Richard D. Wolff video: 3 basic types of socialism

[Harry Bosch]

"Think critically": (verb) To come to the same conclusion as me


There's a word for buying at a price which it's up to the buyer and not the seller to decide is fair: "steal".

Ask the employees if they think that they deserve to get paid more for the work they do. If it's up to the seller, and it very much is the worker selling their labor, and they don't think they are being paid fairly, then who is doing the stealing here?

"The" stealing? What stealing? Who says there's any stealing going on? What, you think employees are paid whatever the buyer decides is fair, just like you "buying out" HB's company without his permission for "I say a fair price to buy you out is the margin you extract from labor once you quit actively working." or whatever else you declare to be fair? That's not how employment works -- if HB won't pay what the sellers decide is fair, he can't make them sell. This is in sharp contrast to a socialist who decides getting HB's company can be accomplished largely by passing laws that gradually transfer ownership of some asset to whomever he defines to be using said assets.

But I shouldn't need to explain this -- Jimmy Stewart explained it better in Shenandoah...

Tinkham: This here is Mr. Carroll, and a few of his friends. They're federal purchasing agents, buying horses for the cavalry.

Carroll: That's right Mr. Anderson, and although there's a set price we pay, I'm willing to hear how much you think your animals are worth.

A Son: Our horses are not for sale.

Anderson: What my son tells you is the gospel truth, gentlemen, and you can carve his words in stone for posterity, if you're a mind to. The horses are not for sale.

Carroll: That may be, but I think you should know we're authorized to confiscate anything we can't buy.

Another Son: What does "confiscate" mean, Pa?

Anderson: Steal.​

Exactly, who says there's any stealing going on? If a condition of doing commercial trade in the country is that what you invest in a company comes to be owned by the workers who work that company as a function of your extraction of value, that is what you consent to in doing trade *as a capitalist*.

See how that works, imposing an asymmetry on an argument and claiming it is ethically justified? I like my version where the persons who control the dialogue are labor.

Cry foul all you like, but you justify your paradigm wherein labor gets shafted over the fact that labor cannot object lest they die in a gutter. But there are more of us, and *we do most of the fucking work*. And we get as much of a right to get together and decide how these paradigms work and what constitutes stealing and what doesn't as much as "capital". What about this don't you understand. You have said "oh, that's *stealing*!" Without justifying the asymmetry in who is deciding on what is "ownership".

You are perfectly free to set up a company that operates how you want. You can set up a company where all workers are owners and vice-versa. There are companies in the US that fit this definition exactly. But why force your system on everyone? This is what bothers me most about socialists is that they want to force their system on everyone.

 

[Tammuz]

Ask the employees if they think that they deserve to get paid more for the work they do. If it's up to the seller, and it very much is the worker selling their labor, and they don't think they are being paid fairly, then who is doing the stealing here?

"The" stealing? What stealing? Who says there's any stealing going on? What, you think employees are paid whatever the buyer decides is fair, just like you "buying out" HB's company without his permission for "I say a fair price to buy you out is the margin you extract from labor once you quit actively working." or whatever else you declare to be fair? That's not how employment works -- if HB won't pay what the sellers decide is fair, he can't make them sell. This is in sharp contrast to a socialist who decides getting HB's company can be accomplished largely by passing laws that gradually transfer ownership of some asset to whomever he defines to be using said assets.

But I shouldn't need to explain this -- Jimmy Stewart explained it better in Shenandoah...

Tinkham: This here is Mr. Carroll, and a few of his friends. They're federal purchasing agents, buying horses for the cavalry.

Carroll: That's right Mr. Anderson, and although there's a set price we pay, I'm willing to hear how much you think your animals are worth.

A Son: Our horses are not for sale.

Anderson: What my son tells you is the gospel truth, gentlemen, and you can carve his words in stone for posterity, if you're a mind to. The horses are not for sale.

Carroll: That may be, but I think you should know we're authorized to confiscate anything we can't buy.

Another Son: What does "confiscate" mean, Pa?

Anderson: Steal.​

Exactly, who says there's any stealing going on? If a condition of doing commercial trade in the country is that what you invest in a company comes to be owned by the workers who work that company as a function of your extraction of value, that is what you consent to in doing trade *as a capitalist*.

See how that works, imposing an asymmetry on an argument and claiming it is ethically justified? I like my version where the persons who control the dialogue are labor.

Cry foul all you like, but you justify your paradigm wherein labor gets shafted over the fact that labor cannot object lest they die in a gutter. But there are more of us, and *we do most of the fucking work*. And we get as much of a right to get together and decide how these paradigms work and what constitutes stealing and what doesn't as much as "capital". What about this don't you understand. You have said "oh, that's *stealing*!" Without justifying the asymmetry in who is deciding on what is "ownership".

You are perfectly free to set up a company that operates how you want. You can set up a company where all workers are owners and vice-versa. There are companies in the US that fit this definition exactly. But why force your system on everyone? This is what bothers me most about socialists is that they want to force their system on everyone.

That's my feeling too. I have nothing at all against such companies existing. If anything, I think a mixture of different kinds of companies is probably a good thing. But I don't understand the insistence that every single company should be organized that way.

 

[Bomb#20]

You are perfectly free to set up a company that operates how you want. You can set up a company where all workers are owners and vice-versa. There are companies in the US that fit this definition exactly. But why force your system on everyone? This is what bothers me most about socialists is that they want to force their system on everyone.

That's my feeling too. I have nothing at all against such companies existing. If anything, I think a mixture of different kinds of companies is probably a good thing. But I don't understand the insistence that every single company should be organized that way.

By-and-large, socialists don't actually care whether any company is organized that way. They think they do, because they think it's an effective means to an end they really do care about: equality. But when actual socialists actually try filling an economy with employee-owned companies, they quickly find out this leads to a few rich companies with a few thousand rich employee-owners (who have surprisingly and totally unforeseeably started thinking like capitalists), and a lot of poor companies with many thousands of poor employee-owners. And then the socialists realize that true employee control means all the companies have to be run centrally by the state by the consolidated workers' union.

The point of insisting that every single company should be organized that way is to get rid of competition. Competition causes inequality. If they allow a mix of employee-owned and traditional companies, traditional companies will typically win the competition.

 

[bilby]

The problem is that people think that money is property - that they own some money, and the amount they own is their 'wealth'.

But money isn't property - it's a signal. It is the way that consumers advise the markets of what is the most valuable use and allocation of resources.

When viewed in this way, it becomes clear that taxes are not theft. They are instead a re-balancing of the weight given to each person's economic signals. In the absence of such re-balancing, wealth tends to concentrate in a few hands, and the signals sent to the economy become biased - the economy starts doing (more of) the things that wealthy people want, and not doing (as much of) the things that poor people want.

Having your wants prioritized by the economy is the reward we give to people who have, in the past, contributed value to the economy. Which is OK, until you find that people who are the distant descendants of people who contributed value; and/or the people who collect rents on assets that they own (largely as a result of past biases towards the prioritizing of the desires of the wealthy) are now the ones telling the economy what to do.

To a degree, this bias towards filling the desires of the rich, and not the desires of the poor, can be mitigated by democracy - by giving some powers to people on a 'one person, one vote' basis, rather than a 'one dollar, one vote' basis. And when we do this, one of the things that happens is that various taxes are levied, which seek in part to reduce the wealth inequality, by transferring economic signalling power (aka 'money') from those with lots, to those with less.

To describe this re-balancing as 'theft' is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose and nature of wealth.

 

[Bomb#20]

But money isn't property - it's a signal. It is the way that consumers advise the markets of what is the most valuable use and allocation of resources.

When viewed in this way, it becomes clear that taxes are not theft. They are instead a re-balancing of the weight given to each person's economic signals. ... To describe this re-balancing as 'theft' is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose and nature of wealth.

So who here called taxation theft? What we're calling "theft" are Jarhyn et al's proposals to enact laws to confiscate BH et al's businesses and hand them over to whomever the socialists consider more worthy of them. Nobody here is denying that BH's business should pay its taxes.

 

[bilby]

But money isn't property - it's a signal. It is the way that consumers advise the markets of what is the most valuable use and allocation of resources.

When viewed in this way, it becomes clear that taxes are not theft. They are instead a re-balancing of the weight given to each person's economic signals. ... To describe this re-balancing as 'theft' is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose and nature of wealth.

So who here called taxation theft?

Nobody in this thread, as far as I recall. But it's a common enough complaint, particularly amongst people who declare redistributive taxation 'socialist'.

What we're calling "theft" are Jarhyn et al's proposals to enact laws to confiscate BH et al's businesses and hand them over to whomever the socialists consider more worthy of them. Nobody here is denying that BH's business should pay its taxes.

That's OK; I am talking about something else. My post isn't intended to follow directly from those immediately before it; Rather it is an IMO important comment regarding a common criticism of 'socialism'. Which I believe is within the scope of the thread topic.

 

[lpetrich]

Turning to #3, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, that would be a good idea, especially for relatively small businesses. It may be hard to make cooperatives scale very well, however, and a lot of people don't have much experience in participating in such businesses. For scaling, it may be necessary to reinvent representative democracy -- it's hard to make direct democracy work on a large scale.

Furthermore, socialism #3 can be interpreted as a form of capitalism with non-elitist business management.

 

[Tammuz]

Turning to #3, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, that would be a good idea, especially for relatively small businesses. It may be hard to make cooperatives scale very well, however, and a lot of people don't have much experience in participating in such businesses. For scaling, it may be necessary to reinvent representative democracy -- it's hard to make direct democracy work on a large scale.

Furthermore, socialism #3 can be interpreted as a form of capitalism with non-elitist business management.

But why does it have to be forced on all companies?

 

[lpetrich]

Turning to #3, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, that would be a good idea, especially for relatively small businesses. ...

But why does it have to be forced on all companies?

I wouldn't want to be an absolutist about it.

 

[PyramidHead]

Turning to #3, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, that would be a good idea, especially for relatively small businesses. It may be hard to make cooperatives scale very well, however, and a lot of people don't have much experience in participating in such businesses. For scaling, it may be necessary to reinvent representative democracy -- it's hard to make direct democracy work on a large scale.

Furthermore, socialism #3 can be interpreted as a form of capitalism with non-elitist business management.

But why does it have to be forced on all companies?

If it were to be forced on all companies, it would be because the alternative is something society no longer tolerates. I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else. If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

 

[Jarhyn]

Turning to #3, worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives, that would be a good idea, especially for relatively small businesses. It may be hard to make cooperatives scale very well, however, and a lot of people don't have much experience in participating in such businesses. For scaling, it may be necessary to reinvent representative democracy -- it's hard to make direct democracy work on a large scale.

Furthermore, socialism #3 can be interpreted as a form of capitalism with non-elitist business management.

But why does it have to be forced on all companies?

If it were to be forced on all companies, it would be because the alternative is something society no longer tolerates. I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else. If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

Thank you. This is the point I have been trying to make: the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production is that "they got there first, and beat up anyone who objected to that control". That's it. That is the basis for private ownership as it is shaped today. I'm just providing a model where people can get SOME kind of compensation for getting their first, for putting together the machine, without ceding control over that machine in perpetuity.

When we acknowledge that "there can be such a thing as a maximum allowable profit as a basis for starting the machine", and that any further compensation must come as a product of work is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Harry Bosch]

If it were to be forced on all companies, it would be because the alternative is something society no longer tolerates. I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else. If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

Thank you. This is the point I have been trying to make: the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production is that "they got there first, and beat up anyone who objected to that control". That's it. That is the basis for private ownership as it is shaped today. I'm just providing a model where people can get SOME kind of compensation for getting their first, for putting together the machine, without ceding control over that machine in perpetuity.

When we acknowledge that "there can be such a thing as a maximum allowable profit as a basis for starting the machine", and that any further compensation must come as a product of work is perfectly reasonable.

I think that the larger reason is that it's a miserable system that has failed everytime it's been implemented. Or, let me be more specific, every time private ownership has been eliminated, the population suffered. Worker owned companies can sometimes work. But don't force everyone into it.

 

[PyramidHead]

If it were to be forced on all companies, it would be because the alternative is something society no longer tolerates. I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else. If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

Thank you. This is the point I have been trying to make: the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production is that "they got there first, and beat up anyone who objected to that control". That's it. That is the basis for private ownership as it is shaped today. I'm just providing a model where people can get SOME kind of compensation for getting their first, for putting together the machine, without ceding control over that machine in perpetuity.

When we acknowledge that "there can be such a thing as a maximum allowable profit as a basis for starting the machine", and that any further compensation must come as a product of work is perfectly reasonable.

I think that the larger reason is that it's a miserable system that has failed everytime it's been implemented. Or, let me be more specific, every time private ownership has been eliminated, the population suffered. Worker owned companies can sometimes work. But don't force everyone into it.

This is false. Socialism has elevated the well-being of the population almost everywhere it has been tried, relative to what it was replacing, and there are no examples of a socialist economy failing on the merits of socialism as a concept, without complicating factors such as imperialist aggression, sabotage, and other reactionary elements. This is true of the USSR, China, Cuba, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, and anywhere else that socialist organization of production has been tried. In every case, there were increases in literacy, employment, access to basic necessities, infant survival, women's rights, and higher education compared to the systems that prevailed before socialism was implemented in some form. You have been lied to your whole life. I suggest you watch this informative video if you would like to know more (honestly, it deserves its own thread):

Socialism always works

 

[Bomb#20]

But why does it have to be forced on all companies?

If it were to be forced on all companies, it would be because the alternative is something society no longer tolerates.

And if respect for Christian notions of the sacred is forced on all citizens, it's because blasphemy is something society no longer tolerates. That's not a justification.

I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else.

"Like anything else"? You mean nothing is a natural right? If that's what you mean, what's your evidence?

If that's not what you mean, how do you determine which things are natural rights? Private ownership predates the existence of legal systems, which appears to make your theory that it's a legal construction implausible. Every human society known to anthropologists recognizes property rights. Chimpanzees recognize property rights. What rights do you figure have better claim than that to being natural?

If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

Attempting to get rid of private ownership causes a police state and usually a famine. Seems to me subjecting people to police states and man-made famines requires a justification.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think that the larger reason is that it's a miserable system that has failed everytime it's been implemented. Or, let me be more specific, every time private ownership has been eliminated, the population suffered. Worker owned companies can sometimes work. But don't force everyone into it.

This is false. Socialism has elevated the well-being of the population almost everywhere it has been tried, relative to what it was replacing, and there are no examples of a socialist economy failing on the merits of socialism as a concept, without complicating factors such as imperialist aggression, sabotage, and other reactionary elements. This is true of the USSR, China, Cuba, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, and anywhere else that socialist organization of production has been tried. In every case, there were increases in literacy, employment, access to basic necessities, infant survival, women's rights, and higher education compared to the systems that prevailed before socialism was implemented in some form. You have been lied to your whole life. I suggest you watch this informative video if you would like to know more (honestly, it deserves its own thread):

Socialism always works

Personally, I see the major problem being *communism as implemented by government seizure*, combined with the fact Bosch is straw-manning again

Of course when "the government" seizes assets and gives control over them to a crony, things go sideways. But we aren't talking about that. We are talking about transferring control in a limited way, over a long time frame, with more than adequate return of investment, only in the situations where value is extracted, explicitly to those who value is extracted from.

This is something new. A compromise between the need to transition to labor control of assets while explicitly addressing the known causes of past failures re: cronyism. The ownership remains private to the extent that the laborers of a business are private persons.

 

[Tammuz]

I think that the larger reason is that it's a miserable system that has failed everytime it's been implemented. Or, let me be more specific, every time private ownership has been eliminated, the population suffered. Worker owned companies can sometimes work. But don't force everyone into it.

This is false. Socialism has elevated the well-being of the population almost everywhere it has been tried, relative to what it was replacing, and there are no examples of a socialist economy failing on the merits of socialism as a concept, without complicating factors such as imperialist aggression, sabotage, and other reactionary elements. This is true of the USSR, China, Cuba, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, and anywhere else that socialist organization of production has been tried. In every case, there were increases in literacy, employment, access to basic necessities, infant survival, women's rights, and higher education compared to the systems that prevailed before socialism was implemented in some form. You have been lied to your whole life. I suggest you watch this informative video if you would like to know more (honestly, it deserves its own thread):

Socialism always works

To put Germany in the same category as the USSR or Cuba is very misleading. And Germany has not abolished private property or ownership.

Really, is Germany now being used as an example of socialism? It's like the division into West Germany and East Germany, with the latter being much poorer than the former, has somehow been erased from memory.

 

[PyramidHead]

I think that the larger reason is that it's a miserable system that has failed everytime it's been implemented. Or, let me be more specific, every time private ownership has been eliminated, the population suffered. Worker owned companies can sometimes work. But don't force everyone into it.

This is false. Socialism has elevated the well-being of the population almost everywhere it has been tried, relative to what it was replacing, and there are no examples of a socialist economy failing on the merits of socialism as a concept, without complicating factors such as imperialist aggression, sabotage, and other reactionary elements. This is true of the USSR, China, Cuba, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, and anywhere else that socialist organization of production has been tried. In every case, there were increases in literacy, employment, access to basic necessities, infant survival, women's rights, and higher education compared to the systems that prevailed before socialism was implemented in some form. You have been lied to your whole life. I suggest you watch this informative video if you would like to know more (honestly, it deserves its own thread):

Socialism always works

To put Germany in the same category as the USSR or Cuba is very misleading. And Germany has not abolished private property or ownership.

Really, is Germany now being used as an example of socialism? It's like the division into West Germany and East Germany, with the latter being much poorer than the former, has somehow been erased from memory.

The German revolution in 1918 that overthrew the monarchy is what I'm talking about. The Weimar Republic, though short-lived, brought a marked improvement in the quality of life of German workers, women, children, and the elderly, who all benefited from progressive reforms that were enacted in the so-called "Golden Era" just before the onset of the great depression, which crippled them in a way from which they never recovered.

 

[PyramidHead]

And if respect for Christian notions of the sacred is forced on all citizens, it's because blasphemy is something society no longer tolerates. That's not a justification.

I wasn't providing a justification, I was refuting the claim that a justification was needed. The original comment implied that abolishing private property was best interpreted as forcing some non-private property alternative on society, as if abolition of a system is necessarily reducible to imposition of an alternative. I showed that it wasn't. No stronger claim about abolition always being justified was ever made.

I've said this before, but maybe not in this context: private ownership is not a natural right, it's a legal construction like anything else.

"Like anything else"? You mean nothing is a natural right? If that's what you mean, what's your evidence?

If that's not what you mean, how do you determine which things are natural rights? Private ownership predates the existence of legal systems, which appears to make your theory that it's a legal construction implausible. Every human society known to anthropologists recognizes property rights. Chimpanzees recognize property rights. What rights do you figure have better claim than that to being natural?

Private property is not personal property. This never happened:

If it no longer serves the needs of the majority of people, it can be abolished without there needing to be a separate justification for "forcing" non-private ownership, any more than abolishing slavery required a justification for non-slave labor.

Attempting to get rid of private ownership causes a police state and usually a famine. Seems to me subjecting people to police states and man-made famines requires a justification.

Neither police states nor famines are unique to nor disproportionately associated with socialist societies, for fuck's sake

 

[lpetrich]

Private property is not personal property.

That seems to me like "Four legs good, two legs bad".

 

[Bomb#20]

Exactly, who says there's any stealing going on? If a condition of doing commercial trade in the country is that what you invest in a company comes to be owned by the workers who work that company as a function of your extraction of value, that is what you consent to in doing trade *as a capitalist*.

So "consent" works just like "fair price" in your world? Not only does the taker get to decide there's a transaction whether the prior owner likes it or not. Not only is it up to the taker to define whether the price he pays is fair. But now it's also up to the taker to define whether the prior owner "consents"? That's not what "consent" means. A consensual transaction involves two people agreeing; it doesn't involve person X saying "yes", person Y saying "no", and then person X saying "you consent".

In any event, what is this "extraction of value" of which you speak? Are you just taking the Labor Theory of Value for granted? Production is the result of synergistic cooperation between capitalists and workers; together they create something the customers like better than what the customers already have; so they swap; and then the capitalists and workers split what the customers gave them. Nothing is "extracted". There's no "Law of Conservation of Value".

See how that works, imposing an asymmetry on an argument and claiming it is ethically justified? I like my version where the persons who control the dialogue are labor.

What on earth are you talking about? In your version the persons who control the dialogue aren't labor; they're socialists. The socialists are dictating to laborers that laborers aren't allowed to make a wages-for-labor swap with capitalists, every bit as much as they're dictating to capitalists.

Cry foul all you like, but you justify your paradigm wherein labor gets shafted over the fact that labor cannot object lest they die in a gutter.

What on earth are you talking about? Labor can object all it pleases -- there's free speech in capitalist countries, unlike in socialist countries. Labor can hold out for more pay -- there are independent unions in capitalist countries, unlike in socialist countries. Labor won't die in a gutter if it walks away -- capitalists will go broke without labor so they'll compete for workers and up the offer. It's in socialist countries that labor has to knuckle under and not even apply for permission to emigrate lest they be fired and die in a gutter, due to not being able to get a different job, due to their current employer being the only employer allowed to exist.

But there are more of us,

Is that supposed to be a justification? As in "There are more of us Christians, so you Jews have to pray to Jesus."?

and *we do most of the ... work*.

Is that supposed to be a justification? Capitalists provide most of the non-work inputs, without which production also doesn't happen. If this is another one of those "Labor is the source of all value" arguments, show your work.

And we get as much of a right to get together and decide how these paradigms work and what constitutes stealing and what doesn't as much as "capital". What about this don't you understand. You have said "oh, that's *stealing*!" Without justifying the asymmetry in who is deciding on what is "ownership".

What asymmetry? A capitalist can no more "decide how these paradigms work" and impose an arbitrary rule on what is "ownership" than a laborer can. What is ownership is all of our shared legacy, from a multi-million-year species-wide optimization process. As with most other optimization processes, when you throw out all the progress that's been made by incremental adjustment and instead try to compute a new solution from scratch, the new solution is almost always much worse than the old one.

Thank you. This is the point I have been trying to make: the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production is that "they got there first, and beat up anyone who objected to that control". That's it. That is the basis for private ownership as it is shaped today.

What on earth are you talking about? Where have you ever heard anyone offer that as the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production? Why do you feel it's up to you to supply both the case for your side of a dispute and also the case for your opponents' side? And on what planet are "the means of production" a natural resource, as if factories and machines just popped out of the ground spontaneously and were taken control of by the first person who got there?

The justification for letting someone control access over the means of production is that if nobody controls access then while one guy is trying to grow food with a plowshare, another guy will grab the plowshare and beat it into a sword, so not enough food will be grown, so the people will starve, and morality is not a suicide pact.

I presume you were not actually proposing that there should be no access control, correct? So now that we have the justification for letting someone control access over the means of production settled, we face the separate question of who it should be who gets to control access to the plowshare. I presume you have somebody in mind, correct? So who did you have in mind? And what's your justification for letting him or her control it? "There are more of us."?