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.
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.