Why is it that everyone that wants socialism

NO------------------------they are living off the money they earned or invested. Or in some cases the money their family earned and invested.

 

Try cutting paychecks to working people without taking a cut for yourself to live on.

 

Thank you for answering those question and clearing up that "workers at IBM would own only IBM..."

I can accept that Marx used the term "private property" in a narrow sense.

I think there is more involved to capitalism than wage labor, and many definitions of capitalism don't even include wage labor as a component. I won't argue the point however, just to keep things on track.

As for worker exploitation, it can just as easily be said that workers team up with the business owner and together they produce a product. The proceeds from the product are then split between the workers and the owner. I would not be surprised to find that on a per product basis, the individual worker receives more of the proceeds than the owner does.

For example, an owner of a factory has 50 employees. Each employee produces 1 widget per hour. The employee is paid $25 per hour and there is another $15 of raw material and overhead in each widget for a total cost of $40 per widget. The company sells the widget for $45. On that basis, the worker received $25 for the widget, there was $15 of material and overhead, and the owner received $5 for the widget. Is that considered as worker exploitation? The worker made way more on the deal than the owner did. And the owner had to buy and maintain all the machinery that the worker needed to produce the widget do the marketing, follow government regulations, risk bankruptcy, etc.

Yes, since the owner has 50 employees making widgets, he is receiving $250 per hour. But I think it is a stretch to say he is exploiting his workers. To me, he is providing a great service to the workers by giving them a place to use their skills to efficiently produce something that provides their livelihood...

...because, it may very well be that a worker, without support of the owner, can produce only 3 widgets per day, versus 8 widgets per day when working on the efficient production line.

Worker on his own = 3 widgets x ($25 + $5) = $90 earnings per day.
Worker on production line = 8 widgets x ($25 +$5) = $240 earnings per day.

So back to "worker exploitation" versus "owner-worker symbiosis," I can see that the former term would be much more useful in inciting a group to revolt and push for changes that may very well result in conditions worse than what they were operating under.

So these employee-owned businesses operating in a free market are not actually the end result of Marx's vision? What is the end goal then? (I know, read the book.) But really, what is the end result if worker-owned businesses are only a step?

But these employee-owned businesses are still competing in a capitalistic (you can omit that term if you want) free market and those forces would certainly subject the business to those pressures. For example, take a pharmaceutical business (Company A) that needs 40 workers doing menial labor on the production line, and 1 experienced, expert PhD chemist to keep things running correctly. So the 41 people take a vote on compensation and decide to divide the profits into 42 shares, with each line worker taking 1 share and the chemist getting 2 shares. Seems fair.

Another competing pharmaceutical company (Company B) has the same make-up of workers, and they decide to hire Company A's chemist. They divide their profit into 44 shares and offer 4 shares to Company A's chemist. He quits Company A and goes to Company B. Now Company A is soon to be out of business if they don't get another chemist. So they must go out on the open market and try to lure another PhD chemist to work for them by offering more of their shares. So, even worker owned businesses will be subject to the supply and desires of labor and the market, and they will have to adjust how they pay the various workers to compensate. It may very well be that some employees end up making much more than others. Of course, this would lead to new shouts of "exploitation!" when in fact, it is simply the free market determining that some are indeed more valuable than others.

Even the individual worker/owners may do the same on their on. Worker/Owner Bob: "Hey Charlie, I hear that IBM is paying $600 per week to their owners. This dump is only paying $500." Worker/Owner Charlie: "I'm out of here!" Again, worker owned companies will have to compete fro labor just like what happens now. So does Charlie have to stay at his present company until he can get someone to buy his share? Does he have to buy into IBM to be able to work there? How would this all work?

I'm all for worker owned businesses - so long as they compete in the free market just like everyone else. I am also all for unions, again, as long as the rules are the same for all and subject to the free market. I would be against government meddling in these things to create winners and losers based on an ideology.

 

Socialism is desired by those who believe that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else.

 

Yea, all that genocide going on in Europe over the NHS. Escaped that bullet. No where on the planet does socialized healthcare and education work, except, England, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Canada.... but as you rightfully point out, those places, filled with genocide. It's like you turn a corner in England and BAM!, you walk right into a genocide. So sad!

 

So homeless elderly folks is not a problem, and no extra money is needed for them.

Libs closed the sanitariums because "people shouldn't be held against their will", forcing the mentally ill into the streets.

 

I'm against 70% or 80% income tax rates and cradle-to-grave care because of the huge loss of freedom involved.

I don't know if that's "socialism". Whatever it's called, I don't want it here.

 

Another laughable thread which again shows the ignorance of the unpatriotic far right.

While these myth makers and fairy tale believers succumb to Fox network ignorance and hate, here's the real source of their "socialism":

Thomas Paine ~ http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Paine1795.pdf

Alexander Hamilton ~ https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-10-02-0001-0007

Washington-Jefferson-Governor DeWitt Clinton ~ https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-10-02-0001-0007



Socialism my Ą∬ - it's PATRIOTISM, not socialism.

 

Socialism is desired by those who believe that wealth can be collected and redistributed without being eliminated.

 

Many of the posts here show that a lot of people simply dont understand economics and how business works.

Simply put people put money in a bank to get interest on their money. Banks loan out money to business so they can expand and employ more people. More people have jobs and work and in turn invest their own money. This is how the economy expands.

What the left here seems to hate is WORK. They try to convince people they should expect something for nothing.

 

mebbe in the next life you'll be able to debate that with our Founding Fathers who were such yuge inspirations to socialists everywhere

 

JFK a big socialist, was he..

nowadays, Democrats just come right out with it...

all while saying it's the right wing that has moved to the fringes.

November is going to be a bloodbath.

 

Great. I just try to reduce things to the simplest and most fundamental truth so that these ideas can be understood.

You're probably right. But that would be a very skewed measurement. I mean, suppose we consider a corporation employing 10,000 workers and let's suppose the gains on each worker's production is split 50-50 with the CEO. If the average employee receives $50,000, that would mean the CEO gets $50,000 for each of the 10,000 workers!!! You can do the math. And you can see that would be ridiculous. So sure, the owner usually get much less per worker than the worker gets. And the owner gets rich while the employee gets by.

As for teaming up, consider this: even so, no employer would hire an employee unless he is reasonably sure he can get more value out of the employee than he will be paying him. And as far as the split between worker and owner, the worker has no say in it once he takes the job. Let that sink in for a moment.

Of course. The owner receives more for the worker's productivity than he pays him... LOTS more.

The word "exploitation" has a meaning. It has a definition. You're looking at the word emotionally. You're objecting to how it "feels". But the definition applies, and according to the definition, yes, the worker is being exploited. It's just an objective fact.

Worker-owned businesses are "islands" of emerging socialism. You ask what the end goal is as though someone has a manual with the process and goal laid out. "Where it goes" is up to the workers since they are in control. You're stuck back in the thought of state control telling the workers how it will be.

Look at this list of workers' co-ops: https://usworker.coop/member-directory/
Note there are 4 pages of businesses listed. The one who is telling those workers "how it will be" is your federal and state governments right now, and they are dedicated to capitalism. My expectation is all I can give you to attempt an answer to your question, and my expectation is that as workers' co-ops catch on and prove themselves (there are a few studies that have already been published and I can link them if you like) there will be more and more politicians who see the value and the future they promise, and they will work to pass more laws that will streamline the path to the formation of co-ops, laws that make lending more available, laws that improve the transition from a privately owned business to a workers' do-op, and thereby advance the cause. It will be necessary to do many things that will smooth the process and make it effective and stable just as happened with emerging capitalism centuries ago. But as government gets more involved, it will happen gradually, methodically, and with the approval of the public. That will prevent a reoccurrence of disasters that happened in the past.

Hold it. By your description of share distribution it seems you're referring to worker-owned co-ops in both cases.
Co-op "B" couldn't offer the chemist 4 shares. The Articles of Incorporation spells out share ownership and it would not be allowed as you describe. It would limit shares one to each worker-member.

Secondly, a co-op worthy of its name would not be competing with another co-op. They would talk and seek mutually beneficial coexistence, typically either taking up two different aspects of the work so they aren't in competition, or merging to work together. This is possible since profit is not the whole enchilada.

But that's what government is for. You are not allowed, for example, to create your own slave-labor business. You are not allowed to enforce a loyalty oath that keeps a family living and working on your farm estate in return for 10% of the crop they produce. Restrictions and regulations are the stuff of government. The question is "for the benefit of which class?"

 

I agree! That would be completely unacceptable.

 

Impecunious old people are in receipt of full age pensions, surely? And they've had a lifetime to make and keep solid relationships with people who will care for them in their declining years.

 

EXACTLY!!!

 

I'm a socialist, but probably quite a different variety to the 'gimme social programs' kind. For me it's about free universal education and healthcare - plus welfare for those who have physical reasons for needing it (disability, old age, orphaned, etc), but not for the able bodied or migrants.

 

Everyone doesn't want socialism. If they did there would be no political debates.

 

Not sure they specifically hate work (although you see that a lot, to be sure). I think it's more about not wanting to fight the fight, personally. They don't want to have to rein themselves in.

 

Given your belief that education or welfare can be free says more about your desperate need for education and welfare than anything else you wrote.

 

Its not supposed to work. Its just a way to get folks to give up their rights. Its a bait and switch back to feudalism.

The Royalty of the Dark Ages want their power back, but they can only have it if we give it to them.

 

Okay, but I would say the owner gets rich while 10,000 workers are given a means to support themselves. It seems like symbiosis to me.

I went to the net and picked the first corporation that came to mind... Walgreens. Internet sources say they employ 235,000 people and the CEO makes $14.7 million. Calculator says that is about $63 per employee per year. That doesn't sound too bad when we consider that Walgreens provides employment to 235,000 people. In reality, Walgreens is providing a terrific benefit to society in the form of jobs. Of course, each employee is obviously producing more value than just the $63 per year because plenty of other "management" personnel are getting paid, plus the stock holders, etc. On that note, I, and I would hope, you, have investments in many different companies so we are reaping some of the benefits of being capitalists ourselves.

Yes, an owner would be foolish/bankrupt to expend capital on "machinery" and then hire employees who could not produce a surplus with said "machinery." Even though, workers often have some say in how things go, especially if they have formed a union. And, if things aren't going to the worker's satisfaction, he can move on to another job - which leads to another discussion - workers fare better when there is a shortage of labor - but that discussion is for another day/another thread.

Quickly looked at two definitions (without emotions attached):
1) the action of making use of and benefiting from resources
2) the action of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work

The first definition seems relatively benign, as all living creatures exploit their environment to survive. So that isn't bad. The second explicitly states that someone is being treated unfairly, and it would be disingenuous to apply that definition to the worker/owner relationship on an a priori basis, especially here in the United States. To make a sweeping statement that employers automatically exploit (treat unfairly) their workers is an opinion, not a fact.

Back to the first definition, it could be said that employers exploit workers and workers exploit employers.

We already have a government "of, by and for" the people, and most people are workers, so maybe what we already have is what the workers want? I know that I will stick with what has gotten us this far instead of put my well-being into some endgame that apparently has an unknown outcome at this point.

Thank you for looking ahead for me. Perhaps these co-ops can help answer the question of automation that we will be facing in the coming decades. I honestly don't have anything against the workers owning businesses. It actually seems like a wonderful idea. But I also don't consider it to be socialism. Perhaps that is semantics. To me, these co-ops would be "multi-owner" businesses competing in the free market. Perhaps an idea like this would get more traction if the word "socialism" was removed from the idea.

So are you saying that the Articles of Incorporation MUST divide the shares equally for all employees? Would this be enforced by the law? If so, who is the enforcing authority? And if it is not enforced by law, wouldn't the worker-members have the power to pay someone more shares than the others if they wanted to?

Do you think that the most important, most productive, hardest working, most educated, most dedicated worker who is absolutely vital to the co-ops' success is going to happily work for the same pay as the guy who sweeps the floors?

Back to our hypothetical Company A: So let's say that the PhD Chemist dies. Now the workers need a new expert chemist. How do the workers acquire another PhD chemist if all available chemists refuse to work for only one share?

What if all available PhD chemists join together to start their own worker owned business which would necessarily deprive the other workers of a chemist thereby bankrupting those businesses? Now the PhD chemists have a monopoly on the product and start raking in the dough, much more than a measly one share of the former companies.

First, that would severely restrict the freedoms of workers. Let us say that Co-op X produces baseball bats. If a different group of workers wanted to form Co-op Y and also make baseball bats, what would stop them? Their loyalty to the "system"? What if they have no loyalty to the "system" and form the co-op and start making baseball bats anyway? Should they be stopped? Who would stop them? A powerful central authority? And wouldn't this authority have to plan out which workers can make baseball bats, and which can make soccer balls? Why shouldn't the consumers have a choice between X bats and Y bats?

If it is a characteristic of the "system" that there is no competition between companies, what sets the price charged to the consumer? A central authority? If not a central authority, then who?

Let's say Co-op A and Co-op B make insulin for diabetics. They decide to join forces and not compete against each other. Soon they realize there is nothing stopping them from raising the price of the insulin which makes each workers' income grow. Does the government step in and stop it? Is there a "controlled economy" involved here? Does a central authority determine who can make insulin and how much they can charge for it? Relying on the "goodness" of those in the business isn't going to work, human nature being what it is. So there would have to be a powerful authority that could usurp workers' freedoms?

Agreed. I was warming up to the "co-op" idea but then you brought up some things toward the end of your post that are unpalatable. I don't like the loss of freedom that would necessarily occur with your vision as I discussed above. Still, co-ops can be a great thing and may answer many of our future issues concerning labor and wages, but to preserve individual freedom, it would need to be done in a free market economy.

 

I'd be willing to bet that some huge super-majority of Americans -- and, for that matter, people in most other countries -- would be willing to endorse the following propositions:

(1) People who, through no fault of their own, no bad judgement of their own, who are seriously mentally or physically impaired, should receive help from the state, financed by the rest of us. [We should be aware that this may dis-incentivize traditional ways of helping such people, eg family and church and neighbors. But modern, urban, hyper-mobile society has already made this traditional model much less possible. what was the norm in small rural communities where you lived with your family near by, if not on the same farm, and knew your neighbors over decades, is no longer relevant to many.] More controversial, mainly because it runs counter to the niceness of liberals and the don't-tread-on-me individualism of conservatives, is the idea that if you're too screwed up -- whether by your own stupidity or by nature -- to live a normal life but have to sleep on the streets, then you should be rehoused in a secure institution, under decent circumstances, where you can get whatever help is available, and where you can't get debilitating amounts of drugs and alcohol. (The problem with the last idea is that a malign United Front of liberal civil libertarians and conservative penny-pinchers would oppose it fiercely.

(2) Worker-owned businesses -- hiring and firing and paying wages via decisions of their worker-owners -- are a good idea. [Actually, conservatives should be far more enthusiastic about this idea than liberals are: no state involvement, and workers get to learn about the problems of buying and selling in a market.] More controversial, but probably commanding a majority, would be the idea that the state should actively encourage such worker-owned businesses, via tax-breaks, and laws making it easy to set them up, and making how to do it part of civics education in the schools, so that every young person learns that this is a viable option.

(3) Some services that are important to society as a whole should be carried out by, or facilitated by, the state: the army, police, fire service, education, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation. More controversial, but probably commanding a majority, would be environmental protection [Quick question: which President started the Environmental Protection Agency? (Hint: the same bleeding heart peacenik liberal who started us on the path to full recognition of the country founded by the Greatest Mass Murderer of All Time.], and health care. The latter two -- environmental protection and health care -- have the problem of being open-ended with respect to scope and cost, and this is where the problem is.

(4) The United States needs to maintain a strong defense: this means spending large amounts of money on nuclear weapons, missiles, capital ships, tanks, etc etc. Few people really oppose this -- the arguments in the past have been over where to deploy our formidable miltiary powers, but there has actually been a quiet consensus growing since Iraq, summarized in the next point.

(5) Trying to bring the blessings of liberty to the whole world via military invasions is generally a bad idea. More controversial would be the idea that it really is not necessary for the United States to have 400 military bases all over the world, an 'Africa Command', tanks in Latvia (the Germans make great tanks and know the way to Latvia). [Actually, probably, most Americans, if asked, "Should our soldiers be in Latvia?",would reply along the lines of "Well, if they're both consenting adults...")

(6) Immigration is fine, if it's under our control, and benefits both the new immigrant and the immigrants and their descendants who are already here: this implies acceptance of Western liberal-democratic values.. Humane treatment of non-legal immigrants and especially of their culturally-assimilated children is good ... but we shouldn't let ourselves be suckered by humane feelings either. The devil is in the details. In any case, no Open Borders.

(7) People who take risks to build enterprises, who bring special creativity to them, who introduce new ideas that eventually benefit us all -- deserve material rewards above those of us who mainly just turn up at 9, do our jobs, and go home at 5.

( 8 ) TANSTAAFL.

 

Doesn’t sound like they want a hybrid system. They want to end capitalism they say so themselves.
“At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people”
https://www.dsausa.org/about_dsa
Also doesn’t sound like they wish to just limit their vision to just the US. Sounds hell of lot worse then the Scandinavian faux version of socialism to me.
https://www.dsausa.org/where_we_stand#global