Market Socialists, explain this to me

Well I mean we have the same problem with investors today. Some institutional investors press for more and more buybacks from their corporations, so much so that its more than their total profits, and more than they put towards both R&D and their own workers.

So, yes, this will occur, just as it occurs now. But, when it occurs those who do this will fail, and those who are more careful with wages and investing in their company will make more money in the long term. And certainly there will be legislation to encourage the latter as well. Not to mention, that with the state owning stock in many of the large corporations, they can pressure them to reinvest more by forcing them to buy back their stock if they are dissatisfied. Credit ratings agencies will also probably down grade firms that are on the brink and raising worker wages absurdly, making the cost of credit higher.

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at least give me one reason markets are superior over planning

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They're not superior or inferior, they're either inevitable or not. As long as goods are scarce, the play of supply and demand will chime in under almost any restriction that doesn't downright translate into a ban of spontaneous economic activities.

If there are certain industries already developed and with the means to provide goods for the general population, some rationalized economic system wouldn't hurt. Otherwise, competition will plays its game in one sphere or another. It's better that it happens in the market than through the manipulation and corruption of the state.

any advantage a market brings, planning can do the same or better. when will you revisionist, crypto-capitalist faggots fuck off

that was precisely the problem with post-split Yugoslavia.

Without firm autonomy you'll inevitably run into supply problems, not to mention how if something goes wrong under a planned economy all the blame gets put on the government.

Basically what these guys said, and also you would have more because profits wouldn't be sunk into ceo bonuses/salaries/expenses/embezzlement.

Also workers could invest in things that make their jobs and lives easier rather than just what's going to turn a profit. Which in the end would turn a profit because happy workers are more productive

You do as well in market socialism

But you just cover it up by upping the price

Probably an ML

probably a trot. Splitter!

You misunderstand my point, yes centrally planned firms are just as allocatively efficient as firms in a market, the problem is that without autonomy it becomes harder to provide for items that are less thought about, but still necessary to live comfortably. A government planner may not anticipate the need for the spare parts of a refrigerator, but a firm, when it notices there's a market waiting, can jump in.

Not to mention, market economies like the US have already figured out how to produce enough bread for everyone, we just subsidize the market, regulate how much can be planted in a certain area, and have the state buy whatever's left over. There's no need to reinvent the wheel unless we're having a real problem. And, in agriculture for example, the real problem is low wages for workers, something that can easily be solved if they just owned a part of the company.

Honest question: How would one handle unemployment in market socialism? Why would the workers in factory A let me work in their factory? Why would they share their profits/ trade secrets etc.?

Two ways, subsidized employment and having the state act as an employer of last resort.

I prefer ML to trot. Just it's usually Mls who talk about revionism which is ironic

That is assuming that a centrally planned system would be completely controlled by a planning board alone, which is ridiculous. An actual centrally planned system would be highly computerized with the ability to add new products as desired by society, by members of society.

Nice idealism, but independent farmers also get shit wages because the margins for profit is just really teeny tiny.

Because if they didn't, the company would go out of business and be replaced by a competitor?

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So… state capitalism with (relatively speaking) a small state?

fugged up, I meant you

marxist market syndicalism is best tbh

But to do all that you'd need to invest into a massive electronic infrastructure and a massive amount of computing power. Not to mention the logistical nightmare of getting all the firms in a given country to integrate into it, or the potential for bureaucratic mismanagement/corruption, stagnation of innovation in production, and the potential for disaster if a central part of the system fails.

Like I said, there's no need to reinvent the wheel, doing so will just lead to more problems than solutions.

Yes, in part thanks to the way capital accumulates in ordinary capitalism. But in market socialism we will also have socialized capital, where the state will have a sovereign wealth fund of stocks in the largest firms in the country, the dividends and profits of which it will split between itself and the citizens at large. With this, people who run smaller firms can still live comfortably or invest more into their firm so it can grow and become more profitable. But since many people in agriculture are working for big corporations, owning a part of that corporation will greatly increase their income.

I wouldn't really call it state capitalism because the main mode of production is done through cooperatives, where workers own their own firm, and socialized capital means everyone has some level of control of their country's industry and reaps some benefit. If you are looking for market socialism without a state, that would be mutualism.

bump

They usually want a job that will be there for a long time, and they probably want their community to have stable jobs.
There really isn't a way of fucking the cooperative over for a huge one-shot profit they can live on for a long time.

ITT: We do so serious theory about the logistics of self-exploitation

Please, read Vanek.

I mean honestly, do none Market Socialists have ANY reason not to be anymore?

Socialism of the XXI:st century will prevail!

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There are two reasons this won't happen:

1. People are not stupid. If you want to make more money off of a business, the answer is to expand the business. While businesses may not expand and grow as quickly as they did under a purely capitalist system(one of the reasons it has not been adopted en masse by corporations), they will still grow, and they will grow in a more humane way that represents the people who live and work at the business.

2. There is a limit to the amount of money that makes a person happy. After you hit ~$50,000, you get diminishing returns. Eventually, the vast majority of the workers within a business will be satisfied, and will decide that it would be better for their wages to expand the business to allow for long term wage growth, as they have no immediate need for a raise.

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capital is the separation of producers from their conditions of production

there is no such thing as socialized capital

Most people grew up being taught that capital is everything needed for the process of producing commodities, hell even Marx used it that way sometimes. In the financial world, stocks and bonds and such are refereed to as capital.

What I mean when I refer to socialized capital is really socialized ownership, whereby the state exchanges stocks for money so the stocks can be placed in a fund that is split between the state and the citizens.

pick one

One of these is not like the other

Literally nobody cares. We're trying to figure out how to make an economy work with socialized ownership. If your ideology doesn't create more freedom and wealth than capitalism people aren't going to be interested

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there is no such thing as socialized ownership

You aren't going to get an economy to "work". Economy must be destroyed and replaced with real human community.

Ideologies don't create anything
capitalism isn't an ideology, it is a mode of production

I meant the political economy your ideology promotes you autist

Good luck getting people on board with that shit

I don't promote a political economy, I promote critique of it

kek

Nobody is going to take you seriously unless you propose a serious alternative to capitalism. And rightly so.

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are you just fucking with the other user or are you some kind of retard?

The idea that communism is a serious alternative is retarded?

1. That may create a race-to-the-bottom competition where everybody starts lowering their own wages in order to reinvest and stay in the market.

2. Either that or the workers of the winning firm will try to compete others out of the market, in order to secure more profits for more wages and reinvestment. In order tostay afloat, competition will start acting like in 1.

Not if its the special just trust me idiot, i will bring socialism haha tier socialism that leninists present.

Think of it like socially necessary labor time, eventually you'll reach an aggregate point where people are unwilling to pay themselves any less for the work they're doing. Not to mention that if indeed their work is increasing the value of the firm once they leave or retire, they will be able to sell that value back to the firm or the state in the form of their stock in the company. Also, there's no reason there wouldn't be a minimum wage in market socialism for that very reason.

Also keep in mind that this process will usually reveal on the distribution end with lower prices, so when a race-to-the-bottom occurs the cost of living/inflation will go down along with wages.

What is appealing about market socialism, explain the appeal. Because I don't see it at all. It's useless. It's trash.

You get greater control over your workplace, and your government (considering the influence of the bourgeoisie is now dispersed). A market socialist economy is also more inclined to growth than a capitalist economy, less likely to encounter crisis, and more equal.

Not to mention, its easier to get people on board with, easier to implement than most socialist systems, and imo just as likely if not more to transition to FALC than other socialist systems.

How is a market giving you "more control", it's setting up another type of control and limitation.

I'm seeing the word "liberalism" screaming at my face.

You'll never get people on board with a form of state socialism that cannot be co-opted faster than fucking Greece. In the current day, it is impossible.

FUUUUUUUCK MY DICK

It's basically liberals realizing how shit capitalism is. I mean, I don't mind it as something to be used to progress towards communism, but it isn't the goal.

More control relative to capitalism, since in market socialist co-ops you can vote on the decisions a firm makes, as well as petition for changes in big industry.

Normal people don't want to live in a world with less material wealth. Granted, consumerism isn't a great outlet for that, but I believe that it would be channeled into more productive outlets when the public has a greater say.

My strategy was a form of entryism, whereby, in the US, after taking control of the executive branch use the intelligence services to track capitalist's finances, wait for a crisis, and then liquidate anyone who tries to sell their stocks and leave. From there the government would buy up the remaining stocks of big companies while requiring workers to be issued a controlling stake of every firm. The government at this point should already have a sovereign wealth fund that splits the proceeds of this ownership between itself and the citizenry. The capitalists who resist will be arrested and charged with economic terrorism, or tax evasion and other laws will be passed to smooth the process.

Well of course it isn't the goal, but it's also the only next logical step.

Putting lipstick on a pig.

The goal shouldn't be working to appeal to other people. First and foremost it should appeal to us, and the results given should attract normal people from the alternative in such a way it cannot be co-opted.

Market socialism, as described, cannot accomplish this goal, specifically in regards to co-option.

That's a fantasy.

It just takes one firm to try to take over the market in order to have a race to the bottom situation.

Workers from the 'winning' firms could give themselves a pay rise, hence more inequality

says the anfem

why

So is violent revolution in the 1st world.

When you're more liberal than me, you have some fucking issues pal.

Because you're suggesting that a state in the post cold war era could adopt socialist policy in the first place without extreme resistance and co-option.

The fact is states are going in the direct opposite of any kind of casual liberalism to appeal to socialism possibly in the future, and it doesn't look to change any time soon.

It's preposterous and impossible, it's reformism. Currently, working under a state is futile.

>So is violent revolution in the 1st world.

If you read what I said, I suggested the direct opposite. Why assume?

Well, why did that one firm dominate the market? If they just had more capital that would imply that they had a natural monopoly in their industry, since the others couldn't make a profit. In which case, a natural monopoly is the cheapest way to do it. But, for all the ancap memeing, dis-economy of scales are a thing, the larger a firm grows the more overhead it takes and the more expensive it becomes, thus driving the prices up and giving other firms an opening. And regardless, anti-trust laws exist for this reason too.

If the firm is doing so well because it has a technological advantage, it only makes sense that other firms invest until they can get the technology too as that would probably be the most efficient way to make the commodity in the first place.

If a market socialist is elected to government I think they could do it, yes.

Well it seems to me that right and left wing populism are moving against neo-liberalism right now, creating three paths, the status quo, social democracy and neo-fascism. The point is to pit these forces against each other, presenting market socialism as a compromise. Use all of their critiques against each other, call neo-liberalism unfair and unequal and the multiculturalism that comes with it as bullshit, call social democracy out using neo-classical economic criticism, how taxes will have to rise to pay for all of it, and rightly call the neo-fascism out on its bigotry, its non-solutions for economics and its identity politics. Present it as the new third way now that they've gotten tired of the old third way.

People like Wolff are already laying the intellectual ground work for it, and I think we're just one popular figure away from taking academia and the public by storm.

what did you suggest?

Better location, supplies, marketing, workers eager to work longer hours….

So are economies of scale. And it has been that way for the past 150 years.

Isn't the point of market socialism to curb bureaucracy? Looks like liberalism on steroids.

If they aren't driven out of the market, until then…

It won't work simply because of the forces currently working against the practice in the first place in any kind of state.

Putting market in the name might fool liberals, but the majority of people don't want state socialism of any kind and you will not be able to convince them otherwise. On top of the world working to slowly destroy anything positive about it.

I doubt it. I really don't think, currently, this is possible without being co-opted.

Well isn't that the point of competition, if you work harder and do better, you get rewarded?

Yeah, and small businesses still exist. Probably even in market socialism more so considering more people will have more money because of socialized ownership and owning a stake in the firm they work at.

Well yeah, there'd be about as much bureaucracy as today, but still less than in a Leninist country.

That doesn't even really happen in modern capitalism. And even if they were, since the workers own this big firm, and they'll still need more workers to dominate a market, the wealth is still spread to a lot of people.

That's why you play politics, in order to change that.

Most people aren't anarchist. In fact, most people have a negative impression of anarchists. I have a negative impression of anarchist.

It's already a subversive idea, what would they do to subvert it?

That's not much of a strategy.

Seeing as previous left economic models have failed every fucking time they were implemented (or never even managed to be implemented properly due to being co-opted) maybe something new should be tried.

Yes, and throwing your competitors under the bus in the process…

They do and are for the most part inefficient or mismanaged. If there's anything that capitalism's done right is its ability to scale things up and pool resources.

economist.com/node/21548945
lbo-news.com/2011/11/26/from-the-archives-the-small-business-myth/

Perhaps, tho David Graeber said in his book Russia has now more state employees than in Soviet times.

It happens a lot.

The wealth gap would be lower than in our present society, but there'd still a gap.

There are regulations we can impose to prevent underhanded tactics. And co-ops would probably be less inclined to get dirty than capitalist businesses since they have a democratic decision making process. Not to mention that if a business does something bad and the state owns stock in them the people can petition the state to do something about it.

Of course small businesses are inefficient, but that's the price you have to pay for local control, and experimenting with what's the most efficient and innovative.

Perhaps, but I think that says more of modern capitalism than market socialism.

Whatever the rate it happens it would be far less harmful in market socialism since the workers get all the benefits from dominating the market.

Which is acceptable considering we are not capable of FALC atm.

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Well, it's not like those two things are impotent. If regulations did nothing we would still be using unleaded gasoline, and be working 80 hours a week.

No amount of politics played can change the way the world is demanded to work.

If you read what I said, I said I'm not for the total destruction of the state immediately. I'm for finding a way for anarchists to become self sufficient first while leeching from the greater world at a whole, which would by itself attract more and more people from the difficulties of life the same way piracy does. Mostly digital in commune.

How would a market become subverted in Capital… hmm…

It is more than trying state for the millionth time.

Nice strawman meme btw.

That's what most of you look like anyways. I'm not even white.

The function of communism isn't economy. It's weening ourselves off of it. If you don't like that, perhaps communism isn't for you.

Historically that's not true.

Yeah that's gonna work out great Mahkno.

By giving the stock of the firms in the market to the workers and the state.

Yeah, because anarchism has worked out great before too.

Neither am I.

History is not as it was, and will not be for some time. The world is unified, under one goal, one thesis. That thesis is the antithesis of communism.

In this digital time, commune without state becomes easier than commune from state. You can lie to yourself this isn't the case, but it's true. No state will listen to you, no state will respect you, and agents outside of it and within it will work to corrupt everything accomplished down. Even if it lasts, it will hardly be forever. Everything can be manipulated for gain.

The only way you can get around this fact, is to refuse to work within the confines of global politics after the cold war, and work within the politics of the internet. And the politics of the internet, chose whichever is easiest for life.

Commune should be its own example. This is tremendously easily, and what the top fears the most. People taking digital theft seriously and politically.

It's not going to work today, I totally disagree. States aren't worth the trouble, and I'm tired of putting faith in liberal parties and platitudes to them. They had their chance to prove that this was viable, but it isn't. Everyone has a price. The only way to work over them is to work under their nose.

History is not as it was, and will not be for some time. The world is unified, under one goal, one thesis. That thesis is the antithesis of communism.

What kind of bullshit fortune cookie analysis is this. Yeah my left hand isn't like my right hand either.

The world is not united, they hate living under the oppression of capitalism. Capitalism only works because it's able to steal the wealth labor creates.

Your left hand has shit to do with how anyone allied to the United States functions after the cold war. You can go left enough to be liberal Europe with a state, any lefter and things start to go shit. There is not a hard limit on how far right you can go, however, and indeed, it is good for business. And the power lies with Capital. As long as Capital exists in such a way as it is now after the Cold War, reforming it is a pipe dream. It will refuse. There is no reason to engage with it, then.

When it comes to challenging capitalism they are. If they challenge capital, then they will simply be neutralized (or would never have happened), or capital will deploy its "illegal" organizations and tactics.

pic related

Politics is part of the process of the mode of production maintaining itself. Politics do have an effect, it just that they themselves, at the end of the day, are determined by the base of social relations, which in turn rests upon a certain level of development of the forces of production (which in turn is affected by the social relations [social relations determine how the forces of production are developed]). It is a relationship of mutual influence even if one is dominant. Even the base-superstructure model isn't completely adequate in addressing the overlap between the two.

That said, most of the people here are more-or-less political determinists in everything but name, so your push to the absolute other side is an understandable tactic.

Now here's where we reach the problem. The state is a consequence of class society, and as long there is a bourgeois state it means that the dictatorship of the class which personifies capital, the bourgeoisie, is intact. The state is how class society stabilizes and reproduces itself. You can't abolish class society without destroying its machinery of reproduction and turning it on its head into a tool of self-negation. The bourgeois state must be utterly smashed, and the proletarian semi-state must be created to enforce the rule of the proletariat in its process of self-destruction.

Communism is the material human community. Autarky has literally nothing to do with the movement of communism in destroying the barriers of the most divided society in history.

This is an absolute scientific fact, but it also a fact we can't be weened off it, there is no time when capitalism and communism can co-exist. There is only the revolutionary transformation of one into the other by the proletariat organized in it's dictatorship to abolish itself.

can market socialism be filtered to egalitarian capitalism?

revisionist

no, because "filtering" implies it isn't already blatantly that

It's not that I don't agree, I do. There's just not an instant way to destroy a state today. There's no revolution of armed militias, if there ever were it wouldn't be left wing. There's no fighting, there's less violence, there's generally more stability, no coups in western governments.

Things are unchanging. And while we would like this not to be this way, it simply is. There isn't anything I, nor you, can do about it. The only way is to act on establishing something independent first, and acting afterwards ever so possibly on eliminating the state.

As it stands I don't see how we can destroy the United States in any fucking capacity at the same time of establishing a new government that can work, that's a pipe dream.

The road to Communism changes as times change. The fact is we need finances in this world to get anything, anyone needs. The best way to both imply there's alternative and to show commune is better, and to suggest to the people there's money out there they deserve, is simply to steal it from the wealthy and give it to the needy, centralizing this all through the internet. Like piracy, this gradually attracts people, and grows the ire of the corporate world.

I feel somewhat vindicated that my two biggest critics are also the two biggest, most autistic shit posters on this board.

what's porky

porky=capitalist

I'm barely here

Depends what you mean, if you mean "today" as to mean in the near future, then yes. But that does not preclude the possibility of class struggle opening up in the future. When women find themselves fighting against the government even with a female president, the minority of them who aren't deceived by the "it's because the congress doesn't let her 'x'" bullshit they will come to communism. Same things goes for white workers and if there is a Trump presidency (which I doubt though). This process will continue on, maintaining a revolutionary core in the proletariat, and eventually capitalism will be forced into world war level inter-imperialist warfare to restore the rate of profit, but before that point the state will become less stable as the bourgeoisie breaks even more into internal struggles over maintaining the economy with state-led/funded production, or it paying back its debts (which is impossible, as everything the state uses at the end of the day comes from the private sector or infringements on its market[s]). The signs of the outbreak of this crisis within the capitalist class are already showing for everyone to see (Brexit and Labor party crisis [Corbyn]. S█████ and the crisis over Trump [the capitalist class really pushing for Hillary]).

If you mean "today" as meaning "from now on", then this is simply untrue, as I explain above.
Things are never unchanging, We are in a certain part of capitalism's life, and it too will come to pass, even if that might not be in the next decade.

Not at the moment, no. But as I explain above, this is not a permanent phase of capitalism.

In capitalism yes, but the communist mode of production cannot develop within capitalism. Communism isn't "financed", it is the ending of the regulation of production by value. This is necessarily a global revolution, the proletariat is a global class and can only abolish itself with resources from all over the planet. The obtaining of resources for building communism happens by expropriation, by the proletariat unified in its dictatorship, guiding itself through its party (which is not the controller of the dictatorship, btw). One of the first steps taken by the proletariat in its dictatorship must be the abolition of money to be replaced by labor vouchers.

"Financing" implies capitalist social relations, and you can't transcend capitalism by using capitalism. No state authority or "horizontal" organization can overcome this, only the world proletariat can by changing these relations themselves (smashing capital and its state, collectivizing the home [destroying gender], completely destroying bourgeois society and rebuilding society anew, ending their existence as "workers").

But this isn't the human community, you are trying not to follow capitalism's rules while staying inside capitalist social relations, this is Utopian nonsense. You will find capitalism re-asserting itself at every step. You may deny it like stalinists will deny the capitaist inner-workings of the USSR, you may complain that they were not part of the plan, or that people aren't listening to your plan, but it will happen.

Your idea that capital and its state is permanently stable is extremely mistaken.

Might I suggest a (relatively) short critique of Marcuse's position (from the Frankfurt school) who though the same thing. BTW, Marcuse himself told Mattick (the author of the critique) that he thought his critique was the "the only central criticism".

PDF is of the critique, taken from marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1972/marcuse.htm

pic related is relevant info about Mattick when he was in America (he's from the German-Dutch tradition of the Communist Left), taken from a review of a book on Mattick:
marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2016/2383

nice argument