Oil and Electricity

[Comrade1]

Let me start by saying that this question is for Marxist-Leninists only. Now, post-revolutions, how would the state manage the nationalized oil and electric industries?

[Ocean Seal]

Let me start by saying that this question is for Marxist-Leninists only. Now, post-revolutions, how would the state manage the nationalized oil and electric industries?
Making sure that every home/collective building has heating, electricity, and cooking gas. We would also make sure to put oil on its way out as we develop industry by funding extensive research in alternative sources as well as the construction of safe nuclear plants within a reasonable distance of semi-dense populations segments subject to regular inspections. Also we would make sure to provide people with the most energy efficient equipment and help communities set up alternative sources like wind or solar power. At least in my opinion using these tactics we could avoid the coming peak oil.

[Comrade1]

Making sure that every home/collective building has heating, electricity, and cooking gas. We would also make sure to put oil on its way out as we develop industry by funding extensive research in alternative sources as well as the construction of safe nuclear plants within a reasonable distance of semi-dense populations segments subject to regular inspections. Also we would make sure to provide people with the most energy efficient equipment and help communities set up alternative sources like wind or solar power. At least in my opinion using these tactics we could avoid the coming peak oil.
Well the state would need to make a profit off oil as it has alot of social programs such as universal healthcare to fund. But yes, finding an alternative source should be a major objective.

[Ocean Seal]

Well the state would need to make a profit off oil as it has alot of social programs such as universal healthcare to fund.
The state should never be profit minded. It should use its resources to the best interests of the working class. If alternative fuels reach a point where they can replace oil there is no reason to continue looking towards oil, especially if the new alternative resources are cheaper and can be packaged and traded effectively.

[Comrade1]

The state should never be profit minded. It should use its resources to the best interests of the working class. If alternative fuels reach a point where they can replace oil there is no reason to continue looking towards oil, especially if the new alternative resources are cheaper and can be packaged and traded effectively. Oh no Im not saying the state should be profit oriented...but it needs to make a profit on something in order to fund social programs and all its expenses. I was just wondering would there be a turnover tax on Oil and electricity like there would be a turnover tax on all commodities?

[Jeraldi]

there would only need to be profit if you insist that money actually produces stuff. Reality is that people and nature produce everything money is just a means of trade that is unnecessary post revolution.

[Comrade1]

there would only need to be profit if you insist that money actually produces stuff. Reality is that people and nature produce everything money is just a means of trade that is unnecessary post revolution. Im going to assume your some sort of liberatarian socialist and/or anarchist, please, I said this question is for Marxist-Leninists only

[Jeraldi]

yes I did miss that part and yeah I am an anarchist. still from the Marxist viewpoint money works very differently than in capitalism so the need for taxes and the like is very different. Industry needs to meet the needs of the populace not create profit.

[Jeraldi]

by using the same type of logic in arguments that capitalists use you make actual change impossible. The society that Marx was aiming for is based on different fundamental principals, having a monetary system creates class divides. a classless society where everyone is equal and gives what they can and gets what they need rewards productivity in a different way than capitalism.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Oh no Im not saying the state should be profit oriented...but it needs to make a profit on something in order to fund social programs and all its expenses. I was just wondering would there be a turnover tax on Oil and electricity like there would be a turnover tax on all commodities?

Why does it need to "fund" anything? Ideally money would be abolished and replaced by something along the lines of labour vouchers/credits that are tools for economic calculation and not direct exchange. The turnover tax system was a Soviet adaptation to the capitalist reality of the world that prevented deeper economic changes. Electricity is also a utility which is a basis of a lot of other production, so it benefits that it not be made further costly by redundant turnover-taxes, even if we imagine that, as in the Soviet Union, parts of capitalism remain in place.

[ckaihatsu]

Well the state would need to make a profit off oil as it has alot of social programs such as universal healthcare to fund. But yes, finding an alternative source should be a major objective.





The state should never be profit minded. It should use its resources to the best interests of the working class. If alternative fuels reach a point where they can replace oil there is no reason to continue looking towards oil, especially if the new alternative resources are cheaper and can be packaged and traded effectively.





Oh no Im not saying the state should be profit oriented...but it needs to make a profit on something in order to fund social programs and all its expenses. I was just wondering would there be a turnover tax on Oil and electricity like there would be a turnover tax on all commodities?


This is a particularly interesting topic since it falls into *two* different 'gray areas'....

I'll note that I'm *not* a Marxist-Leninist, but I'd like to address the issue.

The question indicates a period during or immediately after a widespread proletarian revolution, where much would be in ongoing transition *away* from capitalism's markets. In such a period it would be *convenient* for a nascent workers' control of politics to continue *some* conventional practices, like retaining use of singular governmental authoritarian control and the wages system. The flipside is that such political convenience would come with the risk of possibly becoming stuck in a half-revolution -- a kind of Stalinism, with privileged bureaucratic power becoming institutionalized. (This is one gray area.)

The other gray area is that energy usage falls somewhere between consumerism and the infrastructure of mass industrial production -- obviously modern society *depends* on it, and it's currently a "civilizational" good, yet it's not exactly synonymous with industrial machinery *itself*. From a sheerly *consumer* point of view we can even ask if a household's energy requirements could simply be fulfilled in a non-centralized, *alternative* kind of way, from individual household to individual household.

The reason I'm *not* a libertarian or anarchist, though, is because there are, and will continue to be, mass societal concerns that *cannot* be addressed in any small-scale way. More *potent* energy supplies will always confer a certain material advantage to those who control them, so the very *existence* of such energy supplies has to be addressed in a mass-political way.

A fully revolutionary society, once realized, *will* be able to do this, and *won't* have to resort to elitist / specialized authority, labor commodification, *or* regression into small-scale localism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You sure you don't mean Social Democrats instead of Marxist-Leninists?

Forgive me but this is a public forum so you will have to take an answer from a non-Leninist here.

The way you posture the question is naive and mis-guided to start with. The state, as an entity, would not 'manage' something as strategically important as oil and gas supplies, other than acting as a framework for overall regulation and for negotiating import/export and other oversight roles.

The security and strategic direction of the production and distribution of oil/gas should be taken away from the national state and localised, put in the hands of communities, autonomous or joined at regional level (whatever, really), who can manage the production process and the labour, safety and technical issues engendered there, and the distribution process with its allied safety, cost and charging issues there.