by Max Barry

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Region: The Leftist Assembly

Woflines wrote:Hi,

1)
If you look at most socialist countries in the past, the unemployment rate was pretty low compared to their capitalist counterparts, part of the reason for that was everyone had the right to work.

For example, let's look at Stalin's Soviet Union:(https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10) read Art. 118
For the stats read:(https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch17.htm)

You have to look at institutions such as the state with their class character in mind.
State ownership of the means of production does lead to oppression, to the oppression of the bourgeois class, if the state is in the hands of the proletariat, that is, if it's a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what Marxists argue.
Think of the state as tool, an instrument. A monopoly on violence. Currently it is the bourgeois class which controls this tool (ever notice any politicians actually supporting workers getting any power for a significant amount of time? Me neither.), so why not use this this instrument in the favour of the proletariat?

2)
Violent revolution is unfortunately most likely a necessity, for the simple reason that capitalists won't willingly give up the means of production to the workers.

3)
The workers who are happy with their jobs are either:

-Unaware/apathetic to the fact that their surplus value is being extracted(this is called false conciousness)

-These workers are part of the labour aristocracy (the ones who receive "great benefits")
How could the second category exist? You might ask, :
Imperialism, I won't go into detail about super profits etc here, but if you're interested I would suggest reading Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin. Basically, these "great benefits" happen in the first world where the capitalists can afford them, they do this to "appease" the workers, which is why many Marxists believe that the first world doesn't have much revolutionary potential, that doesn't mean we should give up on the first world, but we definitely need to factor this in when analysing countries such as the USA and Germany.

4)
A business under socialism would either be state directed or a coop. The positions within the company would remain largely unchanged, the difference would be the value one receives in accordance to the quality and quantity of his/her work would be closer to reality than in capitalism.
There is nothing wrong with coops, they are actually more productive than standard companies (Badmouse, an anarchist, made a great video about how coops are more productive but less competitive than companies: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAxajtiRatg), they are just not enough to bring about socialism on their own since they can't out-compete large, private companies. But like I said earlier, they are fine in socialism.

Hope this helped.

Woflines

Yes, this was extremely helpful. I have a follow-up question, however. How would a government enforce socialism? How would every single private business be taken under state control? Would private cooperatives be left alone? Again, thank you so so so much.

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