I am a candidate in very north london, we're all organised for this possibility.

This is not about party allegiance, this is all about brexit.

Which, frankly, is scary in itself. Brexit, in whatever form, is far the only thing that matters in government. We also have significant and immediate concerns about the NHS, the education system at several different levels, our transport and communications infrastructure, our energy infrastructure, the environment and natural resources, the changing nature of work and employment, over-centralisation around London, the erosion of civil liberties, and other issues. Many of these could have far greater effects on the average citizen than anything to do with Brexit is likely to cause, even over the next few years and certainly in the long term, but they're being drowned out by an issue that is, in the big picture, simply not that big a deal.

However you are right that what should be happening is that the current intended prosecutions for electoral fraud should be completed (report due 12th of June) before any election is considered. The opposition parties should not be voting for to enact an election.

https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-and-nhs-staff/

That dates from last year, but suggests only 5% of NHS staff overall and 10% of doctors at that time were immigrants from elsewhere in the EU, and that this was a lower proportion than immigrants from non-EU nations.

Talk of farming collapsing also seems rather extreme. There are some important subsidies from the EU that do support genuine farming, but there is a lot more in the CAP that really doesn't.

I'm far more worried about not just underfunding but morale in the NHS, and in those who are leaving it or who might consider working within it in the future. For example, the figures for doctors planning leaving the profession in the near future compared to those starting to train to become doctors are not comfortable reading next to our predicted national demographics in the future.

I'm also far more worried about the kinds of conditions that make genuine farming need hand-outs to be viable. If that is the case then it seems likely that market forces and/or national resilience strategies have failed catastrophically already and those problems need to be addressed in their own right.

It's not that Brexit couldn't affect these things, I just think some of our existing problems are significantly bigger and their effects longer-lasting than any likely changes due to post-Brexit arrangements.

Actually, their behaviour in the coalition was the fact or that made me respect the LibDems tremendously. In my opinion they actually set aside party advantage in order to give the UK a working government. I believe that without their moderating influence the last government would have been a lot worse - hats off to them. And I speak as a (probably former) Labour voter.

Working government is overrated; Belgium took over a year to form a government and therefore ended up handling the financial crisis slightly better as there was no opportunity to do anything dramatically stupid.

The Lib Dems should have fought a lot harder and longer before agreeing to that coalition.

Is it, really?

People say things like this a lot at the moment, but the objective reality is that for a lot of graduates in the current tuition fees and student loans system, they are leaving university already tens of thousands of pounds in debt.

Earning anything resembling a "normal" graduate salary -- which of course isn't guaranteed these days -- they will then be making repayments that effectively increase their marginal income tax rate by a whopping 9%.

And with the current rate of inflation and the 3% extra interest that gets added on top, most of those repayments will actually just be servicing interest.

Bottom line: a young person graduating this year will have huge debts at the start of their career, they could be facing an extra tax-like burden for most of their working lives, and they're entering a workforce that demands more and offers less than any previous generation in recent history has faced. And that's before you even consider things like the housing market or the likelihood of that generation receiving a useful state pension by the time they retire.

How is anything related to Brexit, even in the most negative possible outcome, going to have anywhere close to that effect on the life of a young person who graduates this year?

There were always unpleasant people using nationalism as cover for doing unpleasant things, even though the current sentiment in many western countries has brought them a higher profile. They're still a relatively small minority, they've never amounted to much before, and I don't see them achieving much in the long term either, even if they cause nasty irritation for a while. More generally, broader nationalist sentiment might lead to a more isolationist foreign policy for a while, with the pros and cons that brings, but talk of that getting us into a war any time in the near future seems hyperbolic.

Russian aggression in Eastern Europe seems a greater and more urgent threat in terms of geopolitical stability, but then NATO seems a more likely forum to moderate that influence than the EU. Given that even NATO has had a limited effect on Putin so far, I don't see the UK's membership or otherwise of the EU making much difference to anything in this respect. With the US not knowing what its foreign policy is from one day to the next under Trump and with many of the other relatively powerful European nations systematically underinvesting in defence for years, I think there are much more influential factors that would need to change here before Brexit started to have much relevance in this context.

Meanwhile, with the tuition fees and student loans system we now have and with current inflation rates, we're talking about crippling around half of a whole generation economically, possibly for their entire lives. I'm already somewhat concerned that inequality and generational conflict could lead to widespread disorder within the next few years here at home, regardless of anything going on abroad. The effects of Brexit surely wouldn't help with that, but I don't believe any outcome in relation to Brexit (including completely stopping it) would fix these deep problems in our own society or their long term consequences either.

I genuinely admire that you are motivated enough to get involved with UK politics - and I wish you all the best. You've no idea the disappointment I had in the LDs though - I cheered them on in a handful of successive elections (they ousted the Tories in my home constituency West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in '97 much to my family's delight) and in the run-in to 2010 was convinced they could rise up to challenge Labour and the Conservatives.

And then to join the Tories - it just boggles the mind, I cannot fathom how anyone didn't think "won't this completely kill us off?". For one this basically lost them the foothold they had Scotland (my home constituency was lost to the SNP, for example) and whatever was left of the younger supporters who weren't turned off by the association with the Conservatives were then burned by the Tuition Fee saga in England.

We'll never know what would have happened with Brexit if the Lib Dems were still in the coalition. But they completely capitulated on a single extremely simple promise in 2010. Now I (a previous Lib Dem voter) have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the exact same again.

But overall, yeah you are right. I do not understand the Lib Dems. And it fucking saddens me.

Now, one thing we did with the coalition was do exactly what we'd been saying before the election. It wasn't what the media reported, but it is what we said. Which was that we'd consider coalition with any party that got the most votes and the most seats. Which was the Tories.

Now, you should also remember that the Lib Dems have a shared history with both the conservative and labour parties. The SDP may be much more recent, but the flight of the libertarians in the 1920s and 30s (along with the telegraph newspaper) lost us what was an originally liberal idea: the market. Suddenly we were no longer the party of the market. And the Tories were a mixture of market purists, capitalists and moral conservatives (political theists). They've purged most of the moral conservatives now, and we're just left with the capitalists (the libertarians forgot all about the social conscience of Adam Smith without the rest of the Liberal party to remind them.)

Now, the Liberals who were left in the 40s and onwards were several things. Social liberal, internationalist, a little bit CND, etc. Radicals. Protestors.

Then we got this influx from Labour in the 80s, the right wing of the Labour Party, the SDP. Vince Cable. Shirley Williams. We grew up and became less of a protest party and more professional. We started winning by-elections and having more than 6 seats.

It is important to distinguish us from a European Liberal (centre-right) party. It is also important to remember that we're internationalists. And it is important to remember that we're not too different from a European Liberal party; we definitely believe in free trade across borders.

So, the European project is a part of British Liberalism which cuts across both internationalism and market freedoms. It's in the political DNA of nearly all Lib Dems.

Brexit is one of the few things we pretty much all agree on (that it's a terrible catastrophe).

I hope that helps you understand us a bit better.

I will be voting Lib Dem as I always have. Not that fussed about EU membership either way but if the LDs can capture a decent proportion of the 'remain' vote then that could mean a huge boost.

Best of luck!

We live in interesting times!

Labour is in a bit of leadership dispute and the Article 50 negotiations haven't had time to go bad. Now is probably the best possible time to call an election. This time next year Labour might have gotten their house in order and the first results of the negotiations with the EU will be in and under close scrutiny, and it is very likely the the government will have been forced to make some tough concessions. Both of those things are likely to make winning an election much harder.

Also if they win now they can conduct the Article 50 negotiations in peace and with clear mandate. Trying to win an election and negotiate Brexit at the same time will be much harder, if for no other reason than the fact that the person across the table won't have any idea if the person they're talking to now will be in charge when it comes time to actually sign the papers.

That is certainly one possible outcome. However the Tories seem rather convinced that they can keep and even increase their majority (although the Tories do seem to have a thing for taking big bets with the country on election outcomes). And if they end up even just keeping their majority it will remove the whole "Theresa May has no public mandate to negotiate Brexit" argument from the table. It will also give them 5 more years to ride out the Brexit storm before having to face the voters again.

If the Lib Dems became a Democratic/Liberal Socialist party, I'd be happier.

Capitalism = bad, Markets = OKish.

It's only the Tories who believe in unrepentant profit mongering as a good way to organise society. (Oh, and UKIP. are they still a thing?)

It was your austerity cuts that created the favourable climate for Brexit in the first place.

I'll probably be voting short term "stop this madness"

I would have prefered a Labour + LibDem coalition in 2010 and 2015, but for what its worth the Lib Dems kept the conservatives on the side of sanity between 2010 and 2015. Without the lib dems they were torn apart by the far right of their party.

That was a pun about currency value, yes? :)

The only problem I see with this is that the election is only 6 weeks away, too little for any credible new stances to form. Beneficial for her & Tories, but undemocratic and bad for the country.

Most people will see this as the party political move that it is. Tory voters will love this, other parties much less so.

As an aside, Northern Ireland will probably join in and have another assembly election on the same date. I wonder if Scotland will join in too?

If I'm going out to vote in another assembly election I expect at LEAST a full five-piece with a free coffee on arrival.

... Alright I'll go. Again. Because I'm a mug.

He's an odd case. He commands a lot of influence among Labour members and to some extent the unions (who have significant ties to and influence on the Labour Party here). This makes him more-or-less untouchable as party leader.

However, he's loathed by most of the party's current MPs, who are politicians and know he's going to be a liability at election time. And he's not particularly popular among the general public outside the traditional Labour voters, which is why he's going to be a liability.

The irony of the snap election, if it does happen, is that it will be an opportunity for Corbyn to clear out the disloyal backstabbers in the Commons and replace them with more traditional Labour MPs, which is probably why he seems to have said previously that he'd support calls for a snap election. On the other hand, he would probably lose so many MPs altogether that his party would become almost irrelevant in the next Parliament, much as the Lib Dems did last time.

A somewhat ironic but apparently quite plausible outcome to all the political manoeuvres is that Corbyn says Labour will support the snap election, almost all of his MPs openly rebel, the election consequently doesn't achieve the 2/3 support needed in the Commons and so doesn't happen, May is weakened and probably steps down as a result, and Corbyn is also so weakened that he finally goes, thus making the two party leaders who were playing the political games the major victims of those games.

We live in interesting times, literally and perhaps euphemistically as well.

[Edit: Added a missing bit. Thanks, gpvos.]

Then on Brexit, he went against the wishes of the members and supported Tory policy.

Needless to say I'm no longer a supporter. Of course, it's easy to forget that all the other leadership candidates and challengers would have done the same.

I'd love to see the scenario in your final paragraph. I think May knows it's all or nothing, and if anything gets in the way of her timetable, it's game over for her and for Brexit.

I don't honestly expect that to happen, because I'm fairly sure that Corbyn is either delusional or compromised - and also willing to use a three-line whip to make sure the election goes ahead.

So what would you have done if you were him? Go with your members and get booted out of any sensible position, or go with your voting base and disregard your members? Brexit was a hot button topic for many reasons and arguably the fact that someone is either a Tory supporter or betraying their voter base is an example of politics becoming more about principle than doing what's right.

The only party which voted against having the referendum, and who aren't similarly bound, were the SNP.

May was campaigning to remain before she was appointed leader. And said categorically she would not call a snap election. The lack of conviction is equal parts depressing and hilarious

(I'm not in the UK, apologies if this is a common question.)

[edit] Thanks for the answers!

Some legal opinions have been proferred that it could be reversible, even though if you read the text of A50 there's no mention of such a mechanism.

Personally I would have thought that was something you would want to exclude - article 50 could be used as a tool to extract concessions "We're leavingg unless...".

There's apparently a court case in Ireland to try to establish this.

Also there's the possibility it could be reversed with unanimous consent from the other 27 members because, when it comes down to it, the members make the rules.

It's entirely possible that the UK could be made to leave and reapply though, which would make for many more years of turmoil.

I don't personally think this is a very useful distinction. By this definition, a soft Brexit is what for example the Lib Dems are advocating at the moment. However, I think it is also highly unlikely to happen, because to a first approximation it is leaving-in-name-only and thus probably an untenable position for the government to adopt politically. The entire spectrum of other possibilities, from retaining relatively close ties in some respects up to completely walking away with no deal at all, then fall under the single banner of hard Brexit, but treating such widely different possible outcomes as equivalent doesn't seem to be very useful (unless for political reasons you want to try to equate them anyway, I suppose).

"Tea?"

"OK, go on."

"There's no kettle so I'm burning the house down to heat water."

"Now wait a…"

"Shut up, I've a clear mandate for tea."

https://twitter.com/louisejjohnson/status/829617043582369792

I suppose to be balanced we should also acknowledge the other side's similarly daft argument that they accept that people voted for tea and yet propose a scheme in which you can't buy any of tea bags, tea leaves, a kettle, an urn, or an instant hot water tap, though it's possible that milk or lemon will still be negotiable. :-)

This is slightly simplistic, since the Tory party was split on the issue of Brexit.

Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.

I suspect he's considering his own position and the general dissatisfaction he faces among his current crop of MPs, and he's probably figuring this is a chance to clean house a bit. I also suspect the extremely short notice given by May is designed to frustrate that effort.

It's almost as if they'd rather have the Tories in government.

I imagine some current Labour MPs with Blairite leanings really might prefer having the Tories in government if a Corbyn-led administration is the alternative. The Tory position on a lot of issues is probably closer to their own.

Presumably the general public don't like him because the media have been telling them he's unelectable, even though he's been voted leader twice and his policies are popular with the electorate even if he isn't.

But being voted leader by a party who like him is far different from getting votes from anyone else, and almost everyone's policies are popular until you start asking the hard questions like how you're going to pay for it or who else is going to lose out as a result. I don't think either the general public's view of him or any resulting electability problems are entirely down to the media.

Theresa May's just taking advantage of her huge poll lead, which is mostly down to a divided official opposition.

When they were elected, Corbyn wasn't leader. The platform they were elected on wasn't Corbyn's, and the people who elected them were their local constituents, not just Corbyn-supporting members of the Labour party.

On the other hand, they ran under a Labour banner, which will be why quite a lot of them are MPs today, and it wasn't the New Labour of Tony Blair, it was the Labour of Ed Miliband, which now belongs to Jeremy Corbyn.

I daresay that it's them who are making the party a liability. They've made the Labour Party seem completely ridiculous - and that's not Corbyn's fault.

There are straight forward routes through for both of them.

May :- repeal the fixed term parliaments act (which would be an entertaining kick in the teeth to the Lib Dems)

Corbyn :- accuse Labour rebels of not respecting democracy and even question their motives w/regard to Brexit.

On that basis I can't see enough Labour rebels actually turning out to block it. They're more likely to walk away from politics completely (their heart was never really in the business of fighting for something).

No wonder - I suspect a lot of them will be out of a job soon.

The only major pro-EU voice in parliament now (discounting regional parties) is Lib Dems.

As an outsider, the news that got to me was that older people simply showed up to vote (and others didn't).

The young just aren't too bothered. Have a feeling, with Brexit, the biggest losers are the young and I hope that there is at least some semblance that they can do something about it this time.

The only person who's trying to do that right now and is at all visible to the public eye is Tony Blair.. and there's just no way that's going to go over with the public.

Nice assumptions there, shame they are incorrect other than my location. My point is that Corbyn is a bog standard left of centre politician in a left of centre party.

If you honestly believe the press have nothing to do with the image of him being a left wing loon then I honestly don't think you're paying attention. He is continually painted as a terrorist sympathizer for his views that talking and treating others as humans actually gets shit resolved (you know, diplomacy), he's quoted out of context time and again to paint him into the fringe left rather than where he actually stands.

That said, I agree that he's not the right candidate to get elected in the UK and he has been particularly ineffectual at providing any meaningful opposition to either Cameron or May both of whom I think Thatcher would think was a bit extreme.

This will force Britain to largely keep regulations for products that are being exported in line with the EU's (as its biggest export market), while still adding costs [2].

Nobody seriously believes that the British economy will implode as a result; what it will do is retard economic growth somewhat (economists argue how much) and possibly create structural problems in sectors that are heavily reliant on exports.

P.S.: I would also not rely on the Daily Express. It's probably one of the worst British tabloids.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-tariff_barriers_to_trade

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/69202760-c3a2-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856...

As for the official foreign policy, I think our government is sorry to see the UK leave ship as we have often had similar objectives when it came to EU politics. I don't think there is any desire to "punish" Britain as far as the Danish government is concerned.

It's a bit like pointing out to environmentalists that the earth itself will be fine; it's true but glossing over a huge amount of detail of what might actually be lost.

Possibly the most accurate prophecy I've read on twitter is that we'll gradually forget that people used to migrate to the UK from Ireland for economic reasons, as it becomes the other way round. The UK is likely to move smoothly from importing workers to young people going abroad (with greater difficulty) in order to find work. And the Home Office net migration figures will declare this a success.

Brexit won't demolish the UK, but it will cripple growth and cut us out of a whole bunch of global opportunities.

(Unless the Home Office goes to kick out the 3m Europeans already here, in which case we're back to tanks-in-the-streets apocalypses)

The UK will probably get a deal like Norway and will be better off without Brussels.

But then many other EU countries will ask: Who actually needs the political union?

EEA membership (which is what Norway has) includes:

* Freedom of movement.

* Contributions to the EU budget.

* Implementing most EU regulations without actually having representation in the bodies that decide them.

This would not go over well with Leave voters and would basically be a worse deal for the UK than remaining in the EU would be.

The monetary union has serious problems, but not all the countries in the EU are part of it.

A more likely outcome is a French Exit or the collapse of a large Italian bank causing the end of the EU as we know it. Then we can make trade deals with individual countries.

French exit would kill the EU, but I think we'll see another narrow defeat for Le Pen. But I could be wrong there, it's volatile.

The EU is going to fragment and crumble over the next ten years. And Europa will be, if not fine then at least better for it.

"The EU is going to fragment and crumble over the next ten years."

No comment.

The EU will probably strengthen after brexit.

If the eu falls there will be huge economic suffering, it will mean almost certain war, and probably an invasion by Putin in the east after he takes Ukraine.

By doing this she gives herself a full five years to hammer out all of the deals required to "successfully" Brexit.

With the opposition in disarray, they stand a good chance to securing more seats. This helps them to prevent other parties blocking the things she needs to pass in order to start revoking EU laws, which they have already said they will copy verbatim to start with into UK law, and then slowly rewrite the bits out they don't want. EHRC being one of their key targets.

There's stronger signs of a generational split, and a rural/city split than a simple rich poor split and of course each area has substantial numbers of voters who think differently. Lots of rich people voted for Brexit, lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit, etc. The reasons are varied. I disagree with Brexit and think it will end in disaster (esp. for labour as you point out), but the view above is unduly reductive.

Unfortunately such a nuanced reality doesn't fit into a sound bite and people prefer to neatly put their opponents in a reductive box, so here we are talking about cities vs countryside and rich vs poor.

> lots of people who are not nationalists voted for Brexit lots of people who are not particularly racist voted for Brexit

Sounds like you're doing the exact same thing. Are the majority of Brexit voters racist and nationalist (assuming you consider nationalism a negative)?

I don't think so no. I do think that should be clear from the text you have quoted.

A party becomes more competitive by moving closer in policy to another party? I'm happy with a far-left leadership, and I'd take it any day over some party vaguely in favour of Keynesianism.

I don't think that's true, I still think Socialism is a solution to the problems of society structured with class (capitalism, feudalism, slavery etc.)

Class is not about equality, it is about removing a power relationship. In the same way that the abolitionist movement removed the property relationship between master and slave, the Socialist movement seeks to remove the private property power relationship between bourgeois and proletariat in general.

The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government, the single biggest source of corruption in existence, is ludicrous and the sooner the ideas of socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.

Two factors are at work here; first, in a capitalist society (or modern mixed economies, which retain this feature of capitalism) visibility is driven in large part by class and wealth, so higher-status individuals will appear more significant (especially from outside the movement) simply because of their status.

Second, the modern popular concept in the West of the "middle class" is almost entirely part of what socialists (and others following the classical analysis of class in capitalist societies) call the working class (the traditional capitalist-economy middle class, the petit-bourgeoisie, aligns better with the current popular concept of the"upper middle class" and lower range of the upper class.)

In modern Western parlance, "middle class" is the middle income segment of the wage-labor dependent segment of society; in traditional (socialist in origin, since they first described and analyzed capitalism) the wage-labor dependent segment is the working class.

And, yes, the segment of the working class that is able to afford to spend effort directed beyond immediate survival, and with the most to lose, is usually the base of most reform efforts and resvolutions (socialist or otherwise), and usually the petit-bourgeoisie is significantly involved, too (though also significantly involved in defending the status quo), since very early in the capitalist (and pre-capitalist transitional) world.

Why does that make it a bad idea? I'm of the belief that stigma surrounding Socialism has meant that only interested academics will talk about it, but this certainly wasn't the case in the 19th century. It is not only the working poor who are of concern, it is the workers as a whole. Class consciousness must be raised.

>The idea that inequality can be solved by handing all property to the government

That's not what I'm proposing; rather, I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers, and the powers of the state be transferred to people so that the state withers away, leaving behind it a government. Decentralised government is also possible.

>socialism and communism die out the closer we'll be to an actual approach to raising up the working poor.

Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.

Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.

The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3608/3608-h/3608-h.htm

I'm not saying it does - I'm saying that if the working class have rejected it then clearly they do not see it is in their benefit. The idea of "raising class consciousness" seems like a fancy way of saying "the working class are too stupid to know what's good for them".

> I propose that private property (i.e property used for social commodity reproduction) be taken over by workers

Such as what? Workers already own property. Most people have a TV, a house (that they own fully after their mortgage matures), a car and so on. Should we steal all of that stuff too? Or just the lambourghinis and yachts of the wealthy? Sounds like "lets just steal stuff we want from other people" to me.

> Decentralised government is also possible.

Sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what form of government you're referring to.

> Have you read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell?[0] He himself was a working class man making the case for Socialism, and why capitalism, a system which is designed to keep one class below the other, is not favourable.

I haven't, I'll add it to my reading list. I doubt I'll be convinced though. The idea that capitalism exists to keep classes separate is one I disagree with - my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want. Naturally, people who are better at this will rise to the top. It's a form of talent sifting. I'd rather have competent people do things they're competent at or we'll end up with more Lysenkoism and bread lines.

> Capitalism has nothing to do with government, the idea that only 'corporatism' is bad is equivocation. The class structure still exists without a government, surplus labour is still extracted without a government, private property is still defended without a government.

Defense of private property makes sense though. If I own a car I like, I'm not going to just let you come and steal it from me. The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce. Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have. Not even close.

> The workers are raised up by ideals looking out for their interests rather than those ideals looking out for the interests of the bourgeoisie. The class system prevents realisation of a meritocracy in which each person is rewarded exactly according to his labour rather than paid by the hour.

You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it. Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward? Value of a thing is determined by what it's worth to the person who wants to use it, i.e. utility pricing.

Marx and other 19th century writers make the distinction between private and personal property (at the time, it was simply called 'property', and personal property called 'possession'). An example of private property is a factory, machinery and land upon which people are employed to make things. These things are social means of reproduction. I don't think anybody, Communist or otherwise, is advocating for taking personal property such as cars (unless property of a limousine company), televisions, computers (unless property of a commercial software house) etc.

>my understanding is that capitalism exists to allow people to compete to be the best at providing services people want

I think that this is merely incidental, capitalism producing goods for exchange rather than usage is not incidental. Not even bosses are in charge of capital, capital is its own owner, and ensures its continuation through the capitalist system. This is why sometimes you see property owners giving themselves salaries of $1.

I don't think that people who provide the best service rise to the top; rather, those who are the most ruthless in providing that service rise to the top; it's not even proportional to the amount of labour applied. In fact, many products are made which people wouldn't buy if it wasn't for a lot of advertising. Accumulating capital is one of the goals of a property owning actor in a capitalist system, and that can be best done by paying the workers the minimum, that is, the amount required to maintain the worker and ensure the continuance of the flow of workers.

> The idea that a community can own property that is shared seems bogus when you extend the argument to things that are scarce.

I think that the community should collectively own means of production; however the labourers themselves as individuals own the product of their own labour and choose when and how to distribute it, if at all. A worker who makes social means of production (i.e MoP which multiple people use) would likely be persuaded to let the community use his machine, in exchange for a certain amount of product for example. However ideally, community projects would make sure that most members of the community who wish to produce contribute to the production of means of production.

>Marx himself posited socialism and communism as being a state that requires a post-scarcity and automated society, which we do not have.

It's not necessary that society be post-scarcity; rather, that resources be managed without introducing artificial scarcity. Full automation is not possible under capitalism, for there has to be someone to buy back the products which are producted. Capitalism isn't a way to get to the point of full automation.

>You can't calculate the value of a thing based on the labour required to create it.

The Labour Theory of Value[0] attempts to do exactly this.

> Otherwise what stops me spending years on some piece of junk and then demanding a reward?

Marx wanted to make the distinction between private labour and social labour. Social labour calculations take place within the context of society, whereas private labour is not commodified. He writes in Capital chap. 1:

"Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value."

>and then demanding a reward?

In a Socialist society, you would make things for your own usage, unless in some kind of barter or market Socialist arrangement.

>Value of a thing is determined by what it's worth to the person who wants to use it, i.e. utility pricing.

Marx makes the distinction between use-value:

"The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4] But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.

When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities.[5]

Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value."

and Value (also exchange value):

"Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both.

[...]

This common “something” cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value. Then one use value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. [...] As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value.

If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour.

Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract."

Marx further writes:

"A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. [...] If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."

Optimised taxes and regulations do not stop exploitation[0].

>"oh shit our web app is running a bit slow, best throw it all out and rebuild the whole thing in <insert hip framework here>"

This is such a false analogy; there are problems inherent with capitalism, which is what the Socialists oppose - namely, the structure of unjustified authority of the State, the exploitation of labour, the class system, the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism, and being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners. A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"

[0] https://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation...

> the structure of unjustified authority of the State

Socialism in all real world implementations has been in the form of an all-encompassing state. The idea that socialism can exist as a form of anarchy seems to be busted - the Soviets (as in the unions that initially formed during the Russian revolution) quickly formed into a hierarchal structure of abstract Soviets that looked just like government departments. I don't agree with the extent that the State has power either, but fundamentally it can provide security from criminal behaviour via the police, protection from outside groups via the military, and welfare via taxation. Those are all positives, imo.

> the exploitation of labour

"Ownership of the means of production" has less and less meaning every year. Everyone can start a business from a laptop, this isn't the Victorian era where most working class are forced to work in factories to escape the poor-house. It would seem that business people do provide real value after all - managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce. Plus, the idea of the 1% owning the vast majority of the wealth in society can in large part be attributed to their owning a large share of their own businesses, which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.

> the class system

The class system is becoming less and less relevant. I don't have to toil away as a serf on some rich noble's land any more. I started out very much lower-middle to working class, and now I live a very comfortable life. Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.

> the internal contradictions and crises of capitalism

... can be well-managed by a more competent state. Tragedy of the commons, neocolonialism, and such could be drastically reduced by improvements to the state. We know this because countries like Norway have good social standards and are military non-interventionist, and the USA is pretty much the only Western country that invades others any more.

> being forced by threat of starvation to sell labour-power to the class of property owners

You mean being forced to be a productive member of society? Work still needs to keep the world going, and if sitting at home consuming goods and providing absolutely no value were a viable option everyone would do it and society would collapse. For those who can't due to disability or unemployability we have welfare benefits to allow them to do exactly that.

Consider this - if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruits of others' labour, are they not being exploitative themselves?

> A better analogy would be if your web app is only serving 5% or less of customers, and the rest get an extremely slow connection, which they complain about to the web app owner, and you respond "We just need to make the website a few kB/s slower for the 5% and give that speed to you!"

You, like every other socialist I've spoken to, seem far more preoccupied with punishing the wealthy than actually helping the poor. If we can establish a dignified baseline for all people to live off of, what's wrong with those who are willing to work hard and sacrifice to provide better services to their customers being able to earn more? Without incentives we wouldn't have any innovation because people don't make sacrifices without incentives. Most innovation is born of personal sacrifices.

I think it could exist as a distributed network of communes, no particular commune with authority over any other, voluntarily exchanging resources where needed. I'm against strengthening the State; at most the State should take the form of a government, having all its other powers handed away.

>and welfare via taxation

I don't think taxation can be justified, unless it is optional and agreed to by everyone paying and receiving the taxes.

> Everyone can start a business from a laptop

Yes, but that laptop only becomes social means of production when you start to hire other people to work on it in the form of wage labour. It's fine to be an artisan or "self-employed", because in that case, the only exploitation happening is exploitation of yourself (depends on the point of view).

>managing people and structuring organised work between individuals with separate skills is an incredible value-add to a workforce

Property owners are distinct from managers; there's no reason why one must cease being a manager when they cease owning property. Managers are workers, and their management would probably be decided via a democratic vote in a Socialist co-operative. Management is cruical, nobody is arguing against it; engineers etc. add value to products of course.

>which are built with their own work and hiring people at mutually-agreed-upon wages.

Very few businesses reach the kind of scale they are today from the labour of the owners; in fact, they reach that status due to the labour of the workers. Agreeing upon wages doesn't mean anything at all, because that agreement almost always happens in a case where one must sell his labour-power in order to survive. The Marxian analysis says that exploitation isn't a matter of wages, it's a matter of receiving the value of labour. Without exploitation, the companies would not make profit.

Yes, the worker has options as to who to sell himself to piecemeal, but that does not mean that the transactions are free; considering the class of property owners as a whole, they force people knowingly by societal structure to work for them.

>Economic mobility is pretty good these days, we don't live in Marx's time any more.

Economic mobility is irrelevant. There are roughly three classes, which some people are able to move between: the proletariat, who must sell their labour-power for wage in order to survive, the petit-bourgeoisie who take the form of artisans or those self-employed, i.e bourgeois in potential, and the bourgeoisie who are a class of property owners. It is possible to be a property owner and work, too. For example, many small businesses have the property owner work. But that does not mean that the property owner should be entitled to the fruits of others' labour.

Many (most?) people do not have sufficient capital, or have no way of accumulating sufficient capital, to move from proletarian to petit bourgeois. Even fewer have the ability to move from proletarian to bourgeois. The system is stacked agaisnt them, it's not a matter of choice and some hard work.

>You mean being forced to be a productive member of society?

I see no reason why one must sell labour-power in order to be a productive member of society, at least, a productive member of a society. Of course one must work to survive, but that work need not be compensated with wages, at least in jobs where goods are produced. One can work for himself, and decide how much surplus product to give to others; this kind of decision making at a large scale can be managed by a voluntary council which manages production. For example, workers may agree to give a certain percentage of their product to those who are less fortunate or unable to work.

> if people don't have to sell labour-power to earn money to buy things, but can still consume the fruits of others' labour, are they not being exploitative themselves?

The fruits of others' labour is never appropriated; the workers individually own it and decide what to do with it; in a society in which there are no wages, and automation is scaled up, my idea is that many people would be happy to give some amount of product as charity to those who cannot work. It's up to each individual worker whether to contribute in such a scheme. This is the fairest way I can think of doing it which doesn't involve coercion or force (like taxes).

Nobdoy has the right to demand the product of your labour.

>You, like every other socialist I've spoken to, seem far more preoccupied with punishing the wealthy than actually helping the poor.

The analogy I was using wasn't in favour of Socialism, rather I was trying to depict what taxation for welfare is like within capitalism. I have no problem at all with people owning wealth; I have issue with people owning capital and simultaneously exploiting people using wage labour. I want to eliminate the conditions which cause this to happen.

It's not even about the poor - it's about the workers as a whole; the poor are an example of the workers who have been maximally shafted by this system of capital accumulation. I don't propose redistribution of wealth or punishing people for hard work. I accept that many who are rich are there as the result of hard work, and if it's their own labour, they deserve the fruits of it.

>Without incentives we wouldn't have any innovation because people don't make sacrifices without incentives.

Possible incentives in a Socialist society other than money include the desire to do something, mastery, the desire for credit and recognition, to create a society that you and your family wish to live in, to help those less fortunate, to have a sense of purpose, and also that one receives what one works for - if one does not work, he must rely upon charity. For service jobs, perhaps some kind of labour voucher may be used, such that the labour voucher is given for one hour of work, adjusted for the difficulty of the job; such vouchers being untransferable because they are stamped with the receiver's name, and they are destroyed upon exchange for goods at a bank of items contributed to voluntarily by workers who produce physical items. The maximum number of vouchers one can obtain per year is equal to 365 * 24 (or rather, less than that because it is impossible for someone to work during the entire year). I'm rather undecided on this idea myself, I haven't read enough about it. It has problems such as differentiating between the work of say an electronic engineer or scientist and a street cleaner, for which one hour of work will of course carry different values (SNLT takes this into account, though).

I see no way around this problem of having to work to live a good life. But the problem can be minimised by using automation for the benefit of workers, to reduce the number of labour-hours they need to perform. At the moment, automation is used against the workers, to displace them and force them into poorer jobs or no job at all. Capitalism cannot head toward full automation, because in that case, there are few people working, thus few people with wages, fewer people with money, and thus few people to buy all these products being produced by help of automation.

Socialist writers such as Kropotkin have long predicted that people would have to be working less than 10 hours a week if automation would be used to help people.