to anyone so if I've left something out please ask but try to keep the criticism constructive and respectful.

ok let the onslaught begin :o

[Broletariat]

It's not a solution but I've been thinking about it a lot recently as a possible tool of revolution. A factory opened in a town which has been abandoned by the government which is owned and run by the workers with a socialist goal could be used to gather support for a revolution people are not inspired by books and science that can be hard to understand and go against everything they have been taught their whole lives but if they have something that improves their lives and they can see it and touch it and live within it then they will fight to defend it. The problem with most businesses that are run communally is that they are not run with a socialist motive and are usually set up by high skilled workers (I'm thinking of the companies set up by computer programmers) they also do not allow workers who join later to become equal share holders this would obviously be different. The next stage would be to expand, I would expand geographically by buying businesses in the same town and having them run in the same way communally, without hierarchy and with better working conditions. The town would gradually become one business owned and run by the workers. You would then stand a representative in elections for that area. Giving greater autonomy for the people of that area. Repeat this method until you have many areas under the control of workers and then seize political power. The commune would obviously be run democratically, I envisage a 4 day week with the 5th day being used as a day for deciding on the direction of the company. The reason I've said to start with a factory is it is important to re-industrialize in my country and the former industrial towns have been destroyed by the out sourcing of jobs to other countries.

I see this as more realistic than workers picking up non existent machine guns and fighting the police and army or the police and army joining our movement. Yes I realize it is capitalism to defeat capitalism and yes the workers labour would be exploited by themselves to progress the cause and to ensure it actually leads somewhere and does not stagnate. But I believe it could be a possible way to progress a revolution.

This is just an idea and this is the first time I've written it down or actually tried to explain it to anyone so if I've left something out please ask but try to keep the criticism constructive and respectful.

ok let the onslaught begin :o

The trouble with this is that it's utopian socialism not scientific class-struggle socialism.

[Manic Impressive]

can you be more specific? what exactly is utopian about it? these types of businesses work very well for capitalists and they are inspired by socialism why not use the model to actually progress the movement.

[Broletariat]

can you be more specific? what exactly is utopian about it? these types of businesses work very well for capitalists and they are inspired by socialism why not use the model to actually progress the movement.
Well it appears to me as if the very ideas you've proposed have been tried before in some ways in America before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community

There was a third one that's name elludes me at the moment. If these do not accurately fit with what you were describing please tell me the differences between your proposal and these examples, and I'll try and elaborate from there.

[Manic Impressive]

Thanks for the links I'll have to read up about these groups as I've never heard of them before and it doesn't exactly tell me much about the economic or business models they used a couple of bits I picked out that could relate.
Harmony Society
"They were accused of being a monopoly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly), and it was advocated that the society be dissolved by the State."
Anti-monopoly laws would be a problem and a possible way to hurt it. But as far as I know they are mainly about making sure a company does not just control one industry but the workers would be controlling many industries from manufacturing to retail to food production or whatever. I don't know if anti-monopoly laws extend to a geographical monopoly

"Over time the group became more protective of itself, didn't allow many new members, moved further from its religious foundation to a more business-oriented and pragmatic approach, and the custom of celibacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celibacy) eventually drained it of its membership."
Obviously we wouldn't be celibate ;) The becoming more isolated bit is the real problem if it did not continually expand and bring in more workers as equals then it would completely fall apart not before becoming exploitative.

Couldn't find much of anything in the second link but it seems that both groups were fucking crazy and were teaching some really cult like practices. A communist run company wouldn't do that but it would provide a great platform to educate workers about capitalism and all of it's reactionary side effects.

The way I see it we have numerous problems halting revolution. Workers don't want to fight for a couple of reasons, they think they can't win or they'd die trying and if they did fight and when we do rise up and are defeated they lose more they'll lose their job they won't be able to sustain themselves or their family, so they need economic security.
capitalist propaganda workers don't think that socialism works or they don't have a clue what it is by showing them that a worker controlled business not only provides better conditions and better security we'd smash the false impression that workers cannot do it for themselves.
By not having one owner or one boss extracting the profit from the workers labour this surplus could be used to fund expansion. The idea is not to make a small group into millionaires but to create more worker controlled industries, wages would be kept at around a national average although a pay scale is something I have not come to a conclusion about. (best thought so far is a pay scale based on time employed) so the guy who cleans the toilets who has been there 10 years would be getting more than someone who while more suited to a administrative position who has just joined but that's not central to the idea.
Revolutions and revolutionaries are also usually under funded and this would be a way of funding them if an armed revolution became possible.
When looking at past and current revolutions we see that one of the biggest problems has been getting the means of production in to the workers hands this is certainly true of Venezuela and arguably Russia as well (sorry I don't buy the party were the acting on behalf of the workers qualifies as workers control) that's not to say a vanguard would not be necessary but would act in a advisory capacity while educating the rest of the workers.

I apologise for the jumbled nature of my post I have to write it as I remember it.

[Zanthorus]

Can I have your views on this, From what I know Marxism is about moving the power of the means of production from the owners to the working class.

I think you have a very limited understanding of how Marxists view capitalism and the form of society which is required to replace the latter. Marx's analysis of capitalism begins with recognising the fact that within societies where the capitalist mode of production preponderates, material goods appear as commodities. The commodity has two aspects. On the one hand it is an object with properties which satisfy some human want. On the other hand it is an object which is exchangeable in definite proportions for other goods. The question then, of what is capitalism, becomes a question of how the useful objects produced in the social process of production take the form of exchangeable commodities. This nature of the products of capitalist production as commodities cannot originate simply in their nature as useful goods. The production of use-values is the prerequisite for any kind of production, a prerequisite which is independent of the social form in which production occurs. Wether or not a loaf of bread was produced by a wage-labourer in a capitalist factory, a serf under the command of his landlord or a slave during antiquity makes no difference to it's character as a loaf of bread. On the other hand, for exchange to take place goods cannot be produced for consumption by the immediate producer. It must be a good which is not directly useful to the producer in order for them to exchange it, a use-value which is a use-value for someone other than the immediate producer, a social use-value. The labour which produces social use-values is social labour, and this social labour requires a social division of labour, such that no producer can satisfy his needs through his own production but only through the products of society. But social labour and division of labour can exist without the products of labour taking the commodity form. Within a single capitalist firm, for instance, there can be an extensive division of labour, however products within the capitalist firm do not take the form of commodities, they only take this form through exchange with other firms. The difference between the division of labour within a firm and between firms is that the former is co-ordinated, whilst the latter takes place between private entitities, entities which are independent of each other and of any kind of social control. Labour which creates commodities is both social labour for the production of social use-values, and private labour, labour which is carried on independently of other producers for private account, and which consequently can only become social through the mediation of the value-form.

The problem with your proposal to reform capitalism by making the staff of companies the owner of companies is precisely that it is a measure to reform capitalism. It in no way does away with the basic building block of capitalism, the commodity-form, and the antagonistic character of the labour which produces it as at once social and private labour. The creation of a form of society in which all labour is directly social labour, labour for the account of society as a whole, communal labour, is, in the first place, what Marxists mean by the terms Socialism or Communism.

The simple transfer of ownership from the corporate oligarchy to the staff of companies would not do away with capitalism at all, it would merely generalise the proletarian condition to all members of society and at the same time transform the proletarians into their own collective capitalists. For Marxists, capitalism can only be abolished by the proletariat's self-abolition. The proletariats existence as the proletariat, as labourers whose labour takes the form of a commodity, is a fundamental precondition for the production and reproduction of material goods to become the production and reproduction of capital. It is only be abolishing it's own status as a class, and with it the whole of class society, that the working-class does away with capitalism. It makes no sense to talk of the working-class controlling the means of production in the context of socialism, as classes only exist with reference to other antagonistic classes. Within a Socialist or Commnist society the means of production are owned and administered by society as a whole.


people are not inspired by books and science that can be hard to understand and go against everything they have been taught their whole lives

To be honest I don't think that Marxism is all that particularly difficult to understand. It is only really made so by the existence of about a thousand different interpretations of Marx, a good majority of which are based on either a reading of preconceptions onto Marx's work or an inability to read beyond anything other than the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Most of Marx's basic propositions such as the twofold character of labour under capitalism as at once social and private, alienation/fetishism and the theories of value and surplus-value are within the grasp of anyone with average levels of intelligence.


but if they have something that improves their lives and they can see it and touch it and live within it then they will fight to defend it.

But what they will be fighting to defend is a reformed version of capitalism, a social form which in no way does away with capitalism's basic antagonisms, but actually makes these antagonisms worse by transforming the workers into their own collective capitalist. If we want to convince people by making a real difference to their lives, there are plenty of other options besides forming co-operative enterprises, for example, participation in struggles for higher wages and better working conditions.


The problem with most businesses that are run communally is that they are not run with a socialist motive

This is an essentially idealist view of capitalist enterprise. What is wrong with co-operative businesses is not that they are not run with socialist intent, but that they are essentially capitalist enterprises which are forced to cede to the laws of the capitalist marketplace.


A communist run company wouldn't do that but it would provide a great platform to educate workers about capitalism and all of it's reactionary side effects.

A similar platform was provided by the Workers' Educational Societies set up by the Communist League. The most prominent of these was the German Workers' Educational Society in London which was run by the head honcho's of the league, Schapper, Bauer and Moll. Marx and Engels were directly involved in the setting up of the Brussels society, which besides debates on political issues also offered "entertainment with singing, recitation, theatricals and the like." (Marx to Herwegh, 26th October 1847) After the failure of the 1848-50 European revolutionary wave Marx even taught various courses on the nature of Wage-Labour in the German Workers' Educational Society. These forms of alternative culture both provided a platform for Communists to agitate for their views among the working-class, a platform which could offer workers a tangible motivation to support Communists and show that the Communists were on their side and were working in their interests, and avoided the creation of any business type enterprise such as you are proposing.

[Oswy]

Hello

Can I have your views on this, From what I know Marxism is about moving the power of the means of production from the owners to the working class.

Well what is the problem with people just working together in a business where all the staff are the owners, Is that not a workable solution and does not need the majority of voters to accomplish?

(also if this post is in the wrong area I apologise and feel free to move it?

Because business, i.e. capitalism, perpetuates private ownership and an emphasis on providing according to wealth not need. Socialism is based on the idea that everyone in society should be equally valued and have their needs met, not about 'mini-socialisms' competing with one-another in a way that is still, very much, capitalist private ownership, accumulation and competition.