State ownership

[Dimentio]

I cannot understand why socialist governments tend to prefer to nationalise resources. That seems quite much as picking all the eggs in the same basket, because no government will sit in it's position forever. When neoliberals are in power, privatisation will happen over night. Also, nationalisation tends to give control to inefficient government bureaucrats.

Why not form a worker cooperative or a national union, and then socialise both national and private capital by giving it to the cooperative or union? The government would be fairly powerless of course, and even if it falls to neoliberals or fascists, it cannot regress the process of socialism that easily then.

What do you think?

[kromando33]

Don't know what your point is, but Marxism isn't state control of the means of production, it's proletarian control over the relations in production. State ownership is not a socialist concept I am afraid, in fact it's pre-Marx. To the Marxist, there is no 'democracies' or 'republics' or 'monarchies', there is only the dictatorship of the bourgeois and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state can only serve one class because the interests of both are in contradiction, so class struggle continues until one dictatorship or the other is in power.

[spartan]

I am in full support of workers cooperatives as a short term thing.

Syndicalism might be something useful in a transtional workers state as well (Especially as a way of preventing excessive Centralism on the part of a self appointed "vanguard").

State ownership of all productive forces in society means nothing if the workers dont control the state.

[kromando33]

Syndicalism is fascism friend, it's an attempt to 'merge' the interests of workers and the bourgeois owners, Spain, Italy and Germany all used that model.

[spartan]

Syndicalism is fascism friend, it's an attempt to 'merge' the interests of workers and the bourgeois owners, Spain, Italy and Germany all used that model.

No you are thinking of Corporatism and National Syndicalism (Both of which were only attempted by Italy and Spain not Germany).

The Syndicalism i am talking about involves trade union federations running all industries in a Socialist society.

Here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_syndicalism

So learn the major differences between the two before coming out with unjust accusations in the future.

[LSD]

State ownership is not a socialist concept I am afraid, in fact it's pre-Marx.

Definitely pre-Marx in theoretical terms, but it's only under Leninist regimes that command econmics became a significant socioeconomic force. For a while there in the mid-twentieth century, something like a third of the planet lived under Marxist-Leninist state capitalist regimes.

The fact that you can now count the number of Leninist governments on one hand obviously doesn't speak too well for your ideology's staying power.

I honestly can't think of a political paradigm that's failed spectacularly quite so many times as Marxist-Leninism. Even fascism was only attempted in something like 5 countries. There have been, literally, dozens of attempts at effecting a Marxist-Leninst "transition" to communism.

Leninism might well be the most positively disproven political theory in the history of the world!


Syndicalism is fascism friend, it's an attempt to 'merge' the interests of workers and the bourgeois owners

You're thinking of corporatism. Syndicalism is fundamentally anti-bourgeois, much more so in fact than Leninism which has a history of appointing bourgeois and petty-bourgeois managers into positions of authority.

Which is why, of course, Leninist states tend to transition so nicely into full-on free-market capitalism. The bosses just turn in their party badges and "commisar" titles for neckties and business degrees.

[Luís Henrique]

kromando33, if you don't have anything to contribute, don't post.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

State ownership is not a socialist concept I am afraid, in fact it's pre-Marx.

It's Fichte.


To the Marxist, there is no 'democracies' or 'republics' or 'monarchies', there is only the dictatorship of the bourgeois and the dictatorship of the proletariat,

You obviously haven't read the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm), by that famous anti-Marxist writer, Karl Marx.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I cannot understand why socialist governments tend to prefer to nationalise resources.

Well, do you mean post-revolutionary socialist governments, or social-democratic governments?


That seems quite much as picking all the eggs in the same basket, because no government will sit in it's position forever.

If, as I suppose, you are referring to "socialist" governments in capitalist societies, this has to do with the fact that the State is bourgeois, while unions or working class cooperatives are not. The purpose of State ownership within a capitalist society is to regulate competition among private capitals, something cooperatives or unions would be unable to do, as cooperative or union-owned corporations would retain their private nature much more clearly than nationalised companies.


When neoliberals are in power, privatisation will happen over night. Also, nationalisation tends to give control to inefficient government bureaucrats.

This is a neoliberal myth. Any huge company will be controlled by an inefficient bureaucracy; as long as the society remains clearly capitalist, and State ownership is exceptional, there is no reason that a State-owned company should be run less efficiently than private ones.

If, in the other hand, competition is "removed" artificially (in fact, repressed), while the productive relationships remain capitalist, then State ownership will lead to inefficiency - but I fear that cooperative ownership would only lead to workers managing capitalism instead of fighting against it.


Why not form a worker cooperative or a national union, and then socialise both national and private capital by giving it to the cooperative or union?

And in this case, ie, cooperative ownership "without" competition, the inefficiency is likely to be of the same kind and degree than State monopoly.


The government would be fairly powerless of course, and even if it falls to neoliberals or fascists, it cannot regress the process of socialism that easily then.

What do you think?

That there would have been no real process of socialism, and a right-wing government would have no difficulty in nationalising the cooperative, firing the cooperative bureaucrats, and re-privatising the companies.

Luís Henrique

[Led Zeppelin]

Definitely pre-Marx in theoretical terms, but it's only under Leninist regimes that command econmics became a significant socioeconomic force. For a while there in the mid-twentieth century, something like a third of the planet lived under Marxist-Leninist state capitalist regimes.

The fact that you can now count the number of Leninist governments on one hand obviously doesn't speak too well for your ideology's staying power.

I honestly can't think of a political paradigm that's failed spectacularly quite so many times as Marxist-Leninism. Even fascism was only attempted in something like 5 countries. There have been, literally, dozens of attempts at effecting a Marxist-Leninst "transition" to communism.

Leninism might well be the most positively disproven political theory in the history of the world!

Wow LSD, talk about historical simplism!

You honestly can't think of a political paradigm that's failed as spectacularly as Stalinism, and neither can I.

Now, please prove how Stalinism is the same as real Marxism? Please prove how the position of Trotsky was exactly the same as the position of Stalin? After all, to you they were both just "Marxist-Leninists", right?

I'm sorry but you are reducing Marxist history to a ridiculous extent, turning it into a joke.

[Dimentio]

I was talking about post-revolutionary societies.

I do not think there will be the same level of bureaucracy in such a structure, and I do think that the workers will do more to defend it. Remember, it is always harder to nationalise than to privatise.


Well, do you mean post-revolutionary socialist governments, or social-democratic governments?



If, as I suppose, you are referring to "socialist" governments in capitalist societies, this has to do with the fact that the State is bourgeois, while unions or working class cooperatives are not. The purpose of State ownership within a capitalist society is to regulate competition among private capitals, something cooperatives or unions would be unable to do, as cooperative or union-owned corporations would retain their private nature much more clearly than nationalised companies.



This is a neoliberal myth. Any huge company will be controlled by an inefficient bureaucracy; as long as the society remains clearly capitalist, and State ownership is exceptional, there is no reason that a State-owned company should be run less efficiently than private ones.

If, in the other hand, competition is "removed" artificially (in fact, repressed), while the productive relationships remain capitalist, then State ownership will lead to inefficiency - but I fear that cooperative ownership would only lead to workers managing capitalism instead of fighting against it.



And in this case, ie, cooperative ownership "without" competition, the inefficiency is likely to be of the same kind and degree than State monopoly.



That there would have been no real process of socialism, and a right-wing government would have no difficulty in nationalising the cooperative, firing the cooperative bureaucrats, and re-privatising the companies.

Luís Henrique

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

What IS state ownership?

[Dimentio]

That the state owns and administrates a company. Present in both the capitalist and the "socialist" system.

[kromando33]

Well if that 'state' is controlled by the proletariat, what's the problem exactly? I spose as usual the anarcho-liberals don't care about proletarian power, only their 'freedom' and 'democracy'....

[Luís Henrique]

I was talking about post-revolutionary societies.

I do not think there will be the same level of bureaucracy in such a structure, and I do think that the workers will do more to defend it. Remember, it is always harder to nationalise than to privatise.

Well, it seems that an experience in that spirit was made in Yugoslavia. The results don't seem impressive, nor much different from the Soviet Union.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Well if that 'state' is controlled by the proletariat, what's the problem exactly? I spose as usual the anarcho-liberals don't care about proletarian power, only their 'freedom' and 'democracy'....

And how exactly does the proletariat control a State?

Luís Henrique

[Dimentio]

I think a socialist system must encompass some sort of minimum size before it could have the potential of being self-sustaining. Yugoslavia was simply not large enough.

Look a the three requirements for a technate as a guiding point.

[Marsella]

And how exactly does the proletariat control a State?

Luís Henrique

They become the state. ;)

[kromando33]

And how exactly does the proletariat control a State?

Luís Henrique
Umm, how about you go away, read Marx, and then return to revleft.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

r
That the state owns and administrates a company. Present in both the capitalist and the "socialist" system.


IN the Conventional, and not Marxist, definition of 'state' then all forms of property ownership, apart from private ownership is 'state owned'.

It's just a matter of semantics if you like. You could call it 'non-hierarchical anti-authoritarian collective workers property' or whatever, but at the end of the day, it would still be 'state owned'.

'state ownership' is a bourgeois term that only works with the conventional bourgeois definitions.

I think we on the left, really lack a good sense of how our own terminology interact with conventional political science terminology.

As sometimes we are limiting our understanding through poor choice of phrases.

[Luís Henrique]

Umm, how about you go away, read Marx, and then return to revleft.

I read Marx. I know his opinion about how the proletariat would control the State. I am asking for your opinion about that, not Marx's.

Luís Henrique

[Lenin II]

The fact that you can now count the number of Leninist governments on one hand obviously doesn't speak too well for your ideology's staying power.

The fact that you can't point to a single anarchist community in history doesn't speak too well for your ideology's logic.

[BobKKKindle$]

They become the state.

Right on. Under Capitalism, there exist bodies of armed men, separate from the general population, which impose the state's will through armed force (or the threat thereof). In a post-revolutionary society, armed power is decentralised, such that every worker is armed, and so is capable of defending the revolution.

Or, as Lenin put it in 'State and Revolution', Chapter Five:


....the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple “machine”, almost without a “machine”, without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people (such as the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, we would remark, running ahead).

[spartan]

The fact that you can't point to a single anarchist community in history doesn't speak too well for your ideology's logic.

Spain (Specifically Catalonia) during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939)?

The fact is the Anarchists in Spain always had it hard as they had to fight the Fascists on one side, and then the counter revolutionary Stalinists (Allied with Liberals and Social Democrats) on the other!

What about Makhno in Ukraine?

He had to fight the white army and then the bloody red army!

Is it any wonder then that any attempt by Anarchists to build an Anarchist society have so far failed?

The fact is Stalinists, and authoritarian "Socialists", seem to have something in common with Fascists, as they both seem to desperately want to suppress real working class power whenever it arises.

I wonder if that is just a coincidence?

I think not!

[Lenin II]

Spain (Specifically Catalonia) during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939)?
However, within the first three years of Anarchist Catalon, it collapsed and was soon under control of the Fascist scum Francisco Franco. But nevertheless, I concede. You’ve had one revolution. We have revolutions going on in Nepal, India, Latin America, and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where are your revolts?

The fact is the Anarchists in Spain always had it hard as they had to fight the Fascists on one side, and then the counter revolutionary Stalinists (Allied with Liberals and Social Democrats) on the other! What about Makhno in Ukraine? He had to fight the white army and then the bloody red army! Is it any wonder then that any attempt by Anarchists to build an Anarchist society have so far failed?
Also it’s odd how the so-called “failure” of Marxist-Leninist states, who were all opposed by the richest and most powerful imperialist powers the world has ever known which directly fought their every action with warfare, blockade, sabotage, slaughter and demonization, not to mention infiltration by revisionists, is unjustifiable. But somehow your failure is understandable. Whatever failures we have had is not.


The fact is Stalinists, and authoritarian "Socialists", seem to have something in common with Fascists, as they both seem to desperately want to suppress real working class power whenever it arises. I wonder if that is just a coincidence? I think not!

The problem with lefts and anarchists is that they see the concept of “separation” as the same as “class.” They fail to realize that concentration of expertise is not a class, or else all careers or differences in jobs are “classes.” And before you drop that precious Trot-left magic word “beauraucracy” on me, I will respond that in all your posts I have seen no evidence to show that members of the party lived any better than your average worker.