/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

You may be onto something here.

Because incels wanna LARP as Lenin rather than address current conditions

>>2834694
>If we did manage to replace every company with a cooperative, would that not still be some kind of proto-Socialist position, albeit with markets still intact?
Think you get a kind of "socialization" with that, and you might call that proto-socialist, but the firm can still be run according to the profit principle. But that can also be true with nationalized industries. This has been tried on very large scale, but maybe these states were really reshaping capitalism in some kind of way into a modified bureaucratically managed form of state capitalism.

The problems with capitalism go well beyond just the traditional ownership structure of a private firm, but also have to do with the existence of private property in general, generalized commodity production, the anarchy of production, etc. A kind of co-op based market socialism would be a definite improvement and could be an important stepping stone to building communism, but it couldn't be an end goal.

>>2834694
>If we did manage to replace every company with a cooperative
and how are you going to achieve that? if the government does it, then you need as much political will as it would take to nationalize industries. a more bottom up approach would require an active engagement with and development of the productive forces in the here and now.

aside from this, it does not make sense either to have these cooperatives freely standing apart from each other. they should be coordinated towards greater organization and planning. this is important both strategically and ethically. the former as it affords a cooperativist movement certain affordances, like the ability to smoothly proliferate new cooperatives. higher organization also allows the development of safety nets for cooperatives during times of crisis, bolstering the superior stability that can already be found in cooperatives. on the more "ethical" side of things, we want to minimize the adverse effects of excessive competition between cooperatives. they need to be held accountable to each other as well as the general community. on this point, it should be pointed out that cooperatives by their very nature already have a greater degree of accountability than other businesses, as workers are much more likely to be average members of the community within which they work, and any increase in surplus value extraction by the cooperative directly damages their person. still, it is foreseeable that market pressures might make things difficult. vertical organization of cooperatives also affords an overlayer of increased cybernetic planning which may provide the seeds for a more planned economy

putting these points together, it becomes clear that we need to organize a federation of cooperatives that is focused on capturing the economic sector starting at the local level and working itself upward. some ideas from municipalism is may be strategically complementary here as well. maximizing the capacity for localities to reproduce their means of subsistence, we arrive at a system that is anti-fragile and resistant to crises from without as well as excessive tendencies towards centralization from above. ive elaborated a bit more about the virtues of localism as a strategy here >>2811736

in order to really appreciate the relevance of this strategy to contemporary times, i recommend checking out veblen as well as nitzan and bichler's capital as power framework. when we move beyond the hitherto all too common assumption that economics and politics are separable entities, it opens up the imagination for new possibilities

Because MLs are just temporarely embarrassed imperialists that want to support their hekin nation

Ultras told me running major tech companies as cooperatives, such as Huawei, is actually evil social imperialism.

>>2834694
Because that would do nothing to remove the anarchy of production? What even is this question

>>2834694
>Why does the left not focus on cooperativization rather than nationalization of industries?
Pretty sure that's been the focus of the Corbyn/Bernie style movements.

The thing is though, full nationalized industry is far superior (and efficient), as it a technically in the sense, owned by the whole people, instead of isolated worker groups, whose interest is their stake in a single enterprise.

The USSR held the position (barring some people), that full state ownership is superior to cooperatives. Even collective farms were only transitional in original conception to eventual full state ownership.

>>2834694
Cooperatives are not incompatible with state-monopoly capital. The federation of worker cooperatives would be dependent on a central state trust of industrial monopolies, land and finance anyway.

>>2834732
Anarchy of production is not the only issue to be resolved, and I believe it could be resolved with worker coops anyway. The greater point is to eliminate exploitation, alienation, and increase local democratic control of workplaces.

>>2834753
>Pretty sure that's been the focus of the Corbyn/Bernie style movements.
I don't know if I would call it a focus. Even as someone that was following their campaigns closely, cooperativization was never really a central pillar of their policy proposals. I think this is a shame, because I think people might be very receptive to the idea of making workplaces more democratic.

>The thing is though, full nationalized industry is far superior (and efficient), as it a technically in the sense, owned by the whole people, instead of isolated worker groups, whose interest is their stake in a single enterprise.
Maybe, but an enterprise owned by a state is still not technically democratically controlled. Democracy is most functional in smaller groups, which is what makes cooperatives so appealing. It would at the very least reduce alienation. Perhaps a middle ground can be reached between these two positions?

>>2834778
Read Hilferding and Bukharin. The petite-bourgeoisie aren't really independent businesses anymore but dependent on state management, monopolies, finance, rent and so on. So worker cooperatives are not really a problem.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1910/finkap/index.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm

>>2834783 (me)
Concretely, you could have a power plant managed by the state, a garbage disposal service managed by the city and a coffee shop cooperative which is dependent on loans from the city. People get weird about the different levels of abstraction and management here.

>>2834694
>Why does the left not focus on cooperativization
Ideological dogma. That said dividing economy between these two would be more flexible than having nationalized former small businesses resulting in poverty and suffering.

>>2834694
i've been saying this for a long time but they get mad at me and post refutations from 100 years ago

>>2834712
>an important stepping stone to building communism, but it couldn't be an end goal.
actually a good goal isn't something vague, amorphous, preposterous, irrelevant, delayed, that may or may not happen in the far future like "the end of all exploitation" but something specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-scheduled like "ask 10 co workers if they want to strike by 5pm on Friday" or "Take the first steps to start a mushroom growing cooperative within the next year" or "Start a self defense training program with your local comrades within the next 2 months"

Those are goals. They exist in the short term and have immediate utility. The long term stuff is more of an ideological carrot on a stick that's always dangling just far enough that you can't bite it, in order to keep you going. everyone hates me when i say this but they have no counter args.

>>2834810
>everyone hates me when i say this but they have no counter args
The best counter argument is the way the worker's movement went in the 20th century where both ML states and Western social democracy/organized labour just rested on their laurels and ceased striving to move further towards a new form of society. The result was that they stagnated, became apathetic, and were made vulnerable to a successful bourgeois counteroffensive that put is in the situation we are today.

>>2834778
>Democracy is most functional in smaller groups, which is what makes cooperatives so appealing. It would at the very least reduce alienation. Perhaps a middle ground can be reached between these two positions?
yes. i am >>2834715 and the model of democracy i suggest is one starting at the cooperative level which is then stratified by workers councils. i think focusing not simply on production but also reproducibility of local communities is also important, and for this local cooperatives would need to work together at that level forming municipalities

btw here is a rough sketch of the sort of organization that i would like to see built. some of the priorities are peculiar to the nature of my faith so you can ignore that. does anyone have any suggestion or concerns

>>2834783
this is also true. it is questionable whether or not we are really living in an "anarchy of production". i think marxism is probably more accurate than neo-classical economics, but it does not feel like many maxist leftists are really paying attention to how our mode of production has changed since marx wrote capital. still it is dangerous if cooperatives are built as though we are living in an anarchy of production and such is how business should look like. broader organization is important ..

>>2834813
for social democracy and organized labour the issue was that such movements did not have the power to maintain such a state of affairs. strategic objectives will always be inefficacious if there is not also means for them to sustain themselves. this is one of the reasons why i emphasize reproducibility and genuine collective sovereignty to so much. for ml states their bureaucrats were a problem as well as of course international pressures

I agree. But we should differentiate from socialism and call it something like "cooperativism" maybe? They can then compete on a socialist market to maximize use value.

This is a ridiculous, moralistic application of socialism. Capitalism works the way it does is because its laws of motion dictate it, not because of the moral failure of a few individuals. If exploitation is nothing but relationship between two isolated individuals, then we have no way to make sense of monopoly capitalism, imperialism and the "labour aristocracy" or really anyone who is not strictly a capitalist, but is clearly involved in maintaining capitalism, including but not limited to fascist gangs/secret police, corporate managers and propagandists of capitalism.

Cooperativism also overlooks the contradiction that pushes capitalism towards decline. If capitalism is exploitative by nature, means that it must rely on the exploitation of labour. As competition leads to technological development and the increased augmentation of labour by machinery, the share of capital to labour keeps rising, which at the same means that the relative share of labour employed in production keeps dropping, leaving capital less and less labour to exploit while having to maintain a large number of machinery against it. This leads to two tendencies that are very easy to articulate politically: first capital tries to keep wages artificially low by importing cheap labour or waging direct class struggle against unions and second when it fails to keep wages low, it starts engaging in self-cannibalism as it lets one part of capital maintain profits by absorbing and destroying another part of capital. This latter process is what is commonly called monopoly capitalism and is exemplified by the infamously predatory business practices of Blackrock or the AI bubble from which capital hopes create a rentier economy that can permanently turn a profit without having to invest in real production or much labour, to the point of quasi-religious insanity ("AGI").

The only answer to these suicidal tendencies is state ownership and state financing which can create capital, circulate capital and direct production even if it doesn't turn a profit, because such an economy is ultimately guided by political demands instead of economic laws.

Cooperatives are by necessity relegated to the field of small businesses. A cooperative is basically a joint-stock company where shares are equally distributed among employees. Private investors are unlikely to invest in such a company where they would have to contend with employee shareholders who will always prioritize providing moderately high living standards over maximizing profit. This leaves to raise capital on their own, an impossible task for wage workers not just because of their reduced ability to raise capital, but also the lack of coordination between most workers who are mostly concerned with competing on the labour market and have no time for anything else. It's not impossible, but at that the level of an individual who dedicates much of his adult life to raising enough capital to start a small business is usually only able to mobilize and only willing share his wealth with the people closest to him, his family members and as such business exclusively financed by workers usually turn out to be a family business largely owned and controlled by the patriarchal head of the family.

As said before, a cooperative is unlikely to receive major private investment and workers are very rarely able to organize themselves at such a large scale just to become collective mini-capitalists. This leaves the state as the only possible sponsor of cooperatives and proves its superiority. The few existing large-scale cooperatives like Mondragon or Huawei were created by the state based on ideological considerations of the Francoist dictatorship or the CPC superseding class struggle.

Cooperativism is a fossil from the 19th century when in many places the countryside was still dominated by small producers instead of large capitalist and working masses. Even then small producers were at many times reluctant to even just share their property with their village community. The agricultural cooperatives of Soviet-style socialism had to be created using intimidation and violence by the secret police because it was the only way for the socialist state to accumulate capital for industrialization. OP's fetish for dismissing AES and Marxist socialism by latching onto a forgotten and failed 19th century ideology that used to compete with Marxism leads me to believe that his mind is infected by left anti-communism.

>>2834856

OP here.

My argument for cooperatives is institutional, nor moralistic. I am not asking for a moral recalibration, but for a recalibration of the property relations. If you can change the property relations inside a firm, you can also change the class structures. This isn't about bosses being mean to workers, it's abolishing the wage relation at the point of production. Exploitation is not about morality, it's about surplus extraction, and cooperatives help to reduce this exploitative relationship.

I never claimed cooperatives alone would be enough, neither did I claim that cooperatives should be an end goal. Cooperatives in a capitalist world are still embedded in competitive markets and can be squeezed, which is exactly why I'm arguing they need to be paired with structural changes and not abandoned. The broader strategic question is whether expanding cooperatives wouldn't serve to effectively build counter-power and chip away at monopoly capital and imperialism. Even a purely Leninist state seizure, were it to emerge today, still has to confront the reality of a globalized, financialized monopoly capitalism. The cooperative path, perhaps paired with nationalization, could be a way to build an international worker-controlled economic base.

I am aware of the suicidal tendencies of capitalism. Again, I never claimed that a purely cooperative-based solution would resolve this. I am arguing that cooperatives can create an entirely new set of relations to property that ultimately benefits Socialist projects. I would like to see a mix of nationalizations and cooperativization as a way to resolve this suicidal tendency. But I also think that the left should focus more on cooperativization in general, because it is woefully missing from economic discourse.

I also don't think that cooperatives have to necessarily be small institutions, either. There are large cooperative projects that are successful. Mondragon was also not a state project, it was created by a technical school. The fact that it operated under Franco's corporatist legal umbrella is a point in favour of cooperatives and their ability to resist fascist corporatism. I think we should incentivize the creation of and protection of cooperatives as a way to create a more widespread, alternative power relation system. Ultimately, though, your point is about private investment. Again, the real solution is a state-backed mechanism that supports cooperatives, and I believe that is more politically achievable in the current political landscape.

You're also making a false equivalency. Forced collectivization in the USSR was violent state accumulation on the backs of a peasantry, not a democratic, voluntary cooperativization of an already-proletarianized workforce within Capitalism. We have new cooperative movements in the 21st century that didn't exist in the past century. Cooperativizing tech giants and tech monopolies would be an incredibly useful political and economic project and a step in the right direction towards alleviating alienation.

Also; rude. I never dismissed AES or Marxist socialism. I do believe, though, that a strong central state requires a strong labour tradition to prevent it from backsliding into revisionism. I think cooperatives can cultivate this working class solidarity. We're so used to seeing companies and corporations as monolithic, soulless creatures that exist to exploit and accumulate capital. Cooperatives would not operate like this. They would incentivize cooperation and foster working class solidarity.

>>2834894

Also, to be clear, as OP, this was my only other post in this thread.

>>2834778

>>2834856
>If exploitation is nothing but relationship between two isolated individuals
no one said this
>when it fails to keep wages low, it starts engaging in self-cannibalism as it lets one part of capital maintain profits by absorbing and destroying another part of capital
yes we live in the age of cannibalism where companies are more focused on sabotaging their competitors out of existence and consolidating an even more totalizing monopoly, with the state aiding in this process. profit has become less important than differential accumulation, and they are not the same thing. debt and credit is everywhere now. aside from this there is also artificial scarcity and a whole host of other strategies that are employed by capitalists in order to avoid a crisis of overproduction. all of the crises of recent memory have been financial crises, which are not the same thing. oh and of course the monopoly capitalist actually enjoys crises because they take out competitors and leave open more room for capitalization. that is partly why there is a tendency for bourgeois governments to engage in practices that actively encourage inflation. with the dynamics of sabotage and artificial scarcity, deindustrialization has become rampant. look at the iran war for instance. america with all its budget is struggling to fight a country that runs off of a fraction of its military spending. it is a struggle for the united states to even build missiles now. needless to say, if we lived in a real economy, this would not be possible, but of course we do not

it is unclear whether this cannibalism is at all sustainable. however, if it is sustainable, it would result in one monopoly eventually getting hold of all of the productive forces as well as the state. the end of capitalism would then be the state becoming a corporation. as it stands, that corporation will be the dictatorship of a single epsteinite billionaire rather than a worker's dictatorship. leftists can choose which one they prefer. if this cannibalism is not sustainable, then it would be beneficial to establish kernels of genuine productivity for when the house comes crumbling down and western nations no longer have the imperialist superprofits to secure the subsistence of their citizens. such a condition would lead to a major crisis followed by either a revolution or further capitalization (accelerating to total corporate capture of the state). in either case, cooperatives could play a positive role in response to whatever comes

>It's not impossible, but at that the level of an individual who dedicates much of his adult life to raising enough capital to start a small business
cooperatives do not get started by individuals, and it is in fact preferable that they do not. it is true that the proliferation of new cooperatives is an issue, but this is why it is imperative that they organize into their own federations rather than simply operating as separate entities. cooperatives should work together to cannibalize existing corporations, leveraging their affordances wrt to sustainability that other business strategies are incapable of capitalizing upon

>leads me to believe that his mind is infected by left anti-communism
socialism has never happened in developed nations. what has happened instead has always been fascism. at the end of the day, if you do not own any capital, you do not have any right to determine anything. the original bolsheviks robbed banks for a reason. aes also often had the historical support of peasantry and national bourgeois. it was never simply proles

>>2834854
i have thought about calling my idea "[something] cooperativism" before, but the word simply has too many syllables. as workers do technically own the means of production in such a system, you might as well just call it socialism

>>2834856
>This is a ridiculous, moralistic application of socialism
He's not making any moral claims here

>A cooperative is basically a joint-stock company where shares are equally distributed among employees
You're describing co-ops under capitalism which is a dishonest comparison. SOEs under capitalism are also not something desirable under socialism given that they are for-profit ventures.

>This leaves the state as the only possible sponsor of cooperatives and proves its superiority.
Yes ? How exactly is this a refutal. OP is not arguing for workers to buy out their shares of their companies.

>OP's fetish for dismissing AES
>leads me to believe that his mind is infected by left anti-communism
National developmentalism is not communism anon

>>2834813
>The best counter argument is the way the worker's movement went in the 20th century where both ML states and Western social democracy/organized labour just rested on their laurels and ceased striving to move further towards a new form of society. The result was that they stagnated, became apathetic, and were made vulnerable to a successful bourgeois counteroffensive that put is in the situation we are today.
that affirms what i said. it does not counter it. resting on your laurels is the opposite of having several realistic short term goals that you relentlessly pursue.

>>2834944
>is not communism
the ruthless criticism can only say what communism is not, and "the real movement to abolish the present state of things" must not be one single easily decapitated method, but several method working in tandem towards the same goal

Coops should be a focus by the global North that can easily acquire its own capital and labour intensive industries. Unions make more sense for the global South or capital intensive industries like car factories

>>2834732
Coops in practice tend to form federations, so they do erode our current model of competition between firms. Regardless it is a nice first step even if it isn't enough

retvrn?????????

>>2835051
These movements and governments had realistic short term goals. They had shit like winning new contracts, raising wages, expanding production in X and Y sector, etc. They led to stagnation because they weren't in service of any broader vision of social transformation. Just incremental improvements within the existing paradigm.

Would it be possible for a socialist state to have some industries be nationalized while others cooperativized?

>>2835110
> They led to stagnation because they weren't in service of any broader vision of social transformation. Just incremental improvements within the existing paradigm.
They stagnated because their leadership became revisionist and they were always weak to imperialism. But we are in century 2 of AES now. Century 1 was a prototype. It took 3 centuries for Christianity to conquer Rome. How long will it take for Communism to conquer the globe? I cannot say, but an ounce of theory is worth a pound of practice, as Engels said, and each failure is a lesson. And I don't think the reason they failed is because they had too many realistic goals and not enough vague amorphous ideals. I respect a person who starts a cooperative much more than I respect a person who posts all day who larps about a revolution that is not close to happening.

fucked up my reply twice, refresh and the others will go away

>>2835121
>an ounce of theory is worth a pound of practice

this is what pseuds actually believe

>>2835115
>Would it be possible for a socialist state to have some industries be nationalized while others cooperativized?
commanding heights: nationalized monopolies
small commerce: decentralized cooperatives

>>2835126
how many revolutions did he start

>>2835126
Yes, he never led an army or became a head of state, him and Marx are worthless, socialism is meaningless before Lenin made it work

>>2835130
>Yes, he never led an army or became a head of state, him and Marx are worthless, socialism is meaningless before Lenin made it work
Engels actually fought in 1848 German bourgeois revolution with August Willich but you're right Lenin made it work. Why? because he understood that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory. This is why he was willing to do the NEP even though it didn't sound theoretically pure.

>>2834694
its a lot more important and effective for the general public good to nationalize key industries than making them cooperatives, coop benefit only the people working in it, nationalization benefit all the citizens and allow a democratic guidance of the economy

>>2835148
And how did that 1848 revolution go?

Cooperatives aren't managed in the democratic interest of the working class but the profit interest of a given group of workers. It could have a place in a socialist economy but would have to rely on mass cybernetic and nationalized industry and it stands in the way of progressing to a labor based currency/credit system; and also complicated linprog planning because we don't set end prices at clearing rates. Also cooperatives only really make sense at the end of the production chain.

>>2835204
read the rest of the reply, that wasn't the main point.

>>2835277
the criticism of cooperatives for existing in a capitalist economy is the same as the criticism of AES for existing on a capitalist planet is the same as saying "so you want to improve society yet you live in society and are forced to act within society? curious!" it's just a dumb way to attack the real movement in favor of some idealist global simultaneous overthrow of capitalism, wage labor, the commodity form, and exchange value everywhere at once.

>>2835115
This is called a smychka

>>2835129
>>2835130
>the value of a political theory lies in how many revolutions the theoretician personally started
by this logic the CIA is the ultimate revolutionary theorist since they have started hundreds of color revolutions.

Hi, guys

I would like to ask you guys to go to EU Inc. proposal page in "Have your say" portal to ask Commission to include cooperatives in their regulation. Here is all you need to know why that's important and to make it easier for you to write your feedback and provide sources too, anyway two studies (1)(2) commissioned by EU identified these problems with the existing SCE (European cooperative society) regulation:

1. High capital requirement to start-up (30000 euros) which is absurd for a cooperatives which rely on labor and frequently struggle to access capital

2. Complicated registration procedures since all 27 member states have their own ways to register SCEs, frequently goverment institutions have no idea how to do it, for example one study references a situation where registration took a whole year, and there is no mechanism to notify other member states then SCE is registered in one state

3. Furthermore in order to register SCE members must come from at least 2 different countries which is arbitrary because all member state citizens are automatically EU citizens so it just needlessly makes it harder to register one

4. Little reason to use SCE legal form then national cooperative forms are much more convenient and can be used to operate cross-borders anyway and little knowledge and visibility that SCEs eve exist

Now proposed EU Inc. regulation would fix LITERALLY all of the problems mentioned above because:

1. It has very low capital requirement, so far the proposal only asks for 100 euros i.e. 300 times less than to set up a SCE

2. Digital first registration procedures using "once-only" principle, once EU Inc. is registered in one country all others are automatically informed and have to register them in 48 hours not freaking years

3. No arbitrary citizenship requirements of their members

4. Cooperatives would actually have a reason to use an European company form now, especially technology cops like platform cooperatives, and just existence of the option to set up EU Inc. as a cooperative would inform people of the possibility and of cooperatives in general

Oh, and commissioned has said they are committed to regulatory non-discrimination of social economy enterprises (which coops fall under) so make sure to remind them of that (3)

So please take some time of your day to write up feedback and ask Commission to include cooperative option in their EU Inc. proposal. Everyone can do it even non-EU citizens (looking at you Americans)

Thank you

Sources:

EURICSE (2024). Synthesis report on the application of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1435/2003 of 22 July 2003 - Statute for a European Cooperative Society (SCE)”. Author: Antonio Fici. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union.

Diesis Network. (2014). Review of European Cooperative Societies (SCEr): Final report. European Commission. diesis-network.coop

Social economy in the EU. (n.d.). Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/proximity-and-social-economy/social-economy-eu_en

This is a neat thread, do it again

>>2834694
>markets still intact
"Markets" is just another euphemism for capitalism. So called "coops" under capitalism are not what the name suggests as differences to other types of private commercial businesses such as shareholding are in practice miniscule and merely formal. In order to not get crushed by commercial market competitors privately owned "coops" must generate revenue, transform goods and products into commodities, accumulate capital and constantly expand just like any other capitalist. After a certain time however an operative threshold is reached and the effects of the falling rate of profit might kick in noticably, making maintaining revenue & growth more difficult. So in order to stay in business private commercial coops are bound to employ the usual bourgeois methods that is degrade product quality while the price is increased, cut r & d costs, degrade working conditions, cut wages of employees and "invest" in imperialist activities of the bourgeois state.
A "nationalized" coop under socialism or communism works entirely different, because socialist and communist economies are based on demand, not on the desire of bourgeois individuals to limitless hoard while preventing others from accessing and distributing resources for common purposes most efficiently.
"More coops" is pseudo-socialist liberal hogwash, it will change nothing substantially as the capitalist mode of production remains untouched.

>>2835107
hey puss… did robert owen even really exist

>>2834694
Mixed economy of is the best option. Use cooperatives in industries where large state owner enterprises fail and vice versa.

>>2839591
>>2834856
wtf, well argued posts on my /leftypol/?

>>2834694
I don't think a socialist project should focus on either of these as an unqualified goal. Coops might be a good idea, nationalizations might be a good idea, but the point is really to find any arrangement that can lead to de facto workers' rule in a way that corresponds to the demands of the workers but provides the basis for its own transcendence. Any single economic policy would be useless without a set of institutions that fulfill those conditions. The reason why nationalizations were favored out of the two historically is because they would centralize the ownership of the means of production, make it possible for those to be controlled democratically, and thus make themselves easier to transition out of. It's not about one of the other, rather the totality is what matters most. So we would probably push for a mixture of decentralized and centralized approaches that can abolish capitalism in some aspects, solve some of its biggest issues today, and pave the way for their own change. I don't think there's an easy solution, but there's a variety of people who write about what a democratically planned economy might look like.

>>2834694
because it's harder to say everything will be fine. if a nationalised industry runs into trouble, you just throw subsidies at it. if a co-op is mismanaged, it might go bankrupt. this is actually a good thing (because over time you're going to need fewer co-ops for horse carers and more co-ops for car maintainers, and any co-op that dogmatically tries to avoid this reality without finding a niche that can make it work is just wasting resources and labor) but it sounds bad. "oh, so you want to leave workers to fend for themselves? how is that any better than capitalism?"
adjacently is the question of "how" things are done. "a really clever state planning bureau will figure it out" is a lot more reassuring than "we'll just let each co-op make its own decisions", even though the odds are that the state planning bureau will make the wrong decisions, subtly at first and then dramatically as time goes on, while co-ops will be subject to more evolutionary pressures - some will fail, others will thrive, and so on.

there is also, of course, the element of power-fantasy to it. the state as a centralised actor just making things happen is a lot more satisfying than the idea of a more mundane process of firms left to their own devices. this can also take the form of a psychological need for a closed, rational system.

more generally: socialists accept the charge of being statists from their opponents, and secretly regard the state as "good" against the "evil" of the market. if, tomorrow, Germany announced it was to nationalise Lufthansa, the average socialist would feel that this was basically a good thing and a step in the right direction, even though all that's happening is moving a firm from the left hand of the capitalist to the glove-puppet on the right hand of the capitalist.

>>2834732
and what if this anarchy is either not resolvable, or if resolving it requires accepting lower long-run production than accepting a certain degree of anarchy?

>>2834753
i am much more sceptical than you are about the virtues of full nationalisation. firms generally continue to act in their own self interest in these circumstances, often to the detriment of everyone else. see, for example, British Petrolium selling oil to Rhodesia in violation of British government policy, the general tendency of the NHS towards excessive gatekeeping to maintain the authority of its staff, resulting in long waiting lists for fairly trivial assessments and the requirement you see a doctor for all sorts of mundane notes (wasting everyone's time), or the maintaining of strange fiefdoms in British Railways. (for example, different regions would commission purposefully incompatible trains so that they couldn't be made to share with other regions, under-maintain trains designed by other regions, they would deliberately give bad timetables to trains from other regions that incidentally crossed through their region, advocate that other regions lines were closed to save money against the interests of rail and the country as a whole, and so on.)

now obviously you can point to successes as well, nationalisation is not some universal evil (and in britain's case what generally happened is that privatisation was nevertheless cut out from market competition, leading to protected and guaranteed profits for cut-out groups, e.g. things only got worse) but it's important not to be rosy eyed about the state. it's a bleak world out there, and something stronger than appealing to benevolence or the national interest is needed. (if you asked any British Railways regional manager, I'm sure they'd retort that it could hardly be in the national interest that the wrong trains were forced on the nation, those of course being the trains from other regions. But every regional manager will imagine that his trains are the right trains… the national interest and his hobby horse, by pure coincidence, align…)

>>2834856
i am unimpressed by this analysis in broad strokes. in particular, the increased augmentation of labour by machinery generally just pushes workers into other sectors where the substitution of capital for labour is more difficult, hence the massive movement of labour into the service sector. (which is not simply outsourcing overseas: most first world countries produce as much value in manufactured goods as they ever have, they just do so with fewer employees, and have generally shed low-value manufacturing. but even China is majority service-sector employment!)
your view of financing is unimaginative. why not, for example, have a co-operative finance by bonds instead of by issuing shares? then the capitalist doesn't need to care about the distribution between living standards and profits, so long as some profits remain. (or a future bond issuance covers his payment)

it is odd to appeal to AES while dismissing the actions of the CPC as superseding class struggle, even as China is the most successful AES state.

>>2889608
to get back to my hobby horse: the difficulty with the idea of democratic control of nationalised industries is that there are far too many factors at play. who would vote in a British election, for example, on the basis of being upset about poor timetabling of trains? there are too many other "big issues" to tackle, so each individual nationalised industry can get away with its own mischief.

to take a good example: a glasgow city councillor drew attention to the fact that the NHS basically does not offer care to transgender patients in glasgow, at glasgow council. the waiting list for that care is 200+ years long. there is a glasgow health board, but it is not accountable to glasgow council or to the people of glasgow in any practical sense. one could resolve the problem at a stroke, without spending a penny more on healthcare by sending patients from the glasgow waiting list to other regions with a "functional" system (2-5 year waiting lists), but this would step on people's internal regional fiefdoms. there is a total failure of the sort of national coordination that would form an ideal argument against local control.
the Scottish NHS as a whole is run from Edinburgh, but "200+ year waiting list for a small number of patients in glasgow" isn't a big enough issue Scotland-wide to be discussed in the Edinburgh parliament, which means there's no external or internal pressure on the NHS whatsoever to fix this blinding incompetence bordering on outright malice.

my general sympathy here is to send power as locally as possible at all times. it is conceivable that if 95% of healthcare in glasgow was handled by glasgow council (the other 5% being national priorities that happen to be sited there), this issue could be resolved. it was, at the least, actually brought to the attention of elected officials in glasgow. glasgow could resolve it by fixing their own service, or by making nominal payments to other regions to take their patients. they could also blunder it - yes - but in that case we are exactly where we started, not worse off.

>>2834856
>If capitalism is exploitative by nature
Isn't socialism exploitative too? Marx made that whole argument in Gotha that Lassalle was wrong to say workers would get the full proceeds of their labor.

Why are people talking about competition and anarchy of production, don't we live in the era of monopoly, who are they competing against?

>>2834694
Cooperatives competing in the market have all the problems of capitalism, driven solely by the interest of profiting from selling commodities, thus contradicting consumers, i.e., the rest of the masses. Eventually, only by luck and local factors, some cooperatives go bankrupt, creating unemployment that will be exploited in relationships that recreate capitalist relations. Or, cooperative workers indebted due to competition and regional inequality will create capitalist relationships with prosperous cooperatives that have succeeded and use their success to subjugate workers from losing cooperatives, recreating capitalist relations.

The objective of the communist movement is not to reverse the socialization of production with fantasies of decentralization, but rather to centralize and monopolize the means of production so that appropriation is no longer private but social, belonging to the whole society. By socializing the economy, existing cooperatives will no longer compete with each other, undergoing a process of equalization with relations with the socialist government without competing in the market.

Let's see quotes that demonstrate this point with Marx and Engels:

<The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.

<The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.

<Karl Marx, 1867, Capital Volume One, Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

<II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production — a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.
[…]
<III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

<Frederick Engels, 1880, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Chapter III [Historical Materialism]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

Marx and Engels do not tolerate market socialism that many petty bourgeois who fear "authoritarianism" want in their idealism and propagandize their ideas here. Let's see what Marx says on lower phase communism:

<Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

<From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

<These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

<There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

<Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

<Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion – namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

<The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

<Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.

<Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

<What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

<Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

The Critique of the Gotha Programme was written after the paris commune and Capital volume 1, any fanciful interpretation that contradicts this text with fear of planning the economy must be discarded.

The communist manifesto is at odds with any concept of liberal or petty-bourgeois socialism.

<The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

<Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

<These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

<Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

<1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
<2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
<3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
<4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
<5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
<6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
<7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
<8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
<10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

<When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

<In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

You do not understand the obligation to install the revolutionary government of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

<While this utopian doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its stages, which puts in place of common social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality, while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom only idealizes present society, takes a picture of it without shadows, and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-called systems as a pretentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolution as against another – the proletariat rallies more and more around revolutionary socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie has itself invented the name of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.

<Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, (1848 to 1850)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm

<It appears that the defeat of the Parisians was their own fault, but a fault which really arose from their too great honnêteté [decency]. The Central Committee and later the Commune gave the mischievous abortion Thiers time to centralise hostile forces, in the first place by their folly in trying not to start civil war–as if Thiers had not started it by his attempt at the forcible disarming of Paris, as if the National Assembly, which was only summoned to decide the question of war or peace with the Prussians, had not immediately declared war on the Republic! (2) In order that the appearance of having usurped power should not attach to them they lost precious moments–(they should immediately have advanced on Versailles after the defeat (Place Vendôme) of the reaction in Paris)–by the election of the Commune, the organisation of which, etc., cost yet more time.

<You must not believe a word of all the stuff you may see in the papers about the internal events in Paris. It is all lies and deception. Never has the vileness of bourgeois journalism displayed itself more brilliantly.

<Marx to Wilhelm Liebknecht In Leipzig, (London, April 6 1871)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_06.htm

<If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent. And this is what our heroic Party comrades in Paris are attempting. What elasticity, what historical initiative, what a capacity for sacrifice in these Parisians! After six months of hunger and ruin, caused rather by internal treachery than by the external enemy, they rise, beneath Prussian bayonets, as if there had never been a war between France and Germany and the enemy were not at the gates of Paris. History has no like example of a like greatness. If they are defeated only their “good nature” will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples. They did not want to start the civil war, as if that mischievous abortion Thiers had not already started the civil war with his attempt to disarm Paris. Second mistake: The Central Committee surrendered its power too soon, to make way for the Commune. Again from a too “honorable” scrupulosity! However that may be, the present rising in Paris – even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and vile curs of the old society – is the most glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection in Paris. Compare these Parisians, storming heaven, with the slave to heaven of the German-Prussian Holy Roman Empire, with its posthumous masquerades reeking of the barracks, the Church, cabbage-junkerdom and above all, of the philistine.

<Marx to Dr Kugelmann Concerning the Paris Commune, April 12, 1871

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_04_12.htm

>>2834694
Continuing what I'm writing here.
>>2890068
More quotes that prove my point against decentralization:

<The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers.

<In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents.

[…]

<The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins,[B] that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the counties.

<The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France.

<Karl Marx: The Civil War in France, The Third Address, May, 1871, [The Paris Commune]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Regarding the question of banks, you can see Engels' criticism of the Paris Commune for not appropriating the Bank of France. This is a lesson that all communist revolutions cannot forget: to appropriate the banks by nationalizing them and suppressing private banking if you want your revolution to succeed:

<It is therefore comprehensible that in the economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our view today, the Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand is certainly the holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully outside the gates of the Bank of France. This was also a serious political mistake. The bank in the hands of the Commune – this would have been worth more than 10,000 hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the whole of the French bourgeoisie on the Versailles government in favor of peace with the Commune, but what is still more wonderful is the correctness of so much that was actually done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists and Proudhonists. Naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, both for their praiseworthy and their unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political actions and omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed – as is usual when doctrinaires come to the helm – that both did the opposite of what the doctrines of their school proscribed.

<1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels, On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm

>>2834712
thanks for your input John Stewart Mill

>>2834778
>Anarchy of production is not the only issue to be resolved, and I believe it could be resolved with worker coops anyway. The greater point is to eliminate exploitation, alienation, and increase local democratic control of workplaces.


Do you say this because the ethical concerns overrule pragmatic and strategic concerns? because that would be idealism and an actual auto-sabotage

How do you subordinate a coop to either a movement or a political party that isn’t already in power?

>>2890880
Either through a federation that lies between the coops and the state or some other form of coordination structure if you are referring to a socialist state. If you are referring to a pre-revolutionary state, there would necessarily have to be some form of movement, tied to the party (though not necessarily entirely subordinated to it) that. in tandem with it, works as a state within the state.

>>2890882
I mean there’s already union congresses, why not merge them or at the very least coordinate a coop federation alongside the unions. Both are at historic lows at this point so what’s to lose?

>>2890886
>unions

I am not an expert in AES, I talked out of my asshole. Unions have an ambiguous position in AES states to begin with, I don't even know what purpose would it have inside a communist party adjacent coop, maybe a bottom-up system of check and balance or some shit. Unions make much more sense in a worker movement vs private owner type of situation (or state bureocracy in the case of SOEs). Unless it's a coop so big that the board of administrators actually have different interests from the workers, a union is redundant in coops, no? (asking because im not sure about that, as I said, im talking out of my ass). Let's see if some anon that actually knows this, what happened in AES states historically, and what about the relationship between unions, communist parties and coops, and etc.

>>2890912
i’m talking about under capitalism, before the government is overthrown

>>2890880
Why not run things the other way around? A party would gladly wreck a co-op in the name of LARPing, while a co-op would have some incentive not to establish a LARP party since a co-op that LARPs too hard will go bankrupt

I understand the idea that a co-op must follow market trend and exploit themselves to make profits, but I don't see how not being turbo exploitative would bankrupt them, even if we were to think that they would have less capital to sustain economic crises (assuming the state doen't bail them out, because yes, most regular capitalist entreprises can't sustain those anyway lol) and thus eventually there will be that one crisis that will kill it, it could still be decades (or more) of activity, decades of actually forming a positive environment for socialist construction, so outright dismissing them is ridiculous unless you expect drastic immediate change.

>>2834694
Why is this even a debate ?
Nationalize ressources and key industries like telecom and oil, make of the rest of the economy into co-ops, or at least the "small businesses", de-commodify what can be

>>2891277
Hasn't this been attempted before?

>>2891363
China and Cuba have been quietly expanding their coop sectors if Richard Wolff is to be believed

Anyways, half of this question should be answered with a history book in hand, but I dont have that data. But regardless, iirc there are many academic studies that show cooperatives can be more competitive than regular firms. In principle it makes sense, since a pyramidal system with some random dude at the top and different layers of PMC at the bottom seems less rational than an actual board of administrators that can check and balance each other and which are subject to change in case of failure.

Yes but the moment it is actually building up the state will put down it's boot on your neck.

We're allowed some coops to use as proof that there is some economic liberty present, the moment it means anything else it's bonebreaking time

>>2891048
Market competition itself creates winners and losers; the logic of debt and profit inevitably recreates capitalist conditions. The Yugoslav experience demonstrates that this leads to conflict between cooperative managers and the workers within those cooperatives—who may blackmail the rest of society by manipulating prices and pressuring the state to relax regulations, thereby facilitating exploitative dynamics that restore typical capitalist relations. Furthermore, there is the conflict involving the many unemployed and indebted workers from failed cooperatives who require constant state intervention. Another issue is the rise of nationalist opportunists who exploit the individualism fostered by competing cooperatives to deceive the masses. A crisis is inevitable; just as the Proudhonists in the Paris Commune—through the very process of practice—transformed into Marxists and spontaneously abolished the cooperative market, a similar shift toward economic planning occurred within the CNT-FAI in Catalonia. This proves that there is no stable state of competing cooperatives; such a situation inevitably generates conflict that leads either to the restoration of typical private capitalist relations or to the nationalization and coordination of these cooperatives under an economic plan designed to meet the population's needs and ensure remuneration based on labor, free from competition.

>>2891277
You are overlooking the fact that bank nationalization is a crucial requirement for a successful communist revolution, according to the critiques Marx leveled at the Paris Commune and all revolutions that established the dictatorship of the proletariat. If a country possesses the means of production—moving beyond backward peasant farming—then the nationalization and socialization of all industries, natural resources, energy, transport, communication, land, housing, healthcare, education, childcare, pensions, technology, and food supplies become necessary; or, at the very least, it is essential to end competition among cooperatives in sectors that cannot yet be fully socialized due to technological limitations or isolation.