So I have been posting here for a while and I am pretty well versed on all the Jargon but I am weak on theoretical knowledge.
I completely understand that workers owning their own means of production is a good thing and is undoubtedly desireable but the thing that I dont really understand is why, in a world where the workers own the means of production, markets should all be abolished, if everyone is a free agent now that owns the product of their labor then what exactly is the problem?
I am sure I am overlooking something staring me right in the face but if someone with more knowledge than me could explain this I would really appreciate it.
tl;dr why are markets bad if workers own their own MOP.
Because a market implies a trade medium which in turn implies those that make and control that medium and those that don't
And if there is a trade medium, ie cash, and those that control it and those that don't, ie classes, then it's not communism.
Nolan Brooks
Because they would still produce commodities for exchange in the market in stead of use. All the contradictions of capitalism would endure, save for the exploitation of laborers by capitalists. Not well versed enough to tell you exactly what kind of exploitation etc. would still remain in such a system though.
Jackson Allen
So basically there would be groups of laborers who, in competing against other groups of workers, actually hurt the business and therefore the livelihood of worker group B, eventually leading to a situation where a small group has cornered the market and made everyone else impoverished?
Juan Bell
Never change Holla Forums
Asher Hernandez
okay okay quit your bitching
because they reproduce capitalist relations marcsocs shill for the market as a useful instrument, but their argumentation is on level of barter exchange when you introduce money, you introduce delay and this fucks up shit so that say's law is no longer valid
so money becomes the storage of abstract value, and so becomes an end in itself what it means is that profit dominates production decisions it doesn't matter if firms are owned by employees or shareholders they will try to maximize profits, it's their raison d'être and so coops that produce interchangeable products will compete for profits and so by the means of natural selection more profitable coops will eat less profitable and so dominating coop grows and hires labor from the side and so former employees become just shareholders and so coop is no longer coop
Luis Parker
What?
Zachary Russell
Watch this WEBM.
TL;DR: as long as there is an instance restricting free access to the means of production, private property exists. It doesn't matter whether that instance is an individual, a state, a corporation or a cooperative. As long as commodity production continues, you have capitalism, nothing else. You reproduce wage labour as a consequence of reproducing capital as an automatic subject. It is wrong to view private property in a false dichotomy between individual and state (or other structure).
Tyler Powell
He's venting his frustration at a that thread being quite empty while the neighboring bait thread is full of replies.
Connor Gomez
if that was the definition of private property, then simply having anything would be private property, including le meme tooth brush. To have and use something is to restrict access to the use of most goods, as most goods cannot be used by more than one person at a time. So long as there is scarcity of a good, that means there must be some method of restriction.
Call commodity production whatever you like, but eliminating absentee ownership and making the workers the owners of the means of production through either social, cooperative or personal ownership, they become the ruling class, the dictatorship of the proletariat if you like.
Kevin Russell
pure idealism so everyone should be allowed into the nuclear plant?
Alexander Torres
Luckily your toothbrush isn't capable of producing a commodity.
James Reyes
They don't have to be abolished. But in order to fully divorce markets from Capialism production must take the form of socialist or mutulistic markets where goods are produced via non-profit co-ops for their use-value or labor-value rather than purely for "market value" as such.
It's also a good idea to either collectivize the MOP or grant access to them only on the basis of usufruct, thereby abolishing private ownership.
Jayden Roberts
Right but it isn't socialism. It's socialized capitalism.
Anthony White
In Marx it is, yes. As you later go on to mention with the term "absentee ownership", this is the society-wide principle upon which socialism would stand. Your toothbrush is a personal; it is not a means of production held privately through legal-structural means. Society will never give a shit about things you actively occupy and use, because they are not private property; excluded for the (sole) purpose of getting a profit out of them. Marx would not oppose this to spoil your fun, but because in attempting to uphold such a configuration systemically built upon contradiction would be a way for you to eventually spoil your own fun. You have no way around this. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm
No, just basic Marx: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm Obviously not, just like a child would not be allowed into the butchery. This restriction once again is not a restriction set upon the basis of commodification. The internal structuring of society in a hypothetical socialism would very much be there.
Julian Reyes
Anarchism of any kind is evil since statism is the only way to freedom. Welcome to /leftyprole/
Easton Evans
wew
Andrew Bailey
What about vegetable gardens and microbreweries people have? Are those private or personal property? Are you allowed to use these to produce for exchange?
Dominic Martinez
You cannot mass-produce with such things far beyond your own needs.
You also need to stop asking us what a purely hypothetical society would look like. Your efforts are better spent on trying to understand the working our current system and how to undermine it.
Wyatt Rogers
friendly reminder that private property can only be enforced by the state, and taxes claimed by the sovereign of a nation (the state) are no different from rent claimed by landlords. Taxes are theft, yes, but so are rent and property.
Luke Moore
Fair point, german leftcom.
Ryder Jenkins
what about personal computers? you can make profit out of them, they are universal machines
mumbo-jumbo nuclear power plant is a mean of production you're restricting access to unauthorized personnel therefore by your logic you have capitalism
Adrian Bailey
This is fascinating, so even if you you are the one using the means of production, it's not your personal property? That's nonsense and utterly arbitrary. What makes your ownership over your toothbrush not a creation of the legal structure, but your ownership of an oven to make bread such a creation of the legal structure?!
Idiot, look at the capitalism around you! Contradiction through contradiction and crisis through crisis it marches on, the only barriers being that which is external to it, i.e. environmental catastrophe.
And let exchange develop into capital! You admit it yourself that this creates a situation where the tendency is for the rate of profit to fall, for machine capital to replace labor as time goes on. What with workers in control of the means of production, and thus in control of the larger state and economy, this would mean a decrease in the necessary amount of labor. And go on as we do, wage labor will slowly be replaced as the primary method of income for the masses, so by rent. youtube.com/watch?v=8tVmSHEIKwk
Dominic Young
No, but groups of people can. Why should they not own the fruit of their own labor, made with machines they personally used?
Aaron Campbell
There's always a contradiction between use-value and exchange-value. Production for exchange doesn't match up with production for use, and private profit still diverges from social need.
