Capitalism (and other historic economic systems) are fundamentally about those who perform work being exploited by an...

Capitalism (and other historic economic systems) are fundamentally about those who perform work being exploited by an authoritarian power relationship with the bourgeois (or master or lord). In a socialist society, all productive forces will be subject to democratic control. But what about individuals who might be unfit to cast a vote in democratic processes? Children, the senile, the mentally ill, etc. I think many would agree that children are probably not educated enough or developed enough to make responsible decisions that the rest of society should have to deal with. A standard age of suffrage has always made sense in liberal democracy (the only question being what that age is). You wouldn't let the students decide how a school is run in kindergarten.

And if that logic is sound, then think about how it applies in worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives within a capitalist world cannot simply enfranchise everyone–that would lead to the destruction of their enterprise by outside decisions. They usually have some sort of vetting or internship process where workers stick around for a period of time until they're allowed to join the cooperative. How is democratic power to be distributed in a fully socialist society though? Will people be allowed to makes decisions across all industries equally, or will there perhaps be some sort of weighted voting system or republican delegation? Is it possible that a new form of exploitation against groups that many would agree should not be allowed to participate in certain decision-making processes can emerge (or at least never be abolished) in a fully socialist society?

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Like more or less every question like this, the answer is, it depends on the tendency.

Allowing a person to join a company is a combination of two decisions: 1. They are allowed to work with the people who are part of the company 2. They are allowed to work with the tools and machines. If we understand socialism to require that the means of production are held in common, we shouldn't pretend these two questions to be one, even though they are connected. So, to what extent should a decision of accepting a person be something by the workers at that particular workplace? If the production cost of the tools a group works with is tiny, the decision can be left to them. If a group is tiny relative to the stored-up work in the machines they set into motion, then, given that the machines aren't only owned by them, representatives of society at large should have a big role in making these decisions. These are two extremes on a spectrum, so this isn't about either one group or the other deciding alone. The management board of a workplace should be made up by people who work there (either proportional election with only people working there being allowed to vote or sortition) and representatives of society at large (sortition), and the votes of each of the two groups should be weighted in proportion to the ratio of new work / (stored-up work + natural resources), which leads to the question how to add up different types of work and natural resources in a one-dimensional way, which I don't think is an issue that will ever be entirely free of subjectivity and politics.

You put a lot of thought into this.

Maybe this thread would have gotten more attention if I posted with a gorilla.

Hahahhaha
it wouldve.

In a socialist society, it would be democratic in reference to how the government is run. Government officials would be directly answerable to the people, and would have normal pay. It would more or less be like government today except smaller and such, with socialist goals in mind.
I guess what you are asking is what would be the role of people voting towards work? I personally haven't read anything about the organization of people in that respect. I imagine it would be much like today, where businesses make products, except they would be socially owned via the state.
I think the individual workplaces would be "combined" under an industry, with more division as need, and it would be democratic. They would be answerable to the state and the people though, so it wouldn't be like "Tool industry has decided to stop making tools" or some ridiculous shit.
Has happened through out history, and is a planned part of the DOTP. Capitalists won't get to vote for Capitalism.

Everybody gets the social net, but votes are granted to "citizens."

This doesn't eliminate class antagonism.

Nah. It's just that sometimes you start with a particular thought that easily leads to another, leading to another. If your thought starts with a group providing a service without needing more for doing that than the people themselves, you get to the idea that when it happens they don't want to work with a person they consider incompetent and so believe having that person on the team would negatively effect their reputation, that such a case isn't something that society at large in any way needs to get involved in.

In a federalized system, not everybody votes on everything, there are local issues only the locals vote on. Would you say that by itself constitutes a class antagonism?

The left cannot afford to be fractured into a million tendencies if the Revolution is to be successful. Let us try to reach some sort of consensus through dialectical discussion.

Tfw "dialectical discussion" serves as a substitute for material conditions, and "the left" for the working-class.

The answer to this is to distill out ideas as much as possible while still maintaining the core principles that all of leftism, Marxist, anarchist, utopian, or otherwise, is based on. Move the Overton Window exclusively into the realm of the left first, then focus on particulars.

Marx's idea that the "material conditions" is the only thing that will/will necessarily prompt a revolution is retarded. A revolution will happen when enough people act to make it happen.

And people will act to make it happen when circumstances more or less compel them to, and not one second more.

No, they will act to make to happen when they become educated, and that's impossible when you're living in squalor. Yes, obviously if things were great for everyone, there would be no motivation to revolt, as revolution would be unnecessary, but if things are so shitty that you are unhealthy, and don't have time/resources to learn and organize, then revolution won't happen either.

Really? Because what's more likely to happen when they become 'educated' is that they'll accept bourgeois political economy wholesale, given that education scales with socioeconomic status.


There's far less to 'learn' than you think. No revolution is made by individuals who have a crystallized conception of what they want out of it beyond the broadest possible strokes; every revolution, to the contrary, is compelled along by events To take one example, the immediate impetus for the French Revolution was price inflation on baked goods in Paris. All of the great thinkers of the 'Enlightenment' and all the bourgeois political parties of the time attached themselves to it after the fact.

You're looking for a special role for yourself in this, as educator of the ignorant proles. I assure you, you need them far more than they need you.

I don't mean that kind of 'education', obviously. I mean, when they become class conscious, when they understand that they're being exploited.


This is exactly how revolutions get betrayed and we end up with caricatures of communism like in the USSR.


Please, we should educate each other through dialectical discussion, and reading/watching/listening to media.

I have a challenge for you: go through the collected works of Marx and Engels - you'll find them on the Marxist Internet Archive - and look for the phrase "class consciousness" in it. Go on, look for it.

You won't find it. Neither they nor any of the revolutionaries at the time used it, or even really any approximation of anything like the concept.


To the contrary, Lenin thought along the same lines as you.


marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

Marx, however, disagreed. He believed that intellectuals follow the workers, not visa-versa.


marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm


Sure. But don't shit yourself into believing you're doing anything but jerking yourself off.

So what, it's a useful term. They're philosophers/scientists/economists, not prophets.


OK, but that doesn't mean the bolsheviks actually were, or that they were educated in the right way, that they had the right theory.


I think that the workers themselves can become "intellectuals", as well as others who feel compelled to join the cause.

Its usefulness is extremely limited, because it comes pre-packaged with an idealist, utterly anti-materialist conceit: that ideas change reality, and that revolutions are worked out in detail long in advance. The history of actually exist [bourgeois] revolutions, on the other hand, shows them to be supremely messy affairs, driven by necessity. All the consciousness-raising groups and struggle sessions in the world will make not one iota of difference in the timing of the final Revolution.


But the necessity of an educated 'vanguard', abstracted from the working-class and set apart from it, was part-and-parcel of their theory, and of yours.


Sure. In all cases some people will be better informed than others, more perceptive than others, etc., and will probably play a more central role in events than others. This is a far cry, however, from imagining Revolution as an idea to be thought up and then imposed on reality in advance, so that the post-revolutionary world subsequently assumes the shape of whoever happened to imagine it first.

Exposure to ideas change minds, which changes actions, which change reality.


What? The American and French revolutions weren't necessary, especially the American revolution, which was in fact driven by extremely idealist notions.


No, I'm saying that a revolution will only be successful if the vast majority of people are properly educated. I reject vanguardism, as I feel the vanguard will just become a new aristocracy post-revolution, as we saw in the USSR.

This [almost] never actually happens. What happens instead is that individuals find themselves in changed circumstances, and their ideas follow suit.


The American Revolution was driven by the need of Northern industrialists and Southern planters to separate economically from the British. In the case of the North it was a matter of taxation; the South was anxious about growing abolitionist sentiment in the United Kingdom. As for the French Revolution, I've already dealt with this.


So tell me, did the vast majority of sans-culottes understand the principles of double-entry bookkeeping and the market economy? Were the wives of the Women's March On Versaille well-versed in the principle of comparative advantage?

How was this a "need"?


No, and those weren't successful communist revolutions either, now ere they?

Simply that Northern industrialists felt themselves overtaxed by the Crown, and the entire Southern plantation economy was under threat by growing English abolitionist sentiment.


No, but they're instructive in telling us what the general conditions for a social revolution are. In neither case was it necessary for those involved to have any kind of theoretical understanding of the order they were in the process of creating.

Right, and they felt this way because of ideas that were spreading around the colonies, including on tracts like "common sense" by Thomas Paine.


"Sentiment", ey? You mean like, ideas? Sounds like those ideas had a material effect, huh?


Yes, things need to be shitty for people to be motivated to revolt, but in order for the revolution to be "successful" as in actually bring an end to the shitty situation in a lasting way, there must be sound theory among the revolutionaries.

To the contrary: 'Common Sense' reflected the changed situation of Northern industrialists. It was an expression of an -already existing- interest translated into an idea.

Sounds instead like the English had opened up new markets to cotton imports from India and were beginning to take a second look at the costly African slave trade.


Sure. And you can begin by self-criticizing your own theory, which has no relation at all with the actual world.

There is clearly a two-way, dynamic relationship between ideas and conditions. They both effect each other.

Sure, and I've not denied it. My only point is that conditions are the prime mover behind ideas, and that ideas are completely reactionary in the sense that they are a response to changing conditions.

Yes, you just did.

No, I didn't. Read it again.

Ideas inform actions, which change the conditions, don't you agree?

But conditions inform -ideas'.

If, for example, I work as a civil rights lawyer, I might win a court case that materially improves the lives of ethnic minorities in a certain country. However, the ideas which motivated my actions are informed by the intolerable conditions I first found myself in. In this case, the subsequent state of things might be directly the product of my action, but are indirectly the antithesis of the former conditions.

Yes, so it goes both ways.

notmycomrade.jpg


That is EXACTLY left tradition for several hundred years.

It's also directly demanded by all three major schools of the left - A, C, S.

Why don't you fuck off back to Holla Forums with your "I know, let's rewrite our race-and-IQ theories under modern trendyliberal idpol" crap, perhaps?

No gods, no masters…

lolwut Do tell me an instance of kindergarten letting toddlers decide how to run the school.