The biggest economy in the world has quite a few problems. It has infrastructure problems and institutions that are unable or underfunded, as we saw in Katrina and increasing infrastructural catastrophes, to maintain them; it has housing problems; while its old infrastructure is falling apart in light of it not having been renewed, on top of increasing cuts to local, state and federal public enterprises, it consumes over 25% of the world's oil and is not building its country away from fossil fuels with necessary infrastructure and renewable energy technology investment. If a workers party took power in the US, the first things that would have to be done would be to: Nationalise banks and socialise the financial system; nationalise monopolies; confiscate the 2 Trillion dollars that are sitting on the bank accounts of corporations and reinstate a progressive tax, tax the rich; cut the 1 Trillion dollar yearly military spending; nationalise all health care insurance companies to reform and cut the current 20% of GDP expenditure on health care (due to profitmaximising, blood sucking capitalists in private health care) to the industrialised countries' average of 10% of yearly GDP. That is so far the funds are concerned; a couple of extra Trillion dollars lying around out of capitalist inefficiency, that were used for imperialist wars, profiteering off of poor health care recipients and tax cuts for the rich etc. to be used for: Making a jobs program, contracting regenerative energy workers' co-operative industries and infrastructure such as trains etc.; investing a lot of money into research, technologies and building infrastructure for a green economy; Nationalising all schools, university, college etc. and educating the new workforce on the management of production; Expanded workers benefits, paid vacation, free kindergartens, and not to forget to gradually cutting work hours with increased productivity and replacing them with workers' education on the management of their enterprise and inner-corporate planning. And signing immediate free trade deals with and subsidies to Cuba
I basically agree with everything here, with the exception of the alternative concept I was telling you about earlier. While I really can't conceive of an alternative to nationalized banking, I do know of another way to appropriate the means of production to the working class, which I believe would be received more positively by the public. It is called an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). The general premise is that corporations issue a share of ownership in the company to the employees in the form of stocks. Here is a link where you can get a better understanding of the plan; http://www.nceo.org/articles/esop-em...ownership-plan Though obviously any financial program developed under the bourgiose, requires revisions, and of these I have several. 1. First of all, the trust fund would not only consist of newly created stocks, but also of pre-existing stocks which large shareholders would have to contribute. 2. Next, I would add a progressive feature to it. By this I mean that each year/quarter or something else, in addition to the new shares of stock being created, major holders would have to contribute a specific number, or percentage of their stocks to the company trust fund. These stocks would then be equally distributed amongst the employees. Depending on the size of the company, and the amount of stocks being forfeited to the employees, in time the workers would come to own the majority of the corporation. At this point the employees would be the decisive factors in the election of the board of directors, and in setting other company policies. And then eventually, the employees would become the sole owners of the company. 3. Another feature of the plan would be that to each company there would be assigned a Workers Protection Team, as commissioned by a national workers protection agency. The function of the teams would be to ensure that employees are not being pressured into rejecting their shares, or opposing the plans, or being encouraged to leave/fired unjustly. Now there are problems with this model, chief amongst them the slow pace of transition form private control to workers control. The obvious solution to this is to mandate a high rate of stocks of non-employees and major shareholders to be contributed on a yearly/quarterly basis. I also have another solution which leads into another phase of communization, which I will go into later.
The next phase of the program (the first phase concluding with employees of a corporation taking majority control of the company through the ESOP) is to elect a proworker board of directors. On the platform of these new directors would be plansnto integrate their corporations into collective associations known as Trans-Industrial Cooperative. These associations would be responsible for coordinating cooperation between different industries in providing eachother with mutual aid. The objective of the Trans-Industrial cooperatives would be to satisfy the needs and wants of all members through pooled production, and public/community service projects. The cooperatives mark a profound change in organization from the current society. The word cooperative is meant to connotate the cooperation between the different industries within it, but the actual form of economic organization is more similar to a collective. It is important to remember that the interaction between member corporations within the cooperatives is really the interaction of groups of democratically organized industries. Since events across every industry impact each person, upon joining the cooperative, members (by members is meant actual people, not the joining corporations) will participate in the decision making of every industry, even the ones they do not work in. This will initialing be through elections, until the working people are educated enough to manage their own affairs. Members will also plan the producive actions of the companies through their demands. Prior to each productive quarter, each household will draft a list of non-essential items that they wish to order. The amount and quality of the items that each household (household refers to a family of some sort, but can refer to an individual) will be allowed to list will depend on the amount of labor credits that they have accumulated through hours work, quality of work (when possible), difficulty of work, and riskiness of work. There is also a system of hierarchy from here on out where the demands of each household are sent to the community, and that which cannot be produced at the level of the community is moved up to the cooperative, at that which cannot be supplied by the cooperative will be moved up to the national/continental, and from there to the global level. This theory draws inspirations from ckaitsutus multi-tiered system of productivity, so if you are confused checking out some of his diagrams might help.
Yes, that sounds good.
Maybe we should draft a list of short term policy demands the way that DNZ did in his last blog entry.
