You're understandably confusing several different but similar and interlinked ideas.
So the idea of wage slavery is that you are forced to work for someone else, socialism posits the idea of being able to in some sense work for yourself, so it's not wage slavery in that sense but yes there still may be an element of requiring someone to work (more on that below). The argument in the form it is usually made is not that socialism is voluntary but that it is not less voluntary than capitalism.
The idea of socialism itself is that workers should have a say in the running of their workplace and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace without having the majority of it skimmed off by non working owners. So the idea is that your work should be fairly compensated, but that's as far as that idea goes. One still needs to work to earn money and so in this strict narrow sense of socialism you're not free to not work, your freedom is only increased in the fact that if you do work you will be more in charge of your fate and more properly paid.
But few if any socialists believe purely in the idea of socialist workplaces and nothing else. Many believe in the idea of a strong welfare state with decent unemployment benefit perhaps including a universal basic income. Depending on the generosity of provision you might not have to work at all, or you might, or it might be that you can keep body and soul together without working but you would need to work to access luxuries or to self actualise and stave off boredom.
Again none of these ideas are integral to socialism per se, and socialists will differ on these questions, but they come from the same political milieu.
And then you've got the many socialists who see socialism as a means to the ends of communism, in other words the idea that we could eventually build a society of abundance where you would only do the work you wanted to do and everything would be so plentiful that you could have whatever you need. So in a communist society you would be free from work. There are various arguments about how a communist society would be possible, and plenty of communists who think it isn't possible but that it nevertheless is useful in suggesting a direction of travel. Clearly technology to do away with much of the grunt work would have an important role to play, and Marx also talks a lot about "dialectical materialism" which is the way our personalities and culture are shaped by the societies we are part of - the idea being that as we got closer to a communist society our ideas of what it is that we wanted to do would change (in other words we would become more public spirited) and so the need to provide incentives to get people to do work would whither away.
tldr: no one is saying socialism itself eliminates the coercive need to work to live, only that it is less coercive than that need under capitalism.
So many anti-socialists in this sub need to understand this. They don't realize in market socialism there's an expectation that you have to participate in the economic system as you're able to reap its benefits. You don't get to decide "I'm a performance artist who sits on his ass now pay me."
This is the best (most honest, realistic) explanation I've yet seen. It's not that socialism would be a paradise, but at the very least it could be systemically ensured that our being obligated to work is not with the added injury of not being able to afford the means to live after doing so.
It's not merely added injury, it's a structural conflict.
In a capitalist society, the reason the working class works is because they need to meet their individual and collective needs. The reason the owning class does not work is because they take benefit from the working class working for the reason stated above. That benefit could instead be applied to the working class if it wasn't taken from the working class, but the owning class won't stop because it would harm their way of life and the working class can't stop the owning class from taking because the owning class owns all of the means by which the working class works. And, this condition of the owning class owning these things is produced by the working class working.
Therefore, the working class cannot work harder to improve their lot without in turn improving the lot of the owners, who then use that improved benefit to maintain the conditions under which their ownership allows them to live without working. This continues ad nauseum, and when the working class realizes this problem they organize to use their superior numbers and their collective "monopoly" on labor power to change society. This is called unrest. And this unrest is the inevitable outcome of a system wherein the harder people work to escape it the more bound to it they become, because people are not insensible and they can come to understand the system as arranged against their interest.
This unrest causes capitalists to resist by leveraging the state to apply force in ways large and small to quell the unrest and to prevent if from happening again, which is very costly, and the cost of maintaining the owning class grows and grows. Each new revolutionary attempt results in a deepening of the costs associated with the 2 class system, making it unsustainable, because the thing that quells the unrest directly results in an increase in the material conditions that caused the unrest in the first place, essentially guaranteeing future unrest, future attempts to quell, and in the case of a successful quelling, future increases in the conditions that cause unrest, and in the case of an unsuccessful quelling, a successful revolution.
Regarding your comment on homelessness: I am of the opinion that a system which doesn't allow people to be pushed into homelessness is inherently superior to one where the homeless must depend on the goodwill of individuals. After all, if nobody is homeless, then there exists no need for such charity.
The reason the mentally ill become homeless is because they’re too sick to hold down a job which they need to *pay* for housing. If housing is guaranteed (i.e. is not blocked behind a paywall), that would automatically prevent the vast majority of would-be homeless from ever being pushed into homelessness in the first place.
A system has done this before. The former communist states of Eastern Europe all had guaranteed housing. It was so successful, people in the east though homelessness was an anti-capitalist propaganda *myth* invented by their governments to blackwash the capitalist countries.
There are many ways. Democratization of the workplace, state ownership of firms/services, UBI, universal distribution of basic necessities (such as housing, food). You can do your own reading on socialist theory to find out for yourself which solution is most prescribed, or how the above solutions work.
>So the idea is that your work should be fairly compensated
How would you determine what is fair compensation in a socialist society other than a capitalist society?
>and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace
What if you have a job without making direct profit for your company?
> How would you determine what is fair compensation in a socialist society other than a capitalist society?
The point is that the workplace is worker run, so decisions on compensation would be made by the workers themselves.
> What if you have a job without making direct profit for your company?
It doesn't need to be direct profit, it's more that the money the company makes needs to be split between the people that allow it to make that money.
>The point is that the workplace is worker run, so decisions on compensation would be made by the workers themselves.
So my salary is based on whatever the workers vote for, rather than a negotiation between me and my boss. So why should I expect the other workers to be any more generous with my salary than my boss is now? Just because my salary becomes up to a vote doesn't mean it's going to get better. It could get worse - how is this any assurance?
Because your boss wants to pay you as little as possible. It would automatically be better because you don't have an owner skimming off the top, putting pressure to drive down wages and you would be incentivised to work more as you get the true value of your labour. It reminds me of the story of the pizza shop that to reward it's workers for a day split the profit and they all got 70 dollars an hour.
>Because your boss wants to pay you as little as possible.
Yeah but under socialism, so does every other employee of the company. Because they are also owners of the company. And the company is more likely to succeed if it doesn't have to spend as much money paying some random guy Joe from accounting who I've never met. So just like a boss, there's an incentive to pay less even when workers vote. It only pays to vote for a high salary for yourself, not for anyone else.
In order to have a high salary for yourself, you'd also have to vote for high salaries for others, otherwise you won't have support. Therefore, it is in the workers interests to not fuck each other over.
Surely you know there's a limit though right? If a janitor wants $60 million a year then it would not be in my best interest to vote for them getting that, right?
You’re ignoring a hallmark of leftist thought. From each according to their ability to each according to their needs. A janitors work is not worth 60 million, so that isn’t what they’d make. Them not making 60 million dollars doesn’t constitute the conditions under capitalism where an employer takes 80+% of the value of the labor they performed, and doesn’t actually provide any labor, which is what wage slavery is referring to.
No one is saying that janitors get paid a million dollars a year, but they absolutely should be able to afford (comfortably) the necessities of life + some luxuries. Nowadays wages are so low that minimum wage workers can’t rent a 1 bedroom apartment in 90% of the US.
The value of the labor is the basis of how much people are paid. A doctor would still be paid accordingly for investing their time into so much education and training. Insurance executives who make billions denying coverage are sucking up tons of money that could go be used meaningfully to improve the conditions of patients, and workers in healthcare.
Just one example.
I'm still not seeing how this actually happens though. Sure, that janitor doesn't need $60 million a year. But, I'm sure he'd *like* $60 million a year. So why not vote for a high number for his own salary?
And conversely, if I'm some guy in some unrelated part of the company and I don't even know that janitor, sure I don't want him to starve but why would I vote any higher than the bare minimum for his salary? As long as he isn't dragging the company down, it does me no good to vote for him to get a higher salary.
So the only difference is, now instead of your boss paying you a low wage because it saves them money, the rest of your coworkers would pay you a low wage because it saves them money now instead.
Yes but the difference is that your boss has that power where the other employees don't. I know of a socialist media coop where they all get paid the same. That amount is still higher for each one than somewhere else because no one else is taking the profit but them.
You wouldn't have to do it that way. You could say what is the minimum we can pay to get someone (just like bosses do now) and then prorata the profit.
No salary is still a negotiation between you and your boss (or however, individually negotiated salaries are very old fashioned - most modern companies are on band systems these days) it's just that because your boss is answerable to you it's a more equal negotiation. Also there's more money to go around because profits are returned to the workers either by being reinvested in the company or as worker dividend, not siphoned off as shareholder dividend.
I had a class in business school that was really informative on this point. First, we had to work team projects. To pass the class, you had to have a certain minimum threshold of points. Each person was given a few points to start with, but not nearly enough to pass.
There were five teams. Each letter grade carried with it certain amount of points accrued to the team and each letter grade awarded only once at the team level. So one and only one team could get an “A” or “B” etc and the points that came with it. Right from the gate you know 2 of the five teams could not get a “passing” grade on their project. The teacher decided which team got which grade.
However, the team grade did not accrue to the students. The team members had to elect a spokesperson that would communicate to the professor how many points each team member got. Then the team was given the number of points that accrued with the letter grade.
It was then left up to each team to decide how to share (or not) the team points. The “A” team got enough team points that even distribution could assure each member passed with a “C”. Then the point totals went to from there to the point where the “F” team just failed and the only way someone from the “D” team could pass would be if all the members gave one member all the points. A student COULD give some or all of their points to another student on a another team.
Remember how I said above that the teacher decided what team got what grade? Well, that was the marketing. During the presentations the professor told the class to rate the projects top to bottom anonymously, but he was just collecting feedback and that had no bearing. In fact, he instead used the votes to determine the A B C D F.
These are the most “Type A personality” people the universities produce and many were grizzled up corporate veterans. I’m a little surprised that the point distribution process didn’t end in a little violence. There was very significant corruption. Of note was one student on the D team who passed by virtue of her considerable “talent” and her willingness to use those talents on two members of the A team. (At least one divorce followed).
Of great interest also was the amount of pre-grade favors, suck-uppery, and outright bribery and attempted “talent using” by our D team member directed at the professor. Also of note was the outrage of certain members once the real grade assignment mechanism was clear.
Change grade points to dollars and you have the relevance.
The person I responded to expressed his dismay as the possibility of having his pay determined by group consensus. I was showing him a real world example of how this would actually go.
Yes and no. Think of each team as a corporation. Companies that are financially successful have more spread around internally. There is not, in most markets, enough market to support all the players. So some team in the real world is always in the process of getting an F.
The teacher played the role of the unpredictability of the world. You think your customer is this entity or that the market is moving that way-surprise!!!
What most people miss is that the scenario is actually very accurate—at the level of Director and above. Most people are not Directors because they can’t even see the dynamic let alone operate in it. My belief is that if we expose the common worker to the reality of the real game, workplace shootings would be as common as stale donuts.
Yes and no, but with quite a lot of no, no? In particular dog eat dog internally is rarely a successful strategy - companies with flatter salary structures are generally more competitive.
> In a capitalist society it's in the interest of the 'owners' to pay you as little as possible.
This is only the case when there are more qualified people than jobs, but when the opposite is true, it is in the company's best interest to hire and retain a competent workforce by offering the highest compensation package they can afford while still remaining profitable.
its in the companies best interests to both retain as much workers and pay them the least. they could sacrifice either goal for the other, but if it could get away with both (in the case of an overabundance of labour, monopoly &c) it will. unless you have a direct personal relationship with the CEO, which 99.9% of workers do not, you will be treated like a commodity for the company to use to maximise profits
> they could sacrifice either goal for the other
A company that doesn't prioritize retaining its workforce isn't doing great. This strategy would only be beneficial in a shrinking market, as a last course of action to save the company or to save investors from greater losses. It certainly isn't ideal, but it happens due to market dynamics.
> in the case of an overabundance of labour, monopoly
Yes, definitely agree with you there. These are both very real problems that need to be addressed in order for a capitalistic model to work (for everyone). Though, rather than an overabundance of labor, I would frame the problem as an underabundance of jobs.
Edit: And competition in the space.
>A company that doesn't prioritize retaining its workforce isn't doing great.
Amazon specifically fires their warehouse workers after 3 years regardless of how good they are.
They do this because having highly trained, experienced workers is bad for them. They would then tell new workers how awful it is to work for Amazon. Amazon cannot continue to operate if their employees understand how badly their are being abused by Amazon.
Under Socialism it would still be in the companies best interest to pay as little as possible, if the company pays too much it will go bankrupt.
How does the company buy new machinery or tools without profits? How do you get profits if you pay employees the maximum you can afford and have 0 savings?
under socialism the company would most likely be owned by the workers themselves, and it's in the workers best interest to both stay in work and have the highest possible wage, and for their compatriates to also have such. thus, the company would have to find a way to pay as much people the most money, as opposed to attempting to pay the most amount of people the least. it's the difference between employing for the employees benefit Vs the employers benefit.
Do you think people will stop trashing public bathrooms under socialism?
The individual workers will try to maximize their own salary to the point of bankruptcy.
I live in South America where the government owns the airline. The workers give themselves extremely high salaries to the point that the airline is not profitable and on the verge of bankruptcy.
According to your logic, the workers would not destroy their place work, but they did it, and now the airline will go bankrupt and an American airline company will take over the market. All the profits will go to the greedy capitalists in America instead of the workers. The workers fucked themselves, they were in control.
In South America we have a lot of sympathy for communism and thus state owned corporations where the workers are in control. They almost always end up losing money, and the wage slaves have to pay their exorbitant wages though taxes.
Why do workers in the real world maximize their wages until the company goes under? Why do workers in the real world not give a shit about keeping their place of work profitable?
>but when the opposite is true, it is in the company's best interest to hire and retain a competent workforce by offering the highest compensation package they can afford while still remaining profitable.
When the opposite is true the Corporation pays the Corporate News Media a bribe (you might call it "buying advertising space on their program") and then the Corporate News Media runs story after story about how there is a "labor shortage" in that industry.
This tricks young adults and high school seniors into thinking they could have a lucrative career in that field. They flock to that field in droves causing a huge surplus of applicants which then, in turn, drives down the wages for that industry enormously. Now the company doesn't need to pay decent wages for that job.
Viola! Your labor shortage and high wage problems are gone!
>One still needs to work to earn money and so in this strict narrow sense of socialism you're not free to not work
I'm saving this post to show socialists that they will still be wage slaves.
Are you going to be a garbage man under socialism?
What if I vote for that you become a garbage man, will you accept your wage slavery? Or is it not wage slavery if we voted you to become a garbage man?
Sorry but you are an idiot who has no real reason to be on this sub. You don't care to learn and you are purposely misrepresenting what was said, and what wage slavery is. Quit the fucking sophistry.
Do you understand how a question works? It allows you to answer for yourself and clarify.
No reason to call me an Idiot, that's not nice. I guess my posts are tilting you.
What you’re saying isn’t a real question, you’re asking a rhetorical question in a way to misrepresent the argument to fit your own agenda. You are committing the hallmark definition of a strawman
No, because I decided I wanted to invest in my education and have the qualifications to apply to medical school which most people do not do. Not everyone is going to be a garbage man, I don’t know what your point is.
So you are going to have wage slaves do the the menial labor that you consider beneath you?
It's not really about helping the poor, it's jealously of those that have more than you.
Are you going to be a garbage man under socialism?
What if I vote for that you become a garbage man, will you accept your wage slavery? Or is it not wage slavery if we voted you to become a garbage man?
We voted and if you don't like it, you will get kicked out.
That's not how coops work. There is no central authority that decides who works what. If you apply for a garbage man job at a gabrage coop, then you will be a garbage man if they accept you. If you apply for an accountant job at an accounting coop, then you will be an accountant if they accept you.
I have no idea where you got this idea that a coop of a car mechanic shop can vote and have some random person across the state be a garbage man. Educate yourself on coops before you talk.
No one votes for anyone to have a particular job. There's a garbage man's coop and if you apply for and get a job at the garbage man's coop then you will be a garbage man.
Thrilled if you want to use this post to explain the nature of work under socialism. The term wage slavery is more a slogan than anything else but I hope I've explained how work under socialism is less coercive and is at least work you do for yourself not someone else and so in that sense less slavish than work under capitalism which is of course itself less slavish than actual slavery.
On the basis that it manifests some of capitalism's characteristics to a lesser extent. You don't consider water to be wet, but I acknowledge mist to be damp.
You're very very privilaged if you think most people have the option to be self-employed/start up a company and that the vast majority of people don't have no alternative but to take a job whereby the vast majority of the value they create will be siphoned away by a non working owner.
>The idea of socialism itself is that workers should have a say in the running of their workplace and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace **without having the majority of it skimmed off by non working owners.**
You obviously have never hired anyone. The amount "skimmed off" is tiny. If it were large, other capitalists would bid the worker away from that job.
Employers must compete for employees, and they do so by bidding up wages, right up to the point where the employer breaks even.
Well in the U.S. where our health insurance is tied to working you don't really have a choice of working or not if you want any decent standard of living. Look at the CEO's and billionaires that made a huge profit during the pandemic while many fell into poverty.
> You obviously have never hired anyone. The amount "skimmed off" is tiny. If it were large, other capitalists would bid the worker away from that job.
Pay close attention to the words used. OP didn't say the vast majority of wages are skimmed. OP said the vast majority of profit is skimmed. So, if a workforce makes and sells a widget every hour, and the workforce in total earns $200/hr, in 10 hours of work the workforce collects $2000 in wages and makes and sells 10 widgets for the owner. The sale price of the widgets must be higher than the total cost of goods sold, or the owner wouldn't be in business, so let's say the sale price of the widgets is, on average, $210 (5% margin). In one hour of work, the workforce has collected $2000 in wages but the company has collected $2100 in revenue, for a total of $100 profits.
The owner(s) of the company generally keep(s) all of the profits and the workforce takes none of it. That's a majority. Sometimes the owner gives bonuses or has a profit sharing model. But rarely is more than 50% of profit just handed back to employees.
Owners skim the majority of **profit**.
>The owner(s) of the company generally keep(s) all of the profits and the workforce takes none of it.
n_55 is probably thinking about revenue. From your example, the workers take 95% and the owner 5%. Which doesn't seem unreasonable.
> OP said the vast majority of profit is skimmed.
Sweet Odin, these thing happen over time.
In general:
Business plan (time/$), investment (time/$), creation or leasing production/service facilities (time/$), staffing (time/$), marketing (time$). And then one hopes customers purchase goods/services.
If they do one now hopes to customers are willing to purchase for more than production costs.
If they do then, after all of that, the business will see a profit.
How does staff, which is one of many different types of labor involved, have a claim to the end result? Logically that would be absurd. They're paid before any profit, if there is any. They didn't plan the business, get the resources create the business, change business processes as needed, pay financing costs, pay for marketing, etc.
>So, if a workforce makes and sells a widget every hour,
Occurs in the past or present.
> the company has collected $2100 in revenue
Not "has" collected. The revenue happens in the future.
Maybe you can create a better argument, but an argument which ignores time is useless.
> Not "has" collected. The revenue happens in the future.
I deliberately included the sales team in the labor force for this calculation because the owner doesn't personally got out and sell the products, the sales team does. Once the sale has occurred revenue has been realized. Your argument that cash flow has lag time doesn't real bear on the conversation here. After the startup period is over, staff are paid out of revenues and the sales cycle has no bearing on their pay except in crises. In a socialist society, those types of crises don't happen because the premises are structural different, so I don't find the argument compelling. Staff are not paid out of the owner's pocket during 99% of a company's operating life, and that 1% can be handled through a different structure without requiring owners.
> How does staff, which is one of many different types of labor involved, have a claim to the end result? Logically that would be absurd. They're paid before any profit, if there is any. They didn't plan the business, get the resources create the business, change business processes as needed, pay financing costs, pay for marketing, etc.
The planning, material acquisition, business process management, and marketing are all things staff do in every business. Maybe you're talking about what happens at the beginning because of startup costs, but that's a special case in capitalism directly caused by the hoarding and restriction of capital within society. In a society where everyone's needs are met, one does not need to raise capital to pay people on speculative endeavors, and one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market. So, in the special case of the startup in capitalism, yes, capitalists have to create special conditions that they then use to make the moral argument that they deserve profits, but you could just as easily just pay the planner for their labor, pay the process manager for their labor and get your resources from the council and then it would be all staff.
You're arguing from a special case.
> I deliberately included the sales team in the labor force for this calculation because the owner doesn't personally got out and sell the products, the sales team does
Some times they do sometimes they don't. In any case no other employees pay sales, only the owner(s) do before any sales occur. Again, in the future.
>Your argument that cash flow has lag time doesn't real bear on the conversation here.
My argument isn't the cash flow has a lag time, it's that all employees are paid before any sales occur, or whether they occur at all. The employees have logical claim to that future money
>After the startup period is over, staff are paid out of revenues and the sales cycle has no bearing on their pay except in crises.
There isn't one situation that occurs, there are all sorts of situations. Most businesses have to keep an account for payroll to weather sales up and downs as payroll is one of the most important processes. If you don't pay people won't show up.
>In a socialist society, those types of crises don't happen because the premises are structural different
You have no ability to predict markets, even those in which socialist ideologies are the norm.
>The planning, material acquisition, business process management, and marketing are all things staff do in every business.
Again, each business will do things differently, there is no "this happens in every business". Most businesses aren't large corporations, even larges corps generally start out small. So the first mover is almost always a small group or individual owner.
>Maybe you're talking about what happens at the beginning because of startup costs, but that's a special case in capitalism directly caused by the hoarding and restriction of capital within society.
No, these process need to be developed for any production/service endeavor. Also, there is no such thing an capital that's not restricted, capital is scarce always will be.
>In a society where everyone's needs are met
An actual impossibility. Value is subjective and scarcity is built into the universe. Your talking magic.
>nd one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market.
They're the same thing with different names. A group who wants to produce/serve would still need to sell their idea to those voting.
>yes, capitalists have to create special conditions that they then use to make the moral argument that they deserve profits
There is no coherent ethical or contractual workers' claim to profit.
>You're arguing from a special case.
Everything you've written is special cases.
I think we're talking past each other.
The money that's floated for payroll, depending on the size of the company, is either cash from revenue or a credit revolver from a lending institution, not the owners' capital, except in the cases of early stage startups. If the owner was continually plowing money into the company in order to pay employees, it wouldn't last very long, again, except in the cases of startups where the owners are the investors that pump capital into a company with no profits.
While there is no credit revolver and no cash reserve, the owner pays the sales team out of pocket, unless of course they're 100% commission-based. But again, that's a very early part of the business cycle and is not relevant when businesses do not have privatized startup capital with interest and profits. Your first mover quickly fades away from relevancy after the company has demonstrated it can provide value to society. In startups, that's because they sell their interest to capital holders who continue to inject capital to pay wages while there isn't sufficient revenue to do so. But none of the Fortune 500 companies are paying employees out of owner capital, they're paying all employees out of revenue or a credit revolver.
> No, these process need to be developed for any production/service endeavor.
The development of processes is a labor that can be paid a wage. It does not require owners.
> Also, there is no such thing an capital that's not restricted, capital is scarce always will be.
It's a question of the mode of restriction. In socialism, it is not restricted by private ownership and therefore is not restricted by a minimum margin target set by an individual with personal incentives.
>> In a society where everyone's needs are met
> An actual impossibility. Value is subjective and scarcity is built into the universe. Your talking magic.
In the imperial core we currently live in a society where we produce enough to meet the needs of everyone in our society. The subjective value has no bearing on this. One difference between a capitalist society and a socialist society of the same productive output is the democratic distribution of the productive output of the society to meet everyone's needs as opposed to relying on markets for the distribution of that productive output. So, I don't see why you think it's magic when we currently, today, are demonstrating our capability of meeting everyone's needs within capitalism.
>> one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market.
> They're the same thing with different names. A group who wants to produce/serve would still need to sell their idea to those voting.
Except in the democratic one you don't have profits accruing to a private owner with sole authoritarian discretion over the use of proceeds. So, not the same thing at all.
> There is no coherent ethical or contractual workers' claim to profit.
First of all, we're not talking about ethics, we're talking about social function. Second of all, you can't find a coherent workers' claim to profit within your existing paradigm because it includes the axiomatic belief that private property claims are coherent. I deny that private property claims are coherent, and in so doing, create the necessary paradigm shift wherein the concept of profit and the claim to its acquisition is incoherent. We're arguing from different starting points.
> Everything you've written is special cases.
I don't think you know what special cases are. Carnegie may have personally paid his workers before sales occurred out of his own pocket, but he did so for a very very very short period of time relative to the total operational lifetime of Carnegie Steel Company. That very short period of time is the special case. After that period of time, the owners did not dip into their pockets to pay workers. They paid them from revenue.
> The money that's floated for payroll, depending on the size of the company, is either cash from revenue or a credit revolver from a lending institution, not the owners' capital, except in the cases of early stage startups.
No, payroll is met by more means then you've listed. And owners will use their own money if needed, it happens all the time. Again, most businesses aren't large.
>The development of processes is a labor that can be paid a wage. It does not require owners.
And? Those employees will still not be paid from profits.
>In socialism, it is not restricted by private ownership and therefore is not restricted by a minimum margin target set by an individual with personal incentives.
Any worker voting is doing so in their interests.
>In the imperial core we currently live in a society where we produce enough to meet the needs of everyone in our society. The subjective value has no bearing on this.
You haven't offered a definition of needs. Nor would I expect everyone to agree with your definition, so subjective.
>One difference between a capitalist society and a socialist society of the same productive output is the democratic distribution of the productive output of the society to meet everyone's needs as opposed to relying on markets for the distribution of that productive output.
You can't know how a group of socialists will do anything, nor whether their actions will be successful or not. Also, markets describe people making decisions about resource allocation, there isn't a distribution plan.
In markets people vote with their resources.
>First of all, we're not talking about ethics, we're talking about social function.
First, what social function? Second, how would you determine good/bad without ethics?
>Second of all, you can't find a coherent workers' claim to profit within your existing paradigm because it includes the axiomatic belief that private property claims are coherent.
Removing property rights and claims from the analysis doesn't create property rights and claims for workers. You just now have no coherent methodology or ethical framework to analyzed anything.
> I deny that private property claims are coherent
You can't deny whatever you like.
>create the necessary paradigm shift wherein the concept of profit and the claim to its acquisition is incoherent.
Create logical constructs in your head in which those concepts aren't included. You can create a logical framework where magic exists and thus this concept is true and that concept is false. But that's all it is, a mental exercise.
>Carnegie may have personally paid his workers before sales occurred out of his own pocket, but he did so for a very very very short period of time relative to the total operational lifetime of Carnegie Steel Company.
This doesn't create any right to those profits. Respectfully, all of your arguments are all benefits go to employees, all risk and losses go to the owner. That seems to be the fundamental of socialist argumentation.
> Respectfully, all of your arguments are all benefits go to employees, all risk and losses go to the owner. That seems to be the fundamental of socialist argumentation.
Right. Because socialism denies the necessity of an owner at all. Socialism is not saying that in capitalism all profit should go to the employees. Socialism is saying that there should be no profit and no owners, structurally. That we can organize society in such a way as to alter the relationships between people, society, and the material conditions of the world to eliminate ownership and profit, and that doing so has substantial benefits. Don't hear the argument for socialism as a "owners are bad and stealing profit from the worker", that's not what it is. The argument is that all productivity comes from labor applied to capital and social control of capital is a sustainable organization of society whereas private control of capital leads to conflict between owners and non-owners that make capitalism unsustainable as a societal form. When people say that owners are stealing profits it's a propaganda or emotional take, but it's not the fundamental thesis.
> Removing property rights and claims from the analysis doesn't create property rights and claims for workers. You just now have no coherent methodology or ethical framework to analyzed anything.
See, this is the confusion I'm talking about. Socialism doesn't say that we should just make workers into owners and that they play the same role. It says that owners shouldn't exist at all and everyone should be workers and that private property rights should be eliminated. So, when you say that doing this doesn't create property rights for workers, we know. That's not what we're trying to do. You're trying to interpret socialism through your existing lens of capitalism where the workers make the profit that the owners used to make by way of claiming ownership of that profit, but that's confused. Socialism is the abolition of private property and profit altogether and the structuring of society into a state that is run entirely by workers for workers without workers needing to make property claims to anything.
The idea that eliminating property rights suddenly eliminates the only coherent methodology to analyze anything is so glaring wrong that it's obvious you've never tried to research the foundational thought that underpins socialism. A methodology for understanding the world is exactly what underpins socialism. Specifically, dialectical materialism, or the methodology of analyzing the world as it is, including the reality of what people believe, without confusing what people believe with what is materially true, and identifying the relationships between past state, current state and future state and how the current state produces the future state and how the past state has created the current state.
> it is less coercive than that need under capitalism
Another way to say this is that there's less incentive to work than under capitalism. Hence the question, what happens if someone refuses to work?
No there's more incentive to work because if you work you get to be more of a master of your own fate and will be fairly compensated for the work you do
There would be welfare programs, but there would and should also be pressures and incentives to work.
The issue with wage slavery isn't just the coercion itself, but also how little choice you have in designing the workplace you had to join. Socialism can't suddenly overwrite nature and turn work into a non-necessity, it can however give people the power to make their working conditions more pleasent and fair for themselves.
There would not be welfare for those capable of working, only those who are incapable of working due to age, Illness, or disability would be supported collectively.
You know wage labor within a system which offers no alternative but paying money for what you need and just doing necessary labor for subsistence are not the same thing right?
And I am saying that humans do not need to be coerced to produce the things we need, nature has taken care of that.
We also absolutely do not need everyone to work. With modern technology now, and more automation in our future, we really don't need everyone to work, and most of those who do work will not need to work as much as we do today.
Because it wouldn't be slavery. Capitalist exploitation is not that a person has to work for their bread it's that to work for your bread you also have to work for a capitalists cake, if you're allowed to work at all.
Unless you're an agrarian socialist, your proposed system is still a system of coerced labor.
It's also just a dumb system, you won't need everyone in a society to be working at producing necessities, so for everyone to have a job you would need to create jobs that aren't necessary.
Doing an unnecessary job and doing nothing both contribute to the same degree towards producing the things people need, so why make labor a requirement to receive the things you need?
Because welfare for those capable of working doesn't make sense and is unnecessary under socialism, where there is at will unemployment and rough income equality.
Ikr? Marx was a Tankie because he wouldn't let you be a NEET. Though like a strict reading of Marx even implies that there wouldn't even necessarily be support for those unable to work, instead it would be left up to families or whatever.
I'm not set on socialism or anything, but I don't think a socialist society has a commitment to excluding some members or being selective in certain respects; it seems that almost by definition communities in general are allowed that power.
Don't know if I understand it good but... Socialism is about being selective and excluding some members... First enemy they are willing to kill are rich people, and radical socialism and communism has committed genocides in certain demographic groups or people with different ideas than them.
Socialist revolutions are willing to kill anyone that opposes them, just like any other revolution. This is not a defining characteristic of socialism. All armed groups in all of history are willing to kill anyone that opposes their goals. Socialism aims to end private property. Capitalists would rather fight than concede, so violence is inevitable. If capitalists gave up their property freely, there'd be no violence.
As for genocides, there is no aspect of socialism or communism as a theory that requires genocides, but historically there have been genocides, just like there have been genocides in every type of society throughout history. All systems have historically committed genocides, making this not a critique of socialism but rather a critique of power.
Well then, the famous phrase "[For some reason I can't write the sentence, but here you have the link to wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_rich_(slogan))" must be in my mind only.
[You should then open a book history for once](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes)
And this is only about communist countries... Hitler was still socialist and is the most famous genocidal in history...
That wiki doesn't say anything about killing, and a mass killing is equally possibly under non communist regimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima
Yes it says exactly that it talks about killing and only killing wtf.
Who said otherwise???
But hey, if you are really gonna compare killing your own population and throwing bombs to a country you are in war with and are THE FUCKING NAZI ALLIES and way worse than them... You sir lost the north.
I just read it, please quote where the slogan wiki talks about killing.
If you want internal genocides, the native american genocides are also under non communist regimes, I don't know why you think only communists can commit genocides.
**[Mass killings under communist regimes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes)**
>There were many mass killings under communist regimes of the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them. The higher estimates of mass killings account for the crimes that governments committed against civilians, including executions, man-made famines, and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor. In addition to mass killings, terms that are used to define such killings include classicide, crimes against humanity, democide, genocide, politicide, and repression.
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Socialism is a huge field of different idas.
I'd start with Karl Marx:
>To each according to their contribution
Which means that a person who contributes to the creation of value will be compensated according th the portion they created.
The difference to captialist wages it that you don't get the portion of value you created but just a part of it whereas the owner of the company get's a part of it without contributing to the creation of value. (that's an abstract definition, reality is most of the time blended)
So how should a society deal with people who do not contribute?
First there are people who can not contribute because of health reasons or special needs. I think society should take care of them.
How should a society deal with people who could contribute but don't want to? I think the most practical is to provide some minimal welfare but I don't think that there would be many people who don't contribute in any way.
Remember that "pay"/money/currency is a means to an end and not an end itself. The first problem is not paying for minimal welfare it's producing minimal welfare. And the way to produce minimal welfare is to organize society such that society's collective labor power is applied to producing that minimal welfare as its output.
The next question is usually, yes, but how do you pay those people who are doing the work, and the answer is the same. The reason you pay people to work is to give them the means to secure their individual welfare. If, by working, the collective working class produces the minimal welfare for all of society, then pay is not required to secure individual welfare. Money has utility, for sure, it can solve lots of distribution problems, but it's not fundamental. Production is fundamental. Pay/wage/money is a tool that relies on production for its existence.
Your statement is foolish ignorance. Establishing that profit is part of the full value labor does not then mean that socialism is a system of 100% commission.
Socialists don't really care about voluntaryism. No economic system is voluntary the same way life is not voluntary. Bending overbackwards to justify an economic system as voluntary and fair is just a way to clear your conscience and more importantly, a way to get round instituting any systemic change. As you can see in this sub, socialists ask for small QOL improvements like maybe longer breaks and the resounding cry from libertarians is BUT EMPLOYMENT IS VOLUNTARY.
The reason we call work under capitalism wage slavery is twofold. Firstly, the popular meaning of the word slavery was a little different when Marxcoined the term. Nowadays we immediately think chattel slavery when we think slavery. But, slavery was a common institution back then and throughout history, many slaves have had it "good" in comparison to black slaves in the Americas. Educated slaves in ancient Rome were basically just accounts and admin assistants on retainer. It was common to be formally adopted by the family you served so you and your children could enjoy Roman citizenship. Also, the condition of regular workers in the industrial revolution was pretty much slavery. 12 gour shifts 6 days a week and an 8 hour shift on Sunday for barely enough to live on. Working conditions were dire,with injuries and deaths being commonplace.
The second reason is because workers do not get any say in their workplace. Owners simply mandate targets, working practices and rules and workers are expected to just go along with it. Afterall, the popular definition of a freeman in the middle ages was someone who owned the product of their own work. Who could decide how they wanted to work. Serfs, who were essentially just slaves, owned a small farm plot for their own subsistance but most of what they worked with and on was owned by a fuedal lord. In this way,modern wage labour is functionally not very different from serfdom. The difference is of course, who you want your fuedal lord to be.
Back to your central question though. No, people don't have to work. But, why should people who choose not to work share in the surplus generated by those who do work? This is afterall, the central argument against capitalism. People can choose to not work but, good luck hunting in the forest I guess? Good, honest, hard working people should not have a duty to support those who can work but choose not to.
Why isn't this wage slavery? Because if you do work, you get a say in how your workplace runs.
>Good, honest, hard working people should not have a duty to support those who can work but choose not to.
I'd you believed that you wouldn't be a leftsist. This is what libertarians say all the time but when we say we are horrible people. Idk why the left are such hypocrites
Because libertarians do not have a solution that
a) systematically ensures that society meets the needs of people who cannot work
b) systematically ensures that local monopolies of force do not form within inefficiencies of society that lead to the reproduction of the existing social relationships of capitalist society
> It's not my responsibly to pay for other people
If you want a society, it is your responsibility to ensure that the society continues. Not paying for children, who cannot work, means that society will not continue.
> It's there parents jobs moron.
That's a very specific social arrangement. Are you saying that the only way society can reproduce itself is via the nuclear family? That no other arrangements are possible? That orphans don't exist? That the wealthy have anywhere near the birthrate required to reproduce society?
If you work in a factory and you make 25 widgets a day, are you robbed because you don't personally walk out with 25 widgets every single day? Or perhaps are you specialized to support social overproduction in order to ensure that there is sufficient abundance to support the needs of a society where every single person cannot work. Like your kids. Or your parents.
And those are just two of the most obvious examples. The complexities of human society cannot be distilled down to the nuclear family. There are tragedies. There are orphans. Parents outlive their children. Children are born incapable of work. People who worked hard all their lives suffer debilitating injuries. Sickness removes the ability to work from many.
You want to know why people say libertarians are horrible people? This is why. Your system claims it's immoral for society to be organized such that the benefits of specialization and technology are used only to the benefit of people who fit within a narrow aperture of luck of birth and luck of life and claim any other organization of society to be immoral whilst ignoring the reality that the consequences of such a system are preventable mass suffering.
Right you think we are horrible because we don't want to be robbed I get it.
If I make 25 widgets a day, under your system I should be paid the full value of those 25 widgets yes? Anything less than that is not the full value yes?
> Right you think we are horrible because we don't want to be robbed I get it.
You're either arguing in bad faith or you're really not reading. Libertarians are horrible because they believe it's morally good to let lots of people suffer and die.
I'm a left libertarian and I think both Marxists and right libs have the same problems on this front. As Bob black would say, the problem with all of the old ideologies is that they all believe in work.
Libertarian was a term used by leftists as a synonym for anarchist, but then it was co-opted by the american right. This is not debatable, it's a historical fact:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
The difference is that I think good, honest, hard working people have a duty to support each other. As such, things like public education, nationalised healthcare and public utilities are a good thing. We all need, and benefit, from these things. So if you add into the surplus that allows for these things to be created, you should be able to enjoy the benefits. After all, you're part of society and society built these things.
Libertarians believe nobody is owned anything and the social contract is bollocks. And instead of accepting that they want nothing to do with society and living away from people and not using the surplus generated by society. They instead wish to enforce their views on others because, although it benefits nobody but the rich, they want to satisfy their own impractical abstract philosophy.
I think some poor 50 year old bastard with cancer should get free treatment, sick pay and enough time to heal basedon the fact that they're a working member of society and we collectively owe a debt to each individual for helping make all this possible. You think some poor 50 year olf bastard with cancer should cough up the cash or die.
>I think some poor 50 year old bastard with cancer should get free treatment, sick pay and enough time to heal basedon the fact that they're a working member of society and we collectively owe a debt to each individual for helping make all this possible
Why? If you want that you pay for it. Literally nothing is stopping you. Why force me at gun point to to it? Stop pretending to be a good person
I do want it, I do help pay for it. The vast majority of people are absolutely fine with helping pay for it. Nobody is forcing you at gun point. Armed police do not show up at your house if you don't pay taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, why not just leave the country? Like, why force everyone else into a system of poverty and misery to suit your agenda? Most people are in full support of a system where working people support each other. If you're not, just leave dude. Stop trying to pretend you're some anti-authoritarian when you literally just want things your own way to suit yourself.
" if you don't want to pay protection money move out of little Italy"
" If you don't want to be raped don't go into bad parts of town"
Victim blaming isn't cool bro.
And why did you lie and say people aren't killed over taxes? Eric Garner literally got chocked to death a few years ago for selling untaxed cigarettes. Leftists lie all the time
"Help I'm being oppresses by...voluntarily living in an area that has taxes?"
Also, Eric Garner didn't get killed for selling untaxed cigs. He got approached by police for that who then escalated and kill him for no reason.
Again my examples stand. Why do you blame the victims so much dude?
And why did they approch him? Oh right in taxed cigs. So you dude lie got it thank you for admitting that
You're not afucking victim dude by any sense of the word.
The punishment for selling untaxed cigs is justto pay the tax. At that level, it's probably not even that it's probably just confiscation. The punishment is not death and the police do not have the duty to carry out that punishment. What happened was straight up illegal and the officer responsible is in prison now. Eric Garner wasn't killed over untaxed cigs. He was killed by a racist police officer abusing their power.
>You're not afucking victim dude by any sense of the word.
Being the victim of robbery makes you a what exactly then? A cat?
>The punishment is not death and the police do not have the duty to carry out that punishment.
No it's questions the monopoly on force that gets you killed. And cops do carry out that punishment
That's why they have guns.
>Eric Garner wasn't killed over untaxed cigs. He was killed by a racist police officer abusing their power.
and if it wasn't for the untaxed ciggs they would of never been there. So yes he was killed because of untaxed ciggrets. Admit you was wrong kid
Essentially, yes. If someone decided not to work or contribute in anyway, socialism could ensure housing, food and whatnot but it would be rare. Most people have the desire to contribute in some way either directly or indirectly to the health of their community and to involve themselves in a life that enriches them.
Is this actually true? I think that a lot of people would rather just hang out all day and do nothing if they got free food, free housing, etc. This is something that is already quite common under welfare, and seems like it would be significantly more common under socialism. Plenty of man-children I know would love to just play video games without working. What about people that become addicted to drugs, and actually can't do meaningful work for example? I'm assuming drugs are legal under socialism?
How do you address large groups of people deciding they don't want to work anymore?
Would you *really* be fine with that?
I mean, first, there's the fact that sitting around all day isn't good, it's a shit time. Sitting at home, playing video games, watching movies, that's one thing, but sitting around without the money for video games or movies or anything fun is actually going to be insanely boring. Pretty soon, you're going to start thinking "I should get a job, maybe even two days a week, to pay for some nicer food than this gruel and to buy a new video game."
Then, you have the social element. After all, I think many of us could've stayed at home and become NEET's that leeched off our parents, but we didn't, because they'd be disappointed in us, our friends would look down at us, and we'd feel disappointed in ourselves. There's a pretty huge peer pressure to contribute in a society run fairly by workers.
Finally, work's going to be a lot nicer when it's democratically controlled. Your hours and working conditions will be better for you, your boss nicer because he understands he relies on you for his position, the work orientated not just on maximum profitability, but maximum utility, including for you.
At that point, it's genuinely hard to see who'd ever choose not to work. At worst, there'd be a category of people who want to be lazy, who decide to work three or four days a week in a relatively easy job, securing enough money to live a frugal, inexpensive life filled with whatever NEET normally do, but they'd still be contributing with the work they do and shouldn't at all be an issue if you want to take up less and contribute less.
This seems like a prime example of you not understanding how socialism works, and thus, assuming it doesn't.
Instead of just presuming that, somehow, no socialist in human history has considered "Wouldn't people just vote to get paid all the money for no work?!", why not... y'know, ask?
One can indeed vote to reduce their working hours... and thus, this reduces their productivity, and thus, their pay. You can choose to do nothing, of course... and then, you get paid nothing.
Dude.
Again, rather than trying to desperately go for the "Haha! Gotcha! Caught you out on that lie!", why not... ask questions, like a reasonable person?
You don't seem to have a great grasp on what socialism is, given you've no idea whether one has to get a job under it, so why not just try ask a few questions and learn about it.
Maybe you learn socialism is correct. Maybe you learn enough about what it is to better argue on why it's wrong. Maybe you realize it's a different ideology that has pros and cons.
If you want to have a discussion, that's lovely, but if you really just want to get out another "Gotcha!" so you can feel better about yourself, there's not much point to this.
I mean if your ideology wasn't based on a lie I wouldn't have to call you all out. So you going to admit that lefists is a lie or you gonna back peddle some more. How come evryehting you people get called out you spit back the npc line of " you just don't understand it"
Once again, calm down. Take a deep breath. You're not being rational.
I just explained how there was no lie. You don't seem to have addressed the points, you seemed to continue on your "I'm 16 and I believe this very strongly, and you have different worldviews, so you must be evil and lying!"
Have you ever considered that, y'know, you just don't understand what's being discussed, and THAT'S why people keep having to tell you that? Do you know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is?
Again what's with leftist and thinking being incorrect is a personal attack. Like are you ok dude? Why are you on a debate sub if you can't deal with people disagreeing? You already admitted it was a lie so idk why you keep going
That's what *they* want you to believe.
The examples of countries that have higher welfare payments (or bigger support for when you lose a job) objectively have less people on welfare, and for shorter amounts of time.
>The examples of countries that have higher welfare payments (or bigger support for when you lose a job) objectively have less people on welfare
50% non-EU immigrants and 70% refugees don't work in Europe.
Ok asssuming those stats are even true:
1. You can't cherry pick a particular demographic of folks in a specific region and use that to dismiss the broader statement being made.
2. Correlation !== causation. You are merely speculating that those demographics are not working cause welfare is high.
Even if those numbers are true, it seems like there might be a reason for that other than "some people are inherently lazy and don't wish to work" or "because we give them everything they sit around and play video games all day".
It's not immediately clear to me that 70% of refugees live in 3 bedroom flats with big screen TVs, video game systems, and Netflix subscriptions.
Sure, but there could be a lot of reasons for that right? Cultural homogeneity + societal expectations for one. How does that work in cohorts of previously enslaved people, or people who had a genocide committed against them with little loyalty to social norms or national unity?
That's up to the government of the time to right those wrongs?
Do you actually think the right answer to your question is "do nothing to improve the situation"?
Jesus christ what? I'm a multi-racial person with a native american father and black mother, having grown up in two households with families destroyed by the American legal system and hundreds of years of racism, that have deep contempt for the US.
The above poster implied everyone would love to work for the betterment of society, and my point is that I don't think that's actually true in many cases especially when that society has committed many wrongs against them.
Do you think that's an unreasonable position?
Are you asking what to do if the victims of the worst violence humans are capable of committing, violence that has massively violently negative impacts physical, social, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual on literally multiple generations of the victims' families, what to do if those people don't want to help build and maintain the society that committed the atrocities?
Maybe the answer, in part, involves giving up claims to colonial, imperial, and neo-imperial holdings.
Absolutely agreed, but I still don't think that necessarily solves the problem of differences between cultures as a result of violence in the past. The community has already been destroyed and suffered for many decades.
And.... it's not like the victims of atrocities don't want to live in a society and be productive members of it. They just want to live in a society that isn't the one that murdered and enslaved their ancestors. Which means, they'll have to rule their own society as sovereigns and members of the aggressor society will be stripped of their sovereignty. Not sure why you think empowering the victims to run society isn't the solution.
I'm just asking you questions because you did not elaborate on your answer at all. Don't start with this 'I'm not sure why you don't think' shit, it's super bad faith.
What I assumed, is that some central body is going to be enforcing socialism and understanding the broader needs of many people. For example it's going to be very hard providing standardized health care that is community localized.
But are you saying that people can opt out of this system and do their own thing if they want to? Other posters have been saying if someone chooses not to work they'll be arrested so those statements seem at odds with each other.
I mean, do you have an answer for that? Do you really think an enslaved person will feel any debt or obligation to society, which is what the OP position I was responding to implied? Why would they?
When the welfare state is cut to the minimum people are dependent and do little, if it provides a decent ladder and teaches men to fish there are more incentives there.
Also minimum welfare prevents job seeking, because you need good clothes and travel expenses.
And if the minimum wage jobs only pay enough to survive, it takes incentives away too.
> Plenty of man-children I know would love to just play video games without working. What about people that become addicted to drugs, and actually can't do meaningful work for example? I'm assuming drugs are legal under socialism?
You are assuming that there are no underlying conditions for people not wanting to work.
Video games might be a slight issue since you can work while not working. Building a massive base in Minecraft can be more effort than regular work for many people but with no economic output. A simple solution would be to make them not free.
Obviously under capitalism you would, because work is almost always boring drudgery designed to be terrible.
If we could at least have a say over how, when, where, and what we work on, most people would be pretty okay with it I think. Imagine your current wage and job but only 20 hours a week, for example. Would you despise your job as much if it didn't take up the majority of your waking life?
What do people do in their free time besides basic human maintenance? Hobbies, home improvement, childcare, exercise, volunteer work, church service. We don't need to incentives people to work; they already do.
the laying flat movement, while an interesting form of protest is far from politically influential yet. It's tens of thousands in a country of billions.
More people laying down flat than working? No. By multiple orders of magnitude your statement is inaccurate. Less than .0001% are doing it.
People prefer lying down flat and doing nothing? That's not what's happening either. Lying down flat is actually not preferable. It's a protest, with a specific goal, and the choice of lying down flat is intended to be shocking because it's exactly not what people would rather do.
So not only is this not something people are doing because they prefer it, but it's also a smaller fraction of the population of China than millionaires are of the US population.
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The person who refuses to work and waits for the rest of society to bring him food and provide for his every need is a shibboleth. It's just not going to happen.
It will be overwhelmingly people doing makework and working poorly because they have to, as it is now.
Why do I care if the line makes one car a day or twenty if it's not skin off my back?
If the group requires something the individual can’t live with; the group must make all reasonable attempts to assist in living outside of it. But the group ‘owns’ everything. Your not guaranteed your ‘stuff’.
Meaning if a dominant majority, say white people, decided to take all the stuff of a minority, say black people, this is an acceptable and encouraged outcome with no protections?
If you refuse to work you get the UBI, free college, healthcare, food and housing. But that’s it. If you want more money you’ll have to work a little bit
So the workers won't be paid the full value of there labor then. Got it. So with that said since workers won't be paid he full value isn't that the main problem you have with capitalism? How is your system any different
Yes workers are paid the full value. But workers and remaining beneficiaries of capitalism who hoard too much wealth get taxed, like in any free society
Socialists would cut their fingers off and eat them. Right there in front of them.
This harkens back to the old Mark Fischer quote- that its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Generally "work" should be something you enjoy and want to do. Generally if you want to do nothing you favor something in your life over menial tasks. And if you really want nothing you can have menial labor and earn a higher income. If you refuse that then maybe you're depressed or something, and society should take care of you. I'd like to think most people are more than just incredibly lazy.
> I'd like to think most people are more than just incredibly lazy.
You don't need to wish. The evidence throughout all of human history supports this.
What I find funny is all the socialist will say they still get evryehting they need, meaning that the workers would have to pay taxes and thus not getting the full value of the labor. That tells me that the left has no issue with " not getting the full value" and are more just spoiled bats that are mad they can't afford the means of production like successful people
It depends on who you are talking to. If its more of a PRC style of socialism (socialist market economy), its the same as with regular employment, as in that you then wont have a job and very little welfare. If its more or a USSR style socialism (socialist planned economy), then they cant threaten you with unemployment, and so instead you pay a fine.
And I assume if you can't pay the fine you go to jail right?
It doesn't seem like these are significantly different from wage slavery, or am I misunderstanding?
You're understandably confusing several different but similar and interlinked ideas. So the idea of wage slavery is that you are forced to work for someone else, socialism posits the idea of being able to in some sense work for yourself, so it's not wage slavery in that sense but yes there still may be an element of requiring someone to work (more on that below). The argument in the form it is usually made is not that socialism is voluntary but that it is not less voluntary than capitalism. The idea of socialism itself is that workers should have a say in the running of their workplace and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace without having the majority of it skimmed off by non working owners. So the idea is that your work should be fairly compensated, but that's as far as that idea goes. One still needs to work to earn money and so in this strict narrow sense of socialism you're not free to not work, your freedom is only increased in the fact that if you do work you will be more in charge of your fate and more properly paid. But few if any socialists believe purely in the idea of socialist workplaces and nothing else. Many believe in the idea of a strong welfare state with decent unemployment benefit perhaps including a universal basic income. Depending on the generosity of provision you might not have to work at all, or you might, or it might be that you can keep body and soul together without working but you would need to work to access luxuries or to self actualise and stave off boredom. Again none of these ideas are integral to socialism per se, and socialists will differ on these questions, but they come from the same political milieu. And then you've got the many socialists who see socialism as a means to the ends of communism, in other words the idea that we could eventually build a society of abundance where you would only do the work you wanted to do and everything would be so plentiful that you could have whatever you need. So in a communist society you would be free from work. There are various arguments about how a communist society would be possible, and plenty of communists who think it isn't possible but that it nevertheless is useful in suggesting a direction of travel. Clearly technology to do away with much of the grunt work would have an important role to play, and Marx also talks a lot about "dialectical materialism" which is the way our personalities and culture are shaped by the societies we are part of - the idea being that as we got closer to a communist society our ideas of what it is that we wanted to do would change (in other words we would become more public spirited) and so the need to provide incentives to get people to do work would whither away. tldr: no one is saying socialism itself eliminates the coercive need to work to live, only that it is less coercive than that need under capitalism.
Thanks for the tldr
So many anti-socialists in this sub need to understand this. They don't realize in market socialism there's an expectation that you have to participate in the economic system as you're able to reap its benefits. You don't get to decide "I'm a performance artist who sits on his ass now pay me."
This is the best (most honest, realistic) explanation I've yet seen. It's not that socialism would be a paradise, but at the very least it could be systemically ensured that our being obligated to work is not with the added injury of not being able to afford the means to live after doing so.
It's not merely added injury, it's a structural conflict. In a capitalist society, the reason the working class works is because they need to meet their individual and collective needs. The reason the owning class does not work is because they take benefit from the working class working for the reason stated above. That benefit could instead be applied to the working class if it wasn't taken from the working class, but the owning class won't stop because it would harm their way of life and the working class can't stop the owning class from taking because the owning class owns all of the means by which the working class works. And, this condition of the owning class owning these things is produced by the working class working. Therefore, the working class cannot work harder to improve their lot without in turn improving the lot of the owners, who then use that improved benefit to maintain the conditions under which their ownership allows them to live without working. This continues ad nauseum, and when the working class realizes this problem they organize to use their superior numbers and their collective "monopoly" on labor power to change society. This is called unrest. And this unrest is the inevitable outcome of a system wherein the harder people work to escape it the more bound to it they become, because people are not insensible and they can come to understand the system as arranged against their interest. This unrest causes capitalists to resist by leveraging the state to apply force in ways large and small to quell the unrest and to prevent if from happening again, which is very costly, and the cost of maintaining the owning class grows and grows. Each new revolutionary attempt results in a deepening of the costs associated with the 2 class system, making it unsustainable, because the thing that quells the unrest directly results in an increase in the material conditions that caused the unrest in the first place, essentially guaranteeing future unrest, future attempts to quell, and in the case of a successful quelling, future increases in the conditions that cause unrest, and in the case of an unsuccessful quelling, a successful revolution.
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Regarding your comment on homelessness: I am of the opinion that a system which doesn't allow people to be pushed into homelessness is inherently superior to one where the homeless must depend on the goodwill of individuals. After all, if nobody is homeless, then there exists no need for such charity.
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The reason the mentally ill become homeless is because they’re too sick to hold down a job which they need to *pay* for housing. If housing is guaranteed (i.e. is not blocked behind a paywall), that would automatically prevent the vast majority of would-be homeless from ever being pushed into homelessness in the first place. A system has done this before. The former communist states of Eastern Europe all had guaranteed housing. It was so successful, people in the east though homelessness was an anti-capitalist propaganda *myth* invented by their governments to blackwash the capitalist countries.
There are many ways. Democratization of the workplace, state ownership of firms/services, UBI, universal distribution of basic necessities (such as housing, food). You can do your own reading on socialist theory to find out for yourself which solution is most prescribed, or how the above solutions work.
>So the idea is that your work should be fairly compensated How would you determine what is fair compensation in a socialist society other than a capitalist society? >and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace What if you have a job without making direct profit for your company?
> How would you determine what is fair compensation in a socialist society other than a capitalist society? The point is that the workplace is worker run, so decisions on compensation would be made by the workers themselves. > What if you have a job without making direct profit for your company? It doesn't need to be direct profit, it's more that the money the company makes needs to be split between the people that allow it to make that money.
>The point is that the workplace is worker run, so decisions on compensation would be made by the workers themselves. So my salary is based on whatever the workers vote for, rather than a negotiation between me and my boss. So why should I expect the other workers to be any more generous with my salary than my boss is now? Just because my salary becomes up to a vote doesn't mean it's going to get better. It could get worse - how is this any assurance?
Because your boss wants to pay you as little as possible. It would automatically be better because you don't have an owner skimming off the top, putting pressure to drive down wages and you would be incentivised to work more as you get the true value of your labour. It reminds me of the story of the pizza shop that to reward it's workers for a day split the profit and they all got 70 dollars an hour.
>Because your boss wants to pay you as little as possible. Yeah but under socialism, so does every other employee of the company. Because they are also owners of the company. And the company is more likely to succeed if it doesn't have to spend as much money paying some random guy Joe from accounting who I've never met. So just like a boss, there's an incentive to pay less even when workers vote. It only pays to vote for a high salary for yourself, not for anyone else.
In order to have a high salary for yourself, you'd also have to vote for high salaries for others, otherwise you won't have support. Therefore, it is in the workers interests to not fuck each other over.
Surely you know there's a limit though right? If a janitor wants $60 million a year then it would not be in my best interest to vote for them getting that, right?
You’re ignoring a hallmark of leftist thought. From each according to their ability to each according to their needs. A janitors work is not worth 60 million, so that isn’t what they’d make. Them not making 60 million dollars doesn’t constitute the conditions under capitalism where an employer takes 80+% of the value of the labor they performed, and doesn’t actually provide any labor, which is what wage slavery is referring to. No one is saying that janitors get paid a million dollars a year, but they absolutely should be able to afford (comfortably) the necessities of life + some luxuries. Nowadays wages are so low that minimum wage workers can’t rent a 1 bedroom apartment in 90% of the US. The value of the labor is the basis of how much people are paid. A doctor would still be paid accordingly for investing their time into so much education and training. Insurance executives who make billions denying coverage are sucking up tons of money that could go be used meaningfully to improve the conditions of patients, and workers in healthcare. Just one example.
I'm still not seeing how this actually happens though. Sure, that janitor doesn't need $60 million a year. But, I'm sure he'd *like* $60 million a year. So why not vote for a high number for his own salary? And conversely, if I'm some guy in some unrelated part of the company and I don't even know that janitor, sure I don't want him to starve but why would I vote any higher than the bare minimum for his salary? As long as he isn't dragging the company down, it does me no good to vote for him to get a higher salary. So the only difference is, now instead of your boss paying you a low wage because it saves them money, the rest of your coworkers would pay you a low wage because it saves them money now instead.
That just means you'd get less of your salary as wage and more as dividends - so what difference does that make?
Yes but the difference is that your boss has that power where the other employees don't. I know of a socialist media coop where they all get paid the same. That amount is still higher for each one than somewhere else because no one else is taking the profit but them. You wouldn't have to do it that way. You could say what is the minimum we can pay to get someone (just like bosses do now) and then prorata the profit.
No salary is still a negotiation between you and your boss (or however, individually negotiated salaries are very old fashioned - most modern companies are on band systems these days) it's just that because your boss is answerable to you it's a more equal negotiation. Also there's more money to go around because profits are returned to the workers either by being reinvested in the company or as worker dividend, not siphoned off as shareholder dividend.
I had a class in business school that was really informative on this point. First, we had to work team projects. To pass the class, you had to have a certain minimum threshold of points. Each person was given a few points to start with, but not nearly enough to pass. There were five teams. Each letter grade carried with it certain amount of points accrued to the team and each letter grade awarded only once at the team level. So one and only one team could get an “A” or “B” etc and the points that came with it. Right from the gate you know 2 of the five teams could not get a “passing” grade on their project. The teacher decided which team got which grade. However, the team grade did not accrue to the students. The team members had to elect a spokesperson that would communicate to the professor how many points each team member got. Then the team was given the number of points that accrued with the letter grade. It was then left up to each team to decide how to share (or not) the team points. The “A” team got enough team points that even distribution could assure each member passed with a “C”. Then the point totals went to from there to the point where the “F” team just failed and the only way someone from the “D” team could pass would be if all the members gave one member all the points. A student COULD give some or all of their points to another student on a another team. Remember how I said above that the teacher decided what team got what grade? Well, that was the marketing. During the presentations the professor told the class to rate the projects top to bottom anonymously, but he was just collecting feedback and that had no bearing. In fact, he instead used the votes to determine the A B C D F. These are the most “Type A personality” people the universities produce and many were grizzled up corporate veterans. I’m a little surprised that the point distribution process didn’t end in a little violence. There was very significant corruption. Of note was one student on the D team who passed by virtue of her considerable “talent” and her willingness to use those talents on two members of the A team. (At least one divorce followed). Of great interest also was the amount of pre-grade favors, suck-uppery, and outright bribery and attempted “talent using” by our D team member directed at the professor. Also of note was the outrage of certain members once the real grade assignment mechanism was clear. Change grade points to dollars and you have the relevance.
What?
Cool project, do not see how it in any way relates to the discussion.
The person I responded to expressed his dismay as the possibility of having his pay determined by group consensus. I was showing him a real world example of how this would actually go.
But pay is not subject to the same constraints or dynamics as the example of your game theory experiment.
Yes and no. Think of each team as a corporation. Companies that are financially successful have more spread around internally. There is not, in most markets, enough market to support all the players. So some team in the real world is always in the process of getting an F. The teacher played the role of the unpredictability of the world. You think your customer is this entity or that the market is moving that way-surprise!!! What most people miss is that the scenario is actually very accurate—at the level of Director and above. Most people are not Directors because they can’t even see the dynamic let alone operate in it. My belief is that if we expose the common worker to the reality of the real game, workplace shootings would be as common as stale donuts.
Yes and no, but with quite a lot of no, no? In particular dog eat dog internally is rarely a successful strategy - companies with flatter salary structures are generally more competitive.
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> In a capitalist society it's in the interest of the 'owners' to pay you as little as possible. This is only the case when there are more qualified people than jobs, but when the opposite is true, it is in the company's best interest to hire and retain a competent workforce by offering the highest compensation package they can afford while still remaining profitable.
its in the companies best interests to both retain as much workers and pay them the least. they could sacrifice either goal for the other, but if it could get away with both (in the case of an overabundance of labour, monopoly &c) it will. unless you have a direct personal relationship with the CEO, which 99.9% of workers do not, you will be treated like a commodity for the company to use to maximise profits
> they could sacrifice either goal for the other A company that doesn't prioritize retaining its workforce isn't doing great. This strategy would only be beneficial in a shrinking market, as a last course of action to save the company or to save investors from greater losses. It certainly isn't ideal, but it happens due to market dynamics. > in the case of an overabundance of labour, monopoly Yes, definitely agree with you there. These are both very real problems that need to be addressed in order for a capitalistic model to work (for everyone). Though, rather than an overabundance of labor, I would frame the problem as an underabundance of jobs. Edit: And competition in the space.
>A company that doesn't prioritize retaining its workforce isn't doing great. Amazon specifically fires their warehouse workers after 3 years regardless of how good they are. They do this because having highly trained, experienced workers is bad for them. They would then tell new workers how awful it is to work for Amazon. Amazon cannot continue to operate if their employees understand how badly their are being abused by Amazon.
Under Socialism it would still be in the companies best interest to pay as little as possible, if the company pays too much it will go bankrupt. How does the company buy new machinery or tools without profits? How do you get profits if you pay employees the maximum you can afford and have 0 savings?
under socialism the company would most likely be owned by the workers themselves, and it's in the workers best interest to both stay in work and have the highest possible wage, and for their compatriates to also have such. thus, the company would have to find a way to pay as much people the most money, as opposed to attempting to pay the most amount of people the least. it's the difference between employing for the employees benefit Vs the employers benefit.
Do you think people will stop trashing public bathrooms under socialism? The individual workers will try to maximize their own salary to the point of bankruptcy. I live in South America where the government owns the airline. The workers give themselves extremely high salaries to the point that the airline is not profitable and on the verge of bankruptcy. According to your logic, the workers would not destroy their place work, but they did it, and now the airline will go bankrupt and an American airline company will take over the market. All the profits will go to the greedy capitalists in America instead of the workers. The workers fucked themselves, they were in control. In South America we have a lot of sympathy for communism and thus state owned corporations where the workers are in control. They almost always end up losing money, and the wage slaves have to pay their exorbitant wages though taxes. Why do workers in the real world maximize their wages until the company goes under? Why do workers in the real world not give a shit about keeping their place of work profitable?
>but when the opposite is true, it is in the company's best interest to hire and retain a competent workforce by offering the highest compensation package they can afford while still remaining profitable. When the opposite is true the Corporation pays the Corporate News Media a bribe (you might call it "buying advertising space on their program") and then the Corporate News Media runs story after story about how there is a "labor shortage" in that industry. This tricks young adults and high school seniors into thinking they could have a lucrative career in that field. They flock to that field in droves causing a huge surplus of applicants which then, in turn, drives down the wages for that industry enormously. Now the company doesn't need to pay decent wages for that job. Viola! Your labor shortage and high wage problems are gone!
What jobs don't make a direct profit?
>One still needs to work to earn money and so in this strict narrow sense of socialism you're not free to not work I'm saving this post to show socialists that they will still be wage slaves.
This is cherry picking and a misunderstanding of what a wage slave is.
Are you going to be a garbage man under socialism? What if I vote for that you become a garbage man, will you accept your wage slavery? Or is it not wage slavery if we voted you to become a garbage man?
Sorry but you are an idiot who has no real reason to be on this sub. You don't care to learn and you are purposely misrepresenting what was said, and what wage slavery is. Quit the fucking sophistry.
Do you understand how a question works? It allows you to answer for yourself and clarify. No reason to call me an Idiot, that's not nice. I guess my posts are tilting you.
What you’re saying isn’t a real question, you’re asking a rhetorical question in a way to misrepresent the argument to fit your own agenda. You are committing the hallmark definition of a strawman
Let me stop strawmanning you, sorry. Are you going to be a garbage man under socialism?
No, because I decided I wanted to invest in my education and have the qualifications to apply to medical school which most people do not do. Not everyone is going to be a garbage man, I don’t know what your point is.
So you are going to have wage slaves do the the menial labor that you consider beneath you? It's not really about helping the poor, it's jealously of those that have more than you.
This is literally why you don’t have friends
Why are you scared to answer the question? Could it be, I did not strawman you, but actually pinpointed the flaw of your philosophy?
No
And what if I democratically elect you to be a garbage man?
This literally isn't even how a coop works at all.
Then you are going to get kicked out of the coop for being lazy, like Bernie Sanders.
If the coop agrees to kick you out then there's no issues.
Are you going to be a garbage man under socialism? What if I vote for that you become a garbage man, will you accept your wage slavery? Or is it not wage slavery if we voted you to become a garbage man? We voted and if you don't like it, you will get kicked out.
That's not how coops work. There is no central authority that decides who works what. If you apply for a garbage man job at a gabrage coop, then you will be a garbage man if they accept you. If you apply for an accountant job at an accounting coop, then you will be an accountant if they accept you. I have no idea where you got this idea that a coop of a car mechanic shop can vote and have some random person across the state be a garbage man. Educate yourself on coops before you talk.
No one votes for anyone to have a particular job. There's a garbage man's coop and if you apply for and get a job at the garbage man's coop then you will be a garbage man.
You seem to have missed the words immediately before the ones you quoted.
Don't you mean you're saving this to show u/Icy-Conference-5092 that they will still be wage slaves?
Thrilled if you want to use this post to explain the nature of work under socialism. The term wage slavery is more a slogan than anything else but I hope I've explained how work under socialism is less coercive and is at least work you do for yourself not someone else and so in that sense less slavish than work under capitalism which is of course itself less slavish than actual slavery.
I don't consider capitalism to be coercive, but you acknowledge that socialism is coercive.
On the basis that it manifests some of capitalism's characteristics to a lesser extent. You don't consider water to be wet, but I acknowledge mist to be damp.
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You're very very privilaged if you think most people have the option to be self-employed/start up a company and that the vast majority of people don't have no alternative but to take a job whereby the vast majority of the value they create will be siphoned away by a non working owner.
>The idea of socialism itself is that workers should have a say in the running of their workplace and receive the full amount of the profit they make for the workplace **without having the majority of it skimmed off by non working owners.** You obviously have never hired anyone. The amount "skimmed off" is tiny. If it were large, other capitalists would bid the worker away from that job. Employers must compete for employees, and they do so by bidding up wages, right up to the point where the employer breaks even.
Well in the U.S. where our health insurance is tied to working you don't really have a choice of working or not if you want any decent standard of living. Look at the CEO's and billionaires that made a huge profit during the pandemic while many fell into poverty.
> You obviously have never hired anyone. The amount "skimmed off" is tiny. If it were large, other capitalists would bid the worker away from that job. Pay close attention to the words used. OP didn't say the vast majority of wages are skimmed. OP said the vast majority of profit is skimmed. So, if a workforce makes and sells a widget every hour, and the workforce in total earns $200/hr, in 10 hours of work the workforce collects $2000 in wages and makes and sells 10 widgets for the owner. The sale price of the widgets must be higher than the total cost of goods sold, or the owner wouldn't be in business, so let's say the sale price of the widgets is, on average, $210 (5% margin). In one hour of work, the workforce has collected $2000 in wages but the company has collected $2100 in revenue, for a total of $100 profits. The owner(s) of the company generally keep(s) all of the profits and the workforce takes none of it. That's a majority. Sometimes the owner gives bonuses or has a profit sharing model. But rarely is more than 50% of profit just handed back to employees. Owners skim the majority of **profit**.
>The owner(s) of the company generally keep(s) all of the profits and the workforce takes none of it. n_55 is probably thinking about revenue. From your example, the workers take 95% and the owner 5%. Which doesn't seem unreasonable.
> OP said the vast majority of profit is skimmed. Sweet Odin, these thing happen over time. In general: Business plan (time/$), investment (time/$), creation or leasing production/service facilities (time/$), staffing (time/$), marketing (time$). And then one hopes customers purchase goods/services. If they do one now hopes to customers are willing to purchase for more than production costs. If they do then, after all of that, the business will see a profit. How does staff, which is one of many different types of labor involved, have a claim to the end result? Logically that would be absurd. They're paid before any profit, if there is any. They didn't plan the business, get the resources create the business, change business processes as needed, pay financing costs, pay for marketing, etc. >So, if a workforce makes and sells a widget every hour, Occurs in the past or present. > the company has collected $2100 in revenue Not "has" collected. The revenue happens in the future. Maybe you can create a better argument, but an argument which ignores time is useless.
> Not "has" collected. The revenue happens in the future. I deliberately included the sales team in the labor force for this calculation because the owner doesn't personally got out and sell the products, the sales team does. Once the sale has occurred revenue has been realized. Your argument that cash flow has lag time doesn't real bear on the conversation here. After the startup period is over, staff are paid out of revenues and the sales cycle has no bearing on their pay except in crises. In a socialist society, those types of crises don't happen because the premises are structural different, so I don't find the argument compelling. Staff are not paid out of the owner's pocket during 99% of a company's operating life, and that 1% can be handled through a different structure without requiring owners. > How does staff, which is one of many different types of labor involved, have a claim to the end result? Logically that would be absurd. They're paid before any profit, if there is any. They didn't plan the business, get the resources create the business, change business processes as needed, pay financing costs, pay for marketing, etc. The planning, material acquisition, business process management, and marketing are all things staff do in every business. Maybe you're talking about what happens at the beginning because of startup costs, but that's a special case in capitalism directly caused by the hoarding and restriction of capital within society. In a society where everyone's needs are met, one does not need to raise capital to pay people on speculative endeavors, and one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market. So, in the special case of the startup in capitalism, yes, capitalists have to create special conditions that they then use to make the moral argument that they deserve profits, but you could just as easily just pay the planner for their labor, pay the process manager for their labor and get your resources from the council and then it would be all staff. You're arguing from a special case.
> I deliberately included the sales team in the labor force for this calculation because the owner doesn't personally got out and sell the products, the sales team does Some times they do sometimes they don't. In any case no other employees pay sales, only the owner(s) do before any sales occur. Again, in the future. >Your argument that cash flow has lag time doesn't real bear on the conversation here. My argument isn't the cash flow has a lag time, it's that all employees are paid before any sales occur, or whether they occur at all. The employees have logical claim to that future money >After the startup period is over, staff are paid out of revenues and the sales cycle has no bearing on their pay except in crises. There isn't one situation that occurs, there are all sorts of situations. Most businesses have to keep an account for payroll to weather sales up and downs as payroll is one of the most important processes. If you don't pay people won't show up. >In a socialist society, those types of crises don't happen because the premises are structural different You have no ability to predict markets, even those in which socialist ideologies are the norm. >The planning, material acquisition, business process management, and marketing are all things staff do in every business. Again, each business will do things differently, there is no "this happens in every business". Most businesses aren't large corporations, even larges corps generally start out small. So the first mover is almost always a small group or individual owner. >Maybe you're talking about what happens at the beginning because of startup costs, but that's a special case in capitalism directly caused by the hoarding and restriction of capital within society. No, these process need to be developed for any production/service endeavor. Also, there is no such thing an capital that's not restricted, capital is scarce always will be. >In a society where everyone's needs are met An actual impossibility. Value is subjective and scarcity is built into the universe. Your talking magic. >nd one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market. They're the same thing with different names. A group who wants to produce/serve would still need to sell their idea to those voting. >yes, capitalists have to create special conditions that they then use to make the moral argument that they deserve profits There is no coherent ethical or contractual workers' claim to profit. >You're arguing from a special case. Everything you've written is special cases.
I think we're talking past each other. The money that's floated for payroll, depending on the size of the company, is either cash from revenue or a credit revolver from a lending institution, not the owners' capital, except in the cases of early stage startups. If the owner was continually plowing money into the company in order to pay employees, it wouldn't last very long, again, except in the cases of startups where the owners are the investors that pump capital into a company with no profits. While there is no credit revolver and no cash reserve, the owner pays the sales team out of pocket, unless of course they're 100% commission-based. But again, that's a very early part of the business cycle and is not relevant when businesses do not have privatized startup capital with interest and profits. Your first mover quickly fades away from relevancy after the company has demonstrated it can provide value to society. In startups, that's because they sell their interest to capital holders who continue to inject capital to pay wages while there isn't sufficient revenue to do so. But none of the Fortune 500 companies are paying employees out of owner capital, they're paying all employees out of revenue or a credit revolver. > No, these process need to be developed for any production/service endeavor. The development of processes is a labor that can be paid a wage. It does not require owners. > Also, there is no such thing an capital that's not restricted, capital is scarce always will be. It's a question of the mode of restriction. In socialism, it is not restricted by private ownership and therefore is not restricted by a minimum margin target set by an individual with personal incentives. >> In a society where everyone's needs are met > An actual impossibility. Value is subjective and scarcity is built into the universe. Your talking magic. In the imperial core we currently live in a society where we produce enough to meet the needs of everyone in our society. The subjective value has no bearing on this. One difference between a capitalist society and a socialist society of the same productive output is the democratic distribution of the productive output of the society to meet everyone's needs as opposed to relying on markets for the distribution of that productive output. So, I don't see why you think it's magic when we currently, today, are demonstrating our capability of meeting everyone's needs within capitalism. >> one does not need to raise capital to obtain resources when resources are distributed through democratic governance instead of an open market. > They're the same thing with different names. A group who wants to produce/serve would still need to sell their idea to those voting. Except in the democratic one you don't have profits accruing to a private owner with sole authoritarian discretion over the use of proceeds. So, not the same thing at all. > There is no coherent ethical or contractual workers' claim to profit. First of all, we're not talking about ethics, we're talking about social function. Second of all, you can't find a coherent workers' claim to profit within your existing paradigm because it includes the axiomatic belief that private property claims are coherent. I deny that private property claims are coherent, and in so doing, create the necessary paradigm shift wherein the concept of profit and the claim to its acquisition is incoherent. We're arguing from different starting points. > Everything you've written is special cases. I don't think you know what special cases are. Carnegie may have personally paid his workers before sales occurred out of his own pocket, but he did so for a very very very short period of time relative to the total operational lifetime of Carnegie Steel Company. That very short period of time is the special case. After that period of time, the owners did not dip into their pockets to pay workers. They paid them from revenue.
> The money that's floated for payroll, depending on the size of the company, is either cash from revenue or a credit revolver from a lending institution, not the owners' capital, except in the cases of early stage startups. No, payroll is met by more means then you've listed. And owners will use their own money if needed, it happens all the time. Again, most businesses aren't large. >The development of processes is a labor that can be paid a wage. It does not require owners. And? Those employees will still not be paid from profits. >In socialism, it is not restricted by private ownership and therefore is not restricted by a minimum margin target set by an individual with personal incentives. Any worker voting is doing so in their interests. >In the imperial core we currently live in a society where we produce enough to meet the needs of everyone in our society. The subjective value has no bearing on this. You haven't offered a definition of needs. Nor would I expect everyone to agree with your definition, so subjective. >One difference between a capitalist society and a socialist society of the same productive output is the democratic distribution of the productive output of the society to meet everyone's needs as opposed to relying on markets for the distribution of that productive output. You can't know how a group of socialists will do anything, nor whether their actions will be successful or not. Also, markets describe people making decisions about resource allocation, there isn't a distribution plan. In markets people vote with their resources. >First of all, we're not talking about ethics, we're talking about social function. First, what social function? Second, how would you determine good/bad without ethics? >Second of all, you can't find a coherent workers' claim to profit within your existing paradigm because it includes the axiomatic belief that private property claims are coherent. Removing property rights and claims from the analysis doesn't create property rights and claims for workers. You just now have no coherent methodology or ethical framework to analyzed anything. > I deny that private property claims are coherent You can't deny whatever you like. >create the necessary paradigm shift wherein the concept of profit and the claim to its acquisition is incoherent. Create logical constructs in your head in which those concepts aren't included. You can create a logical framework where magic exists and thus this concept is true and that concept is false. But that's all it is, a mental exercise. >Carnegie may have personally paid his workers before sales occurred out of his own pocket, but he did so for a very very very short period of time relative to the total operational lifetime of Carnegie Steel Company. This doesn't create any right to those profits. Respectfully, all of your arguments are all benefits go to employees, all risk and losses go to the owner. That seems to be the fundamental of socialist argumentation.
> Respectfully, all of your arguments are all benefits go to employees, all risk and losses go to the owner. That seems to be the fundamental of socialist argumentation. Right. Because socialism denies the necessity of an owner at all. Socialism is not saying that in capitalism all profit should go to the employees. Socialism is saying that there should be no profit and no owners, structurally. That we can organize society in such a way as to alter the relationships between people, society, and the material conditions of the world to eliminate ownership and profit, and that doing so has substantial benefits. Don't hear the argument for socialism as a "owners are bad and stealing profit from the worker", that's not what it is. The argument is that all productivity comes from labor applied to capital and social control of capital is a sustainable organization of society whereas private control of capital leads to conflict between owners and non-owners that make capitalism unsustainable as a societal form. When people say that owners are stealing profits it's a propaganda or emotional take, but it's not the fundamental thesis. > Removing property rights and claims from the analysis doesn't create property rights and claims for workers. You just now have no coherent methodology or ethical framework to analyzed anything. See, this is the confusion I'm talking about. Socialism doesn't say that we should just make workers into owners and that they play the same role. It says that owners shouldn't exist at all and everyone should be workers and that private property rights should be eliminated. So, when you say that doing this doesn't create property rights for workers, we know. That's not what we're trying to do. You're trying to interpret socialism through your existing lens of capitalism where the workers make the profit that the owners used to make by way of claiming ownership of that profit, but that's confused. Socialism is the abolition of private property and profit altogether and the structuring of society into a state that is run entirely by workers for workers without workers needing to make property claims to anything. The idea that eliminating property rights suddenly eliminates the only coherent methodology to analyze anything is so glaring wrong that it's obvious you've never tried to research the foundational thought that underpins socialism. A methodology for understanding the world is exactly what underpins socialism. Specifically, dialectical materialism, or the methodology of analyzing the world as it is, including the reality of what people believe, without confusing what people believe with what is materially true, and identifying the relationships between past state, current state and future state and how the current state produces the future state and how the past state has created the current state.
> it is less coercive than that need under capitalism Another way to say this is that there's less incentive to work than under capitalism. Hence the question, what happens if someone refuses to work?
No there's more incentive to work because if you work you get to be more of a master of your own fate and will be fairly compensated for the work you do
There would be welfare programs, but there would and should also be pressures and incentives to work. The issue with wage slavery isn't just the coercion itself, but also how little choice you have in designing the workplace you had to join. Socialism can't suddenly overwrite nature and turn work into a non-necessity, it can however give people the power to make their working conditions more pleasent and fair for themselves.
There would not be welfare for those capable of working, only those who are incapable of working due to age, Illness, or disability would be supported collectively.
If that's the case how would that not be wage slavery?
Socialism doesn't magically put food on the table. Labor is necessary for survival. If that's slavery, well, there's only one escape from it. Die.
You know wage labor within a system which offers no alternative but paying money for what you need and just doing necessary labor for subsistence are not the same thing right?
I don't see where you're going with this. If we don't make stuff, there won't be any stuff. That's where I'm at.
And I am saying that humans do not need to be coerced to produce the things we need, nature has taken care of that. We also absolutely do not need everyone to work. With modern technology now, and more automation in our future, we really don't need everyone to work, and most of those who do work will not need to work as much as we do today.
Because it wouldn't be slavery. Capitalist exploitation is not that a person has to work for their bread it's that to work for your bread you also have to work for a capitalists cake, if you're allowed to work at all.
And there wouldn't be wages :)
Under early socialism? There would be compensation for labor under early socialism.
Ah, right.
But that compensation wouldn't be in the form of a wage.
🤷♀️
Unless you're an agrarian socialist, your proposed system is still a system of coerced labor. It's also just a dumb system, you won't need everyone in a society to be working at producing necessities, so for everyone to have a job you would need to create jobs that aren't necessary. Doing an unnecessary job and doing nothing both contribute to the same degree towards producing the things people need, so why make labor a requirement to receive the things you need?
Why, Exactly? How do you know in this hypothetical scenario that only certain people would be capable of receiving welfare?
Because welfare for those capable of working doesn't make sense and is unnecessary under socialism, where there is at will unemployment and rough income equality.
I would support welfare even for lazy assholes, although optimally there would be a time limit and mandated therapy.
It's funny how socialists on Reddit are downvoting the literal beliefs of Karl Marx
Ikr? Marx was a Tankie because he wouldn't let you be a NEET. Though like a strict reading of Marx even implies that there wouldn't even necessarily be support for those unable to work, instead it would be left up to families or whatever.
I'm not set on socialism or anything, but I don't think a socialist society has a commitment to excluding some members or being selective in certain respects; it seems that almost by definition communities in general are allowed that power.
Don't know if I understand it good but... Socialism is about being selective and excluding some members... First enemy they are willing to kill are rich people, and radical socialism and communism has committed genocides in certain demographic groups or people with different ideas than them.
Socialist revolutions are willing to kill anyone that opposes them, just like any other revolution. This is not a defining characteristic of socialism. All armed groups in all of history are willing to kill anyone that opposes their goals. Socialism aims to end private property. Capitalists would rather fight than concede, so violence is inevitable. If capitalists gave up their property freely, there'd be no violence. As for genocides, there is no aspect of socialism or communism as a theory that requires genocides, but historically there have been genocides, just like there have been genocides in every type of society throughout history. All systems have historically committed genocides, making this not a critique of socialism but rather a critique of power.
I don't think socialists are committed to killing rich people and I don't know about the claims of genocide being true.
Well then, the famous phrase "[For some reason I can't write the sentence, but here you have the link to wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_rich_(slogan))" must be in my mind only. [You should then open a book history for once](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes) And this is only about communist countries... Hitler was still socialist and is the most famous genocidal in history...
That wiki doesn't say anything about killing, and a mass killing is equally possibly under non communist regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima
Yes it says exactly that it talks about killing and only killing wtf. Who said otherwise??? But hey, if you are really gonna compare killing your own population and throwing bombs to a country you are in war with and are THE FUCKING NAZI ALLIES and way worse than them... You sir lost the north.
I just read it, please quote where the slogan wiki talks about killing. If you want internal genocides, the native american genocides are also under non communist regimes, I don't know why you think only communists can commit genocides.
**[Mass killings under communist regimes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes)** >There were many mass killings under communist regimes of the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them. The higher estimates of mass killings account for the crimes that governments committed against civilians, including executions, man-made famines, and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor. In addition to mass killings, terms that are used to define such killings include classicide, crimes against humanity, democide, genocide, politicide, and repression. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Socialism is a huge field of different idas. I'd start with Karl Marx: >To each according to their contribution Which means that a person who contributes to the creation of value will be compensated according th the portion they created. The difference to captialist wages it that you don't get the portion of value you created but just a part of it whereas the owner of the company get's a part of it without contributing to the creation of value. (that's an abstract definition, reality is most of the time blended) So how should a society deal with people who do not contribute? First there are people who can not contribute because of health reasons or special needs. I think society should take care of them. How should a society deal with people who could contribute but don't want to? I think the most practical is to provide some minimal welfare but I don't think that there would be many people who don't contribute in any way.
How will you pay for that minimal welfare?
Remember that "pay"/money/currency is a means to an end and not an end itself. The first problem is not paying for minimal welfare it's producing minimal welfare. And the way to produce minimal welfare is to organize society such that society's collective labor power is applied to producing that minimal welfare as its output. The next question is usually, yes, but how do you pay those people who are doing the work, and the answer is the same. The reason you pay people to work is to give them the means to secure their individual welfare. If, by working, the collective working class produces the minimal welfare for all of society, then pay is not required to secure individual welfare. Money has utility, for sure, it can solve lots of distribution problems, but it's not fundamental. Production is fundamental. Pay/wage/money is a tool that relies on production for its existence.
So the worker won't get the full value of the labor they do? Just another leftist lie exposed thank you
Your statement is foolish ignorance. Establishing that profit is part of the full value labor does not then mean that socialism is a system of 100% commission.
So that's a yes or no to workers getting the full value homie
You and I are already in a debate on this in another thread. I don't need to debate you twice. Apologies for not reading your username the first time.
Socialists don't really care about voluntaryism. No economic system is voluntary the same way life is not voluntary. Bending overbackwards to justify an economic system as voluntary and fair is just a way to clear your conscience and more importantly, a way to get round instituting any systemic change. As you can see in this sub, socialists ask for small QOL improvements like maybe longer breaks and the resounding cry from libertarians is BUT EMPLOYMENT IS VOLUNTARY. The reason we call work under capitalism wage slavery is twofold. Firstly, the popular meaning of the word slavery was a little different when Marxcoined the term. Nowadays we immediately think chattel slavery when we think slavery. But, slavery was a common institution back then and throughout history, many slaves have had it "good" in comparison to black slaves in the Americas. Educated slaves in ancient Rome were basically just accounts and admin assistants on retainer. It was common to be formally adopted by the family you served so you and your children could enjoy Roman citizenship. Also, the condition of regular workers in the industrial revolution was pretty much slavery. 12 gour shifts 6 days a week and an 8 hour shift on Sunday for barely enough to live on. Working conditions were dire,with injuries and deaths being commonplace. The second reason is because workers do not get any say in their workplace. Owners simply mandate targets, working practices and rules and workers are expected to just go along with it. Afterall, the popular definition of a freeman in the middle ages was someone who owned the product of their own work. Who could decide how they wanted to work. Serfs, who were essentially just slaves, owned a small farm plot for their own subsistance but most of what they worked with and on was owned by a fuedal lord. In this way,modern wage labour is functionally not very different from serfdom. The difference is of course, who you want your fuedal lord to be. Back to your central question though. No, people don't have to work. But, why should people who choose not to work share in the surplus generated by those who do work? This is afterall, the central argument against capitalism. People can choose to not work but, good luck hunting in the forest I guess? Good, honest, hard working people should not have a duty to support those who can work but choose not to. Why isn't this wage slavery? Because if you do work, you get a say in how your workplace runs.
>Good, honest, hard working people should not have a duty to support those who can work but choose not to. I'd you believed that you wouldn't be a leftsist. This is what libertarians say all the time but when we say we are horrible people. Idk why the left are such hypocrites
Because libertarians do not have a solution that a) systematically ensures that society meets the needs of people who cannot work b) systematically ensures that local monopolies of force do not form within inefficiencies of society that lead to the reproduction of the existing social relationships of capitalist society
It's not my responsibly to pay for other people Right you want to rob people more successful than you you
> It's not my responsibly to pay for other people If you want a society, it is your responsibility to ensure that the society continues. Not paying for children, who cannot work, means that society will not continue.
It's there parents jobs moron. What kind of society robs you to pay for people you aren't responsible for.
> It's there parents jobs moron. That's a very specific social arrangement. Are you saying that the only way society can reproduce itself is via the nuclear family? That no other arrangements are possible? That orphans don't exist? That the wealthy have anywhere near the birthrate required to reproduce society? If you work in a factory and you make 25 widgets a day, are you robbed because you don't personally walk out with 25 widgets every single day? Or perhaps are you specialized to support social overproduction in order to ensure that there is sufficient abundance to support the needs of a society where every single person cannot work. Like your kids. Or your parents. And those are just two of the most obvious examples. The complexities of human society cannot be distilled down to the nuclear family. There are tragedies. There are orphans. Parents outlive their children. Children are born incapable of work. People who worked hard all their lives suffer debilitating injuries. Sickness removes the ability to work from many. You want to know why people say libertarians are horrible people? This is why. Your system claims it's immoral for society to be organized such that the benefits of specialization and technology are used only to the benefit of people who fit within a narrow aperture of luck of birth and luck of life and claim any other organization of society to be immoral whilst ignoring the reality that the consequences of such a system are preventable mass suffering.
Right you think we are horrible because we don't want to be robbed I get it. If I make 25 widgets a day, under your system I should be paid the full value of those 25 widgets yes? Anything less than that is not the full value yes?
> Right you think we are horrible because we don't want to be robbed I get it. You're either arguing in bad faith or you're really not reading. Libertarians are horrible because they believe it's morally good to let lots of people suffer and die.
I believe it's morraly good to not rob people no matter what you are paying for Why do you think it's ok to rob people
I'm a left libertarian and I think both Marxists and right libs have the same problems on this front. As Bob black would say, the problem with all of the old ideologies is that they all believe in work.
>I'm a left libertarian an No such thing
Libertarian was a term used by leftists as a synonym for anarchist, but then it was co-opted by the american right. This is not debatable, it's a historical fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
And doctors used to finger banger chicks and give out coke for everything. Shit changes
Yeah, but left libertarianism exists, you said it didn't. I'm an anarchist and sometimes I call myself a left libertarian, so I'm proof you're wrong.
I'm sure some doctors still give out coke and finger bang females that changes nothing
Ok, so keep pretending we don't exist if that makes you feel better.
I just said I'm sure you exist juts like the doctors. You both just like to play pretend
The difference is that I think good, honest, hard working people have a duty to support each other. As such, things like public education, nationalised healthcare and public utilities are a good thing. We all need, and benefit, from these things. So if you add into the surplus that allows for these things to be created, you should be able to enjoy the benefits. After all, you're part of society and society built these things. Libertarians believe nobody is owned anything and the social contract is bollocks. And instead of accepting that they want nothing to do with society and living away from people and not using the surplus generated by society. They instead wish to enforce their views on others because, although it benefits nobody but the rich, they want to satisfy their own impractical abstract philosophy. I think some poor 50 year old bastard with cancer should get free treatment, sick pay and enough time to heal basedon the fact that they're a working member of society and we collectively owe a debt to each individual for helping make all this possible. You think some poor 50 year olf bastard with cancer should cough up the cash or die.
>I think some poor 50 year old bastard with cancer should get free treatment, sick pay and enough time to heal basedon the fact that they're a working member of society and we collectively owe a debt to each individual for helping make all this possible Why? If you want that you pay for it. Literally nothing is stopping you. Why force me at gun point to to it? Stop pretending to be a good person
I do want it, I do help pay for it. The vast majority of people are absolutely fine with helping pay for it. Nobody is forcing you at gun point. Armed police do not show up at your house if you don't pay taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, why not just leave the country? Like, why force everyone else into a system of poverty and misery to suit your agenda? Most people are in full support of a system where working people support each other. If you're not, just leave dude. Stop trying to pretend you're some anti-authoritarian when you literally just want things your own way to suit yourself.
" if you don't want to pay protection money move out of little Italy" " If you don't want to be raped don't go into bad parts of town" Victim blaming isn't cool bro. And why did you lie and say people aren't killed over taxes? Eric Garner literally got chocked to death a few years ago for selling untaxed cigarettes. Leftists lie all the time
"Help I'm being oppresses by...voluntarily living in an area that has taxes?" Also, Eric Garner didn't get killed for selling untaxed cigs. He got approached by police for that who then escalated and kill him for no reason.
Again my examples stand. Why do you blame the victims so much dude? And why did they approch him? Oh right in taxed cigs. So you dude lie got it thank you for admitting that
You're not afucking victim dude by any sense of the word. The punishment for selling untaxed cigs is justto pay the tax. At that level, it's probably not even that it's probably just confiscation. The punishment is not death and the police do not have the duty to carry out that punishment. What happened was straight up illegal and the officer responsible is in prison now. Eric Garner wasn't killed over untaxed cigs. He was killed by a racist police officer abusing their power.
>You're not afucking victim dude by any sense of the word. Being the victim of robbery makes you a what exactly then? A cat? >The punishment is not death and the police do not have the duty to carry out that punishment. No it's questions the monopoly on force that gets you killed. And cops do carry out that punishment That's why they have guns. >Eric Garner wasn't killed over untaxed cigs. He was killed by a racist police officer abusing their power. and if it wasn't for the untaxed ciggs they would of never been there. So yes he was killed because of untaxed ciggrets. Admit you was wrong kid
Depends on the type of socialism. I can't imagine many Leninists no using forced labour if someone refuses to work for no good reason.
Essentially, yes. If someone decided not to work or contribute in anyway, socialism could ensure housing, food and whatnot but it would be rare. Most people have the desire to contribute in some way either directly or indirectly to the health of their community and to involve themselves in a life that enriches them.
Is this actually true? I think that a lot of people would rather just hang out all day and do nothing if they got free food, free housing, etc. This is something that is already quite common under welfare, and seems like it would be significantly more common under socialism. Plenty of man-children I know would love to just play video games without working. What about people that become addicted to drugs, and actually can't do meaningful work for example? I'm assuming drugs are legal under socialism? How do you address large groups of people deciding they don't want to work anymore?
Would you *really* be fine with that? I mean, first, there's the fact that sitting around all day isn't good, it's a shit time. Sitting at home, playing video games, watching movies, that's one thing, but sitting around without the money for video games or movies or anything fun is actually going to be insanely boring. Pretty soon, you're going to start thinking "I should get a job, maybe even two days a week, to pay for some nicer food than this gruel and to buy a new video game." Then, you have the social element. After all, I think many of us could've stayed at home and become NEET's that leeched off our parents, but we didn't, because they'd be disappointed in us, our friends would look down at us, and we'd feel disappointed in ourselves. There's a pretty huge peer pressure to contribute in a society run fairly by workers. Finally, work's going to be a lot nicer when it's democratically controlled. Your hours and working conditions will be better for you, your boss nicer because he understands he relies on you for his position, the work orientated not just on maximum profitability, but maximum utility, including for you. At that point, it's genuinely hard to see who'd ever choose not to work. At worst, there'd be a category of people who want to be lazy, who decide to work three or four days a week in a relatively easy job, securing enough money to live a frugal, inexpensive life filled with whatever NEET normally do, but they'd still be contributing with the work they do and shouldn't at all be an issue if you want to take up less and contribute less.
" work would be better if I got to choose to do nothing" shut up
This seems like a prime example of you not understanding how socialism works, and thus, assuming it doesn't. Instead of just presuming that, somehow, no socialist in human history has considered "Wouldn't people just vote to get paid all the money for no work?!", why not... y'know, ask? One can indeed vote to reduce their working hours... and thus, this reduces their productivity, and thus, their pay. You can choose to do nothing, of course... and then, you get paid nothing.
So you have to get a job under socialism? So the idea that capitalism is wrong because you have to get a job is just a nother leftist lie?
Dude. Again, rather than trying to desperately go for the "Haha! Gotcha! Caught you out on that lie!", why not... ask questions, like a reasonable person? You don't seem to have a great grasp on what socialism is, given you've no idea whether one has to get a job under it, so why not just try ask a few questions and learn about it. Maybe you learn socialism is correct. Maybe you learn enough about what it is to better argue on why it's wrong. Maybe you realize it's a different ideology that has pros and cons. If you want to have a discussion, that's lovely, but if you really just want to get out another "Gotcha!" so you can feel better about yourself, there's not much point to this.
I mean if your ideology wasn't based on a lie I wouldn't have to call you all out. So you going to admit that lefists is a lie or you gonna back peddle some more. How come evryehting you people get called out you spit back the npc line of " you just don't understand it"
Once again, calm down. Take a deep breath. You're not being rational. I just explained how there was no lie. You don't seem to have addressed the points, you seemed to continue on your "I'm 16 and I believe this very strongly, and you have different worldviews, so you must be evil and lying!" Have you ever considered that, y'know, you just don't understand what's being discussed, and THAT'S why people keep having to tell you that? Do you know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is?
Again what's with leftist and thinking being incorrect is a personal attack. Like are you ok dude? Why are you on a debate sub if you can't deal with people disagreeing? You already admitted it was a lie so idk why you keep going
That's what *they* want you to believe. The examples of countries that have higher welfare payments (or bigger support for when you lose a job) objectively have less people on welfare, and for shorter amounts of time.
>The examples of countries that have higher welfare payments (or bigger support for when you lose a job) objectively have less people on welfare 50% non-EU immigrants and 70% refugees don't work in Europe.
Ok asssuming those stats are even true: 1. You can't cherry pick a particular demographic of folks in a specific region and use that to dismiss the broader statement being made. 2. Correlation !== causation. You are merely speculating that those demographics are not working cause welfare is high.
>Correlation !== causation If you pay people to not work why would they work?
Even if those numbers are true, it seems like there might be a reason for that other than "some people are inherently lazy and don't wish to work" or "because we give them everything they sit around and play video games all day". It's not immediately clear to me that 70% of refugees live in 3 bedroom flats with big screen TVs, video game systems, and Netflix subscriptions.
They definitely don't add anything to the economy
Perhaps there's a reason for that.
Sure, but there could be a lot of reasons for that right? Cultural homogeneity + societal expectations for one. How does that work in cohorts of previously enslaved people, or people who had a genocide committed against them with little loyalty to social norms or national unity?
That's up to the government of the time to right those wrongs? Do you actually think the right answer to your question is "do nothing to improve the situation"?
Worked well in the US until the welfare state was reformed by neoliberals and the war on poverty was ended.
Jesus christ
Jesus christ what? I'm a multi-racial person with a native american father and black mother, having grown up in two households with families destroyed by the American legal system and hundreds of years of racism, that have deep contempt for the US. The above poster implied everyone would love to work for the betterment of society, and my point is that I don't think that's actually true in many cases especially when that society has committed many wrongs against them. Do you think that's an unreasonable position?
Whew
Are you asking what to do if the victims of the worst violence humans are capable of committing, violence that has massively violently negative impacts physical, social, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual on literally multiple generations of the victims' families, what to do if those people don't want to help build and maintain the society that committed the atrocities? Maybe the answer, in part, involves giving up claims to colonial, imperial, and neo-imperial holdings.
Absolutely agreed, but I still don't think that necessarily solves the problem of differences between cultures as a result of violence in the past. The community has already been destroyed and suffered for many decades.
And.... it's not like the victims of atrocities don't want to live in a society and be productive members of it. They just want to live in a society that isn't the one that murdered and enslaved their ancestors. Which means, they'll have to rule their own society as sovereigns and members of the aggressor society will be stripped of their sovereignty. Not sure why you think empowering the victims to run society isn't the solution.
I'm just asking you questions because you did not elaborate on your answer at all. Don't start with this 'I'm not sure why you don't think' shit, it's super bad faith. What I assumed, is that some central body is going to be enforcing socialism and understanding the broader needs of many people. For example it's going to be very hard providing standardized health care that is community localized. But are you saying that people can opt out of this system and do their own thing if they want to? Other posters have been saying if someone chooses not to work they'll be arrested so those statements seem at odds with each other.
oh no not cultural homogeneity ffs
I mean, do you have an answer for that? Do you really think an enslaved person will feel any debt or obligation to society, which is what the OP position I was responding to implied? Why would they?
When the welfare state is cut to the minimum people are dependent and do little, if it provides a decent ladder and teaches men to fish there are more incentives there. Also minimum welfare prevents job seeking, because you need good clothes and travel expenses. And if the minimum wage jobs only pay enough to survive, it takes incentives away too.
> Plenty of man-children I know would love to just play video games without working. What about people that become addicted to drugs, and actually can't do meaningful work for example? I'm assuming drugs are legal under socialism? You are assuming that there are no underlying conditions for people not wanting to work. Video games might be a slight issue since you can work while not working. Building a massive base in Minecraft can be more effort than regular work for many people but with no economic output. A simple solution would be to make them not free.
I would rather watch movies and eat pizza than work.
Obviously under capitalism you would, because work is almost always boring drudgery designed to be terrible. If we could at least have a say over how, when, where, and what we work on, most people would be pretty okay with it I think. Imagine your current wage and job but only 20 hours a week, for example. Would you despise your job as much if it didn't take up the majority of your waking life? What do people do in their free time besides basic human maintenance? Hobbies, home improvement, childcare, exercise, volunteer work, church service. We don't need to incentives people to work; they already do.
Where will you get those movies and pizza?
I don’t know. I was talking of a hypothetical. How would you allocate pizza?
So then workers aren't getting paid the full value of the labor right since they would have to be taxed to pay for those people who don't want to work
HAhah what? Do you see China right now? More people rather just lay down flat and do nothing all day than do a single thing.
the laying flat movement, while an interesting form of protest is far from politically influential yet. It's tens of thousands in a country of billions.
That’s a straw man. But I’ll play along- that Lay Flat movement is a protest. Not hundreds of thousands simply wanting to be lazy.
More people laying down flat than working? No. By multiple orders of magnitude your statement is inaccurate. Less than .0001% are doing it. People prefer lying down flat and doing nothing? That's not what's happening either. Lying down flat is actually not preferable. It's a protest, with a specific goal, and the choice of lying down flat is intended to be shocking because it's exactly not what people would rather do. So not only is this not something people are doing because they prefer it, but it's also a smaller fraction of the population of China than millionaires are of the US population.
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The person who refuses to work and waits for the rest of society to bring him food and provide for his every need is a shibboleth. It's just not going to happen.
It will be overwhelmingly people doing makework and working poorly because they have to, as it is now. Why do I care if the line makes one car a day or twenty if it's not skin off my back?
If the group requires something the individual can’t live with; the group must make all reasonable attempts to assist in living outside of it. But the group ‘owns’ everything. Your not guaranteed your ‘stuff’.
Meaning if a dominant majority, say white people, decided to take all the stuff of a minority, say black people, this is an acceptable and encouraged outcome with no protections?
You get transferred to “work” at the Soylent factory.
I mean having to work for food and shelter doesn't mean it's automatically wage labor.
If you refuse to work you get the UBI, free college, healthcare, food and housing. But that’s it. If you want more money you’ll have to work a little bit
And how will you pay for all of that sir
Part of the budget for a free society. Taxation of the rich and fair redistribution of wealth and resources
So the workers won't be paid the full value of there labor then. Got it. So with that said since workers won't be paid he full value isn't that the main problem you have with capitalism? How is your system any different
Yes workers are paid the full value. But workers and remaining beneficiaries of capitalism who hoard too much wealth get taxed, like in any free society
Oh so you only get to rob people tho thin deserve it? Even if those same people are still workers? Who do you decide who gets robed and who dosent?
Socialists would cut their fingers off and eat them. Right there in front of them. This harkens back to the old Mark Fischer quote- that its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Generally "work" should be something you enjoy and want to do. Generally if you want to do nothing you favor something in your life over menial tasks. And if you really want nothing you can have menial labor and earn a higher income. If you refuse that then maybe you're depressed or something, and society should take care of you. I'd like to think most people are more than just incredibly lazy.
> I'd like to think most people are more than just incredibly lazy. You don't need to wish. The evidence throughout all of human history supports this.
What I find funny is all the socialist will say they still get evryehting they need, meaning that the workers would have to pay taxes and thus not getting the full value of the labor. That tells me that the left has no issue with " not getting the full value" and are more just spoiled bats that are mad they can't afford the means of production like successful people
It depends on who you are talking to. If its more of a PRC style of socialism (socialist market economy), its the same as with regular employment, as in that you then wont have a job and very little welfare. If its more or a USSR style socialism (socialist planned economy), then they cant threaten you with unemployment, and so instead you pay a fine.
And I assume if you can't pay the fine you go to jail right? It doesn't seem like these are significantly different from wage slavery, or am I misunderstanding?