Market Socialism

I just found out about market socialism a couple months ago. Are there any drawbacks? Seems like the perfect blend of innovation and fairness.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Soviet_economic_reform
marx2mao.com/Other/RCSU75.html
youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7
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Markets are a mythical abstraction. Literally voodoo.

Markets provide a motive for exploitation. Market "socialism" just makes workers exploit themselves.


Could you explain what you mean?

Market socialism causes a deep divide which there is basically no arguing out of. Personally I am all for it, do not believe that it will result in workers "exploiting" themselves but can't particularly put together an argument to the contrary because it's ultimately a disagreement about what exploitation IS. Disagreement about fundamental terms like that is… basically irreconcilable.

I'll throw this in: Can someone please explain how market socialism is supposed to work and how it is not horrible?

It seems like a competition based economy and not an economy based on sharing. How is this not horrible?

I don't see a competition based economy as horrible as long as workers control the means of production. This is just a fundamental disagreement that you and I have.

Because planned economy sounds great but seems to stagnate after a while. Market socialism is just non Co-Op businesses are banned and each worker is then as powerful as the boss.

The problem with competition is that there are clear losers, and with markets losing does not usually owe to lesser effort or even to the production of a poor product. Markets undercut the meritocratic quality of socialism.

How will this not devolve into monopolies?

Government still regulates stuff and stops monopolies.

Workers will probably take a slight paycut to not have to deal with getting outvoted by a bunch of assholes that don't even live in the same state, geeze! (Also, antitrust laws.)

I'm fine with winners and losers as long as they earned it and did not exploit people.

Markets are intangible. They don't objectively and measurably exist. It's just a way of obscuring the nature of capitalism.

How can communism ever be achieved in this kind of system?

So there spooks?

The fact that it retains the exploitation of wage-labor by capital is a bit of an issue. Increasing the number of shareholders over a firm won't fix the fundamental problems of capitalism. The law of value will still rule people's actions in the economy, and thus workers will have to labor primarily to satisfy the demands of market mechanisms. This renders satisfying the needs of men as only an incidental side-effect of production.

Every word in every language describes an abstraction, numb nuts.

Because communism is satanic and always leads to genocide.

They surely would seem to stagnate to an illiterate. As opposed to the never-ending crises markets produce. You should probably be aware of the fact that the Soviet economy was not planned after 1965, and it had already begun liberalizing years before that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Soviet_economic_reform

Market socialists quite literally destroyed communism.

Simple. The government goes away and the economy is still co-operative. Hold on… Would that just be ancapistan but with co-ops?

I mean that markets are a myth. The idea of the invisible hand is utter nonsense.


Sort of.

Marx's vision of communism never could. However, as far as i'm concerned in market socialism the means of production have in fact been socialized and that's communism enough for me.

I know what you meant, and it's a pointless comment because nothing in nature is truly real. But market still serves as a useful heuristic term to describe a phenomena. If you don't accept that the decentralized actions of persons responding to prices has a regulating principle over an economy then the entire case against capital is rendered meaningless.

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As an addendum, markets don't need to ABSOLUTELY PERFECT to still be really fucking useful. The invisible hand is… more "overstated" than it is utter nonsense.

It doesn't do away with the mechanisms for capitalism but it would be much more preferable and would probably be more accepting of government regulation. I'm honestly not convinced that a planned economy can even work satisfactorily and I think it's easier to get people behind a co-op economy, so I think it's a good goal. Market socialism doesn't have a path to communism however, not without another sort of revolution (would be less of a hassle if people were already pretty equal and private property was abolished)

if people were already pretty equal and private property was abolished why would they want to go to communism? Market socialism seems pretty good.

That wiki page notes that "many" of the "specific" reforms were "revised." Pretty big difference from rolling everything back, champ. Even if that were so it wouldn't change the reality of gradual liberalization and that collective farms were already purchasing from the state by the late-50's, rather than directly receiving their equipment as they did under Stalin. But that was only the start of it. If you actually think the the Soviet economy in the 70's and onwards was anything but a highly-centralized market society you're just setting yourself up for embarrassment.

marx2mao.com/Other/RCSU75.html

Don't bother replying unless you're going to dispute the obvious success of Soviet-type communism compared to the constantly-crashing world markets. From 1950-65 the Soviet economy even grew 50% more than the USA. (Mao: A revolution derailed, hardly a pro-communist work)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is like 9% GDP growth/year, guess we should all emulate it!

Yeah ok

Markets are distinct from capitalism. That markets constantly crash under capitalism doesn't mean that they would constantly crash under socialism.

Why wouldn't it?

Worker-controlled firms would be heavily discouraged to engage in the vast majority of crash-causing behavior because they make working there fucking suck.

Nice.

this is retarded. Leave competition for games and sports

Everyone else else is talking about the problem of exploitation, but I don't think that's much of an issue. I mean once every single worker can decide the fate of their workplace, you can't really get less exploitative unless you start splitting hairs.

The real issue I see is how to prevent accumulation of capital, which is the natural tendency of any non-planned market. This happened in Yugoslavia – they had an immense amount of capital stored in citizens' bank accounts – but it wasn't much problem simply because the citizens didn't have anything to invest on other than real estate. Regardless, I would argue that the people who manage to accumulate more capital would inevitably end up lobbying for further liberalizing measures so they can invest that capital, and it would keep going that way until capitalism was restored.

Come on man, you're pushing it. Businesses had a profit motive, but they weren't free to act on their own anyway. They still had to do what the planners said, and for the most part all they could do is lobby.

It's a decent halfway to socialism or communism and co-ops are objectively a better material situation for most proles, but it does have problems inherit to the market like clear losers and accumulation of capital.

I'm personally for it and co-ops as a short term tactic to get proles class conscious(and get a better material situation for myself), but it shouldn't be seen as a goal in itself.

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Market socialism is a stepping stone toward planned economies and eventually post-scarcity. Reforming capitalism is succdem sophistry and abolishing markets from the top down is disastrous because they need to fade away from lack of necessity.

Planned economy stagnate very quickly a there governments are forced to liberalize. We can keep the fairness of socialism and the efficiency of capitalism.

How would much wealth accumulate? and if the proles in the company agreed to give someone money it would be voluntary and therefore fair. If there is a huge company it needs a huge workforce which now own a huge portion of the company and get a huge portion of the money.

Could we ban lobbying?

Why would they want liberalism if they got all the money in there le ebin collaborative business. The only dangerous wealth accumulation is someone gets money and invests in an automated factory. But If they did there not exploiting anyone and there not being exploited.

Whats wrong with Tito?

Capitalism is wasteful. It produces shit to be sold, not used.

I couldn't think of the right word. Whats the word for "makes the economy prosperous"

Well you could but it's the sort of thing that you can't really eliminate. People will try to sway government their way legally or not. Look at the enormous "social markets" that propered in the communist countries.


Come now, user. Greed, of course. Just look at anything porky does. Or if you prefer a reified analogy, capital will always seek to grow.


The pic implies he approves of Tito, user.

Isn't that basically what Rojava is turning into?
No taxes, no central bank, private property (to a degree, communities can interfere).

Market socialism and anarcho capitalism appear to be remarkably compatible.

I think that market socialism is just capitalism with no co-op businesses outlawed. Stateless market socialism would be anarcho-crapitalism but with non co-op businesses not there.

Will planned obsolescence still exist within market socialism?

No drawbacks. Extreme butthurt from dogmatic marxist yelling 'revisionism' but thats only a plus. The radical left has to evolve and change with the times. If something doest work you fix it until it functions.

It could but if the government monitors products they could stop it.

K den

Its market socialism. Its socialism with a market.

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How the fuck do you exploit yourself?

When state and party elite exploits workers its not real exploitation.

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I'm sorry for starting the flame war.

But the workers own it not the state/party. You can't exploit yourself.

I agree i was just imitating comrades that support state capitalism.

Contradiction in terms. Watch WEBM related. There's a reason it's capitalism and not capitalistism. The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact the firm has a (few) boss(es).

If you`re a market socialist you can`t be intellectually honest communist at the same time.

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I don't a stateless society is possible. Someone has to keep order and they normally fit the definition of a state.

Is there a youtube link of that? The flaw of the current capitalist system (Based on monopolization, debt and workers not getting their dues) is that it breeds massive income and wealth inequality and is effectively self-destructive. (Eventually it will kill off the very core that keeps it all running, its consumers)
By sharing the profits among all the firm's workers we can improve market liquidity (increased purchasing power), reduce income inequality, and make communities more self-sufficient.
The number one benefit of a market is that it is a self-correcting system.


State and markets are not inseparable, nor is the abolition of markets the ultimate goal.

If markets will "force workers to exploit themselves", make the unsuccessful ones sell their labor for a wage and thus recreate capitalism, then what about in a planned economy? How do you prevent the re-emergence of capitalism with the hierarchical structure necessary to coordinate planned production?

Indeed, but any market without monopoly of state violence is bound to be ineffective.

I would never associate with that taistolainen piece of filth who`s grandparents should have been shot at end of 1944.

youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7

These are inevitable consequences of an economy based on commodified labor that produces to exchange for competition.

This is not what a cooperative private firm does. All it does is democratize a firm that is still submitted to impersonal market forces because, once again, it produces for exchange, not use.

Yes, impersonal market forces operate against labor constantly regardless of anything. This is capitalism.

In capitalism this self-correction comes at the expense of human suffering and misery. Often, imperialist ventures and wars are the manner in which it corrects itself. Other times the self-correction comes in the form of shifting problems to other places of the market and world. What form will self-correction take under market socialism?

There are plenty of examples of markets operating without a monopoly on state violence. The free exchange of goods predates the formation of centralized power structures.
Markets do need a degree of security, but that can be provided on a local level. Rojava is an interesting example of this. You don't need a state, you just need an armed force (Which can be a state or local militias) to enforce an environment where the voluntary exchange of goods can take place.


You can have a market without interest (and by extension debt slavery), where local communities control their resources and wealthy citizens aren't allowed to hoard land.
This is a large part of what democratic confederalism is about. Preventing the cancerous outgrowths of an otherwise self-correcting system.

And while a single cooperative firm cannot ensure all of these changes, a society based on cooperative ownership of the means of production does.
Market forces, absent states propping up insolvent enterprises, operate against inefficiency. Not everyone will be equal, but it will be more equal.


Not everyone will "win". But in general the lower strata are a lot better off under such systems. You might not be able erase greed or other evolutionary urges, but you can make sure the system is a lot fairer and pleasant for almost everyone.

Again, I`m not saying that there can`t be markets without state. Without a monopoly of violence there can be no safety to operate those markets even if that monopoly is decentralized in its power dynamics.

You don't need a monopoly, you need mutually assured destruction.
If you can cause enough damage to the point where any materials gains do not compensate the losses, you win.

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I agree.

I don't understand how these leftist anarchic ideas could work since I think of capitalism when I think of anarchy or a lack of regulation.

Doesn't seem too realistic

I don't get it either.

Violates the First Amendment, oh, but socialism doesn't have a First Amendment :(

A better Idea would be to build the principles of socialism into the constitution to make them unchangeable.

But muh living constitution!

He left us too early.

Didn't read Bordiga.