How would you define socialism?

Banks are socialist

Fuck off utopian. ALL POWER TO WORKERS AND SOVIETS!

When the president is black

Ruthless Exploitative capitalism:
Value form
Money
Markets
Bosses
The law of value
Exploitation

$ociali$m
Value form
Money
Markets
WORKER SELF MANAGEMENT!!!!
The law of value
Self exploitation

Marcsucc gang is never anti worker but wants the workers to own the means of production and share the profit. Leftcomm are anti proletarian state capitalists.

Gay and unrealistic.

you can keep repeating it, it won't make it true

If there is government, its socialism

socialism not communism dipshit

so socialism is basically just capitalism with a read flag?

Its like "wasn't real communism" but internalised

...

A broad category of politico-economic ideas that seek to abolish capitalism and replace it with a system where classes (as the left defines) are eliminated, people receive the full fruit of their labor, and are free from the control of an ownership class who can dictate the direction and quality of their life through disproportionate ownership of property. All of this achieved through a reexamination and legal redefinition of what is legitimate property, with heavy democratic undertones to it all.

Its like "but i guess that "wasn't real communism"" but internalised

Its literally capitalism. Surplus value is still exploited. Workers still sell labor power on the market. Money still exists. It has all the charecteristics of capitalism except muh ebil managers. This form of "socialism" has no real difference from just capitalism.

oh my god literally fucking read what I wrote. LOWER. STAGE. MARX AND BAKUNIN, BOTH OF THEM THEORISED THIS

so, its not exactly the same, is it, because who makes the decisions, i.e, the workers, or the bourgeoisie, matters

no, not managers, owners. BIG difference Mr orthodox Marxist

you're both confusing what neoliberals call socialism with what Marx called lower stage communism.

READ MARX. lower stage communism isn't just capitalism but coops.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Workers don't make decisions. The law of value does.

Joint stock companies exist in capitalism.

We are often told that machines will make life easier, reducing the need for work. But this has never been the case in a capitalist society. Machines just create more output per hour worked. Often times machines are used to get more work out of workers because the machine can dictate the pace and intensity of work. SNLT is a force that presses down upon us, disciplining our motions, driving us to produce value merely for the sake of producing value, rewarding us when we can produce above the average productivity and punishing us when we fall behind.

SNLT and the centralization and concentration of capital

Capitalists compete to lower the SNLT by investing in fancier equipment. The better the machines the more efficient the labor process the higher the output the lower the prices the more super-profit the more money available to invest in new machines… Competition for SNLT means that more and more equipment is needed in order to stay competitive. This makes it harder and harder for small firms to stay in the market. The size of the firm gets larger and larger and the amount of firms in an industry shrinks. The winners gobble up the losers and capital is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. If firms become powerful enough they may even take measures to blunt competition so that nobody can produce more efficiently than them. (2)

SNLT and Market Socialism

The tools we use to critique capitalism determine how we envision an alternative to capitalism. Models for market socialism that talk of worker-owned cooperatives coordinated by market exchange clearly see that production for the enrichment of the capitalist class must be done away with if we are to overcome capitalism. Yet any society coordinated by market exchange is still disciplined by SNLT.

This means that workers in such a society would still have to discipline their actions to the social average. Cooperatives that worked at under the SNLT would appropriate value in exchange. Cooperatives would compete to modernize their equipment so as to lower the SNLT. And how would co-ops obtain the money to invest in better, labor-saving equipment? They would have to exploit themselves. That is, the more money that workers want to plow back into making their labor competitive, they less they can pay themselves. Not only would the workers be disciplined by SNLT, they would also find themselves disciplined by the need to amass surplus value so as to stay competitive. What happens to the workers in firms driven out of business by the centralization of industries? Where do they get the capital to start new firms? Do they have to sell their labor in the market?

Production of surplus-value for its own sake, fierce competition over super-profits, the disciplining of the labor process to the whims of impersonal market forces… sound familiar? Now perhaps one might be of the opinion that it is impossible to do away with SNLT, with market coordination. If this is the case then our best option is do debate what type of market socialism would be least exploitative, least alienating. But why not challenge ourselves to imagine a world without these things?

A world without What?

This seems to be the big question whenever we critique capitalism. Surely labor will always take time and we must have a way of coordinating labor to produce all of the goods society needs. Surely this labor must not just produce immediate goods but also surplus goods, as well as invest in long-term projects like infrastructure and machines that will make work better in the future. So we can’t say that we want to produce a society without work, without time, without surplus product, or without machines. (4)

What is unique about capitalism is that labor time, surplus and commodities are all measured in value. The types of commodities created, the types of assets the surplus is invested in, and the quality of the life of those who do the labor are not important. What is important is this endless expansion of value for its own sake. This is capital’s defining substance.

But if we are to coordinate human labor, the production of surpluses, innovation, distribution, etc without value production then what other method are we to use? It is not within the scope of this series evaluate different proposals for alternatives for capitalism. But it is the place to talk about how Marx’s analysis of SNLT might help us evaluate these different proposals.

We’ve probably all heard Marx’s famous description of the higher phase of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Marx didn’t actually come up with this phrase but he quotes it in one his rare commentaries on communism. Here an hour of one person’s work is equal to an hour of anyone else’s, creating a basis for real equality throughout society, regardless of the productive abilities (or privileges) of individuals. In the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx describes the lower phase of communism as a system in which, after an hour of labor, all workers receive a certificate entitling them to a certain amount of consumption goods in proportion to their working time, not their level of productivity. There is no SNLT, and no inequality, because everyone’s work has the same social power. Obviously this is not a robust plan for how a communist society should be run. But it gives us a glimpse into the sort of radical questions we should be asking ourselves when thinking about communism. (5)

how can we both be confusing it? How about you explain what Marx though tthe lower stage would be?

So Marx AND bakunin and again both favoured labour vouchers, so what, the currency which ultimately still represents abstract value is not the issue we are discussing here, the point is, for this voucher system, or money system, to be in place, the workers must be controlling the means of production, the way they will control them, in certain conceptions, could be a co-operative model, where the workers themselves own and control their own means of production and pay themselves in labour tickets, or money, neither of these is the abolition of value, so are you telling me that labour voucher society is also not socialism, and that Marx lower stage is wrong because it is not real socialism? Or that you just think a state should run the voucher/money system rather than direct democracy? Which would also, by the way, according to you, not be real socialism, but would it be wrong?
this is just simply factually incorrect, workers in many cases manage to increase their wages etc, through struggle, if that is the case, how could the workers ever in any way shape their own future and have a revolution?

...

Marx clearly says that in the lower phase:
1.Markets will not exist
2.The value form won't exist.

Whats the difference?

If their is labour vouchers(abstract labour counters, any unit of value can ever only be abstract), being exchanged, based on an amount of labour used to earn them, rather than distributed for need. Mate, that isn't real socialism and you didn't at all answer my questions so again:

Things are not exchanged. Private labor is directly social.

LITERALLY, you don't understand basic concepts of economics and are thick as shit

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

In modern-day corporate law, the existence of a joint-stock company is often synonymous with incorporation (possession of legal personality separate from shareholders) and limited liability (shareholders are liable for the company's debts only to the value of the money they invested in the company). Therefore, joint-stock companies are commonly known as corporations or limited companies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

ffs

so, you don't give labour and get labour vouchers in exchange for that labour? That doesn't happen?

after that you dont exchange those labour vouchers for commodities?

...

So what you're saying is the stock market is socialism? Are you insane?

Just as socialist as a worker coop.

read this please

okay so lets start the cycle again and see if next time round you answer the question and we break it

If their is labour vouchers(abstract labour counters, any unit of value can ever only be abstract), being exchanged, based on an amount of labour used to earn them, rather than distributed for need. Mate, that isn't real socialism and you didn't at all answer my questions so again:

Labor vouchers arnt exchanged though

Worker coops are microcosms of socialism, and while a single coop in a capitalist economy doesn't equal socialism, an entire economy of worker and consumer coops only is a form of socialism.

different person btw

irrelevant to the discussion of what lower stage socialism is, why people feel the need to repeat ad nauseum "the value form still exists" when everybody knows that, its missing the point entirely, the point being, proliferation of worker co-operatives gets us closer to that fabled value abolition, through increased worker power and increased production feedback

Wew. Things are not exchange. Your labor isn't private but merely a component part of the social labor. You labor is directly social. No one owns anything except for indivual products. I don't 'exchange' my labor for a voucher and I don't 'exchange' the voucher for a commodity. Instead all of themse thinsg are directly social. But even I agreed that labor voucher society possessed the law of value market "socialism" still has all the bad things in capitalist society.

The law of value still commands society. It doesn't matter who manages the firms. The hell of capitalism is the firm not the fact the firm has a boss.

right, so next part of the cycle, if they aren't exchanged, then what happens to them? Physically, not in the abstract, I am worker, i do my labour, now i want lunch, what happens?

repeats the dogma, does not answer the question,
so, you agree with exactly what i am saying, but you just felt the need to vomit out something about the value form one more time?
The law of value still commands society. It doesn't matter who manages the firms. The hell of capitalism is the firm not the fact the firm has a boss.
jesus christ you people are repetitive, i have already answered this claim. This doesn't make any difference to what I am saying, I am not claiming that capitalism is having a boss, just that without a boss, it makes it much easier to achieve communism, and is a distinct mode of production from straight capitalism, literally because the class that controls production is different, the bourg is gone

They are destroyed because the voucher whether its a classical slip of paper or some 1s & 0s on a debit card style thing, it is purely a representation of the SNLT work that you the unique individual have done. When the shop keep takes your vouchers he isnt merely repurposing your vouchers into some that he can use he is creating his own unique vouchers that only he can use.

At least this is my understanding of it. Im not to up on the theory and all that.

Marx did create socialism as an ideological category. If you're going to talk about Marx's ideas of what socialism should feature, call it Marxist socialism, but don't claim that other, especially earlier, ideas are somehow not socialist.

Sorry I meant: But even IF i agreed.

You never owned the labor. It belonged to society. So you are not exchanging merely preforming. This entitles you to the use of some good. However you did not exchange. You were not paid a wage based on the value of your labor power. Your labor doesn't need to take on the form of value to be social.

if you got given a bunch of tickets based on how much labour you did, and then you exchange those tickets for stuff,. you have exchanged for value. Literally can't be any clearer than this

if off to bed by the way i haven't bitched out ill be back in the morn

Socialism when the government does stuff.
Socialism with Chinese characteristics is when the government does stuff but also you broke some statues or whatever and now people are angry at you about it.
Communism is when the government does everything also there is no free speech and you broke all the statues and Stalin personally orders your cattle to be executed.
FALC is when gay space robots kill the human race just because they're tired of our shit.

Lol killing your boss is socialism :DDDD
t. "Socialists"

literally repeated over and over again that it isn't communism.

1) you NEED to get rid of the owning class in order to have communism
2) if you got given a bunch of tickets based on how much labour you did, and then you exchange those tickets for stuff,. you have exchanged for value. Literally can't be any clearer than this
3)Therefore: "so are you telling me that labour voucher society is also not socialism, and that Marx lower stage is wrong because it is not real socialism? Or that you just think a state should run the voucher/money system rather than direct democracy? Which would also, by the way, according to you, not be real socialism, but would it be wrong?"

I don't understand how marxists can say this and then claim that feudalism preceded capitalism as a stage, since during feudal times people also had exchange value and surplus value exploitation.

its real thing

i thought i replied to this one last night but the comment is gone, what happens inbetween the ticket being earned and it being destroyed, it is exchanged for things no?

It has no difference from capitalist society.

In fuedalism these weren't generelized across society.

Labor vouchers are a sort of exchange but not in the same way as capitalist exchange. In a labor voucher society the 'exchange' is a direct exchange with society. No one can give anything except labor and no one can own anything except indivual means of consumption the same principle applies that governs the exchange of commodities but its directly social.

right so, the seeds of capitalism existed within feudalism, just like the seeds of communism exist with capitalism and existed within feudalism, and along with those seeds, other seeds of a collective mode of production that precedes communism proper, in this day and age we still have pockets of village community life around the world, even primitive tribal life, modes of production are never distinct, and there is a great amount of overlap, capitalist countries like Britain for example still have constitutional monarchies, the last remnants of the feudal system, the idea that we will have instant full communisation is ludicrous, even after the future "fall" of capitalism it is likely pockets of capitalism and even feudalism or primitive tribal life will exist for a long time until they become part of the totality.

If the mere presence of value exchange or currency means capitalism, then why isn't the feudal period akshually capitalist too?

Saying they "weren't generalized" says nothing about were you place the distinction and is contradictory with the argument that the soviet union is capitalist because those things were present.

right but its still exchange, you work for x hours and that is worth y goods, rather than simply working for an amount of hours related to the completion of a specific task and then going and collecting whatever you feel necessary

This means that workers in a market socialist society would still have to discipline their actions to the social average. Cooperatives that worked at under the SNLT would appropriate value in exchange. Cooperatives would compete to modernize their equipment so as to lower the SNLT. And how would co-ops obtain the money to invest in better, labor-saving equipment? They would have to exploit themselves. That is, the more money that workers want to plow back into making their labor competitive, they less they can pay themselves. Not only would the workers be disciplined by SNLT, they would also find themselves disciplined by the need to amass surplus value so as to stay competitive. What happens to the workers in firms driven out of business by the centralization of industries? Where do they get the capital to start new firms? Do they have to sell their labor in the market?

Production of surplus-value for its own sake, fierce competition over super-profits, the disciplining of the labor process to the whims of impersonal market forces… sound familiar?

Its not 'exchange' in the capitalist sense. Withv alue you exchaneg commodities with socialism in its lowest phase you exchange with society.

Generally in capitalism things are produced for exchange. In fuedalism a large portion of production was not for exchange but rather directly for the use of the peasants.

If the value of your labour is calculated at all, and that value correlates to your access to goods, then there is exchange value, no matter what semantic tricks you pull.

its the difference between buying constantly from one single firm or buying from a variety of firms. I agree neither is communism, but feasibly i don't see capture of the state in the industrial economies at the forefront of global capitalist countries as an achievable way to get rid of the owning class, and furthermore it has never been achieved in history, waging a civil war is also not real socialism, its a tool, just like co-ops are a tool for the removal of the owning classes, to bring production under the control of the workforce

Therefor you will have a better understanding if you drop the insular prescriptivism of the that's not real socialism line, which isn't about what something is, but about how it should be judged.

I see, people investing the product of their labour means they don't get it in full, which means communism will only be possible if nothing new is ever invested…

No. Doing labor for society and taking from society is different from exchanging commodities on a market. The commodotie no longer appears as a 'value' as the voucher is just a measure of your contribution to society.

its not me that keeps saying, not real socialism though

like i said its the difference between on super monopoly controlling the market and many smaller companies controlling the market, you are still producing commodities and exchanging them for labour, its just you can't go anywhere else for whats produced, society is still producing an amount of goods that the proletariat are in competition for , i would say that, this again, would not be capitalism proper, neither would it be communism proper, so what you would have is an intermediary stage, all i am suggesting is that there are multiple theories for an intermediary stage, non which are real communism, and none are free from critique

if you have already totalised production to the point where all goods produced are completely social, where is the need for labour tickets?

Even in a monopoly labor is indirectly social. It belongs to you until you sell it.

Your correct it still has some flaws but your "lower phase" is capitalism without bosses.

You are also forgetting this one hour of labor is not measured based on productivity.

i don't even necessarily discard labour tickets, it is even very possible that, a co-operative society adopting labour tickets could be part of its transitioning to communism, you could imagine for instance a situation where a federation of worker co-operatives paid their workers in labour tickets and came to agreements on what to produce, i just disagree that getting rid of the owner is completely without value, there are other forms of private property besides ownership of a business, interest for example, but ownership of a business is one and its a key one

an hour of labour isn't based on productivity in capitalism either

Yes it is. If I make something worth 4 hours in 1 hour in capitalism the thing is worth 4 hours. In this case you are paid 1 hour for 1 hour no matter how productive you actually were.

Getting rid of the owners would have value but in market 'socialism' you just transfered ownership to a new group of people and did nothing to lighten the contradictions of capitalism.

dude have you ever had a job? I get paid £9.30 and hour no matter how productive i am. Under capitalism right now

Yeah you get paid based on hours but the value of the goods i productivity.

that group of people being the proletariat themselves, so basically what Lenin had achieved one day after the October revolution with more direct worker input, if we are to imagine an entire society producing under co-operative management

Good point.

But if this calculation of remuneration and item prices results in a rather different allocation than it would with the old system and the same technology, how can it be true that it is at the same time identical to the standard capitalist exchange-value production?

i work an amount of hours and get paid an amount corresponding to those hours, this pay corresponds to how many commodities i can have access to

this is true with labour tickets or money , neither gives free access to all goods and services

All the coal miners owning the coal mine isn't proletarian diactatorship. If all of society owned everything then it is.

It measures your contribution in socialism and in capitalism measures the amount of value needed to substain you.

who do you think is more inclined to collaborate with each other for the benefit of the miners, miners with other miners or miner porkies with other miner porkies?

Because now capital doesn't exist and labor vouchers are only a measure of your contribution to society.

Money is a commodity, too, which is what sets it apart from an accounting tool (can be labor vouchers or whatever.) Labor vouchers can't be used to replicate and gain more capital. It's only "exchange" in the sense that you hand something over in return for another thing. What communists are concerned with is exchange value, which is something labor certificates would lack (as envisaged by Marx in the Gotha Critique.)

the allocation is inconsequential if we are talking about what constitutes real socialism, if we are considering socialism to be the abolition of the value form, and anything before it merely an incremental or intermediary stage, the fact remains that you must work an amount of hours which corresponds to an amount of goods, you must punch the clock, still, and if you wake up later hours will be deducted, and if you get sick you must rely on hand outs in other forms, the goods are not simply yours by right,

and the wage represents your contribution in capitalism, after the bosses cut

planned economy

i am aware of all this, im saying that, there is still exchange value, you still must work in order to generate value, measured in its abstract worth by the medium of labour tickets, and exchanged for goods whose value is again pegged to the labour tickets and exchanged, and you are still working for a firm, its just a megafirm, particularly if it runs along centralist (and particularly organic centralist) lines the firm becomes simply the entire "socialist" territory

This has literally nothing to do with the question you "reply" to. Wrong number?

It is true that humanity as a whole has to do productive activity for humanity to be able to consume. It is true that not every human that consumes things that contain human work has to work for it, but this exception cannot be generalized to 100 % of humanity you fucking hippie.

dude if you are going to go all "not real socialism because value wasn't abolished" on me, I am perfectly entitled to complain that I would have to lift a finger to work, value has only really truly been abolished under full automation, i thought everybody was kinda clear on that

or once we get to stage where production is so efficient that we have super abundance and work is done voluntarily because so little of it is needed, but tbh i see full or nearly full automation coming before this point

The "horror scenario" you describe is literally what Marx envisioned, though you forgot child-labour bit (don't piss your pants, the kids would just work like one day a week or so). Almost everybody would have work hours we today consider part-time. People would put a lot of effort into improving work conditions and reducing the most awful work (there is little incentive to do this today, since the work hours in the worst jobs are too cheap and directing people to do awful tasks is also used as a threat to discipline people), society would consciously and systematically work on reducing the work burden and reduce it drastically (no grand idea needed, billions of utterly banal micro-ideas that people already have, but are not in the position to implement right now, will do).

…
You really have trouble following these conversations without avatars and names, don't you.

...