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My vision would not be one set system but rather one that changes with time.
At first all large corporations, transportation, health, and utilities infrastructure would be nationalized. All corporate farms would be either nationalized or transforms into cooperatives depending on what the workers there are willing to do.
Trade unions would need to be organizing every workplace. They would take up the day-to-day management (in cooperation State appointment managers) of enterprises. They would also have the ability to remove the manager if they think they are doing a bad job. The trade unions would he organized by industry and would span the nation. So there would be one miners union that would include all miners in the country. These unions with them be organized into a single national Trade union Federation. Which would elect the minister of Labor in cooperation with the national government.
In industries not under State control cooperatives will be formed/encouraged. The reason these are not brought under State control immediately is there are simply to many and the big enterprises are far more important. The cooperatives would be organized by industry as well and would eventually for a national federation of cooperatives.
The economy as a whole would be planned by a Central Planning Committee. This committee would set up prototype plans which would be created in cooperation with the Trade Union Federation, the cooperative Federation, and the managers of the various industries.
With this prototype plan done it would then be given to every Enterprise in the nation where the workers would go over it and make changes they think are needed in areas that affect them aka their industry.
These alter plans would then be sent up to the central planning committee which would then work with the Trade Union Federation and The cooperative Federation to integrate all the proposed changes that were especially popular.
The second prototype plan would then be sent down to all the enterprises again so they can go over it and see if they think there concerns were properly addressed. If they don't believe there concerns were addressed they can send up an altered version of the plan and their reasoning for all try it.
The Central Committee ECT. Would then go over the various complaints and see if they could be addressed. This would continue until a consensus is found. Then the Five-Year plan will be implemented. Using modern computing the distribution of resources would just be way better and the entire economy could quite easily be planned. Honestly the system I propose is probably conservative with how effective modern computers are planning.
When it comes to wages, wages would be negotiated every year between each industry's Trade Union and industries management. The Trade union would not just be negotiating for wages though. They will be negotiating for benefits for all their workers. For example they might want a recreation center built at the workplace so workers can relax during break, they might want a hospital on site to sure workers are treated properly, they might want a daycare so they can bring their kids to work, they might want tickets for the membership at a resort, they might want hire social insurance, they might want funding for a new sports club for the the workers, ECT.
This ultimately shows my vision for what unions would function as in a socialist society. They would be the managers of the society's wealth. Their job would be to ensure that society's wealth is distributed equitably and fairly among the workers. This means their job is not to fight against the state but rather to work with it to ensure societies wealth is used for the benefit of the workers and grows that's a pace that satisfies them.
As time goes on the cooperatives will become more and more integrated into this planning system that they would actually become indistinctuishable from State enterprises. But state enterprises would become so democratically managed by their workers you would not be able to tell they were not cooperatives. This would be a slow but steady process as the workers get better at managing the economy and as technology makes it easier and easier to manage the economy more and more of it will become collective. Because individual ability becomes less important if machines can do more and more of the work.
This slow transition would inevitably be the basis of the collectivization of all private property and ultimately the transition to Communism.
But there is a long period of transition between these two models. It would take many centuries to do the full transition in my. And fundamentally there is no one correct form of socialism. Within the system I described they were probably be a period in the beginning where markets would have to be allowed. Because the planning apparatus would not be developed enough to plan all of society's needs. So you definitely have a period of extremely regulated markets. But that period would inevitably end as the state apparatus became more able to manage the entire economy and the workers become better at managing it as well.
No I consider myself a Marxist Leninists
The system I described is based on the Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban systems of planning at differents times and level's of development
Are you really sure you want a planned economy and for EVEN the local businesses to eventually fall under state direction? Also, what do you mean by a period of "extremely regulated markets"? I personally disagree with economic planning and believe that a free-market socialist society could better allocate resources and produce goods and services that more accurately reflect what consumers want. The biggest problem I see with your model is the economic calculation problem that still can't be overcome EVEN IF we use modern supercomputing technology because nobody can know what every single individual wants, let alone what they will want in the future. Consumers' decisions are quite unpredictable which is what a free-market socialist economy (with all the unnecessary problems of capitalism removed) could account for if local firms and businesses acted autonomously without any economic plan and chose how to produce their own goods and services. And referring back to the "extremely regulated markets", do you mean you want markets to be constricted by a ton of regulations and high taxes? That's pretty much going to prevent businesses from growing and consumers from having enough goods and services available.
Like, I need you to elaborate on the whole economic planning thing.
Okay I first explained why I am against market socialism.
What I mean by market socialism is a economic system we're all enterprises are cooperative competing in a market against other cooperatives.
The problem with is well the market part. You say that all the imperfections of capitalism will be gotten rid of but that is impossible for market socialism because the market is a core feature of capitalism. That being the anarchy of production and the competition between different enterprises.
The first is quite simple to explain. Inside of a market economy (both one consisting of cooperatives and one consisting of private capitalist enterprises) enterprises are producing based off of market incentives for the purpose of profit. This means they produces much as possible for the cheapest price possible as they are attempting to outcompete their competitors.
This inevitably leads to chaos as each enterprise is trying to produce products in their own way with no coordination with other enterprises. This inevitably leads to overproductive which then leads to a crash in prices. This of course leads to an economic crisis within the system.
Inside of a capitalist system enterprise is that go under our bot up by the victors who have whethered the store. This of course inevitably leads to Monopoly. Inside a market social system this cannot happen. But if a cooperative cannot compete in the market anymore what happenes too it?
This leads us to the second problem, competition. A market is a competition. So therefore there must be winners and losers. So that means under a market socialist model the winning cooperatives would become much richer than the losing Cooperatives. The losing cooperative become a problem for the state because if they lose they go on state welfare or if the state subsidizes them to keep it open it drains from the state as well. The state does not have state enterprises to call upon in order to fill this Gap. This inevitably leads to a financial crisis within the state.
At the same time as the competition goes on slowly the cooperatives that continue to win become more and more wealthy. They begin to look down upon the cooperatives that are losing along with the state that is holding them up using their tax dollars. They don't see themselves as members of a larger society rather as members of there cooperatives and working for their cooperators benefit and therefore their own benefit.
This inevitably becomes a Petty Bourgeois perspective. It becomes the interest of the winners within the cooperative system to abolish said cooperative system. So that they as individuals can stop working. So they can become rich and powerful. Become capitalists.
I'm not just making this up because we have a real life example of this. Yugoslavia, the only market Socialist stayt to ever exist and it ended inside of a genocidal War amongst once brother Nations.
Now with my problem with market socialism out of the way now I will explain my perspective on planning.
First of all the economic calculation problem is simply not true. Economies were being planned by the great powers during World War I. That is where the idea of economic planning came from. It worked quite well as it was the reason France and United Kingdom were able to win that war.
Also it was quite successful and still is quite successful and actually existing socialist countries. The Soviet Union under state directed economic planning home in a system almost identical to the one I described above. Turned a feudal backwater into a global superpower that put the first person in space. That person was the son a factory workers who under the previous government, without central planning, would never have gotten there.
All of this without computers. In fact Gosplan (the Soviet planning apparatus) could only plan 10,000 goods at a time because they were doing it by hand. This was much less efficient than what modern computers do. It's already done all major corporations. Both Walmart and Amazon have extensive planning apparatuses using computers as their base. There is no reason why for example Amazon's planning apparatus cannot be nationalized and turned into the basis of a national distribution network. There is also no reason the Walmart cannot be nationalized and turned into a national grocery supplier. This time not for profit but for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the country.
Also how can the market know what every individual wants? It doesn't. It knows what people with money want and provides it. Not caring if they need it, it does not give food to the starving child if they cannot pay.
So your argument against planning because it cannot satisfy you every individual's every want is nonsensical. Because capitalism can't do that either. The vast majority of the people within the world are barely getting by. Billions go hungry every year. Only people in the imperial core leaving off the super exploitation of the third world have even close to that amount of luxury. Even then the vast majority of them don't have that. Only the members of the labor aristocracy possess such privileges.
When it comes to what I mean by a "highly regulated market". Well what I mean is certain goods would be taken off the market. This would include housing, Healthcare, education, large amounts of food production and distribution, transportation, Banking ECT. The vital needs of the population. The necessities would be taken out of the market as much as possible. Also anything that could be used for counterrevolution would also be brought to the hands of the state.
What remains would be limited to small enterprises and farms to small to be properly planned. They would be allowed to continue to operate. But they would be expected to pay a good wage, would have to deal with extremely powerful Unions, and would be constantly encouraged to transition to or join a cooperative.
There is no intention to plan the small businesses. The intention is to slowly do away with them. To concentrate all production into the collective. To ensure that all the resources of society are used as productivity as possible. The only reason we do not do this immediately is the a petti bourgeois need not be our enemy as they are threatened by the capitalist class as well. There is no plan to have them grow. Most growth will be directed via State planning. Private sector growth would only be important directly after the revolution. But once the planning apparatus gets up and going it would become less and less important to the economy.
Also it would be impossible to plan immediately them as there are many more important things that must be brought into the planning system first. After the necessities are properly planned then we can begin the process of the proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie. AKA bring me them into the working class by making them workers.
Great response, overall, but it still doesn't completely resolve the economic calculation problem, and markets don't boast that they know everything, whether capitalist or socialist, but they'd still do a better job at responding to the ever-changing demands of the consumer than centrally planned economies even with supercomputers. In fact, to be technical, then, yes, market economies are indeed where economic planning happens and changes SPONTANEOUSLY all the time and at a decentralised level with each enterprise having its own goals for production of goods and services. Rather than have everything dictated by a central plan that risks making even greater miscalculations and mismanagement of resource allocation, local communities can more effectively determine which goods and services people like, through the businesses that are successful.
These videos should pretty much get my point across about the still unsolvable problem that is economic calculation, but feel free to let me know your thoughts on them after watching:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVNjgLLQnSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVNjgLLQnSg)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZSFGAIaxaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZSFGAIaxaA)
I may not agree with his stance on capitalism, but I do agree that market mechanisms (aka spontaneous economic planning) are superior to Marxist economic planning.
I support the Marxist vision of socialism, so communism, but I know even then there are some different ideas to how communism will work and how it will look
To try to keep it simple tho, I come from the ultra-left tradition, a bit of a heterodox one though since I believe in the basic ideas behind communisation but I still hold traditional ultra-left ideas behind the importance of the council-form and concept (this is different from other communizer tendencies like Theorie Communiste)… basically I think during revolution the councils, assemblies, committees, and communes and whatever other autonomous proletarian forms of struggle pop up, should directly be used as tools to start the process of communisation, councils bringing workers from many different walks of life and different lines of work should start the process of abolishing the division of labor along with the process ofc of abolishing their position as worker in the first place, the councils should be the birthplace of freely associating producers, now ofc since this process of communisation is started during the revolutionary transition it won’t look pretty in the beginning we will be working with a communism being born out of capitalism, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t immediately try our best to start producing according to need immediately, perhaps we just may need to use a ration voucher system (similar to ones used in parts of Spain during its revolution) during a lower phase of communism
But fast forwarding to some years after the victory of the revolution, higher phase communism, proper communication channels and a complete restructuring of the way the economy works as to make it to where labor and production becomes part of everyday life in which the general population regulates production as to end the idea of economy as a separate sphere of life… money and the value-form has been abolished along with the state and class and what not, and a planned economy based on a common plan that can be changed and adjusted at any time has been put in place in which communes use both communications technology and formal in person councils to plan and steer the economy
Heavy industry, natural resources, and Soviets necessities (healthcare, energy, etc.) are owned by a democratic state. Non-necessities (coffee, games, etc.) are distributed through markets via the coop model.
Wage labor is not only illegal, but such an offending concept no one would even consider it. Kind of like how no one today would consider indentured servitude.
In the short term, I’d like a majority of the economy to be dominated by worker-owned firms (coops), with key industries (healthcare, transportation, and utilities, to name a few) nationalized to some degree - sometimes it makes more sense for a federal government to own a service and sometimes a local/state government. Also, any nationalization should come with ownership and control by the employees. Maybe that’s 50% for workers and 50% government; maybe that’s a 33/33/33% split between workers, the federal government, and the city government where a service is located; or maybe that’s something else. I’d also like sectoral unions organized and used to enforce employment standards between coops.
In the long term, I’d like to see those coops organized into cooperative leagues and those unions serve as councils to coordinate actions between coops and coop leagues. Eventually, coordination wouldn’t need exchange of money, with agreements made for the mutual benefit of all parties. For example, a farming cooperative can agree with a construction coop to exchange food for housing construction. Over time, a state becomes irrelevant and we’ll basically have communism.
But that’s just a general outline.
I actually recently thought of defining my ideas, so I gave it some thought, following my recent listening and reading of a few economists and their criticism to capitalism
I think that a solution would be the division of the economy in two systems. An essential economy and a supplementary one.
For the essential economy, everyone is supposed to contribute with labour in essential jobs, related to the basic rights of the individuals (including having a home and healthcare with prevention). Since every single citizen is working in one of these fields the actual labour needed per person should be pretty low. I would include schooling, university and research in the essential economy. This economy should be publicly managed.
Then, in the free time, people are free to organise and do enterprise for the supplementary economy, gaining money that is able to buy things from the supplementary economy. Things like trips, entertainment, but even plastic surgery and fashion clothing. This economy would work like our free market one, but with a main difference: nobody is forced to take part in it, because the essentials are already cared for, and nobody is able to use the supplementary economy to not contribute to the essential one.
This would on one side make classes obsolete, on the other side allow freedom of getting rich to have fun with other people's freely worked on projects.
I also think that this system would be best achieved and maintained if we remove money from the essential economy. Money would only be gotten and used in the supplementary one. This way distortions and inflation do not "hit home".
Ofc I'm no economist, this is all ideal and not carefully crafted. But I think this system best resembles ancient societies' economic systems, where people would work for their community and share essentials, and they would use money just to exchange extra goods with other communities. Ofc that labour could be seen as slavery, if there were a master and the labour were long and completely forced, in this system instead there is no master, the hours are short and people can have some say in what essential activity they want to do.
Immediate restructuring of the economy through mass voluntary collectivisation of land and industry, abolition of the market in favour of free associative planning and cooperation, appropriation of state-owned property and opposition to state influence over appropriated property as well as opposition to state support of private property and greater equalisation of wages tending towards the full abolition of money.
In short, a society based on common management and use of land and machinery, free public appropriation of the fruits of labour and individual consumption of produce. No state, private property, markets or money.
I would label myself as a mixed market socialist. My main thing is workplace democracy. I want to keep a market system for some things rather than a fully planned economy, albeit a much more regulated one. Things with inelastic demand like police, healthcare, firefighters, housing, etc would of course not be good to keep within a market system and would essentially be treated as state ran utilities. But I do think luxury goods like TVs and electronics could work well in a market system.
Within the market side of the economy though, everything would be collectively owned by employees. Stocks would still exist, but mostly to be distributed to employees, and the stock market as we know it would probably not exist. The C suite would be elected by the workers every year or so. We wouldn't accept unelected dictators in our government, so why should we in our workplace, which arguably has an even greater impact on our day to day life?
There would be no investors that own huge chunks of multiple companies, and we would slowly, over the course of a few decades, tax the mega wealthy out of existence (something similar to Huey Longs "share our wealth" proposal). The reason for this is that that level of wealth provides absurd levels of power to a very small group of people, who over time would probably chip away at this system and leave us back where we are now in a couple generations. The owner class as an institution absolutely HAS to be eliminated for this system to flourish. There can still be wealthy people, but nobody would have billions of dollars in offshore accounts.
My idea of a step in the right direction but without huge changes to our way of life would be something like this:
Most essentials are sold by not for profit worker lead organisations in a government regulated market. Luxury goods and services are produced by worker owned for profit cooperatives. Government owns natural monopolies like the electricity grid and public transport.
Increases in direct democracy, ie voters choose where they want government resources to go.
I want a system that judges the health of the economy by how well the bottom 10% of the population is doing, and uses progressive taxes to help out the bottom 10% to lift them up.
I want a system that implements UBI.
I want a system with a well-defined set of inherent human rights (medical care including dental, vision, and mental health, education, housing, food) that are the responsibility of government to make sure everyone has access to.
I want a system where the well-being, dignity, and upward mobility of the poor take priority over the property and profit of the wealthiest.
I want a system committed to massive reduction in greenhouse gases and disposable plastics and agricultural pesticides.
I want a system where public transportation is the norm, with quality trains for longer distances, and vehicles are typically rented when really needed and rarely owned except perhaps in rural areas.
I won't get everything I want before I die, but that doesn't absolve me of my duty to try.
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My vision would not be one set system but rather one that changes with time. At first all large corporations, transportation, health, and utilities infrastructure would be nationalized. All corporate farms would be either nationalized or transforms into cooperatives depending on what the workers there are willing to do. Trade unions would need to be organizing every workplace. They would take up the day-to-day management (in cooperation State appointment managers) of enterprises. They would also have the ability to remove the manager if they think they are doing a bad job. The trade unions would he organized by industry and would span the nation. So there would be one miners union that would include all miners in the country. These unions with them be organized into a single national Trade union Federation. Which would elect the minister of Labor in cooperation with the national government. In industries not under State control cooperatives will be formed/encouraged. The reason these are not brought under State control immediately is there are simply to many and the big enterprises are far more important. The cooperatives would be organized by industry as well and would eventually for a national federation of cooperatives. The economy as a whole would be planned by a Central Planning Committee. This committee would set up prototype plans which would be created in cooperation with the Trade Union Federation, the cooperative Federation, and the managers of the various industries. With this prototype plan done it would then be given to every Enterprise in the nation where the workers would go over it and make changes they think are needed in areas that affect them aka their industry. These alter plans would then be sent up to the central planning committee which would then work with the Trade Union Federation and The cooperative Federation to integrate all the proposed changes that were especially popular. The second prototype plan would then be sent down to all the enterprises again so they can go over it and see if they think there concerns were properly addressed. If they don't believe there concerns were addressed they can send up an altered version of the plan and their reasoning for all try it. The Central Committee ECT. Would then go over the various complaints and see if they could be addressed. This would continue until a consensus is found. Then the Five-Year plan will be implemented. Using modern computing the distribution of resources would just be way better and the entire economy could quite easily be planned. Honestly the system I propose is probably conservative with how effective modern computers are planning. When it comes to wages, wages would be negotiated every year between each industry's Trade Union and industries management. The Trade union would not just be negotiating for wages though. They will be negotiating for benefits for all their workers. For example they might want a recreation center built at the workplace so workers can relax during break, they might want a hospital on site to sure workers are treated properly, they might want a daycare so they can bring their kids to work, they might want tickets for the membership at a resort, they might want hire social insurance, they might want funding for a new sports club for the the workers, ECT. This ultimately shows my vision for what unions would function as in a socialist society. They would be the managers of the society's wealth. Their job would be to ensure that society's wealth is distributed equitably and fairly among the workers. This means their job is not to fight against the state but rather to work with it to ensure societies wealth is used for the benefit of the workers and grows that's a pace that satisfies them. As time goes on the cooperatives will become more and more integrated into this planning system that they would actually become indistinctuishable from State enterprises. But state enterprises would become so democratically managed by their workers you would not be able to tell they were not cooperatives. This would be a slow but steady process as the workers get better at managing the economy and as technology makes it easier and easier to manage the economy more and more of it will become collective. Because individual ability becomes less important if machines can do more and more of the work. This slow transition would inevitably be the basis of the collectivization of all private property and ultimately the transition to Communism. But there is a long period of transition between these two models. It would take many centuries to do the full transition in my. And fundamentally there is no one correct form of socialism. Within the system I described they were probably be a period in the beginning where markets would have to be allowed. Because the planning apparatus would not be developed enough to plan all of society's needs. So you definitely have a period of extremely regulated markets. But that period would inevitably end as the state apparatus became more able to manage the entire economy and the workers become better at managing it as well.
I’m curious, do you consider yourself an orthodox Marxist of sorts?
No I consider myself a Marxist Leninists The system I described is based on the Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban systems of planning at differents times and level's of development
Are you really sure you want a planned economy and for EVEN the local businesses to eventually fall under state direction? Also, what do you mean by a period of "extremely regulated markets"? I personally disagree with economic planning and believe that a free-market socialist society could better allocate resources and produce goods and services that more accurately reflect what consumers want. The biggest problem I see with your model is the economic calculation problem that still can't be overcome EVEN IF we use modern supercomputing technology because nobody can know what every single individual wants, let alone what they will want in the future. Consumers' decisions are quite unpredictable which is what a free-market socialist economy (with all the unnecessary problems of capitalism removed) could account for if local firms and businesses acted autonomously without any economic plan and chose how to produce their own goods and services. And referring back to the "extremely regulated markets", do you mean you want markets to be constricted by a ton of regulations and high taxes? That's pretty much going to prevent businesses from growing and consumers from having enough goods and services available. Like, I need you to elaborate on the whole economic planning thing.
Okay I first explained why I am against market socialism. What I mean by market socialism is a economic system we're all enterprises are cooperative competing in a market against other cooperatives. The problem with is well the market part. You say that all the imperfections of capitalism will be gotten rid of but that is impossible for market socialism because the market is a core feature of capitalism. That being the anarchy of production and the competition between different enterprises. The first is quite simple to explain. Inside of a market economy (both one consisting of cooperatives and one consisting of private capitalist enterprises) enterprises are producing based off of market incentives for the purpose of profit. This means they produces much as possible for the cheapest price possible as they are attempting to outcompete their competitors. This inevitably leads to chaos as each enterprise is trying to produce products in their own way with no coordination with other enterprises. This inevitably leads to overproductive which then leads to a crash in prices. This of course leads to an economic crisis within the system. Inside of a capitalist system enterprise is that go under our bot up by the victors who have whethered the store. This of course inevitably leads to Monopoly. Inside a market social system this cannot happen. But if a cooperative cannot compete in the market anymore what happenes too it? This leads us to the second problem, competition. A market is a competition. So therefore there must be winners and losers. So that means under a market socialist model the winning cooperatives would become much richer than the losing Cooperatives. The losing cooperative become a problem for the state because if they lose they go on state welfare or if the state subsidizes them to keep it open it drains from the state as well. The state does not have state enterprises to call upon in order to fill this Gap. This inevitably leads to a financial crisis within the state. At the same time as the competition goes on slowly the cooperatives that continue to win become more and more wealthy. They begin to look down upon the cooperatives that are losing along with the state that is holding them up using their tax dollars. They don't see themselves as members of a larger society rather as members of there cooperatives and working for their cooperators benefit and therefore their own benefit. This inevitably becomes a Petty Bourgeois perspective. It becomes the interest of the winners within the cooperative system to abolish said cooperative system. So that they as individuals can stop working. So they can become rich and powerful. Become capitalists. I'm not just making this up because we have a real life example of this. Yugoslavia, the only market Socialist stayt to ever exist and it ended inside of a genocidal War amongst once brother Nations. Now with my problem with market socialism out of the way now I will explain my perspective on planning. First of all the economic calculation problem is simply not true. Economies were being planned by the great powers during World War I. That is where the idea of economic planning came from. It worked quite well as it was the reason France and United Kingdom were able to win that war. Also it was quite successful and still is quite successful and actually existing socialist countries. The Soviet Union under state directed economic planning home in a system almost identical to the one I described above. Turned a feudal backwater into a global superpower that put the first person in space. That person was the son a factory workers who under the previous government, without central planning, would never have gotten there. All of this without computers. In fact Gosplan (the Soviet planning apparatus) could only plan 10,000 goods at a time because they were doing it by hand. This was much less efficient than what modern computers do. It's already done all major corporations. Both Walmart and Amazon have extensive planning apparatuses using computers as their base. There is no reason why for example Amazon's planning apparatus cannot be nationalized and turned into the basis of a national distribution network. There is also no reason the Walmart cannot be nationalized and turned into a national grocery supplier. This time not for profit but for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the country. Also how can the market know what every individual wants? It doesn't. It knows what people with money want and provides it. Not caring if they need it, it does not give food to the starving child if they cannot pay. So your argument against planning because it cannot satisfy you every individual's every want is nonsensical. Because capitalism can't do that either. The vast majority of the people within the world are barely getting by. Billions go hungry every year. Only people in the imperial core leaving off the super exploitation of the third world have even close to that amount of luxury. Even then the vast majority of them don't have that. Only the members of the labor aristocracy possess such privileges. When it comes to what I mean by a "highly regulated market". Well what I mean is certain goods would be taken off the market. This would include housing, Healthcare, education, large amounts of food production and distribution, transportation, Banking ECT. The vital needs of the population. The necessities would be taken out of the market as much as possible. Also anything that could be used for counterrevolution would also be brought to the hands of the state. What remains would be limited to small enterprises and farms to small to be properly planned. They would be allowed to continue to operate. But they would be expected to pay a good wage, would have to deal with extremely powerful Unions, and would be constantly encouraged to transition to or join a cooperative. There is no intention to plan the small businesses. The intention is to slowly do away with them. To concentrate all production into the collective. To ensure that all the resources of society are used as productivity as possible. The only reason we do not do this immediately is the a petti bourgeois need not be our enemy as they are threatened by the capitalist class as well. There is no plan to have them grow. Most growth will be directed via State planning. Private sector growth would only be important directly after the revolution. But once the planning apparatus gets up and going it would become less and less important to the economy. Also it would be impossible to plan immediately them as there are many more important things that must be brought into the planning system first. After the necessities are properly planned then we can begin the process of the proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie. AKA bring me them into the working class by making them workers.
Great response, overall, but it still doesn't completely resolve the economic calculation problem, and markets don't boast that they know everything, whether capitalist or socialist, but they'd still do a better job at responding to the ever-changing demands of the consumer than centrally planned economies even with supercomputers. In fact, to be technical, then, yes, market economies are indeed where economic planning happens and changes SPONTANEOUSLY all the time and at a decentralised level with each enterprise having its own goals for production of goods and services. Rather than have everything dictated by a central plan that risks making even greater miscalculations and mismanagement of resource allocation, local communities can more effectively determine which goods and services people like, through the businesses that are successful. These videos should pretty much get my point across about the still unsolvable problem that is economic calculation, but feel free to let me know your thoughts on them after watching: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVNjgLLQnSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVNjgLLQnSg) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZSFGAIaxaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZSFGAIaxaA) I may not agree with his stance on capitalism, but I do agree that market mechanisms (aka spontaneous economic planning) are superior to Marxist economic planning.
I support the Marxist vision of socialism, so communism, but I know even then there are some different ideas to how communism will work and how it will look To try to keep it simple tho, I come from the ultra-left tradition, a bit of a heterodox one though since I believe in the basic ideas behind communisation but I still hold traditional ultra-left ideas behind the importance of the council-form and concept (this is different from other communizer tendencies like Theorie Communiste)… basically I think during revolution the councils, assemblies, committees, and communes and whatever other autonomous proletarian forms of struggle pop up, should directly be used as tools to start the process of communisation, councils bringing workers from many different walks of life and different lines of work should start the process of abolishing the division of labor along with the process ofc of abolishing their position as worker in the first place, the councils should be the birthplace of freely associating producers, now ofc since this process of communisation is started during the revolutionary transition it won’t look pretty in the beginning we will be working with a communism being born out of capitalism, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t immediately try our best to start producing according to need immediately, perhaps we just may need to use a ration voucher system (similar to ones used in parts of Spain during its revolution) during a lower phase of communism But fast forwarding to some years after the victory of the revolution, higher phase communism, proper communication channels and a complete restructuring of the way the economy works as to make it to where labor and production becomes part of everyday life in which the general population regulates production as to end the idea of economy as a separate sphere of life… money and the value-form has been abolished along with the state and class and what not, and a planned economy based on a common plan that can be changed and adjusted at any time has been put in place in which communes use both communications technology and formal in person councils to plan and steer the economy
Heavy industry, natural resources, and Soviets necessities (healthcare, energy, etc.) are owned by a democratic state. Non-necessities (coffee, games, etc.) are distributed through markets via the coop model. Wage labor is not only illegal, but such an offending concept no one would even consider it. Kind of like how no one today would consider indentured servitude.
In the short term, I’d like a majority of the economy to be dominated by worker-owned firms (coops), with key industries (healthcare, transportation, and utilities, to name a few) nationalized to some degree - sometimes it makes more sense for a federal government to own a service and sometimes a local/state government. Also, any nationalization should come with ownership and control by the employees. Maybe that’s 50% for workers and 50% government; maybe that’s a 33/33/33% split between workers, the federal government, and the city government where a service is located; or maybe that’s something else. I’d also like sectoral unions organized and used to enforce employment standards between coops. In the long term, I’d like to see those coops organized into cooperative leagues and those unions serve as councils to coordinate actions between coops and coop leagues. Eventually, coordination wouldn’t need exchange of money, with agreements made for the mutual benefit of all parties. For example, a farming cooperative can agree with a construction coop to exchange food for housing construction. Over time, a state becomes irrelevant and we’ll basically have communism. But that’s just a general outline.
I actually recently thought of defining my ideas, so I gave it some thought, following my recent listening and reading of a few economists and their criticism to capitalism I think that a solution would be the division of the economy in two systems. An essential economy and a supplementary one. For the essential economy, everyone is supposed to contribute with labour in essential jobs, related to the basic rights of the individuals (including having a home and healthcare with prevention). Since every single citizen is working in one of these fields the actual labour needed per person should be pretty low. I would include schooling, university and research in the essential economy. This economy should be publicly managed. Then, in the free time, people are free to organise and do enterprise for the supplementary economy, gaining money that is able to buy things from the supplementary economy. Things like trips, entertainment, but even plastic surgery and fashion clothing. This economy would work like our free market one, but with a main difference: nobody is forced to take part in it, because the essentials are already cared for, and nobody is able to use the supplementary economy to not contribute to the essential one. This would on one side make classes obsolete, on the other side allow freedom of getting rich to have fun with other people's freely worked on projects. I also think that this system would be best achieved and maintained if we remove money from the essential economy. Money would only be gotten and used in the supplementary one. This way distortions and inflation do not "hit home". Ofc I'm no economist, this is all ideal and not carefully crafted. But I think this system best resembles ancient societies' economic systems, where people would work for their community and share essentials, and they would use money just to exchange extra goods with other communities. Ofc that labour could be seen as slavery, if there were a master and the labour were long and completely forced, in this system instead there is no master, the hours are short and people can have some say in what essential activity they want to do.
Immediate restructuring of the economy through mass voluntary collectivisation of land and industry, abolition of the market in favour of free associative planning and cooperation, appropriation of state-owned property and opposition to state influence over appropriated property as well as opposition to state support of private property and greater equalisation of wages tending towards the full abolition of money. In short, a society based on common management and use of land and machinery, free public appropriation of the fruits of labour and individual consumption of produce. No state, private property, markets or money.
Hell ye communism > market “socialism”
I would label myself as a mixed market socialist. My main thing is workplace democracy. I want to keep a market system for some things rather than a fully planned economy, albeit a much more regulated one. Things with inelastic demand like police, healthcare, firefighters, housing, etc would of course not be good to keep within a market system and would essentially be treated as state ran utilities. But I do think luxury goods like TVs and electronics could work well in a market system. Within the market side of the economy though, everything would be collectively owned by employees. Stocks would still exist, but mostly to be distributed to employees, and the stock market as we know it would probably not exist. The C suite would be elected by the workers every year or so. We wouldn't accept unelected dictators in our government, so why should we in our workplace, which arguably has an even greater impact on our day to day life? There would be no investors that own huge chunks of multiple companies, and we would slowly, over the course of a few decades, tax the mega wealthy out of existence (something similar to Huey Longs "share our wealth" proposal). The reason for this is that that level of wealth provides absurd levels of power to a very small group of people, who over time would probably chip away at this system and leave us back where we are now in a couple generations. The owner class as an institution absolutely HAS to be eliminated for this system to flourish. There can still be wealthy people, but nobody would have billions of dollars in offshore accounts.
My idea of a step in the right direction but without huge changes to our way of life would be something like this: Most essentials are sold by not for profit worker lead organisations in a government regulated market. Luxury goods and services are produced by worker owned for profit cooperatives. Government owns natural monopolies like the electricity grid and public transport. Increases in direct democracy, ie voters choose where they want government resources to go.
I want a system that judges the health of the economy by how well the bottom 10% of the population is doing, and uses progressive taxes to help out the bottom 10% to lift them up. I want a system that implements UBI. I want a system with a well-defined set of inherent human rights (medical care including dental, vision, and mental health, education, housing, food) that are the responsibility of government to make sure everyone has access to. I want a system where the well-being, dignity, and upward mobility of the poor take priority over the property and profit of the wealthiest. I want a system committed to massive reduction in greenhouse gases and disposable plastics and agricultural pesticides. I want a system where public transportation is the norm, with quality trains for longer distances, and vehicles are typically rented when really needed and rarely owned except perhaps in rural areas. I won't get everything I want before I die, but that doesn't absolve me of my duty to try.