Why aren't you a market socialist yet?

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Yeah, that's why I'm confused

It depends on what you mean by market socialism. Most of you clowns generally just want to preserve the capitalist system except with the added bonus of electing managers. The concepts of social property, democracy, and socialism are utterly alien to you.

You've been totally duped. Market socialism is not an actual current of socialist thought, it's just the name anti-communists like Tito and Deng had to use to disguise their hatred of socialism. We seriously need to purge you idiots from this board. We've suffered a lot for our tolerance of pro-capitalist elements here.

You expect us to just take your claims at face value? Socialist economies are not the guilty ones, market socialism is what destroyed communism. If we let you weenies in charge of anything again we'll have another situation like the 70's with thousands of millionaires popping up in Yugoslavia and the USSR.

As opposed to your policy, where you wish to introduce it right from the start.

It was attainable in 1860 and it's even easier now.

You people have no theory, you only exist because the socialist movement totally lost all it's self-confidence in the mid-80's. Your existence is nothing more than a pathetic capitulation to liberalism.

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I'll do so if pressed on a topic. But right now there's no need to bother as it's obvious these people are totally illiterate. You can tell how brainwashed they are by how violently they react when presented with actual socialism ITT, the very idea of replacing a market economy provokes cries of "tankie". They have no basis for their opinions, they just believe private property is irreplaceable because what they've been told their whole life. Most likely they're just some new liberals that became convinced they're socialists after browsing this dump for a month.

I'm going to drop another shill for >>>/marx/. I know there's got to be at least a few real radicals here tired of how anarchists have run yet another socialist movement into the ground. Because of them we'll no doubt have a budding Titoist minority within a few months.

Are you serious nigger?

it's just the name anti-communists like Tito and Deng
BWAHAHAHAHAHA

What the fuck am I reading?

HAHAHAAHAHA you're an idiot. Muh seekrit global market socialist conspiracy

But market socialism isn't capitalism, you fucking idiot. If you seriously think "socialism=no markets", you officially know no more than the conservatards who listen to talk radio.

Holodomors and police states tend to cause that.

E U P H O R I C

You can tell how brainwashed they are by how violently they react when presented with actual socialism ITT, the very idea of replacing a market economy provokes cries of "tankie".
Fuck off, there is literaly nothing wrong with democratic centralism if it actually solves the problem, but dogmatically rejecting markets is what causes famines and failed states.

READ A BOOK NIGGER

Oh wow, call your opponents liberals, I haven't heard that one used before by literally everyone.

>I'm going to drop another shill for >>>/marx/.
Please go back there and stay.

Oh good you're one of those people.

I relish the new opinions instead of more tankie/anarch shitflinging.

There is literally nothing in this post besides pure elitism.

You've made some pretty heavy accusations lad. Care to prove them?

Because I'm not a classcuck or controlled opposition.

Literally Holla Forums's version of calling someone a Illuminati Patriarchy shill

Guess I'll post some of my notes from "Against the Market":

Market Socialist begin by assuming the market is the most efficient means of allocating goods and services.

They ignore the fact that an economy governed by price signals is one in which market principles determine the value of all inputs and outputs within the economic process (including human labor power). Moreover, the market cannot be the regulator of economic reproduction until labour-power is commodified; it follows, therefore, that a market regulated economy is an economy based on wage-labour.

Even workers’ cooperatives producing commodities for the market will tend inevitably to ‘become their own capitalist’ - they will be driven by market competition to accumulate a growing surplus from their own labour in order to invest in new means of production which give them a fighting chance to meet the survival conditions established on the market.

Capitalist relations and imperatives are thus built into an economy regulated by commodity production and exchange, an economy in which each producing unit is under a constant pressure to accumulate at the expense of labour in order to raise levels of productivity. This is why it is not enough for workers to establish control of their places of work. As important as workers’ self-management within the enterprise may be, it cannot break free of the logic of the market unless the working class can establish democratic, planned control of the economy.

This is the gist of it, feel free to ask me stuff.

Also here's a little blurb on market socialism in Yugoslavia:

One can see some of these effects in the case of the Yugoslav economy of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Yugoslavia was that Stalinist state which most seriously tried to co-ordinate elements of workers’ participation in the firm with market regulation. And the results were entirely consistent with the analysis we have presented: inherent tendencies towards unemployment (partially relieved for a time through emigration), inflation, increasing social inequality, and concentration and centralization of capital. The Yugoslav case demonstrates that market regulation imposes its own imperatives on the firm irrespective of its structure of ownership or the degree of workers’ self-management (which in the Yugoslav case was often exaggerated by commentators). As one socialist critic rightly notes, ‘Yugoslav history suggests that self-management can be destroyed by economic conditions external to the firm, even when supported by a full panoply of intra-firm self-management laws and institutions’.

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this post reminded me of shitty OC I made and never posted

Fuck off. Market socialists (who aren't strawmen) ALLOW markets, they don't DEMAND everything be a market.

Investing in technological development is good. (shut up primmies)
This shit would happen anyways in a planned economy.

Except that's bullshit. The logic of ever accelerating competition is only present under systems with exploitation and capital accumulation (capitalism) , not every system where trading commdities is allowed.

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How comes there are so many different flavours of leftist ideologies?

Because people's make-believe fantasy societies don't always match up, which is why Superman can kick Batman's ass.

Utopianism

Because, in the transition from a capitalist to a socialist/communist society, there is a lot of question of "how we intend to make it work" and "how much of the existing societal framework is salvageable." The latter is where a lot of the problems arise, because many would seek to transform the society as a whole while hoping to change as little as possible as to how said society operates. Falling too deeply into this line of thinking results in losing sight of why the society needed to be transformed in the first place, and forgetting how the individual parts of the former system contributed to the formation of such an exploitative system.

That's not it at all, studies during cold war showed that firms in the communist bloc where economies were planned were just as efficient at allocating goods and services by conventional standards. When one country, (I think it was hungary?) started selling goods on a market but kept state control of firms, nothing improved. It's actually the autonomy of firms and the ability of individuals to spontaneously enter and exit markets that's important as this is what allows demand to be met most easily and for small devices and spare parts to be manufactured that may not be a central planners biggest priority.

What market socialism does, though, is eliminate the surplus taken by capitalist. So yes, workers in competitive markets will just reinvest their surplus to stay competitive, but doing so will raise living standards across the board and keep prices low. The problems the profit motive creates can be mitigated by socializing capital itself whereby the government invests in businesses larger than a certain threshold and becomes shareholder, especially municipalities, so that it is not just the workers that control large firms, but also society at large.

Because there are fundamental problems inherent in market economics which facilitate the perpetuation of capitalism. Even in a so-called market socialist economy, economic entities will still be governed by the rules of capital, only now they would exploit themselves rather than be subject to a dominant class which exploits them. Market socialism is only useful as a transitional stage between the capitalist and socialist modes of production. In that capacity, market socialism can be promoted by anarcho-socialists and -communists as our transitional equivalent of state capitalism per Marxism–Leninism. Just like with state capitalism, however, any long-term market socialist economy will inevitably deform and degenerate back into capitalism proper (or fascism) if the economy and greater society is not swiftly transformed into socialism proper.

Market socialism can be a stepping stone in the path to communism, but it should not be treated as the substitute thereof. I personally prefer market socialism as the transitional path over state capitalism (hence why I'm an ancom), but just as with social democrats, my alliance with social democrats is only temporary and will be terminated once they outlive their usefulness.

*but just as with social democrats, my alliance with market socialists is only temporary and will be terminated once they outlive their usefulness.

I would counter that society is insanely complicated and immediately changing everything about it is extremely dangerous. Especially since most people hate us, want to regress back to the 1700s, or are trapped in a massive system of ideology. Giving people voting power in their own workplaces is easy for people to understand, attractive, and doesn't invoke questions about human nature, rivalries with foreign cultures, or conspiracy theories about dirty jewish commies.

Of all the memes Holla Forums has come up with, this is probably the stupidest.

As it looks now capitalism is ruling pretty much the whole globe. How are you going to bring about the socialist revolution? Will it require a change of minds or a change of material conditions? Can it be done progressively or only abruptly? Can it start locally and spread out from one country or region that adopts socialism or does it require infiltration of international institutions with socialists who then change the global system from within?

/marx/ is a shameless shitposting board where a half dozen or so tankies jerk each other off and rehearse antiquated and counterrevolutionary "leftist" theory. I'm all for you promoting an exodus of tankies and other counterrevolutionaries (ML, MLM, etc.) to that board, but those unfamiliar with /marx/ shouldn't even bother checking it out unless they are in the aforementioned categories.

It will require a change of minds and material conditions, but first we need a political organization, so the first step imo is entryism into the green party which is moving to become market socialist as we speak. If we start with the US things will become much easier, we are the center for global capitalism as it stands.

Even according to the Marxian definition of exploitation, the role of worker-owner in a market socialist economy would still be exploitative. Although there is no longer a division of productive relations wherein that exploitation more clearly manifests, worker-owners nevertheless pay themselves wages and withhold the surplus so that they could expand their business. They are not being paid the full value of their labor; they are simply taking over the role of the capitalist.

Socialism is about transforming society such that the rules of capital no longer apply, which includes the dissolution of productive relations. Accomplishing the latter while failing to achieve the former renders the result still fundamentally capitalist, only the class divisions are internalized within the worker-owners who still must perform both roles rather than being an explicit characteristic of the system. This internalized division of productive relations eventually externalize, however, since the pressures of the rules of capital cause worker cooperatives to redevelop rigid undemocratic hierarchies within economic enterprises. This is because such enterprises are more efficient according to the rules of capital; only by eliminating those rules can the efficiency of cooperative economic enterprises truly be realized.

Successive global revolutions that topples the principal perpetuators of capitalism—the United States, western Europe, Japan, China, and India—or another cold war in which communism wins are the only serious options. Neither are likely to occur, however, because global warming is such an imminent and exigent threat that it must be addressed first, even if that means the implementation of green totalitarian regimes (including green fascism). Otherwise, it will be too late and we won't have a world left to transform.

We have about 30 years left, if even that, to fix global warming. After that, game over.

Exploitation is necessarily a relationship between two different people. I can't believe I have to explain this.

By that definition capitalists exploit themselves because reinvestment cuts into their profits. By that definition planned socialism is exploitative because people vote for technological investment instead of just pocketing everything.

Where the fuck are you getting this bullshit.

[vagueness]
[More vagueness]
[Sudden accusation of capitalism justified by vagueness]
A division within a single person is not a division, it is merely a person acting in his own self-interest. A person is indivisible. You're projecting class logic onto a classless society.

[Citation seriously fucking needed]

Gee whiz it's like law enforcement and regulation are impossible now. The small-mindedness here is incredible. You realize capitalism is supported by a huge network of legal hacks?

Exploitation is a power relation between two entities such that the dominant entity appropriates the unpaid labor of the subordinate entity. Those entities could manifest in material class distinctions, or they could be internalized as a conceptual antagonism within the role of worker-owner once it subsumes the role of both capitalist and worker. It is in that latter respect that worker-owner is an exploitative role.

Capitalists don't exploit themselves because the exploitation already occurs between the capitalist and the worker. Only once that explicit division of productive relations dissolves can self-exploitation occurs.

These are my personal thoughts as they have been informed by my discussions on Holla Forums and the pertinent literature I have read.

I am making a general statement about what socialism is, so of course it's going to be vague.

"The dissolution of productive relations" is just another way of saying "abolishing class".

It's fundamentally capitalist because it is still governed by the rules of capital.

When those class divisions remain latent in society because only their material manifestations are abolished while leaving the rules of the system which produces those material manifestations untouched, then class logic is fully applicable even in an ostensibly classless society. A market socialist society may be "classless" insomuch as it no longer has an explicit division of productive relations, but it nevertheless still upholds the conditions which produce those class divisions in the first place, namely the rules of capital (which are intrinsic in market economics). Any such market socialist society thus cannot remain classless indefinitely because the systemic pressures of capital will cause the redevelopment of classes.

I don't have one. These are my thoughts. Why do you disagree with them and why do you think they are incorrect.

What does law enforcement and regulation have to do with any of this? More generally, what are you trying to say here?

Yes.

No. Exploitation is not some internal attitude or mindfuckery. It is objective theft of fruits of production from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, causing poverty and struggle over resources. That's where the materialism kicks in. Your material standard of living is literally being stolen from.

More like, they don't exploit themselves because reinvestment into production isn't exploitative at all. Might as well say taxation for the purpose of constructing infrastructure is exploitative.

Feel free to spell them out for me. I don't get this magic about the market. It's just a way to split up decision-making bodies so they're not so massive and monolithic. All the magic of socialism (democracy) is still going on inside those bodies whether they're centralized or decentralized. I am highly suspicious of representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy and I'm skeptical of the feasibility of direct democracy at the scale of the entire world economy so market socialism is a good compromise.

The remarkable longevity and stability of worker coops.

I'm saying that market socialism can be maintained through appropriate legislation and legal enforcement of contracts.

wew lad

I understand that, but the same is occurring with worker-owners in a "market socialist" society because the rules of capital still apply, only it is self-applied.

I do consider taxation to be exploitative, which is why I oppose it.

The market is simply a distributive mechanism whereby resources are allocated according to certain principles inherent in market economics. Those principles are the rules of capital, such as capital accumulation and consolidation. These rules of capital entail certain traits to manifest in the social relations produced by that system, such as alienation or the commodification of labor and capital goods.

A socialist or communist society can be decentralized while still operating in accordance with the socialist mode of production; market economics are neither necessary for decentralization, nor does it even ensure decentralization since market economics necessarily entails a gradual centralization of economic power through capital accumulation and consolidation.

I am categorically against so-called "representative democracy", or psephocracy, because it is fundamentally undemocratic and upholds a political hierarchy which can project itself onto the economy. That is why I promote direct democracy and delegative democracy. Direct democracy is entirely possible, and already partially implemented in China and some other countries, as facilitated by technology. With the advent of the Internet, we can now literally hold global referenda and votes so long as we have the technological infrastructure to support it and checks to prevent voting fraud.

Market socialism doesn't actually provide a compromise whatsoever with respect to how politics are run, since market socialism is a strictly economic system. Only if market socialism is paired with a compatible political apparatus, such as delegative or council democracy, can it have any semblance of political democracy. Even then, however, the rules of capital and other intrinsic problems of market economics will inevitably corrupt the political establishment and render it an organ of facilitating capital accumulation and consolidation.

When scaling microeconomics mechanics to macroeconomic systems, certain "magic" also happens as a result of increasing complexity and the development of social relations. If we don't address those issues, as well, transforming the workplace is only a temporary reform that will inevitably be reversed due to macroeconomic pressures.

Worker cooperatives have also yet to achieve the height of financial success and domination as capitalist corporations do. I contend that this is because the principles which inform worker cooperatives conflict with the rules of capital and thus limits the success that worker cooperatives can achieve.

That is exactly how market capitalism works, and as you can see, the rules of capital and principles of market economics causes that legislation and legal enforcement to be hampered, repealed, and eventually co-opted to serve the interests of those with the greatest economic power. By failing to change the market mechanics of the economy, you are failing to break out of capitalism and into a socialist mode of production.

This is ironic, because historically tankies are responsible for the most brutal forms of state capitalism ever existed.

But you would totally be ok with socialists building infrastructure instead of giving you more consumer trash even though they're basically doing the same shit.

Those rules are based upon a certain conception of private property. If society is organized around different conceptions of what is legitimately considered property, they collapse. Market socialism has nothing resembling capitalist definitions of private property.

It creates decentralization where it is most efficient through market competition and centralization where it is more efficient through monopolies-cum-central-organs.

I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking about organizations of production. A corrupt representative who controls how your food supply is produced is just as dangerous as a corrupt representative who controls your freedom of speech.

yes

I like this paranoia about capitalist features being the inherent state of the market universe. It's like the mirror image inversion of lolberts screaming anything not lassiez-faire capitalism will inevitably devolve into USSR gulags.

Maybe because they're tiny and not well-known and business founders with a good idea would be crazy to treat their workers fairly instead of getting filthy rich.

ebin.

Yeah man such barbaric concentrations of capital! I worked overtime last weekend and got 20% more production done and now I have enough dough to buy a new computer! The government's legitimacy is getting threatened already!

I'd like to ask you a question to feel out your reasoning. You make 10 chairs in your ideal society. What do you do with them?

But I am.

you're stupid

rude

This sort of slipping in anti-Marxism with anti-Tankism is particularly disturbing and distressing.

Haha oh wow, so qualitative statements which require theory and or philosophy for their interpretation are vagueness! Indeed.

already am

I thought we didn't like social democrats here?

We about to do it comrades

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Dogmatically accepting markets in spite of the immense damage they've wrecked on humanity is what's doomed this species to self-enslavement for thousands of years. Even if we accept that socialist planning is to blame for all the famines in former ML states (I don't) the point is irrelevant because, in case you haven't noticed, those were agrarian societies. Pro-tip: planned economies don't have a monopoly over famines in pre-industrial countries. Though you seem to think if we question the logic of the market it will use it's powers to starve us lesser beings all to death so reasoning with you seems fruitless.

It does. When a part of society monopolizes the use of a firm to be used against the rest you can call that whatever you like but it still behaves as private property. There are no social property relations in a society with exchanges in ownership of the means of production.

No it doesn't, do you really think capitalists waste all their surplus on luxuries? Most of it goes towards maintaining the firm in the face of needless competition, and that's where it will continue to go under wage-socialism.

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They're vague because they're weasel words that don't refer to anything in particular.

Nice meme

Nigga learn to read. I said use markets WHEN they are useful. Quit strawmanning me as an ideologue.

The only applicable criticism here is duplication of effort. The plurality of competing firms will exist so long as consumers choose different products. If one firm offers a superior solution, they begin to dominate the market. If not, they get replaced. Monopolies in market socialism are not nearly as dangerous in market socialism as they are in capitalism.

kek

K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme.

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