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by pdonis
3444 days ago
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> The main large scale experiment I am aware of that meets the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production is the Mondragon system and similar labor cooperative ventures Um, what about the Soviet Union? (I'm not familiar with the Mondragon system but I'll look it up.) > those don't seem to be operating in anything like the "obvious sense" of workers owning the means of production. If you are including the Soviet Union in this category, you are rejecting the very Marxist terminology that you appeared to be using, since the whole point of the Soviet Union was that the workers would own the means of production. Yes, I know it failed spectacularly; that was my point. |
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I think if you read the thread, you'll see that you are using the word "you" quite sloppily.
> since the whole point of the Soviet Union was that the workers would own the means of production.
The whole point of Leninist vanguardism, of which the USSR is obviously the first concrete manifestation, was to adapt Marxist rhetoric to be used in societies in which the perquisites Marx identified for socialism as a step on the route to communism were not met, to justify mechanism which were not what Marx and Engels pres cribed. Leninism is, itself, a substantive rejection of Marxism while adopting it's superficial structure.
That said, Marx is hardly the only thinker (even of his time) to argue for workers owning the means of production, and the indirect manner of such ownership in Marxist socialism -- and even moreso it's Leninist vanguardism adaptation -- is pretty far from the most obvious sense of workers owning the means of production.
The actual workers of individual firms controlling them directly rather than the state doing so in their name is, clearly, much closer to the obvious sense of that phrase.