I don’t understand. Why couldn’t the teams that make the machines, the crews that make the steel, all the way down, all be worker owned companies in a market economy?
What happens when those crews get older and wanna retire and now they’re wealthy from all the money they made over their careers plus the value of the factory they own? Are they just gonna give that factory away for free to the next generation of young workers who have not a dime to their names?
No, of course not. They’re gonna sell the factory at fair market value.
I would imagine every crew has a wide range of ages already. They’re not all gonna retire at the same time. Plus, whatever happens to the business would be a democratic decision by all workers, however they choose to structure that democratic process.
If you think that sort of process would fail, I’m not sure why you would support socialism at all.
That’s not a judgment on you, to be clear. I’m relatively new to socialism, at least in terms of thinking of it in practical terms. Maybe there’s a role for a bigger regulatory body to play in that system to ensure capital continues to be owned by the people who work with that capital (or owned by the broader community in which it resides).
I’m assuming the simplest scenario which is like a fairly small business started by a group of people around the same age so that we can assume they’ll all retire around the same time. If it’s difficult to make simple cases work then more complex ones are probably even more difficult.
I think there’s a big issue with getting the government involved: this group of people came together, built a company, paid for all the equipment themselves, and now want to sell it all so they can retire on the profits. Forcing them to transfer the company or its equipment to other people (who neither contributed anything nor have any money to pay compensation) would nullify their property rights. In essence, we’d be saying they never owned their company in the first place.
The ordinary way this issue is resolved today, with properties such as certain kinds of golf courses, is to have new members purchase their membership either from an existing member (transferring it to them) or from a pool of new memberships voted in by the existing members. This way the existing members are compensated for the arrival of new members and anyone who no longer wants a membership can sell theirs (possibly for a profit).
It’s hard to see how this would work with workers in a socialist system, unless the government was providing new workers with money to help them purchase their share of a company. But then the question is: how do you protect such a system from abuse, where people might take the money and run or otherwise waste it?
Lastly, I would point out that if you have a market system then you really can’t prevent people from buying and selling capital (such as machinery). After all, a machine is simply an assemblage of parts and people can definitely buy and sell parts (otherwise you don’t have a market whatsoever).
As an aside, you can actually go on eBay or Craigslist today and buy a used lathe or milling machine for a few thousand dollars and start making production-quality metal parts (such as car parts) if you have the know-how. Things are very different today from the days of Marx where factories and their equipment were rare and cost a king’s ransom. Of course a modern car manufacturing plant is going to cost billions of dollars today, but that’s due to all the custom robots they use to mass produce cars in a highly automated fashion. A skilled machinist can produce as good or better quality parts with machine tools from the 1960s.
I don’t think I disagree with any individual point you’re making. But I’m still getting the sense that we’re focusing on what won’t work rather than what possibly could work. It seems like you’re opposed to bottom up approaches (worker coops, etc, in a market system) and also top down approaches to regulate the edge cases.
I don’t have the time to really sit and think through possibilities, but I’ll simply say I think a current failure to think how socialism could work in a market economy does not necessarily rule out the possibility.
I appreciate the conversation regardless. You’ve given me a good few things to chew on.
I am not opposed to bottom up solutions such as worker coops. I think they’ve proven successful both with small businesses such as coffee shops and with larger companies such as Mondragon. What I am opposed to is a top down mandate that all companies must be worker coops. The bottom up approach does not have any of the issues I raised because the workers themselves have the power to decide what to do with the coop when they want to retire.
Thanks! I’ve appreciated the discussion with you too!
Goods include capital equipment. If you can’t buy and sell machinery then you don’t have a market economy.
I don’t understand. Why couldn’t the teams that make the machines, the crews that make the steel, all the way down, all be worker owned companies in a market economy?
What happens when those crews get older and wanna retire and now they’re wealthy from all the money they made over their careers plus the value of the factory they own? Are they just gonna give that factory away for free to the next generation of young workers who have not a dime to their names?
No, of course not. They’re gonna sell the factory at fair market value.
I would imagine every crew has a wide range of ages already. They’re not all gonna retire at the same time. Plus, whatever happens to the business would be a democratic decision by all workers, however they choose to structure that democratic process.
If you think that sort of process would fail, I’m not sure why you would support socialism at all.
That’s not a judgment on you, to be clear. I’m relatively new to socialism, at least in terms of thinking of it in practical terms. Maybe there’s a role for a bigger regulatory body to play in that system to ensure capital continues to be owned by the people who work with that capital (or owned by the broader community in which it resides).
I’m assuming the simplest scenario which is like a fairly small business started by a group of people around the same age so that we can assume they’ll all retire around the same time. If it’s difficult to make simple cases work then more complex ones are probably even more difficult.
I think there’s a big issue with getting the government involved: this group of people came together, built a company, paid for all the equipment themselves, and now want to sell it all so they can retire on the profits. Forcing them to transfer the company or its equipment to other people (who neither contributed anything nor have any money to pay compensation) would nullify their property rights. In essence, we’d be saying they never owned their company in the first place.
The ordinary way this issue is resolved today, with properties such as certain kinds of golf courses, is to have new members purchase their membership either from an existing member (transferring it to them) or from a pool of new memberships voted in by the existing members. This way the existing members are compensated for the arrival of new members and anyone who no longer wants a membership can sell theirs (possibly for a profit).
It’s hard to see how this would work with workers in a socialist system, unless the government was providing new workers with money to help them purchase their share of a company. But then the question is: how do you protect such a system from abuse, where people might take the money and run or otherwise waste it?
Lastly, I would point out that if you have a market system then you really can’t prevent people from buying and selling capital (such as machinery). After all, a machine is simply an assemblage of parts and people can definitely buy and sell parts (otherwise you don’t have a market whatsoever).
As an aside, you can actually go on eBay or Craigslist today and buy a used lathe or milling machine for a few thousand dollars and start making production-quality metal parts (such as car parts) if you have the know-how. Things are very different today from the days of Marx where factories and their equipment were rare and cost a king’s ransom. Of course a modern car manufacturing plant is going to cost billions of dollars today, but that’s due to all the custom robots they use to mass produce cars in a highly automated fashion. A skilled machinist can produce as good or better quality parts with machine tools from the 1960s.
I don’t think I disagree with any individual point you’re making. But I’m still getting the sense that we’re focusing on what won’t work rather than what possibly could work. It seems like you’re opposed to bottom up approaches (worker coops, etc, in a market system) and also top down approaches to regulate the edge cases.
I don’t have the time to really sit and think through possibilities, but I’ll simply say I think a current failure to think how socialism could work in a market economy does not necessarily rule out the possibility.
I appreciate the conversation regardless. You’ve given me a good few things to chew on.
I am not opposed to bottom up solutions such as worker coops. I think they’ve proven successful both with small businesses such as coffee shops and with larger companies such as Mondragon. What I am opposed to is a top down mandate that all companies must be worker coops. The bottom up approach does not have any of the issues I raised because the workers themselves have the power to decide what to do with the coop when they want to retire.
Thanks! I’ve appreciated the discussion with you too!