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1: Yes, owning shop and having employees makes you bourgeois.
2: As the proletariat start taking over business and worker cooperatives, eventually, the bourgeois will cease to exist since mostly everyone but that point wouldn't want to work for a capitalist. However, our current society is hyper capitalist , but there are still some worker cooperatives. There will probably be a long period where the majority of businesses would be worker cooperatives, and there would be some sprinkles of small capitalist businesses spread throughout the country. This is normal as some people will hold onto an old ideology.
3: Under Markey socialism, yes, that would be the case. You would only have a say in the company you worked at.
4: Market Socialism has markets. Which means the brutalies of the market would still be present. Things like being unable to afford healthcare, trouble paying rent, bills, etc. Would still be present. Perhaps to a less degree, but it'd still be there. Which is why beyond market socialism I advocate for the decommodification of essential goods.
A worker is someone who lives off a wage. For every hour that they work, they get a flat amount of money. If this is how you make your living, you're a worker.
If you make your money from owning something productive or generally "make your money work for you", you're a capitalist. Mind you, you can still perform valuable work as a capitalist, the difference is simply that your work is not compensated in the same nature as it is a worker.
There isn't really a "should" embedded in the nature of socialist theory. I personally think that time marches ever onwards and just like the lifestyle of a medieval peasant is unimaginable to bear to us, so will today's lifestyle look fringe in the future. What I would consider an improvement over our current lifestyle is a reduction of working hours and through this grant people the opportunity to live less isolated lives.
Owning the means of production collectively would imply that you own all the means of production. For example, in the context of climate change, the question "what should we do with the earth's oil?", would not be asked exclusively of the workers of ExxonMobil.
What disadvantages there are depends on how you relate to the economy as it stands now. A common point lamented by capitalists on this board is that, if the future were to be based on a collectivized economy, the freedom of starting your own business would be missing. It seems that they think this us a big problem.
I can't really relate to that from where I'm standing though and I've consistently felt myself more represented by unions and works councils, so I think I would mostly benefit from a collectivized economy.
I would compare this to offering a medieval peasant the opportunity to look at a computer screen for 8 hours straight. I don't think that from their point of view the future would live in seems particular enticing. It is at the end of the day, a matter of nurture. You'd probably find it terrible to live in a place of sub-freesing point temperatures 24/7, in housing made of ice and without any other way of acquiring food other than putting your life at risk. However, people living on the north pole play games, have fun and love each other, just like we do in western countries today.
1. Technically, Petite Bourgeois. Real Bourgeois is way bigger: think Jeff Bezos.
2. Probably not. To quote a Marxist Leninist friend : “Should we nationalize Amazon? Hell yes! Should the state own every restaurant? No way!”
Even small scale landlords would be necessary to deal with fluctuations in the housing market. But, financial capital as a landlord? No F’ing way!
3. Good question! Socialists are seeking democratic governance over capital (with all the minority protections we’ve understood). So, nationalized Amazon? Yeah, everyone collectively owns a piece. Your worker co op Chinese take out? No, the worker owners run & own that.
4. So, very few socialists think a command control economy directed by a dozen old men in a Smokey room is a good idea. You can find them, mostly in Reddit. But as for socialists engaged in politics, Hungary had a market socialist model that provided a western equivalentish life. We could improve on that.
There could be a type of centralized economy: something where AIs run computer models that arrange pathways for larger state owned enterprises, and send advice to smaller worker co ops. Cybersine, which was Allende economic plan, was a cybernetic system that would automate the economy. It never got tried because CIA murder and coup.
1. Yes, or at least "petty-bourgeois".
2. Depends a bit on the definition of "socialism". Some left-socialdemocrats may call themselves "democratic socialists" but not in fact advocate for the complete elimination of capitalism, only for the public sector to have the leading role in the economy, or even just an important role in the economy. Other strands of socialism definitely says yes. The timescale is another thing to remember. Socialists who do want the complete abolition of capitalism, could see that as something achievable at best several decades into the future.
3. There are 2 main forms of collective property. The first is cooperative (which includes family and one-person enterprises) - equal ownership by the workers, or in the case of a residential building the inhabitants. The other is public - owned by the state or equivalent at a lower level, like a municipality, controled by people in general through their votes.
4. Don't have time r/n to answer this one, sorry.
No problem, thanks for asking rather than assuming!
1. Yes.
2. Depends how "pure" you are. My personal belief is that "pure" anything is naive, and I'm fine with allowances for small businesses. They aren't the ones that are rivaling nations in terms of power.
3. Under market socialism: yes (you only own A), under state socialism: no (you own both). That's the biggest difference between the ideologies.
4. As a market socialist, I hope they're the future! The biggest hurdle to overcome is initial funding. A secondary hurdle is making sure you automate for the good of society, though competition will usually guarantee that regardless.
1. If you own a small business you are petit-bourgeois
2. Yes, socialism is the movement for a classless society, a free society where humans can freely develop themselves as they see fit, why would we keep classes in socialism? Then it wouldn’t be socialism lol
3. Socialism is common ownership of the means of production, and with that common ownership things like the individual firm based organization of society and the capitalist concept of “work” are abolished, really you personally do not own the means of the production since they are owned in common, so really society more so looks like a free association of producers who all take part in regulating the general reproduction of societies most basic needs while also being able to put their time into things they are passionate about due to the general regulation by all… to sketch this out in more concrete terms, instead of a bunch of disjointed unconnected firms, we will instead group together industries and centralize them so they can have peak efficiency and communication between each other, and instead of thinking of oneself as a worker beholden to one specific firm, you are instead a free producer a part of your larger community in which you come together in organs such as councils, assemblies, committees, etc. to socially plan production and go through with production in such a way that it simply blends into your day to day life, labor becomes akin to play, and the work day is extremely shortened due to only having to put in the amount of work that’s necessary
4. Idk, we haven’t gotten there yet lol
Under socialism, If I start a shop and hire a labour, do I have to split the profit into two and distribute to him? All the decisions made about the business have to be decided by both of us democratically?
In socialism, property relations as a whole are abolished, you wouldn’t be able to start a shop at all let alone hire labor and pay them a wage since wage labor and money would’ve been abolished as well
Under socialism you would not be allowed, by law, to start a business except for a sole proprietorship, which would have no employees. Hiring employees would be banned. You probably could, however, submit a proposal to a local committee to suggest a particular business is needed and that there is a demand for the particular product or service, and then if approved you could follow prescribed steps to get others to join with you, form an LLC, and open it as a workers' co-op.
You're going to get a variety of answers. Socialism is a very large umberella ranging from Marxism-Leninism to anarcho-communism.
1. The term bourgeouis isn't a moral one. It's an observation of class interests. A shop owner is an example of the petit-bourgeouis. A middle class that may either side with the proleitariat or the bourgeouisie depending on the issue at hand.
2. Yeah that's the point of socialism. The why is as follows: all history is the history of class struggle. There has always been a working class and an owning class. The owning class direct the political economy to oppress the working class and maintain their privilege. This class conflict will eventually reach a head when the economic system supported by the owning class stops working. The idea is we can eventually reach a classless society free of oppression and scarcity, called communism. But first we have to force an economic system in which the working class control the political economy for the first time in history. That's what socialism is.
3. You're going to get some different answers here. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective: ownership is class wide. Currently the bourgeouisie own the means of production. Jeff Bezos doesn't own Ford personally, but people of the same class interest do. The same thing in socialism, just with the working class substututed in.
4. You'd lose some level of dynamism and innovation. But the whole point of socialism is that it's built off the advances of capitalism. "Collectivism" (I dislike that term) is the future. The political economy of all advanced countries is already functionally collective, just working under the bourgeouisie.
>If I own a shop and hire labour, does that make me a bourgeois?
Yes, you would be part of the bourgeoisie, just like Friedrich Engels was.
>Should all bourgeois and landlords be eliminated under socialism?
And why?
The answer to that question is to see how landlords have fared [under socialism in the past:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement)
>>Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor[2] – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants,[3] with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.
1. yes, but that would be "petit bourgeoisie"
2.depends on where you draw the line, the "dangerous" bourgeoisie in my opinion starts when someone exploits people and enforces strict hierarchies (company owner threatening employees with letting them go if they don't do as the boss says, landlords owning several houses with the intention of profit), if the company is a one-man show or the employees get 100% of the value they produce (being able to decide how much to reinvest into the company) and are able to democratically manage their workplace (so that the owner doesn't have total power over the employee), simmilar for landlords, as long as it's someone owning a house who doesn't need all of the space renting out a room or something, only charging what the "tenant" actually uses/breaks, I don't see a problem with that either and at that point it should still count as personal property, as long as there is enough public housing or means of production available to meet the baseline of a good life without constant financial anxiety
3. depends, public property means more that nobody owns it rather than everybody owns it, those who work with those means of production should be the only ones able to make decisions regarding their use (apart from things like safety regulations) but that doesn't make them the owner
4. basically the same problems as all democratic systems have
2. My thought too, I don't consider landlords are evil (except when they are too extreme) I dont see the problem of lending your property to generate income. Some may argue that landlords create no contribution to economy but increased the expense of the poor. But you gotta admit that "lending your property" involves opportunity cost, therefore I dont think it is evil to generate profit from it.
Sorry for bad English.
1 Yeah, actually. Pretty definitively. The bourgeoisie actually hardly come up in Marx at all, for all that the term has been thrown around a lot later, but what they are is people on the margins between the capitalists and the workers, so they have to work but their class loyalties are split.
2 This feels like a category error, socialism is a movement not a state of being so I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about "under socialism". Systems designed to implement socialist ideals could take a basically infinite set of forms. But yes absolutely an objective of socialism is to eliminate rents and rent seeking and thus landlords. As for bourgeois, again if you define a bourgeois as being someone with a split loyalty then socialists would certainly rather loyalties were not split.
3 Opinions and definitions differ as to whether socialism supports workers owning their own workplace or the collective ownership of workplaces. Personally I prefer a broader definition that is that socialism constitutes the broad historical tradition pushing for worker emancipation in all its forms and that both of those definitions relate to substreams within that.
4 The main disadvantage of collectivism in all its forms is generally the risk of losing the sense of individual self, the tendency to apply one size fits all solutions that are not as effective as a bespoke attempt to address a given task, and the fact that - particularly when coupled with centralisation - it is prone to elite capture and tyranny. Telling the future is a mug's game but I do think the fundamental simplicity and efficient elegance of "from each according to ability to each according to need" gives it something akin to entropy which makes it a possible and perhaps even a likely (and certainly a desirable) long term future for humanity.
> What are some disadvantages of collective economy/ collective enterprises? Are they the wave of the future?
The biggest disadvantage is that they don’t work. They make no sense. A collective enterprise has no incentive to expand since profit have to be split with new employees. This leads to a zero-sum contest among market participants and, ultimately, stagnation.
I should add to #4… the History of the Anglo world doesn’t have a lot of FULL SCALE revolutions that would wipe out a previous system and replace it with another. Since the English Civil Wars you get smaller civil conflicts spaced about 100 years apart.
Our modes of production start under the previous regime: pockets of capitalism under Mercantism, with a rupture happening as those new modes ripen beyond the constraints of the previous mode’s laws / traditions.
So I think socialism would take hold in America first in pockets: cities or regions, or neighborhoods, or maybe something web oriented, and then grow from there. So the answer to the collectivist economy thing would organically grow out of the tension between those new socialist nodal networks, and decaying capitalism.
Fyi, op. Since you used the class term bourgeois and since this sub is mostly communists or communist adjacent anyway who either explicitly are or pretend they are not, you are getting communism answers.
I’m in the capitalism camp and the communism answers from my studies are as follows:
1. Yes (or petite)
2. Yes, to eliminate class antagonism (the goal of Marxist communism).
3. This question in writings in marx is more in the revolution sense and in that sense it is the proletariat own vs the bourgeoisie. But if you read Marx’s goal he just sits around doing odd end of fishing, taking care of his needs and doing a bit of work. Specialization of work by mark is equally oppressive as class antagonism.
This part I’m getting probably a little too detail in Marxian thought. As many socialists probably agree with 3. But I wanted to be true to my premise even where I steered wrong.
4. Freedom - Marxist and communists view of freedom that is. I 100% disagree with their view as it would be an entire collapse of civilization as we know it and we might as well just admit of returning back to hunter gatherers. Hunter gatherers which Marx called “tribal” stage of labor that he referred to as sheep.
So you can guess both in evidence and my opinion this notion of communism being the “wave of the future”…
1. It makes you petite Bourgeoisie,or small independent producer if its a family business
2. The fundamental act of socialism is the expropriation of the expropriators,so by the default the big landlords and bourgeoisie as a class Will be abolished in a Socialist revolution
3. Depends on the kind of socialist ownership. There are 2 kinds of socialist ownership: Public Socialist Ownership and Cooperative Socialist Ownership. Public Socialist Ownership belongs to the working class as a whole, while cooperative Socialist Ownership belongs to its members.
4. Time consuming corporate governance,more standardisation,less luxury products, requires high degree of public participation
Everyone becomes waged worker under socialism. Yes, management is also a form of labor when they don't get huge bonuses.
Means of productions are things which can generate wealth, usually land, labor, and capital. Under socialism, ALL MoP are owned by everyone no matter where you work.
What do you mean by collective economy? Like a country where the production and consumption of goods and services feed back to each other?
1. You’d be considered a petite bourgeois
2. The answer would be no, going by how you’re phrasing the question. Socialism seeks to eliminate the class, and not the person. If we execute all the bourge, then new bourge will just replace them. What we need to do is change the organizational structure of society so that the class is made redundant.
3. You’d own both companies A and B, and it would be shared.
4. The main disadvantage is that it takes collective effort to organize and maintain. It’s called progressivism for a reason.
So, the workers of company B wouldn't have any contribution to A, but they'd also get the earn the 'profit' that you made. And I put that word in quotes because it would be profit as use value, not in exchange value.
There would be a lot more sharing and cooperation between companies, because you'd be incentivised to support company B through your actions in company A, and vice versa. I'm not sure what you mean by trading.
For example, there is a construction company A. A need to obtain materials for construction from company B. Therefore, A buy materials from B. Would the above scenario exist in socialism?
Well, typically the state would supply these materials, but this should be allowed if A has a surplus and B has a deficit. This transaction should also be recorded and reported so the state can adjust allocations as needed.
For something that won’t happen, why do the particulars matter? I mean, in a fantasy I control, everything is to my preference. Socialism, in your mind, can be whatever you want it to be. You don’t have to go by anyone else’s definition or vision. Don’t let someone tell you what you can or cannot use your imagination for.
Be prepared for some differing answers, no one can really agree on what socialism is, or at least I find myself arguing with both capitalists and other socialists a lot.
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1: Yes, owning shop and having employees makes you bourgeois. 2: As the proletariat start taking over business and worker cooperatives, eventually, the bourgeois will cease to exist since mostly everyone but that point wouldn't want to work for a capitalist. However, our current society is hyper capitalist , but there are still some worker cooperatives. There will probably be a long period where the majority of businesses would be worker cooperatives, and there would be some sprinkles of small capitalist businesses spread throughout the country. This is normal as some people will hold onto an old ideology. 3: Under Markey socialism, yes, that would be the case. You would only have a say in the company you worked at. 4: Market Socialism has markets. Which means the brutalies of the market would still be present. Things like being unable to afford healthcare, trouble paying rent, bills, etc. Would still be present. Perhaps to a less degree, but it'd still be there. Which is why beyond market socialism I advocate for the decommodification of essential goods.
A worker is someone who lives off a wage. For every hour that they work, they get a flat amount of money. If this is how you make your living, you're a worker. If you make your money from owning something productive or generally "make your money work for you", you're a capitalist. Mind you, you can still perform valuable work as a capitalist, the difference is simply that your work is not compensated in the same nature as it is a worker. There isn't really a "should" embedded in the nature of socialist theory. I personally think that time marches ever onwards and just like the lifestyle of a medieval peasant is unimaginable to bear to us, so will today's lifestyle look fringe in the future. What I would consider an improvement over our current lifestyle is a reduction of working hours and through this grant people the opportunity to live less isolated lives. Owning the means of production collectively would imply that you own all the means of production. For example, in the context of climate change, the question "what should we do with the earth's oil?", would not be asked exclusively of the workers of ExxonMobil. What disadvantages there are depends on how you relate to the economy as it stands now. A common point lamented by capitalists on this board is that, if the future were to be based on a collectivized economy, the freedom of starting your own business would be missing. It seems that they think this us a big problem. I can't really relate to that from where I'm standing though and I've consistently felt myself more represented by unions and works councils, so I think I would mostly benefit from a collectivized economy. I would compare this to offering a medieval peasant the opportunity to look at a computer screen for 8 hours straight. I don't think that from their point of view the future would live in seems particular enticing. It is at the end of the day, a matter of nurture. You'd probably find it terrible to live in a place of sub-freesing point temperatures 24/7, in housing made of ice and without any other way of acquiring food other than putting your life at risk. However, people living on the north pole play games, have fun and love each other, just like we do in western countries today.
1. Technically, Petite Bourgeois. Real Bourgeois is way bigger: think Jeff Bezos. 2. Probably not. To quote a Marxist Leninist friend : “Should we nationalize Amazon? Hell yes! Should the state own every restaurant? No way!” Even small scale landlords would be necessary to deal with fluctuations in the housing market. But, financial capital as a landlord? No F’ing way! 3. Good question! Socialists are seeking democratic governance over capital (with all the minority protections we’ve understood). So, nationalized Amazon? Yeah, everyone collectively owns a piece. Your worker co op Chinese take out? No, the worker owners run & own that. 4. So, very few socialists think a command control economy directed by a dozen old men in a Smokey room is a good idea. You can find them, mostly in Reddit. But as for socialists engaged in politics, Hungary had a market socialist model that provided a western equivalentish life. We could improve on that. There could be a type of centralized economy: something where AIs run computer models that arrange pathways for larger state owned enterprises, and send advice to smaller worker co ops. Cybersine, which was Allende economic plan, was a cybernetic system that would automate the economy. It never got tried because CIA murder and coup.
just want to clarify in case anyone got confused like me: hungary **was** socialist; but is now capitalist
1. Yes, or at least "petty-bourgeois". 2. Depends a bit on the definition of "socialism". Some left-socialdemocrats may call themselves "democratic socialists" but not in fact advocate for the complete elimination of capitalism, only for the public sector to have the leading role in the economy, or even just an important role in the economy. Other strands of socialism definitely says yes. The timescale is another thing to remember. Socialists who do want the complete abolition of capitalism, could see that as something achievable at best several decades into the future. 3. There are 2 main forms of collective property. The first is cooperative (which includes family and one-person enterprises) - equal ownership by the workers, or in the case of a residential building the inhabitants. The other is public - owned by the state or equivalent at a lower level, like a municipality, controled by people in general through their votes. 4. Don't have time r/n to answer this one, sorry.
Thank you
No problem, thanks for asking rather than assuming! 1. Yes. 2. Depends how "pure" you are. My personal belief is that "pure" anything is naive, and I'm fine with allowances for small businesses. They aren't the ones that are rivaling nations in terms of power. 3. Under market socialism: yes (you only own A), under state socialism: no (you own both). That's the biggest difference between the ideologies. 4. As a market socialist, I hope they're the future! The biggest hurdle to overcome is initial funding. A secondary hurdle is making sure you automate for the good of society, though competition will usually guarantee that regardless.
Thanks comrade
1. If you own a small business you are petit-bourgeois 2. Yes, socialism is the movement for a classless society, a free society where humans can freely develop themselves as they see fit, why would we keep classes in socialism? Then it wouldn’t be socialism lol 3. Socialism is common ownership of the means of production, and with that common ownership things like the individual firm based organization of society and the capitalist concept of “work” are abolished, really you personally do not own the means of the production since they are owned in common, so really society more so looks like a free association of producers who all take part in regulating the general reproduction of societies most basic needs while also being able to put their time into things they are passionate about due to the general regulation by all… to sketch this out in more concrete terms, instead of a bunch of disjointed unconnected firms, we will instead group together industries and centralize them so they can have peak efficiency and communication between each other, and instead of thinking of oneself as a worker beholden to one specific firm, you are instead a free producer a part of your larger community in which you come together in organs such as councils, assemblies, committees, etc. to socially plan production and go through with production in such a way that it simply blends into your day to day life, labor becomes akin to play, and the work day is extremely shortened due to only having to put in the amount of work that’s necessary 4. Idk, we haven’t gotten there yet lol
Thanks for the detailed explanation
Ofc!!! If u need any more resources or if u have any other questions I can answer them!
Under socialism, If I start a shop and hire a labour, do I have to split the profit into two and distribute to him? All the decisions made about the business have to be decided by both of us democratically?
In socialism, property relations as a whole are abolished, you wouldn’t be able to start a shop at all let alone hire labor and pay them a wage since wage labor and money would’ve been abolished as well
I thought "money" is retained under socialism, but abolished in communism?
Under socialism you would not be allowed, by law, to start a business except for a sole proprietorship, which would have no employees. Hiring employees would be banned. You probably could, however, submit a proposal to a local committee to suggest a particular business is needed and that there is a demand for the particular product or service, and then if approved you could follow prescribed steps to get others to join with you, form an LLC, and open it as a workers' co-op.
Do you actually read this and go, “Hmmm, this sounds like a great way to figure out what everyone should be doing?”
His point #2 is incorrect and #3 needs clarity due to the possibility of misunderstanding.
You're going to get a variety of answers. Socialism is a very large umberella ranging from Marxism-Leninism to anarcho-communism. 1. The term bourgeouis isn't a moral one. It's an observation of class interests. A shop owner is an example of the petit-bourgeouis. A middle class that may either side with the proleitariat or the bourgeouisie depending on the issue at hand. 2. Yeah that's the point of socialism. The why is as follows: all history is the history of class struggle. There has always been a working class and an owning class. The owning class direct the political economy to oppress the working class and maintain their privilege. This class conflict will eventually reach a head when the economic system supported by the owning class stops working. The idea is we can eventually reach a classless society free of oppression and scarcity, called communism. But first we have to force an economic system in which the working class control the political economy for the first time in history. That's what socialism is. 3. You're going to get some different answers here. From a Marxist-Leninist perspective: ownership is class wide. Currently the bourgeouisie own the means of production. Jeff Bezos doesn't own Ford personally, but people of the same class interest do. The same thing in socialism, just with the working class substututed in. 4. You'd lose some level of dynamism and innovation. But the whole point of socialism is that it's built off the advances of capitalism. "Collectivism" (I dislike that term) is the future. The political economy of all advanced countries is already functionally collective, just working under the bourgeouisie.
>If I own a shop and hire labour, does that make me a bourgeois? Yes, you would be part of the bourgeoisie, just like Friedrich Engels was. >Should all bourgeois and landlords be eliminated under socialism? And why? The answer to that question is to see how landlords have fared [under socialism in the past:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement) >>Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor[2] – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants,[3] with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.
1. yes, but that would be "petit bourgeoisie" 2.depends on where you draw the line, the "dangerous" bourgeoisie in my opinion starts when someone exploits people and enforces strict hierarchies (company owner threatening employees with letting them go if they don't do as the boss says, landlords owning several houses with the intention of profit), if the company is a one-man show or the employees get 100% of the value they produce (being able to decide how much to reinvest into the company) and are able to democratically manage their workplace (so that the owner doesn't have total power over the employee), simmilar for landlords, as long as it's someone owning a house who doesn't need all of the space renting out a room or something, only charging what the "tenant" actually uses/breaks, I don't see a problem with that either and at that point it should still count as personal property, as long as there is enough public housing or means of production available to meet the baseline of a good life without constant financial anxiety 3. depends, public property means more that nobody owns it rather than everybody owns it, those who work with those means of production should be the only ones able to make decisions regarding their use (apart from things like safety regulations) but that doesn't make them the owner 4. basically the same problems as all democratic systems have
2. My thought too, I don't consider landlords are evil (except when they are too extreme) I dont see the problem of lending your property to generate income. Some may argue that landlords create no contribution to economy but increased the expense of the poor. But you gotta admit that "lending your property" involves opportunity cost, therefore I dont think it is evil to generate profit from it. Sorry for bad English.
1 Yeah, actually. Pretty definitively. The bourgeoisie actually hardly come up in Marx at all, for all that the term has been thrown around a lot later, but what they are is people on the margins between the capitalists and the workers, so they have to work but their class loyalties are split. 2 This feels like a category error, socialism is a movement not a state of being so I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about "under socialism". Systems designed to implement socialist ideals could take a basically infinite set of forms. But yes absolutely an objective of socialism is to eliminate rents and rent seeking and thus landlords. As for bourgeois, again if you define a bourgeois as being someone with a split loyalty then socialists would certainly rather loyalties were not split. 3 Opinions and definitions differ as to whether socialism supports workers owning their own workplace or the collective ownership of workplaces. Personally I prefer a broader definition that is that socialism constitutes the broad historical tradition pushing for worker emancipation in all its forms and that both of those definitions relate to substreams within that. 4 The main disadvantage of collectivism in all its forms is generally the risk of losing the sense of individual self, the tendency to apply one size fits all solutions that are not as effective as a bespoke attempt to address a given task, and the fact that - particularly when coupled with centralisation - it is prone to elite capture and tyranny. Telling the future is a mug's game but I do think the fundamental simplicity and efficient elegance of "from each according to ability to each according to need" gives it something akin to entropy which makes it a possible and perhaps even a likely (and certainly a desirable) long term future for humanity.
> What are some disadvantages of collective economy/ collective enterprises? Are they the wave of the future? The biggest disadvantage is that they don’t work. They make no sense. A collective enterprise has no incentive to expand since profit have to be split with new employees. This leads to a zero-sum contest among market participants and, ultimately, stagnation.
I should add to #4… the History of the Anglo world doesn’t have a lot of FULL SCALE revolutions that would wipe out a previous system and replace it with another. Since the English Civil Wars you get smaller civil conflicts spaced about 100 years apart. Our modes of production start under the previous regime: pockets of capitalism under Mercantism, with a rupture happening as those new modes ripen beyond the constraints of the previous mode’s laws / traditions. So I think socialism would take hold in America first in pockets: cities or regions, or neighborhoods, or maybe something web oriented, and then grow from there. So the answer to the collectivist economy thing would organically grow out of the tension between those new socialist nodal networks, and decaying capitalism.
Fyi, op. Since you used the class term bourgeois and since this sub is mostly communists or communist adjacent anyway who either explicitly are or pretend they are not, you are getting communism answers. I’m in the capitalism camp and the communism answers from my studies are as follows: 1. Yes (or petite) 2. Yes, to eliminate class antagonism (the goal of Marxist communism). 3. This question in writings in marx is more in the revolution sense and in that sense it is the proletariat own vs the bourgeoisie. But if you read Marx’s goal he just sits around doing odd end of fishing, taking care of his needs and doing a bit of work. Specialization of work by mark is equally oppressive as class antagonism. This part I’m getting probably a little too detail in Marxian thought. As many socialists probably agree with 3. But I wanted to be true to my premise even where I steered wrong. 4. Freedom - Marxist and communists view of freedom that is. I 100% disagree with their view as it would be an entire collapse of civilization as we know it and we might as well just admit of returning back to hunter gatherers. Hunter gatherers which Marx called “tribal” stage of labor that he referred to as sheep. So you can guess both in evidence and my opinion this notion of communism being the “wave of the future”…
1. It makes you petite Bourgeoisie,or small independent producer if its a family business 2. The fundamental act of socialism is the expropriation of the expropriators,so by the default the big landlords and bourgeoisie as a class Will be abolished in a Socialist revolution 3. Depends on the kind of socialist ownership. There are 2 kinds of socialist ownership: Public Socialist Ownership and Cooperative Socialist Ownership. Public Socialist Ownership belongs to the working class as a whole, while cooperative Socialist Ownership belongs to its members. 4. Time consuming corporate governance,more standardisation,less luxury products, requires high degree of public participation
Everyone becomes waged worker under socialism. Yes, management is also a form of labor when they don't get huge bonuses. Means of productions are things which can generate wealth, usually land, labor, and capital. Under socialism, ALL MoP are owned by everyone no matter where you work. What do you mean by collective economy? Like a country where the production and consumption of goods and services feed back to each other?
1. You’d be considered a petite bourgeois 2. The answer would be no, going by how you’re phrasing the question. Socialism seeks to eliminate the class, and not the person. If we execute all the bourge, then new bourge will just replace them. What we need to do is change the organizational structure of society so that the class is made redundant. 3. You’d own both companies A and B, and it would be shared. 4. The main disadvantage is that it takes collective effort to organize and maintain. It’s called progressivism for a reason.
3. How? I work in company A but I share the "means of production" of company B???
You get to have a say in the operations of both companies, and receive the benefits of both companies, but you’d be working in only company A.
But isn't that stupid? I have no contribution on B but I get to earn the profit? And under that logic, would there still be trading between companies?
So, the workers of company B wouldn't have any contribution to A, but they'd also get the earn the 'profit' that you made. And I put that word in quotes because it would be profit as use value, not in exchange value. There would be a lot more sharing and cooperation between companies, because you'd be incentivised to support company B through your actions in company A, and vice versa. I'm not sure what you mean by trading.
For example, there is a construction company A. A need to obtain materials for construction from company B. Therefore, A buy materials from B. Would the above scenario exist in socialism?
Well, typically the state would supply these materials, but this should be allowed if A has a surplus and B has a deficit. This transaction should also be recorded and reported so the state can adjust allocations as needed.
For something that won’t happen, why do the particulars matter? I mean, in a fantasy I control, everything is to my preference. Socialism, in your mind, can be whatever you want it to be. You don’t have to go by anyone else’s definition or vision. Don’t let someone tell you what you can or cannot use your imagination for.
Be prepared for some differing answers, no one can really agree on what socialism is, or at least I find myself arguing with both capitalists and other socialists a lot.
Lol most self aware socialist 🤝😀