Because the majority of workers are doing the minimum amount of work to get by, because ~50% of workers are below average intelligence, because those with the entrepreneurial skill and/or business management competence necessary to make this happen benefit more from the current system and have less motivation to mess with it.
The bell curve is a bitch.
The average person just gets by and doesn’t think all that much about anything outside of their immediate surroundings. For most, politics and such is a team sport, not an intellectual pursuit.
It’s an uncomfortable fact of life, and those that have talents and gifts above the norm are by default responsible for guiding and advancing society. We ignore that burden at the peril of all.
The only thing either response to your original reply have done is provide uncontroversial and non-conspiratorial reasons why Mondragons are extremely rare. Calling that Social Darwinism is like calling you a Stalinist, a slander based entirely on a superficial similarity of your rhetoric.
As for the idea that people that bother to think about things like their social responsibility to humanity are , by default, responsible for guiding humanity (because people that don’t think about such things will not take an active role in that effort , by definition) seems also uncontroversial.
In short, I have no idea what you’re on about.
That said, I’m with you on labor movements, and believe that unions and coops are generally extremely positive things most of the time.
I just don’t expect much from the average person anymore. Decades of observation has made me skeptical of the ability of the Everyman to act in his own best interests, on average.
It’s worth mentioning that it is apparent to me that this inability is fostered in no small part by people and entities that make it their business to subvert otherwise good faith actors that don’t exercise very much independent thought into pursuing goals and supporting policies that are explicitly or covertly not in their collective best interest. Gullible people are gullible, and they are exploited all up and down the political spectrum.
If you're so smart, why are you beaten up by my thugs?
Some businesses only require simple work, so you could argue that they have one smart boss and many stupid employees. But there are many businesses that require highly qualified professionals. And those professionals have mostly been taught that their proper place in life is working for someone else. This is practically what school trains you to do for decades -- there is the teacher who gives commands, and the students who obey. And then you transition to a job where it is the boss who gives commands, and the employees who obey. I wonder whether a different kind of education would result in a different kind of a society.
It's not so simple to measure intelligence, anyway. I marvel at some of the things a below-average person does every day such as drive a car at high speeds on the interstate, or navigating political bureaucracy. Meanwhile, I'm two standard deviations above the mean but have ADHD and sometimes struggle with basic tasks that even people of below-average intelligence have mastered.
The contrast is so much at times that I can see the confusion and concern in the faces of those around me whenever I have an ADHD moment. Yet, I'm an expert in multiple subjects, a quick learner and have a well-developed sense of intuition. People are multi-faceted, and we're not going to get very far with over-simplistic models of intelligence.
Better to have a system based on creating things.
I beg to differ. Socialists are always concerned with distributing production equally. Anyone being creative gets it confiscated from them.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Where does creativity come into play?
Where are all the creative products the Soviets made?
Not really. Socialism (the project of the labor movement) is concerned with workers being in control of their own work, not vessels for capitalist exploitation. Syndicalism is a form of socialism that emphasizes decentralization and federation, as opposed to command control. How resources are allocated under conditions of such federated governance is up for debate.
> "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Socialism is older than Marxism and shouldn't be conflated with it.
> Where are all the creative products the Soviets made?
The USSR was a state capitalist/authoritarian regime, nothing like socialism.
That happens every time. Socialism gets implemented with high hopes, falls flat on its face, and gets declared to be not really socialism at all.
How many times does it need to fail before one realizes it is never going to work?
Simple litmus test for socialism: do workers manage production completely, through direct democratic processes?
You also conflation democracy with freedom. 49% gets subjugated by the other 51%.
Freedom means not being dictated to by the mob.
You could argue that private property is theft, necessarily enforced by a repressive state, and reappropriation is justice. The general strike is non-violent (until the police arrive).
> You also conflation democracy with freedom. 49% gets subjugated by the other 51%.
The interesting part about decentralization is that it somewhat relieves this problem. Federation allows for complex arrangements that coordinate towards consensus. So it might not be necessary to subject populations to laws they don't agree with with such broad strokes.
You could, but it wouldn't be convincing. It's a bit hard to convince me that things I bought or made I actually stole. Are you going to argue that if I hire someone to build a patio, I actually stole it from him?
This doesn't reflect the most well-known socialist axiom on the distribution of production...
> "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
...which you appear to be aware of. The entire point of idealizing "to each according to his need" is that different people have different needs.
Didn't they make Sputnik
Back in the heyday(!) of the USSR, tourists would routinely fill their luggage with blue jeans to sell on the black market there.
Anyway, you asked for Soviet creative products and I’ve named one. For what it’s worth, I’ve also heard good things about Soviet watches, I had a coworker who collected them and they’ve been discussed before on HN.
When the Red Army invaded Germany, the number 1 looted object was wristwatches. Soldiers would have a row of them affixed to their forearms. In multiple books I've read, they were always looking for wristwatches.
My father (B-17 crew) was issued a wristwatch, but I've been unable to find it among his stuff. Timekeeping was essential for coordinated military operations.
> have achieved something in uplifting backwards feudal empires towards something resembling modernity
The USSR was described as 3rd world country with a 1st world military. The PRC launched their economy by abandoning Marxism and embracing free markets. Cuba is a mess as it still tries to hang on to Marxism.
I did read the Soviet watch article when it was here - most interesting!
> The USSR was described as 3rd world country with a 1st world military.
And yet, tsarist Russia was even poorer and had worse standards of living. Pointing out that a change in state led to a difference in quality is not a moral judgment, nor does it necessitate an endorsement of that change.
Note that capitalism does not exclude worker-owned companies at all. You're free to start one.
Pretty damning critique of capitalists there, comrade.
BTW, studies of the bones of pre-Columbian Indians shows they worked hard and suffered from periodic famines, as well as a lot of violence.
Industries tend to require raw materials, which many times are located in or around land.
But the profits were looted from the workers who actually built all that stuff.
Capitalists aren't the ones hammering in steel spikes or wearing clean-room fab suits.
Or maybe the people that used to live there shouldn't have let so many migrants in.