[TheSpanishInquisition]

I'd like to get something out of the way. I genuinely came into this as someone who knew very little about socialism. My opinions, analysises and criticisms here and completely derived from the information you all have given me.  OK so what all this boils down to is that you believe manual labour of the working classes is responsible for the wealth of the rich, which is true, to a certain extent. Unfortunately, you also believe that you don't need someone to orchestrate the movements of the working classes and that the working classes are perfectly capable of organising themselves efficienty, which is simply untrue. Do you honestly think that 40, 400 or 4000 people could all work together as equals? Of course not. In fact, there's a huge amount of market evidence about this kind of thing. Once you get to 7 people, you need a leader. Anything more than 7 people and there are too many disagreements in how to progress for the company to remain functional. Then, for every 7 extra people you employ, you need another leader. Once you have 7 leaders, you need a leader to lead those 7. This is a system that has been tried and tested since the dawn of humanity, and even before when groups of our ancestors had their elders and respected. Similarly, 1 king leading a nation with no barons and knights is also a terrible system, which is why kings had barons and knights – it was a much better way of working efficiently.  Now, those workers who drilled the oil. They didn't do it for fun. They did it because they were getting paid money, which is very useful for being able to buy things. I guaruntee if you go to an oil rig and ask the people working there "Why do you work for this capitalist when he's making all the money" they'll say "because we get paid money to be here." Do you have some kind of collective misconception in which workers don't get paid for work? Surely not since you knew to put "wage" before your "slavery" (which I find quite amusing, honestly. It gives the impression that once the capitalists have been overthrown, workers will somehow not be "slaves" anymore, even though they'll be doing exactly the same job). I also notice that not one of you managed to answer my question: If every company deemed a 'global resource' is owned by no one, then who pays the people working for the company? Will you just force the original owner to pay even though he no longer receives any benefit from doing so? Will the government subsidise the costs? Will you seek out private investors? Will this leaderless movement somehow pay every employee from its profits alone? If so, how will the amount each person earns be determined? What's to stop the more expendable workers complaining because the more important ones got paid more? 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

ALB wrote:

And they won't be bought out, but simply expropriated without compensation when a majority decide democratically to make the means of production the common property of all, so they can be used to provide for the needs of all instead of to make profits for a few

So theft, plain and simple. Except it's worse than theft, because it's organised, publicly advertised theft that no one is going to be able to do anything about, and no one's going to punish. You're forcefully taking the possessions of people and pretend you're in the moral right because 'they're rich and rich people don't deserve to have things', which is what your argument feels to boil down to – spite for the rich for being more intelligent and more opportunistic. 

ALB wrote:

Nor has socialism anything to do with government ownership. It's about common ownership, which is the same as non-ownership. The means of production won't belong to anyone or any institution, not corporations, not rich individuals, not governments. They will simply be there to be used under democratic control to provide for people's needs in accordance with the principle "from each their ability, to each their needs".

OK so these public services, owned by no one… who is paying the workers? Taxes? That means the government would be paying for the services, making the government count as investors, and therefore having a say in the way the service is run. 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

 We are the dispossessed, we are taking back what is rightfully ours in the first place. 

Since when was oil etc 'rightfully ours'? Oil is a natural product that originally belonged to nobody. Someone found it, realised "this makes a great fuel" then invested huge amounts of money into extracting it and making it available for use by the public. By saying 'rightfully ours' you are implying that you think oil was something that was just lying around for anyone to pick up and use until some capitalist scumbags came and took it all away to sell it back to us, which anyone could tell you obviously isn't true. You also suggest with 'rightfully' that there's some kind of divine law system going on that dictates an absolute correct order, which is also obviously not true. 

[TheSpanishInquisition]

7 pages generated. Glad I could prompt such a discussion!So, I don't have the space or energy to respond individually to every single post so I'll give my general impressions.It seems to me that Socialism is something that would only work if implemented simultaneously on a global, worldwide scale; essentially forming one super-nation in which everyone works hand in hand with one another. I mean, common ownership of global resources is a pretty neat idea and would prevent monopolies from being created, but these are resources currently owned by a huge array of companies across the world, all of which would need to be bought by the governments. Can the world even afford to do this? It's also immoral to force people to give up their possessions, even if they can be viewed as a globally important resource, and this is one of the many reasons communism is widely accepted as such a terrible idea in practice, despite looking very good on paper – it forces people to give up their possessions. What's to stop the owners of these resources simply saying "no" when asked "do you want to sell your company to the government?" It's obvious that implementing socialism would demand a colossal amount of money, and given we don't even have enough money to hire more doctors, how on earth can we expect to have the money to buy every oil rig that supplies Britain?  So, to take the discussion back to my original question of "what does socialism mean for the country", it currently appears to mean "even more crippling debt but it's OK because we'll only have to pay 60p per litre of petrol."

[Author]

Posts