Headbutt
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It’s a moral position, Marcos. You are either part of the problem (deliberately making yourself a potential exploiter of the State via insistence on comforts and freedoms), or part of the solution (deliberately avoiding exploitation of the State via sacrifice of comforts and freedoms).
Having said that, I’m all for much more comprehensive social programs, in an accountable form. IOW they need to be in a form which dramatically limits their appeal to exploiters, but which will advantage the genuine.
Marcos .. we differ. I pay zero attention to the politics and words, and focus on action. I’m a ground-up person, and regard all of it as a matter of people power. And here and now, the people who refer to themselves as Urban Progressives are the people least amenable to any kind of working socialism. They are, therefore, the greatest impediment to equity. It’s patently impossible to have both endless privilege (as demanded by urban Progressives), AND equity.
Marcos, I agree that the concept of a First and Third World sucks.
But try telling that to your average Urban Progressive. They expect every possible First World privilege and advantage, and are constantly demanding more. They want perfect safety, unlimited choices and freedoms, privacy, autonomy, a massive safety net, a low cost house in a location of their choosing (and it’s always somewhere expensive), free tertiary education, and protection from all insult and slight.
They are an absolute nightmare for socialism, and for any effort to bring us all together in the ‘Second World’. They won’t stand for it, not for a minute. They want constant increase of their privileges.
ALB … we’re not on same page, I don’t think.
I have no issue with the wage earner. None whatsoever. It’s not about how the individual acquires their income, it’s about what they do with it. Voluntary rents (and all rents are voluntary, given we don’t live in a totalitarian state) are just one example of the choice to avoid the work of self-reliance, in preference for the luxury of paying someone else to shoulder that burden. When we rent, we’re saying we don’t care for the self-discipline of the years of frugality needed to save a down-payment, nor the ongoing obligations of mortgage and maintenance. We’d rather someone else handle that stuff (ie the landlord), and we’re happy to pay through the nose for that luxury. Further, if you can spare a lifetime of monthly rent payments knowing you’ll have nothing to show for it at the end, you’re clearly very very privileged .. either of mind or means. The working classes cannot afford to waste that much money, obviously. If they are doing so, then they’ve chosen to live a champagne life, and can’t rightly be regarded as anything but champions of capitalism.
And I don’t agree that workers have fewer choices when it comes to owning the means of their survival. If you run the stats you’ll find that working class people have a much higher rate of home ownership in places other than big cities. Regional cities, large towns, rural etc all have better outcomes for those on modest incomes.
And a paid for home is a significant bulwark against things like job loss, pandemics, recession, etc. As long as it’s not a studio apartment (and it rarely is, outside the big cities), the average family home can house quite a few people – people who might otherwise be struggling trying to live alone. If these people have earned the right to that owned property via full commitment to the work of the collective, they’ve themselves then acquired ‘worker owned means of survival’.
The problem is that the capitalism-minded will not sacrifice their privacy and autonomy, and are prepared to fund those luxuries to the point of burdening the working stiff (aka, taxpayers).
Matthew Culbert .. we don’t agree. The very reason we’re in the state we’re in today, is that accountability has been abandoned. The privileged rushing to ‘feed the masses’ in the whatever manner silenced them fastest .. means that no genuine concern was involved. The equivalent of allowing our children to eat whatever they want, because training them to make better choices would impact our own comforts and freedoms.
“Owned in common” is bad news unless every one of those owners has earned that place, and continues to earn it. Indiscriminate ‘ownership in common’ is exactly what I’m referring to above. It leads to gross inequity, and is therefore a step backwards in any progress towards collectivism. There’s nothing quasi-religious about ‘work to eat’ .. it’s a survival fundamental common to all social mammals.
“For each according to ability” is another outrage, IMO. It’s entitlement and privilege, and completely unrealistic. It’s a bourgeois expectation of freedom of choice, in a context which cannot possibly support that. It demands First World privilege, at the cost of wider equity. And “each according to needs” is in some senses even worse. What about the overweight First Worlder living alone? What is his need compared to the shanty dwelling Bangladeshi who scrapes together just enough rice and veg each day to feed (barely) his family of five?
I offer all the above with respect.
alanjjohnstone … we agree. Community and mutual interdependence is a lost art in the First World. I blame the Left for eroding that, via indiscriminate Welfarism.
robbo203, appreciate your thoughts!
To be clear, I’ve been practising either common purse collectivism or essential community for 30+ years. I’m an old hand at this, and have invested political energies in the various iterations of socialism and communism over those years, for good or ill. I’d read Mao’s little book by the time I was 15, was raised by hippy Pinko parents, paid up member of Pinko Party in early adulthood, and an erstwhile Nearing fan. I’ve seen most of it .. if not all.
No fan of the Mondragon model, since it’s a capitalist enterprise. Doesn’t matter who owns it, if they’re turning a profit excess to needs it’s not for me.
Progressives are .. IMO .. the worst possible thing to ever happen to the Left. They almost exclusively live lives deeply wedded to the liberties, choices and purchasing power of capitalism, and they keep seeking more. More and more and more. It’s not enough to feed and house everyone, they want delicate feelings and pecadillos catered to as well. Meanwhile, people starve. I quite literally hate what they’ve done to the Left in the past 20 years.
As regards ownership of the means of production, my position is that that is ALWAYS property. Specifically, smallholder. Whether land for food production and the housing of the collective, or small business premises. I’m entirely opposed to voluntary rent slavery, regarding it as the ultimate personal sell-out to capitalism, and submission of one’s power to the interests of those who would exploit us. It’s also increasingly the choice of those who should know better (Cafe Socialists), which does not auger at all well for the future of any kind of useful Leftism.
Finally, I’m fundamentally opposed to State Socialism in any form. There is nothing ‘equal’ about being forced to fund others via the work of your hands, when those others are contributing less or nothing. For me, that’s about as ‘capitalist aristocracy’ as it gets. The peasants (the productive) funding the lords (the non-productive). I would much rather see gradually adjusted social programs, with significantly increased accountability and limitations. This is far more likely to lead to voluntary self-reliance .. and thus obviate the injustices and inequities of State Socialism. The terrible failure of First World democracies to compel mutual obligation in welfare, has created an era of very high reliance on the capitalist machine.
Upshot ….. if you live a life predicated on mutual (collective) benefit, in which the ‘work to eat’ proviso is adhered to and surplus is avoided or not sought, and you own the means of production, you’re a socialist. I’ve lived in various parts of the world over the years, and have seen more lived and globally beneficial socialism outside of the Western political philosophy. I’ve seen it in every agrarian subsistence village, in multi-generational family compounds throughout Asia, small businesses run out of shop-houses, inherited farms (continuing to feed and house successive generations), religious groups, etc etc etc. Ten people living in collective use a quarter of the resources of ten people choosing to live separately according to the First World dream. And at the same time that collective ten are dramatically reducing their likelihood of dependence upon the State.
PS: If you’ve (general you) chosen the First World capitalist dream, you’ve chosen not to give a damn about burdening your fellows. You’ve literally chosen your own comforts and freedoms (which can only be secured via capitalism) over the people. Irregardless of what you call yourself, if you fail that first basic hurdle, you’re no socialist. You’re not even a socialist’s afterthought. This is the thing it took me longest to understand, incidentally. I couldn’t see the elephant in the room, for far too many years.
Marcos, I’m a pragmatist .. so measure only action (lived ethics, not ‘political action’). I don’t care what people call themselves, or who they vote for. If you’re living collectively, own the means of your survival, and also provide the labour implicit in that survival .. you’re a communist/socialist as far as I’m concerned. It’s worker ownership and non-surplus productivity. That could be the family farm, a multi-generational home, a small business making just enough to feed and house the group which owns it, a religious sect living via common purse, or a village engaged in subsistence agriculture. Many prepper and libertarian types fit this definition, so I would argue against any essential capitalism in that group.
For me it’s clear cut. The buying and selling of labour, paying of rents, purchase of the products of survival etc, the insistence on individualism, choice, privacy, a state safety net etc … is all capitalism. It’s a voluntary dependence upon the complex infrastructure of the capitalist system, IOW.
Ozymandias .. why is that? I’m no fan of the urban middle classes, so apologise if it’s a sore point. Should I assume that that demographic is honoured here?
As regards ‘culturally collectivist’, it’s just a clunky way of saying people within cultures which practice collectivism as a matter of course. Multi-generational living, family farms, religious groups, off-grid multi-occupancies, etc. There are a million iterations. I would put money on these groups being a better/greater force for actual lived socialism in the US. Those urban middle classes do the least to forward the actuality.
I see a better future for US socialism in the libertarians, preppers, anarchists, and migrants (who are often culturally collectivist).
The middle class white urban Cafe Socialists have been a disaster, IMO.
Thanks Matthew. I’m strictly utilitarian, so that second one is of interest – will give it a read over weekend. As for the majority being needed, I do wonder if a majority could happen. My experience is that the least likely to voluntarily alter capitalism-dependent lifestyles (choices, privacy, buying/selling labour, outsourcing fundamentals, etc), are sometimes the loudest ‘socialists’. You wonder where that majority will come from, when even those who claim it can’t contemplate the reality. Perhaps we’d have more luck with those who already live a version of it, but don’t associate it with any politics? The economic pragmatist collectivist, as it were.
Interrupted by life! As I was saying … I’m what some refer to as an old school Commie, in that I’m quite hardline on the ‘work to eat’ premise, and don’t believe any model accommodating preferences is viable without gross inequity and significant limits to dexterity of support. I’m also virulently opposed to the Welfare State (regarding it as a disabling tool of the Progressive elite). That may or may not be an issue hereabouts. Hopefully not!
Thanks, friendly folks!
Good to hear the original idea is being kept alive. Not sure if that puts me on same page, but I’m opposed to collectivism being sold out to entitlement capitalists and their cronies, the Progressive Left.
Cheers, and thanks for not banting moi as spam!
