Our boy Richard Wolff pointed out that one of the main problems of the USSR was that those who were in charge of the enterprises (as in those who are in the board of directors under capitalism) were appointed by the state undemocratically and workers had little say in the matter. What are yall's thoughts on this?
PS: How do socially-owned enterprises account for the production of varied products as in different brands of orange juice that some people may have a preference towards? Would it be the same enterprise producing both types of orange juice? Hope I was able to get my point across.
Richard Wolff shouldn't be taken seriously in these matters, he fetishizes co-ops without wanting to abolish capitalism.
Benjamin Parker
Enterprises should be held to open standards. 1. They publish an open standard that includes their blueprints, manufacturing process, and materials. These standards should be freely available and modifiable for all. Those who want to propose a new product or method of doing things should use these standards as a basis. 2. A large IRS-type auditing organization will inspect the enterprises according to the standards of their specification. They will also constantly compare the estimated productivity and manufacturing quality of the specification to the real product. You don't get punished for working extra, or for working less. You only get punished for not meeting your own declared productivity numbers and quality. Punishment would mean demoting people in charge, inspecting for sabotage or corruption, etc. 3. Workers AND consumers have a say in the process, but not to an unnecessary degree. They can vote on which blueprints and methodologies to use, what kind of product selection to sell, etc. However, votes on minor issues and nuances will be largely avoided by adhering to open standards that account for everything. If there is a radically new circumstance that demands a new methodology, they can draft it and do a trial run. And ideally, you would normally just vote on managers who would decide what is worth a trial run, with flash referendums to get around them when needed.
Market socialism is shit because it's still based around competition AND still has the bureaucratic apparatus. A GPL-inspired economic system would allow for "cooperative competition" where competing models are freely split and then merged back into the central organization, and realistic planning.
Isaac Allen
Exactly. They are capitalists.
Wyatt Martin
No, you idiot. We want to BECOME the establishment. … Shit.. I said to much…
Tyler Perry
that sounds perfect fam
Lucas Lewis
then why was it shit and why did it fail why did my people in yugoslavia have a saying "he cannot pay me as little as I can work"
Adam Mitchell
and another thing - how to avoid it in the theoretical future socialist state
Jose Morgan
Oh boy, have I got news for you. He abhors capitalism, which you'd know if you listened to Economic Update. Dude definitely wants to abolish private ownership and therefore capitalism. What he doesn't want to abolish is production for exchange.
Hudson Morris
all that's missing is the coordinator role of the state because cooperatives aren't market competitors, one of the main principles of co-ops besides democracy in the workplace and all that is cooperation between cooperatives. I'm trying to understand if this is really that different from USSR socialism. Forgive me if I'm missing something about production for exchange, care to explain it briefly for me? Maybe I know what it is, idk, maybe I'm just not associating the terms.
Adam Garcia
didnt yugoslavia have market socialism already?
Julian Gray
because theres still a market
Jose Sullivan
It wasn't shit. It didn't fail. Magic fairies killed the revolution.
Landon Nelson
In limited for. But it's the closest anyone's ever gotten, so the Yugo flag serves as a proxy for market socialism here.
Cooperatives do still compete against one another in the market, the difference being that in a capitalist market, the owners of the losing enterprise get a shitload of money when it's bought out, and the workers get shafted.
In a cooperative vs. cooperative situation, consolidation is good for the workers. The coop on the losing end gets gobbled up, and any duplicated work ends up reducing the total work necessary for the now-combined enterprise to meet demand. Thus the workers from both see a reduction in work time and an increase in quality of life. Antitrust measures are only necessary in capitalism because of it's extractive nature.
Jaxon Davis
And production for exchange is literally "let's make this because people will pay for it."
Production for use is central planning. "Let's produce this because it's directly needed, and we're commanded to produce it."
Brandon Davis
I said this in a thread some time ago and never got a response, but in capitalism there is an inherent pull towards monopoly. I figure that same pull would exist in a co-op dominated market, so widespread co-ops seem like a back door to an integrated, worker controlled socialist economy. Eventually, a huge part of the market may be monopolized by one of the co-ops, but since the co-ops are worker owned anyways it wouldn't be a capitalist that benefits, but all of the workers. Once the monopoly got large enough, the workers would effectively just vote on production and other matters because they'd be large enough to control the market. The market would become obsolete to the power of the monopoly co-op.
Ryan Barnes
The monopolistic coop wouldn't have an incentive to kill entrepreneurial startups in the cradle either.
Aaron Cox
At that point it's just abstract. No different than creating a different committee or project division in a single corporation.
Aaron Russell
True. Which is completely different from capitalist enterprises, where they can't abide any threat to their accumulation and so they stamp out disruptive ideas.
Jonathan Nguyen
There are actually some pretty bizarre examples of competition within corporations. Steve Jobs had his teams at each other's throats before he got kicked out of Apple.
Connor Evans
Far from the norm, though. What you usually get when you try that is SEARS collapsing because a fucking lolbert Randian piece of shit took over and tried to make the internal workings of the company into a competition.
Noah Adams
Yes, that is pretty much the main problem with Stalinism. "When me and my friends TAKE power, you go to gulag." Not, "when you elect me and my friends to office, you go to gulag."
James Taylor
ok, let's smash the bourgeois state without taking power?
Aaron Sullivan
Making teams or branches that compete against each other within a company is actually a pretty option way to run a corporation. Usually they'll compete for corporate funding or it's just a way to see what sticks and dissolve what doesn't.
Works better in some industries compared to others probably.
Sears is actually a really sad case of ideology run rampant. Should have been a shoe-in for the internet economy, since they literally invented Amazon's business model of having no brick and mortar presence a d just sending shit when ordered. But no. Didn't want to figure out the internet because reasons. Started to crumble. Lolbert took over and fucked it until its asshole bled. Poor workers, man. Always losing out.
Jason Miller
I honestly do not know why anyone here takes this guy seriously. His form of 'revolutionary change' is nothing more then the establishment of a new, more worker friendly sector of the capitalist economy. He is a soc-dem in everything but name and as such an agent of the status-quo.
More on topic. the USSR had two main problems. The first was a failure to commit to developing the infrastructure necessary for cybernetic central-planning, making a back-slide into a bureaucratic market economy all but inevitable. The second was a failure to combat revisionism, a failure that was ultimately responsible for the death of the USSR.
Levi Rodriguez
No I mean it's just another corporate model that's taught in business schools as totally viable and normal. The Sears guy is kind if a strawman example of it being bad since he was obviously worse than even Trump at managing a business.
Carter Torres
This is bait, isn't it?
Elijah Evans
It's a reduction of the concept for the purpose of demonstration. There's obviously examples of production for use that don't fit that mould, but none on a national scale.
Levi Perez
As opposed to NeoCuckservative Daddy 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧Donald🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Jace Carter
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Christopher Walker
Perhaps the greatest flaw in Soviet history was not using medical magic to keep Stalin and Lenin alive forever, since your "two main problems" are unavoidable and inherent in any single-party state run by unelected, unaccountable officials and bureaucrats.
Henry Scott
explain to me what is wrong with co-ops
Justin Brown
They do not abolish commodity production, markets, or create an environment where the community makes economic choices together.
They are marginally better than the current system but they are nowhere near ideal.
Connor Thomas
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Jacob Sullivan
This is the most retarded utopianism I have ever seen on this board.
Samuel Young
Deutopianized!
Gabriel Moore
Literally wrong from the first line.
Cameron Ross
They've had Zizek before. I don't think who they get to speak is decided by the board or CEO. They might step in if the speakers get too out of hand, but it's good PR to have a wide range of speakers. The fact that they'd have people like this do talks means either 1) they're not on corporate's radar or 2) corporate is aware and doesn't perceive them as a threat. Your enemy being unaware of you or underestimating you is good. Of course it could also be 3) that they're very interested in the left and are only picking leftists who they think will neuter the left, like an incoherent cocaine addict and a reformist.
Bentley Morgan
Isn't this talk at Google thing directed at Google employees? Isn't Papa Wolff basically sowing dissent in the workers of one of the biggest corporations?
Julian Edwards
I thought it was kind of common sense that a centrally planned economy didn't turn out to be such a hot idea. Marx said that a capitalist economy will always outproduce a socialist one because growth is capitalism's whole goal. By the time 1917 rolled around, it seems that the notion that a planned economy would perform better than capitalism's chaotic markets had somehow become commonplace. I really would like to know who was responsible for it.
Hudson Moore
A planned economy is a lot more efficient than a market in general. You don't have parallel development or crises of over/underproduction (as much). The problem is that when market capitalism competes directly with state capitalism or communism, the capitalist economy can and will sacrifice the wellbeing of its members in order to protect itself and focus production on making the commies go away.
Levi Russell
Fuck off already, you are the worst poster on this board.
Grayson Flores
You seem upset, tankie.
Aiden Jones
Your idiocy honestly doesn't deserve dignified answers. It's pretty telling about Wolff that people like you are shilling for him. Read a book or even a few chapters.
Robert Sullivan
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Jaxson Collins
More efficient, yes, but that doesn't say anything about total productive capacity. Efficiency is a secondary concern when productivity is so low that you have to enter a months-long line to be able to buy a washing machine.
I think this is one of those areas where people think it's a matter of picking your posion, but I think there can be a new way superior than both the previous ones.
Ryan Morgan
If state capitalism has one convincing selling point, it is the subsequent explosion of productivity that happens after it gets implemented. Even capitalists occasionally use the term "five-year plan" for their economic policies.
Jaxson Roberts
It's a little more complicated than that. In case anyone doesn't know: Shareholders are the owners of the company. They elect the board of directors. The board of directors hires and fires the top managers (CEO, CFO, etc.).
What you're describing sounds more like syndicalism to me.
Camden Cruz
How does that explain the frequent shortages of both materials and finished goods?
Bentley Morales
Why should we take your claims seriously? We both know you haven't read a single book on Soviet history, and you obviously haven't provided a substantial argument beyond what can be found in US highschool texts.
Ryder Watson
Because soviet union overproduced raw materials and intermediate goods, relative to end consumer goods. This could be fixed with modern techniques like linear programming where intermediate goods and raw materials are economized, while we focus on end consumer products.
Josiah Brown
I was under the impression that the shortage of these was the big problem, because the decreased production propagated further down the production chain. Is it Cockshott who claimed it? I really got to read it. I really got to read a shitload of stuff.