[tehjoker]

If you learn to turn a lathe then work in standard corporation (a dictatorship, military-like organization that produces profits by extracting surplus value from labor) that's not a democratically controlled workplace, hence the workers having skills does not make for socialism. For that matter, only having democratic control of a single workplace (a worker cooperative) does not make for socialism either as you will still have to extract surplus labor to compete in an unplanned marketplace.

[philwelch]

Yeah, you definitely need the famines and gulags before you can seriously call it Real Socialism, not that it’s ever been tried.