Socialist business

[Redhead]

How would you start up a "business" in a communist society? I mean, when the revolution comes the businesses will be taken over and every worker will be equally owners. But what about when your going to start a new business. Example: It has been your life long dream to start a pub. Would this be impossible because it doesnt really benefit the community? And how would you get new workers to your pub (which isnt really yours).

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

The community central council would presumably have open forums for suggestions. Someone goes to a meeting, says, "we need a pub."

A team is gathered to work on the project based on who is interested in taking it up as a project. The pub is built. Alcohol is served by people interested in bar tending. Nobody "owns" it. The end.

[Sinister Intents]

How would you start up a "business" in a communist society? I mean, when the revolution comes the businesses will be taken over and every worker will be equally owners. But what about when your going to start a new business. Example: It has been your life long dream to start a pub. Would this be impossible because it doesnt really benefit the community? And how would you get new workers to your pub (which isnt really yours).

When socialism is achieved business will no longer exist, all work will be done by the community members according to need, and according to ability. There will exist skilled and unskilled labor of course, and the people who do the skilled labor can easily do things out of mutual aid and voluntary association, and unskilled labor can be done by anyone. Business would literally be the communities business, all would own because of collective ownership of capital and means of production. If you want to start a pub in your own home, you're completely allowed to start setting up shop, and you could mimic what others do, or follow instructions on how to effectively start a pub, but not for profit. It would still be collective property, you'd just be able to associate in its functionings. You'd have to ask people to help out, and I'm sure there would be people who would help out. For example I started a forum and I had people who agreed to helping out and they've used the forum more than I could recently. You wouldn't profit off of this established pub because there would exist no need to capitalize. To attract people to it, word-of-mouth is the best advertising, plus posters and related things could be made locally.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

How would you start up a "business" in a communist society? I mean, when the revolution comes the businesses will be taken over and every worker will be equally owners. But what about when your going to start a new business. Example: It has been your life long dream to start a pub. Would this be impossible because it doesnt really benefit the community? And how would you get new workers to your pub (which isnt really yours).

Before everyone jumps and attacks the noob I think it's important to clarify that despite all of our agreements, we universally agree that communism is a classless, moneyless, stateless society.

However, while I don't necessarily agree on the fetishization of the voluntary association/voluntary central assembly or whatever the libertarians are calling it these days, it is true that there will be a certain degree of economic activity outside of the normal parameters of use value alone. Why I am sure that there are people who enjoy making video games available, the shear abundance of modified games makes this self evident, and while it might use a little bit of electricity to distribute I think it's fair to say that any human economy must support some form of entertainment and that Communism would turn the welfare of the species into its primary goal as opposed to an after thought or a side affect and there's no reason to shun the production of non capital(in the bourgeois sense of the term obviously there will be no capital in communism) goods that make life more enjoyable.

So to get back to your question, presumably if the community and the central economic organ is capable of supporting it then I imagine that yes, workers would be able to voluntarily associate and run their own pub. I do make the cavete that it must be supported by the community and whatever form the central economic decision making comes form simply because if we don't have enough food to go around then we shouldn't be starting pubs. But of course the point of communism is to make these essential goods widely available to allow the human species to have other persuits

[OGLemon]

I can imagine pubs in small communities

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Obviously, in socialism a pub would not be a "business". This does not mean you couldn't open one, of course. Presumably you would find people who are interested in the project, notify the relevant authorities (the organs dealing with urban planning, workers' control and so on), and if there is any space that is available you order what's necessary to refurbish the place as a pub, inform other people about your new pub, and probably send statistics once a month or so and allow a few inspectors in to make sure you aren't serving salmonella-laden sandwiches, and you're set to go.

Note that this would not mean that you own the pub. If space is at a premium, your pub might be converted into something more useful. If you open an eye-poking service and no one wants their eyes poked, your service might get closed down and a pub would open on the location. And so on.