classless capitalism?

[RedLeaf]

Once I thought about the theory of ideal capitalism. I.e. a economy with private property but with fair profit distribution. Therefore everyone in a company would get the same wage (including the owner). However, the problem would be that the rivalry could get supressed, that would mean that workers of another company would impoverish, no matter how fair the wage is. Imagine that all workers would shift to the strongest company so that the rivalry would disappear. So only monopolists with fair company policy would exist. In case of companies without spoil, no luxury goods would exist and the request for all products would almost be the same (for products of needs). So everybody would have the same wage. This case would create a classless society in capitalism.
Would that even be capitalism? What do you guys think, would capitalism with fair wages solve all problems of social inequality?

[IbelieveInanarchy]

What on earth are you talking about? How does capitalism get "fair wages"? Profit drops because of competition > wages drop to compete with other companies > profits drop because of competition. This repeats over and over again causing the common ruin of the proletariat, this is why capitalism is not sustainable. (this is of course an oversimplified explaination, read Das Kapital on how competition causes this).

Why do you think bosses will give fair wages? I have no idea what you even mean, you talk of collective worker action to get fair wages. Then why haven't fair wages appeared in western countries where there are unions, or do you think these are fair wages? How is a wage fair if a part of it is appropriated by a bourgeoisie? Your text raises so much questions.

[RedLeaf]

I am talking about an ideal case with fare wages and without competition as I wrote..

[IbelieveInanarchy]

I am talking about an ideal case with fare wages and without competition as I wrote..

Where did you even get the idea of capitalism without competition? How did competition disappear? Honestly i'm trying to understand but what do you think capitalism even is? The very definition of capitalism is that bourgeoisie hold the means of production and hire workers to produce as cheap as possible products to sell to consumers. Why would they stop competing? If 90% of the bourgeoisie stopped competing and 10% would continue, the 90% would go bankrupt. You have to tell me more then just "capitalism which is fair" because i do not have any idea what you mean this way.

[RedLeaf]

The defenition of capitalism is the fact that people can own means of production and hire personal. I am just talking about a theoretical case about companies with fair profit distribution and that the leading company would destroy all rivalries and hire those personal.

Where did you even get the idea of capitalism without competition? How did competition disappear? Honestly i'm trying to understand but what do you think capitalism even is? The very definition of capitalism is that bourgeoisie hold the means of production and hire workers to produce as cheap as possible products to sell to consumers. Why would they stop competing? If 90% of the bourgeoisie stopped competing and 10% would continue, the 90% would go bankrupt. You have to tell me more then just "capitalism which is fair" because i do not have any idea what you mean this way.

[IbelieveInanarchy]

Okay then i pose, in case that happens, bourgeoisie will want to enrich their selves and drop wages to sell more and this Utopian system will end. If you say that then workers will act collectively, please explain why they would revolt against one exploiter to put a new one in its place? Why would they, if they apparently are united as one, not take their fate in their own hands?

[Fellow_Human]

class =/= income group

We don't expect income equality in a communist society, let alone a socialist one. More equal income, almost certainly, but not absolutely equal.

A capitalist society is a class society by its very nature. If it's classless, it's not capitalism.

In that hypothetical "classless capitalism," who would those companies be owned by? If there is a class of workers separate from a class of owners, the society is not classless.

Now let's imagine a scenario where, without government intervention or abolition of private property, the people somehow manage to come to a point where most enterprises in a nation (that are not sole proprietorships) are owned and controlled cooperatively by their workers. How long would such a situation manage to last? How long until that majority is crushed by its competitors through exploitation of labor?

[ckaihatsu]

class =/= income group

We don't expect income equality in a communist society, let alone a socialist one. More equal income

On this particular point I'll note that any revolutionary society's retention of the wages system, under a socialized / coordinated / centralized approach, would have to be out of logistical *necessity* since such a wages system would be synonymous with the use of a societal administrative hierarchy.

A socialized politics is *incompatible* with a wages-type economics -- even if it's collectively 'rationally' planned, per work role -- because the formal / official rates of wages per project per work role, would be inherently *politicized* from the start, with no recourse to an automatic ideological 'invisible hand' of the market mechanism.

The worst-case would be where everyone contests their assigned wage-rates and sees the collective administration over such as being stubbornly skewed, inaccurate, and illegitimate in its calculations of wage rates for all liberated-laborers.

Would workers be *prohibited* from moving to seek-out areas of greater labor need, for presumably higher assigned rates of compensation per liberated-labor-hour -- ?

I think the *point* of an incrementally-socializing society should be to spread the revolution throughout the world as quickly as possible, and to get to a communist-type 'gift economy' of sheerly voluntary liberated-labor as quickly as possible. (This would mean that all fruits of production would be made freely available, according to pre-made, specific plans, so as to bypass all exchange-value-type currencies, 'exchanges', and complications, altogether.)

On a more-technical point I'll note that the main complication of retaining commodity-type economics (wages) with a collectively-hands-on-type social *administration*, is that the material quantities of all components would have to correlate and *reconcile*, for the system to have *internal integrity*, so as to avoid contentious wrangling over every little economic operation, and overall -- for example, the total amount of commodity-type 'money' issued would have to numerically represent *all* labor performed, since wages are paid out of it, and all social production necessarily derives from all human labor exerted.

Here's a diagram for this argument:


Pies Must Line Up

[Antiochus]

Dumbest idea I've ever heard but its basically a rehashed "independent communes where the workers seek to enrich themselves!" sort of idea. Its idiotic to say the least. First off, what IS Capitalism? Well there is a laundry list of qualifications and characteristics:

* Consistent reinvestment of profit
* Progressive concentration of capital (i.e tendency of capital to accumulate)
* Generalized commodity production
* Generalized wage labor
* 'Streamlining' labor, the creation of the reserve army of labor (the perpetually unemployed)


With most of these characteristics you cannot, by definition have people "earning the same wage", which would mean, no wage labor in itself anyway. Everything else is just nonsense. You might as well think you can create a Feudalism without landlords or whatever.