[blind-democracy] Re: Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees

Corporate Capitalism is a cancer. As such, it devours anything from
which it derives nourishment.
The examples in the article, public schools, Amtrak, Postal Service,
PUD's, etc., are all under attack by the Private Mega Corporations.
Even local, state and national government is under attack by the
out-of-control Virus. In my opinion, Public Enterprises cannot exist
alongside Private Corporations. Indeed, when not feeding on public
owned businesses, these corporations devour one another, creating even
larger and more frightening monsters. And some among us think that we
can integrate into the System and take it over. So far the track
record for this idea is bad, to horrible. While I am initially
supporting Bernie Sanders, I make no mistake in thinking he could
bring about reforms. The Cancer will infect him, or anyone who rises
in their System, and turn them into a Puppet.
Corporate Capitalism will not allow itself to be slowly replaced. No
transition will end up in socialism. Every attempt so far has failed.
The nations that claim to be socialistic or communistic are blowing
smoke up our noses. If a System that is of the People, by the People
and for the People is going to succeed, it must be organized, planned,
thought out and agreed upon, and set in place. So long as there are
bosses, there will be power tripping. Any sort of temporary
transitional management will morph into a new Ruling Class. Can the
Human Species change its spots and begin to think as one People, one
Class, one World? It's crazy to even think that it could happen. But
so long as two nations exist, instead of one World, and so long as one
individual claims dominance over others, true Socialism will not
exist. And Planet Earth will not be safe. We Humans chose ourselves
to rule this Garden of Eden. And to date, we've done a real crappy
job. If we want to avoid being tossed out, banned, annihilated, we'd
better get serious.
But hey, the big game's this afternoon. I'll worry about survival
later next winter.

Carl Jarvis


On 6/29/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> I posted the article partly, to get your response. I thought that he said
> over and over again that his point was that real socialism means that the
> workers own the means of production, not the state.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
> Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81@aol.com" for DMARC)
> Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2015 9:59 PM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction
> Between Bosses and Employees
>
> Like I said, if you call everything socialism then the word socialism means
> nothing. I do note, however, that after distinguishing state capitalism
> from
> socialism this author goes right ahead and accepts that if a group calls
> itself socialist it is socialist and then what does he get? Socialists have
> captured state power in France?
>
> On 6/28/2015 9:43 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and
>> Employees Saturday, 27 June 2015 00:00 By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout |
> News Analysis
>> An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction
>> between employers and employees within it has been abolished. (Image:
>> Jared Rodriguez / Truthout) The support of readers like you got this
>> story published - and helps Truthout stay free from corporate
>> advertising. Can you sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation
>> today?
>> Regulated private capitalism. State capitalism. Socialism. These three
>> systems are entirely different from each other. We need to understand
>> the differences between them to move beyond today's dysfunctional
> economies.
>> With confidence waning in whether modern private capitalism can truly
>> be fixed, the debate shifts to a choice between two systemic
>> alternatives that we must learn to keep straight: state capitalism and
> socialism.
>> State capitalism exists when the state apparatus - rather than a group
>> of private citizens - positions state officials to function as
>> capitalist employers. Thus, under state capitalism it is state
>> officials placed in charge of enterprises who hire employees, organize
>> and supervise their activities within enterprises, sell the resulting
>> outputs (goods or services), receive the sales revenues and thus
>> realize any profits. State officials occupy the key directorial
>> positions within such state capitalist enterprises.
>> In contrast, in private capitalist enterprises, shareholders assign
>> these positions instead to private individuals - not state officials -
>> within structures such as corporate boards of directors. Hybrid
>> capitalist enterprises (part private and part state) also exist. Goods
>> and services produced in state capitalist enterprises are often sold
>> in markets alongside those produced by private capitalist enterprises.
>> Likewise, state capitalist enterprises typically buy their inputs in
>> markets alongside parallel purchases made by private capitalist
> businesses.
>> The Difference Between State Capitalism and Socialism In all countries
>> today, state capitalist enterprises coexist and transact in markets
>> with private capitalist enterprises. The proportions of the different
>> types of capitalist enterprise vary from country to country. Only in
>> some countries are state capitalist enterprises the socially dominant
>> kind of enterprise. In the United States, state capitalist enterprises
>> are definitely not socially dominant, but they do exist: Amtrak, TVA,
>> public colleges and universities, the post office, the Bank of North
>> Dakota, public power companies owned and operated by thousands of US
>> municipalities, and the New York City subway system are all examples.
>> Some state capitalist enterprises in the US obtain subsidies from the
>> government, but then many private capitalist enterprises obtain
>> subsidies,
> too.
>> The state directly regulates state capitalism. It does this through
>> the state officials it assigns to direct state enterprise activities.
>> The state indirectly regulates private capitalism. It does this by
>> means of rules and laws that limit the enterprise-directing decisions
>> made by private capitalists.
>> AN ENTERPRISE ONLY QUALIFIES AS "SOCIALIST" ONCE THE DISTINCTION
>> BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES WITHIN IT HAS BEEN ABOLISHED.
>> The fact that the state regulates private capitalist enterprises and
>> operates state capitalist enterprises does not reduce the capitalist
>> structure of an economy. So long as employers, private or state, hire
>> laborers to produce commodities and generate profits that the
>> employers exclusively receive, the economy has a capitalist structure.
>> So long as it is exclusively the employers (whether private, state or
>> hybrid; whether more or less regulated) who decide how to use those
>> profits, it is a capitalist structure.
>> An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction
>> between employers and employees within it has been abolished. When
>> workers collectively and democratically produce, receive and
>> distribute the profits their labor generates, the enterprise becomes
>> socialist. Such enterprises can then become the base of a socialist
>> economy - its micro-level foundation
>> - supporting whatever ownership system (public and/or private) and
>> distribution system (planning and/or market) constitute that economy's
>> macro level.
>> Actual large-scale socialism would thus predominantly entail worker
>> cooperative enterprises such as these. Like the capitalist enterprises
>> that once emerged from European feudalism, these new cooperative
>> enterprises would seek to solve problems such as how to organize their
>> interdependencies with one another and with the public, how to relate
>> to private and public property, and how to manage transitions from
>> smaller- to larger-scale enterprises. Different forms of societal
>> socialisms will emerge: some with markets, private property and large
>> corporations, and others with centralized and/or decentralized
>> planning systems, socialized property, constraints on enterprise size
>> etc. Debates, experiments and choices among them will likely characterize
> the multiple forms that socialism will take.
>> Previous economic systems likewise often displayed coexistences among
>> more or less regulated private enterprises and state enterprises. In
>> slave societies, for example, alongside the private masters of slaves
>> working on plantations, states often owned and operated slave
>> plantations. In feudal societies, private feudal manors interacted
>> with the feudal manors operated by kings, to take a European example.
>> In short, slavery and feudalism, like capitalism, display varying
> combinations of private and state enterprises.
>> Historical Debates Within Socialism
>> The European socialism that emerged in the19th century was not
>> initially much concerned with issues of state versus private. It began
>> and evolved - especially with the work of Marx and his followers - as
>> a systemic critique of capitalism, not of regulation or the balance
>> between state and private enterprises. Socialists wanted to go beyond
>> capitalism to an altogether different system, one that fundamentally
>> rejected the basic division between employers and employees.
>> Socialists generally favored organizing society as "classless" where
>> all would be workers who democratically made society's basic economic and
> political decisions.
>> During the 19th century, as the socialist criticism of capitalism grew
>> and spread globally alongside capitalism itself, socialists debated
>> how to accomplish the transition from capitalism to socialism. The
>> debate fixed upon the state as the key means to make that transition.
>> If capitalism's critics could capture the state, state power could
>> then be utilized for the subsequent transition to socialism. The state
>> could, under socialists, usher the new system into being.
>> A transition to socialistically reorganized enterprises, once
>> accomplished by a state, would also transform the state as an
>> institution. With capitalists' power over the state removed, that
>> power would be wielded instead by the workers controlling the
>> socialized enterprises. Ending classes would end the need for a
>> repressive
> state to secure class divisions.
>> Both Marx's early and important association with the anarchist Mikhail
>> Bakunin and Lenin's later concept of the "withering away of the state"
>> shared presumptions that any state apparatus remaining in socialism
>> would
>> (a) be reduced to coordinating socialized enterprises' interactions,
>> and (b) depend on workers' socialized enterprises for its resources and
> powers.
>> AS SOME PUT IT, SOCIALISM EITHER SHOULD OR COULD ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY
>> MEANS OF EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION.
>> Some socialists have believed in and strategized for a revolutionary
>> seizure of state power from capitalists and their associates. They
>> have sought to replicate the action of revolutionaries in 1789 France
>> who took state power from the feudal lords, the feudal king and their
>> associates. Where the French revolutionary state enabled and
>> facilitated the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a socialist
>> revolution would proceed similarly for a transition from capitalism to
> socialism.
>> Other socialists have disagreed and argued instead for a
>> parliamentary/electoral strategy. They have argued that socialists
>> should form political parties and win elections as the way to capture
>> the state. As some put it, socialism either should or could only be
>> achieved by means of evolution, not revolution. As socialism became a
>> powerful global movement, socialists pursued one or the other or both
>> strategies depending on the specific conditions in each place and time.
>> Since 1900, proponents of both strategies claimed some victories. In
>> Western Europe, socialists built political parties that eventually
>> captured state power such as socialists in France possess today. In
>> Russia, China and Cuba, revolutions brought state power to socialists.
>> However, neither socialist strategy took the next step. Socialists in
>> power could not or would not make transitions to socialism (and ever
>> since have furiously debated whether that is what happened and if so,
> why).
>> Looking back now, it seems clear that socialists in power moved to
>> economic systems that mixed state capitalism with more or less
>> regulated private capitalism. That is, they used state power to
>> construct larger or smaller state capitalist sectors alongside often
>> heavily regulated private capitalist sectors. In Western Europe, the
>> state capitalist sectors tended to be smaller than those in Russia, China
> and Cuba.
>> Stalin Spreads Confusion
>> Shortly after the 1917 Soviet revolution, Lenin described the Bolsheviks'
>> achievement as having constructed "a state capitalism" that he
>> applauded as a necessary step toward a transition to socialism. By the
>> early 1930s, the subsequent leader, Stalin, made a pointedly different
>> declaration: Socialism had been achieved in the USSR. Yet precisely
>> what Lenin had named state capitalism remained the Soviet industrial
>> reality; indeed, Stalin extended state capitalism into Soviet
>> agriculture.
>> CONCEPTUAL CONFUSIONS SET IN ABOUT WHAT EXACTLY SEPARATED
>> STATE-REGULATED PRIVATE CAPITALISM FROM STATE CAPITALISM FROM SOCIALISM.
>> In effect, Stalin had pronounced a new and daring definitional equation:
>> State capitalism was socialism. Many other socialists, including those
>> who otherwise denounced Stalin and reviled Stalinism, sooner or later
>> agreed with this new definition. So too did most of socialism's
>> enemies. In practice, when socialists achieved state power, they
>> either could not or would not use that power to go beyond varying
>> mixtures of regulated private and state capitalism. Yet socialists and
>> their enemies increasingly defined those mixtures as socialism
>> (although some socialists always disagreed and promoted other
>> formulations of what the key terms meant). Conceptual confusions set
>> in about what exactly, if anything, separated state-regulated private
> capitalism from state capitalism from socialism.
>> For most of the last century those confusions proliferated across the
>> statements of workers, capitalists, politicians, academics, media
>> personalities and the broad general public. For example, the term
>> "socialism" was often applied to almost anything done by or through
>> state power (such as President Obama's Affordable Care Act or the
>> IRS's efforts to increase tax collection). In much of Europe and
>> beyond, socialism refers mostly to the broad social welfare results
>> (national health insurance, pensions etc.) of using government power
>> to regulate, control and tax what are still largely private capitalisms.
>> A similar concept of socialism is more or less embraced by US
>> presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Thus, he seeks higher mass
>> consumption levels and better working conditions through state
>> regulatory policies that redistribute power and wealth from
>> corporations and the rich to the rest of the society. Yet Sanders'
>> celebration of worker cooperatives suggests some interest in going
>> further toward a non-capitalist system. Definitions of socialism in
>> places like China and the USSR specified socially dominant state
>> capitalist sectors with only marginal allowances for heavily regulated
> private capitalism.
>> The Limitations of State Capitalism and Regulated Private Capitalism
>> Many socialists struggled and eventually succeeded, often at great
>> costs, to construct regulated private capitalisms that delivered
>> public services, wealth and income redistribution, and social welfare
>> far beyond what less regulated private capitalisms had done. Other
>> socialists went further to implement state capitalisms that prevailed
>> in their countries. Those could and often did deliver public services
>> and social welfare beyond what even worker-friendly regulated private
> capitalisms did.
>> Yet socialists in power who presided over combinations of regulated
>> private capitalisms and state capitalisms suffered two severe
>> limitations. First, they could not prevent capitalist crises with
>> profound
> social consequences.
>> Second, they could not build sufficient confidence in or loyalty to
>> the systems they constructed to prevent those crises from provoking
>> reversions from state to private capitalism and from more to less
>> regulated private capitalism. The capitalist crises of the 1970s thus
>> led to neoliberalism and the crises of the late 1980s, to the
>> implosions in Eastern Europe. Even the deep global crisis since 2008
>> could not stop that reversion as many socialists and socialist parties
>> embraced austerity policies while failing seriously to reregulate.
>> Because the mixtures of highly regulated private and state capitalisms
>> were often run by socialists and called socialism, their decline over
>> recent decades has been widely and mistakenly understood as the "end" of
> socialism.
>> The workers in state capitalisms that were defined as socialism (the
>> USSR, China etc.) almost never themselves collectively and
>> democratically directed state capitalist enterprises. That key
>> function was reserved for state officials who had replaced the
>> corporate boards of directors. In state capitalist enterprises, the
>> workers did not have command of and responsibility for their
>> enterprises' performances. In the aftermath of their crises, the
>> "actually existing socialisms" of the late 20th century exhausted the
>> political and historical possibilities of such state capitalisms.
>> Similarly, the welfare-state-regulated private capitalisms have shown,
>> through their periods of neoliberalism since the 1970s and then
>> post-2008 austerity policies, that they were fundamentally insecure
>> and thus temporary. The New Deal in the US and social democracies in
>> Europe proved unable to reproduce the political alliances that once
>> forced their states to enable and facilitate their emergence. They
>> were rolled back in a determined counterattack by corporations and the
> rich.
>> Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such
>> as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social
>> services and
>> jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private
>> capitalism.
>> The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control
>> of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or
>> social democratic responses to crises. Socialist parties and movements
>> failed to preserve the New Deal and social democracy, and failed to
>> prevent or destroy austerity policies after 2008. They thereby
>> exhausted the political appeal and foundation of socialisms based on
>> state regulation of private capitalism as utterly as the experiences
>> of the USSR and China largely exhausted the socialisms based on state
> capitalism.
>> Does Socialism Have a Future?
>> If socialism is to have a future, it will likely have to cut its
>> residual ties to both state-regulated private capitalism and state
>> capitalism. It will have to come full circle in the 21st century to
>> rediscover and update its 19th century differentiation from capitalism
>> as a fundamentally different mode of organizing the production and
>> distribution of goods and services.
>> Self-criticism by socialists must account for the decline of socialist
>> parties in Western Europe as well as the collapse of state capitalisms
>> ("actually existing socialisms"). Doing so culminates in new
>> definitions of socialism for the 21st century focused increasingly on
>> democratizing the workplace - at the micro-level. That is the key
>> change that was missing from previous socialisms. It must be added to
>> old definitions that were over-focused on substituting socialized for
>> privately owned means of production and substituting planning for
>> markets. This is the significance of the remarkable recent Cuban
>> policy decision to refocus its economic development strategy
>> relatively more on worker cooperatives and relatively less on state
>> enterprises. This is likewise the significance of the remarkable surge
>> of interest in workers' self-directed enterprises among anti-capitalist
> social movements and social critics.
>> Capitalism is relocating from its old centers in Western Europe, North
>> America and Japan, to new centers in China, India, Brazil and so on.
>> This relocation is also generating a vast new global criticism of the
>> private capitalism that proclaimed its absolute victory in the
>> aftermath of the USSR's implosion in 1989. Workers in the old centers
>> are slowly grasping that capitalism's relocation will no longer offset
>> their rising exploitation with rising consumption. They are feeling
>> abandoned by capitalism and raising increasingly critical voices. They
>> do not want a socialism defined in terms of Soviet or other state
>> capitalisms that had serious problems and imploded. They do not want a
>> private capitalism whose regulations proved reversible and whose
>> qualities of decline they deeply resent. A new socialism built around
>> democratized workplaces appeals to them in ways old socialisms no longer
> can.
>> Socialism in and for the 21st century must now define itself in clear
>> distinction from both regulated private capitalism and state capitalism.
>> Only then can we begin our strategic debates over precisely which
>> socialist goal to set and pursue.
>> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
>> RICHARD D. WOLFF
>> Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of
>> Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He
>> is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in
>> International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He
>> also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
>> Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the
>> City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994,
>> he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris
>> (France), I (Sorbonne). His work is available at rdwolff.com and at
> democracyatwork.info.
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>> Moyers & Company | News Analysis and Video System Change, or There and
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>> Include Its Definition By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | News Analysis
>> ________________________________________
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>> Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and
>> Employees Saturday, 27 June 2015 00:00 By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout |
> News Analysis
>> . font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
>> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error!
>> Hyperlink reference not valid.
>> . An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction
>> between employers and employees within it has been abolished. (Image:
>> Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
>> . http://truth-out.org/members/donateThe support of readers like you
>> got this story published - and helps Truthout stay free from corporate
>> advertising. Can you sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation
> today?
>> Regulated private capitalism. State capitalism. Socialism. These three
>> systems are entirely different from each other. We need to understand
>> the differences between them to move beyond today's dysfunctional
> economies.
>> With confidence waning in whether modern private capitalism can truly
>> be fixed, the debate shifts to a choice between two systemic
>> alternatives that we must learn to keep straight: state capitalism and
> socialism.
>> State capitalism exists when the state apparatus - rather than a group
>> of private citizens - positions state officials to function as
>> capitalist employers. Thus, under state capitalism it is state
>> officials placed in charge of enterprises who hire employees, organize
>> and supervise their activities within enterprises, sell the resulting
>> outputs (goods or services), receive the sales revenues and thus
>> realize any profits. State officials occupy the key directorial
>> positions within such state capitalist enterprises.
>> In contrast, in private capitalist enterprises, shareholders assign
>> these positions instead to private individuals - not state officials -
>> within structures such as corporate boards of directors. Hybrid
>> capitalist enterprises (part private and part state) also exist. Goods
>> and services produced in state capitalist enterprises are often sold
>> in markets alongside those produced by private capitalist enterprises.
>> Likewise, state capitalist enterprises typically buy their inputs in
>> markets alongside parallel purchases made by private capitalist
> businesses.
>> The Difference Between State Capitalism and Socialism In all countries
>> today, state capitalist enterprises coexist and transact in markets
>> with private capitalist enterprises. The proportions of the different
>> types of capitalist enterprise vary from country to country. Only in
>> some countries are state capitalist enterprises the socially dominant
>> kind of enterprise. In the United States, state capitalist enterprises
>> are definitely not socially dominant, but they do exist: Amtrak, TVA,
>> public colleges and universities, the post office, the Bank of North
>> Dakota, public power companies owned and operated by thousands of US
>> municipalities, and the New York City subway system are all examples.
>> Some state capitalist enterprises in the US obtain subsidies from the
>> government, but then many private capitalist enterprises obtain
>> subsidies,
> too.
>> The state directly regulates state capitalism. It does this through
>> the state officials it assigns to direct state enterprise activities.
>> The state indirectly regulates private capitalism. It does this by
>> means of rules and laws that limit the enterprise-directing decisions
>> made by private capitalists.
>> An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction
>> between employers and employees within it has been abolished.
>> The fact that the state regulates private capitalist enterprises and
>> operates state capitalist enterprises does not reduce the capitalist
>> structure of an economy. So long as employers, private or state, hire
>> laborers to produce commodities and generate profits that the
>> employers exclusively receive, the economy has a capitalist structure.
>> So long as it is exclusively the employers (whether private, state or
>> hybrid; whether more or less regulated) who decide how to use those
>> profits, it is a capitalist structure.
>> An enterprise only qualifies as "socialist" once the distinction
>> between employers and employees within it has been abolished. When
>> workers collectively and democratically produce, receive and
>> distribute the profits their labor generates, the enterprise becomes
>> socialist. Such enterprises can then become the base of a socialist
>> economy - its micro-level foundation
>> - supporting whatever ownership system (public and/or private) and
>> distribution system (planning and/or market) constitute that economy's
>> macro level.
>> Actual large-scale socialism would thus predominantly entail worker
>> cooperative enterprises such as these. Like the capitalist enterprises
>> that once emerged from European feudalism, these new cooperative
>> enterprises would seek to solve problems such as how to organize their
>> interdependencies with one another and with the public, how to relate
>> to private and public property, and how to manage transitions from
>> smaller- to larger-scale enterprises. Different forms of societal
>> socialisms will emerge: some with markets, private property and large
>> corporations, and others with centralized and/or decentralized
>> planning systems, socialized property, constraints on enterprise size
>> etc. Debates, experiments and choices among them will likely characterize
> the multiple forms that socialism will take.
>> Previous economic systems likewise often displayed coexistences among
>> more or less regulated private enterprises and state enterprises. In
>> slave societies, for example, alongside the private masters of slaves
>> working on plantations, states often owned and operated slave
>> plantations. In feudal societies, private feudal manors interacted
>> with the feudal manors operated by kings, to take a European example.
>> In short, slavery and feudalism, like capitalism, display varying
> combinations of private and state enterprises.
>> Historical Debates Within Socialism
>> The European socialism that emerged in the19th century was not
>> initially much concerned with issues of state versus private. It began
>> and evolved - especially with the work of Marx and his followers - as
>> a systemic critique of capitalism, not of regulation or the balance
>> between state and private enterprises. Socialists wanted to go beyond
>> capitalism to an altogether different system, one that fundamentally
>> rejected the basic division between employers and employees.
>> Socialists generally favored organizing society as "classless" where
>> all would be workers who democratically made society's basic economic and
> political decisions.
>> During the 19th century, as the socialist criticism of capitalism grew
>> and spread globally alongside capitalism itself, socialists debated
>> how to accomplish the transition from capitalism to socialism. The
>> debate fixed upon the state as the key means to make that transition.
>> If capitalism's critics could capture the state, state power could
>> then be utilized for the subsequent transition to socialism. The state
>> could, under socialists, usher the new system into being.
>> A transition to socialistically reorganized enterprises, once
>> accomplished by a state, would also transform the state as an
>> institution. With capitalists' power over the state removed, that
>> power would be wielded instead by the workers controlling the
>> socialized enterprises. Ending classes would end the need for a
>> repressive
> state to secure class divisions.
>> Both Marx's early and important association with the anarchist Mikhail
>> Bakunin and Lenin's later concept of the "withering away of the state"
>> shared presumptions that any state apparatus remaining in socialism
>> would
>> (a) be reduced to coordinating socialized enterprises' interactions,
>> and (b) depend on workers' socialized enterprises for its resources and
> powers.
>> As some put it, socialism either should or could only be achieved by
>> means of evolution, not revolution.
>> Some socialists have believed in and strategized for a revolutionary
>> seizure of state power from capitalists and their associates. They
>> have sought to replicate the action of revolutionaries in 1789 France
>> who took state power from the feudal lords, the feudal king and their
>> associates. Where the French revolutionary state enabled and
>> facilitated the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a socialist
>> revolution would proceed similarly for a transition from capitalism to
> socialism.
>> Other socialists have disagreed and argued instead for a
>> parliamentary/electoral strategy. They have argued that socialists
>> should form political parties and win elections as the way to capture
>> the state. As some put it, socialism either should or could only be
>> achieved by means of evolution, not revolution. As socialism became a
>> powerful global movement, socialists pursued one or the other or both
>> strategies depending on the specific conditions in each place and time.
>> Since 1900, proponents of both strategies claimed some victories. In
>> Western Europe, socialists built political parties that eventually
>> captured state power such as socialists in France possess today. In
>> Russia, China and Cuba, revolutions brought state power to socialists.
>> However, neither socialist strategy took the next step. Socialists in
>> power could not or would not make transitions to socialism (and ever
>> since have furiously debated whether that is what happened and if so,
> why).
>> Looking back now, it seems clear that socialists in power moved to
>> economic systems that mixed state capitalism with more or less
>> regulated private capitalism. That is, they used state power to
>> construct larger or smaller state capitalist sectors alongside often
>> heavily regulated private capitalist sectors. In Western Europe, the
>> state capitalist sectors tended to be smaller than those in Russia, China
> and Cuba.
>> Stalin Spreads Confusion
>> Shortly after the 1917 Soviet revolution, Lenin described the Bolsheviks'
>> achievement as having constructed "a state capitalism" that he
>> applauded as a necessary step toward a transition to socialism. By the
>> early 1930s, the subsequent leader, Stalin, made a pointedly different
>> declaration: Socialism had been achieved in the USSR. Yet precisely
>> what Lenin had named state capitalism remained the Soviet industrial
>> reality; indeed, Stalin extended state capitalism into Soviet
>> agriculture.
>> Conceptual confusions set in about what exactly separated
>> state-regulated private capitalism from state capitalism from socialism.
>> In effect, Stalin had pronounced a new and daring definitional equation:
>> State capitalism was socialism. Many other socialists, including those
>> who otherwise denounced Stalin and reviled Stalinism, sooner or later
>> agreed with this new definition. So too did most of socialism's
>> enemies. In practice, when socialists achieved state power, they
>> either could not or would not use that power to go beyond varying
>> mixtures of regulated private and state capitalism. Yet socialists and
>> their enemies increasingly defined those mixtures as socialism
>> (although some socialists always disagreed and promoted other
>> formulations of what the key terms meant). Conceptual confusions set
>> in about what exactly, if anything, separated state-regulated private
> capitalism from state capitalism from socialism.
>> For most of the last century those confusions proliferated across the
>> statements of workers, capitalists, politicians, academics, media
>> personalities and the broad general public. For example, the term
>> "socialism" was often applied to almost anything done by or through
>> state power (such as President Obama's Affordable Care Act or the
>> IRS's efforts to increase tax collection). In much of Europe and
>> beyond, socialism refers mostly to the broad social welfare results
>> (national health insurance, pensions etc.) of using government power
>> to regulate, control and tax what are still largely private capitalisms.
>> A similar concept of socialism is more or less embraced by US
>> presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Thus, he seeks higher mass
>> consumption levels and better working conditions through state
>> regulatory policies that redistribute power and wealth from
>> corporations and the rich to the rest of the society. Yet Sanders'
>> celebration of worker cooperatives suggests some interest in going
>> further toward a non-capitalist system. Definitions of socialism in
>> places like China and the USSR specified socially dominant state
>> capitalist sectors with only marginal allowances for heavily regulated
> private capitalism.
>> The Limitations of State Capitalism and Regulated Private Capitalism
>> Many socialists struggled and eventually succeeded, often at great
>> costs, to construct regulated private capitalisms that delivered
>> public services, wealth and income redistribution, and social welfare
>> far beyond what less regulated private capitalisms had done. Other
>> socialists went further to implement state capitalisms that prevailed
>> in their countries. Those could and often did deliver public services
>> and social welfare beyond what even worker-friendly regulated private
> capitalisms did.
>> Yet socialists in power who presided over combinations of regulated
>> private capitalisms and state capitalisms suffered two severe
>> limitations. First, they could not prevent capitalist crises with
>> profound
> social consequences.
>> Second, they could not build sufficient confidence in or loyalty to
>> the systems they constructed to prevent those crises from provoking
>> reversions from state to private capitalism and from more to less
>> regulated private capitalism. The capitalist crises of the 1970s thus
>> led to neoliberalism and the crises of the late 1980s, to the
>> implosions in Eastern Europe. Even the deep global crisis since 2008
>> could not stop that reversion as many socialists and socialist parties
>> embraced austerity policies while failing seriously to reregulate.
>> Because the mixtures of highly regulated private and state capitalisms
>> were often run by socialists and called socialism, their decline over
>> recent decades has been widely and mistakenly understood as the "end" of
> socialism.
>> The workers in state capitalisms that were defined as socialism (the
>> USSR, China etc.) almost never themselves collectively and
>> democratically directed state capitalist enterprises. That key
>> function was reserved for state officials who had replaced the
>> corporate boards of directors. In state capitalist enterprises, the
>> workers did not have command of and responsibility for their
>> enterprises' performances. In the aftermath of their crises, the
>> "actually existing socialisms" of the late 20th century exhausted the
>> political and historical possibilities of such state capitalisms.
>> Similarly, the welfare-state-regulated private capitalisms have shown,
>> through their periods of neoliberalism since the 1970s and then
>> post-2008 austerity policies, that they were fundamentally insecure
>> and thus temporary. The New Deal in the US and social democracies in
>> Europe proved unable to reproduce the political alliances that once
>> forced their states to enable and facilitate their emergence. They
>> were rolled back in a determined counterattack by corporations and the
> rich.
>> Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such
>> as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social
>> services and
>> jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private
>> capitalism.
>> The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control
>> of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or
>> social democratic responses to crises. Socialist parties and movements
>> failed to preserve the New Deal and social democracy, and failed to
>> prevent or destroy austerity policies after 2008. They thereby
>> exhausted the political appeal and foundation of socialisms based on
>> state regulation of private capitalism as utterly as the experiences
>> of the USSR and China largely exhausted the socialisms based on state
> capitalism.
>> Does Socialism Have a Future?
>> If socialism is to have a future, it will likely have to cut its
>> residual ties to both state-regulated private capitalism and state
>> capitalism. It will have to come full circle in the 21st century to
>> rediscover and update its 19th century differentiation from capitalism
>> as a fundamentally different mode of organizing the production and
>> distribution of goods and services.
>> Self-criticism by socialists must account for the decline of socialist
>> parties in Western Europe as well as the collapse of state capitalisms
>> ("actually existing socialisms"). Doing so culminates in new
>> definitions of socialism for the 21st century focused increasingly on
>> democratizing the workplace - at the micro-level. That is the key
>> change that was missing from previous socialisms. It must be added to
>> old definitions that were over-focused on substituting socialized for
>> privately owned means of production and substituting planning for
>> markets. This is the significance of the remarkable recent Cuban
>> policy decision to refocus its economic development strategy
>> relatively more on worker cooperatives and relatively less on state
>> enterprises. This is likewise the significance of the remarkable surge
>> of interest in workers' self-directed enterprises among anti-capitalist
> social movements and social critics.
>> Capitalism is relocating from its old centers in Western Europe, North
>> America and Japan, to new centers in China, India, Brazil and so on.
>> This relocation is also generating a vast new global criticism of the
>> private capitalism that proclaimed its absolute victory in the
>> aftermath of the USSR's implosion in 1989. Workers in the old centers
>> are slowly grasping that capitalism's relocation will no longer offset
>> their rising exploitation with rising consumption. They are feeling
>> abandoned by capitalism and raising increasingly critical voices. They
>> do not want a socialism defined in terms of Soviet or other state
>> capitalisms that had serious problems and imploded. They do not want a
>> private capitalism whose regulations proved reversible and whose
>> qualities of decline they deeply resent. A new socialism built around
>> democratized workplaces appeals to them in ways old socialisms no longer
> can.
>> Socialism in and for the 21st century must now define itself in clear
>> distinction from both regulated private capitalism and state capitalism.
>> Only then can we begin our strategic debates over precisely which
>> socialist goal to set and pursue.
>> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
>> Richard D. Wolff
>> Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of
>> Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He
>> is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in
>> International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He
>> also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
>> Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the
>> City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994,
>> he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris
>> (France), I (Sorbonne). His work is available at rdwolff.com and at
> democracyatwork.info.
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