You clearly don’t understand how many countries operate. Or you’re somehow misunderstanding what “means of production” or “workers” means.
My local electricity provider, and all of it’s power production equipment, transmission lines, meters, etc. are owned by the government. So is every hospital in the country. Almost every road is public.
Means of production is any sort of capital used to build value, so things like infrastructure, buildings, factories, machinery, tools, etc.
Workers does not mean the people that work in a particular building or factory, it means the class of people as a whole.
It’s pretty obvious that if the government owns something, under a democracy that thing is is owned by the citizens of the region. Even Marx mentions that socialism would use the state for collective ownership.
Yes, they may be state-owned, but you still live in a bourgeois state with capitalist ownership structure, so the state doesn’t act in the workers interest, but to uphold the capitalist order.
By the way, would you mind telling me what country that is? Most EU countries with strong state-owned infrastructure that I’m aware of have been forced to liberalize, so for example in my country lots of former state enterprises are now private profit-bound businesses that are just 100% owned by the state.
You’re stretching the realities here with your assertions. The vast majority of what the government does is in the interest of workers. It could be better, absolutely, but it’s a far cry from some dystopian corpo-state. The government could move towards more positive worker benefits, but a lot of those workers won’t actually vote for them if they did because people aren’t entirely rational. So we’re essentially getting what we deserve right now.
Profit-bound but still owned by the state would still be socialist. There’s no requirement that the means of production not generate profit to qualify as being owned by the workers.
So you’re a Social Democrat, got it. Those are pretty out of fashion over here and gave up pretending wanting to achieve Socialism long ago. Sorry, but I don’t really think that what you’re talking about is Socialism, it’s liberal reformism.
It makes me someone who treats them as economic systems, usually referred to as an economist.
Have fun being morally outraged by my proposal, but at least it’s grounded in reality. Humans are not capable of making or maintaining a full Marxist communist state. Our desires are limitless, reality is finite.
Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal (rising and dominant) aspect of the economy. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution where the entire economy is collectivized and planned, and there is no longer a state, class, or money. See Cheng Enfu’s diagram:
You have a horrible understanding of socialism, communism, and social democracy, that frankly makes things more confusing.
If two people get together and put all of their earnings into a pot together, then each take out what they need. That’s a type of communism. It’s also usually called a family.
Marxism/Leninism are specific type of communism as well, that reach well into the political space as well as the economic.
What you’re trying to do right now, imposing your own singular view of what communism can be, is the same as saying Catholicism is the only type of Christianity just because it’s the most well known.
There’s a whole wikipedia article detailing dozens of variations of Communism, from Marxism to variations on Marxism, to variations independent of Marxism. Just because he did a lot of thinking on the whole thing doesn’t mean he’s the only one who gets to define the word.
You clearly don’t understand how many countries operate. Or you’re somehow misunderstanding what “means of production” or “workers” means.
My local electricity provider, and all of it’s power production equipment, transmission lines, meters, etc. are owned by the government. So is every hospital in the country. Almost every road is public.
Means of production is any sort of capital used to build value, so things like infrastructure, buildings, factories, machinery, tools, etc.
Workers does not mean the people that work in a particular building or factory, it means the class of people as a whole.
It’s pretty obvious that if the government owns something, under a democracy that thing is is owned by the citizens of the region. Even Marx mentions that socialism would use the state for collective ownership.
Yes, they may be state-owned, but you still live in a bourgeois state with capitalist ownership structure, so the state doesn’t act in the workers interest, but to uphold the capitalist order.
By the way, would you mind telling me what country that is? Most EU countries with strong state-owned infrastructure that I’m aware of have been forced to liberalize, so for example in my country lots of former state enterprises are now private profit-bound businesses that are just 100% owned by the state.
Canada
You’re stretching the realities here with your assertions. The vast majority of what the government does is in the interest of workers. It could be better, absolutely, but it’s a far cry from some dystopian corpo-state. The government could move towards more positive worker benefits, but a lot of those workers won’t actually vote for them if they did because people aren’t entirely rational. So we’re essentially getting what we deserve right now.
Profit-bound but still owned by the state would still be socialist. There’s no requirement that the means of production not generate profit to qualify as being owned by the workers.
So you’re a Social Democrat, got it. Those are pretty out of fashion over here and gave up pretending wanting to achieve Socialism long ago. Sorry, but I don’t really think that what you’re talking about is Socialism, it’s liberal reformism.
I want Communism for Land, Socialism for Necessities, and Capitalism for Luxuries.
I don’t think that puts me into any of the existing labels to be quite honest.
It makes you someone who doesn’t understand what those terms mean, so a modern liberal.
It makes me someone who treats them as economic systems, usually referred to as an economist.
Have fun being morally outraged by my proposal, but at least it’s grounded in reality. Humans are not capable of making or maintaining a full Marxist communist state. Our desires are limitless, reality is finite.
Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal (rising and dominant) aspect of the economy. Communism is a post-socialist mode of production and distribution where the entire economy is collectivized and planned, and there is no longer a state, class, or money. See Cheng Enfu’s diagram:
You have a horrible understanding of socialism, communism, and social democracy, that frankly makes things more confusing.
You have a horrible understanding of reality.
If two people get together and put all of their earnings into a pot together, then each take out what they need. That’s a type of communism. It’s also usually called a family.
Marxism/Leninism are specific type of communism as well, that reach well into the political space as well as the economic.
What you’re trying to do right now, imposing your own singular view of what communism can be, is the same as saying Catholicism is the only type of Christianity just because it’s the most well known.
There’s a whole wikipedia article detailing dozens of variations of Communism, from Marxism to variations on Marxism, to variations independent of Marxism. Just because he did a lot of thinking on the whole thing doesn’t mean he’s the only one who gets to define the word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies