[AnimalMuppet]

"Incrementally owning the means of production" can look like a lot of things. Contributing to a 401k that's invested in an index fund. Employers granting shares to employees. Unions owning shares in the company. I'm sure there are others that have not occurred to me.

Do you have a preferred approach, or is the big thing just getting workers to own at least part of the means of production?

[jmyeet]

> Contributing to a 401k that's invested in an index fund

At an earlier point in my life I used to believe in this, what some people will call things like "shareholder democracy". I've changed my tune on this. I now think it's incredibly destructive to society in the same way that private property is destructive because the majority of people are homeowners.

Why? Because it fools people to think they're beneficiaries of the system when they're really not. If you own a house, it serves a basic need. If you buy your house for $200k and it goes up to $500k, you haven't really gained anything if every house has increased in value similarly. You still need one unit of housing to live in.

Compare that to someone owning 1000 houses. Well they've just made a huge profit. So the entire housing prices always going up thing is just theft from the next generation. It's creating massive personal wealth at the expensive of a lifetime of debt for many.

401ks have the same effect on the stockmarket. You might think of yourself as a capital owner because you own a few shares of Amazon but you're not. A capital owner, by definition, derives wealth from their capital. A worker derives wealth from their labor. Note that someone like LeBron James is a worker in this scenario. Another myth is that socialism is a poverty cult. It is not.

Anyway, so we have a government that become sinvested in keeping the stockmarket going up. This benefits a few capital owners disproportionately and creates lots of negative externalities as we allow capital owners to skirt safety, steal from workers, steal from the government and so on all because governments become afraid that the stockmarket might go down. Doubling your Amazon shares from $100k to $200k doesn't substantially change your life. Bezos going from $100 billion to $200 billion creates massive problems.

> Employers granting shares to employees.

This is a little different and depends on the scale. As tech workers, getting RSUs in Amaazon or Google has the same (negative) effects as a 401k and allows Larry Page and Sergey Brin to accumulate $100B+ for really no reason.

But if the share is more substantial and/or the ownership is mostly or wholly worker-owned then you've arrived at the workers owning the means of production.

This can happen at scale. Consider Mondragon Corporation in Spain [1].

> Do you have a preferred approach

It's a difficult question because the money from the wealthy corrupts every facet of government and life. Consider something as simple as giving people Internet access. The best solution, and it's not even close, is municipal broadband. Yet we have national ISPs that have successfully lobbied to make this illegal in many states.

Likewise, we have a government that tends to bail out failing businesses rather than doing what they should do and simply nationalizing them. Imagine where we'd be if, after the 2008 GFC, the banks who had created this problem were nationalized and instead re-organized as community owned and operated banks.

America has become very anti-labor. Again this was by design. Union membership sits around 10-11% IIRC. We have a society that celebrates hyper-individualism when collectivism would benefit everybody. People delude themselves into thinking they can individually negotiate with trillion dollar companies and come out ahead. Even if you're in a high-demand field like tech, that power you may think you have is fleeting. Big Tech is doing everything they can do undermine labor and suppress wages, including the current trend for permanent layoffs (ie constantly laying off ~5% of their workforce).

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-mondragon-be...

[wesselbindt]

One thing that bothers me about the incremental approach is that we seem to be at a local minimum[footnote]. It feels like any small amount of ownership of the means of production we transfer to the workers will be clawed back into the hands of the owning class, because they have the means to do the clawing back, and we do not. There's a couple examples I know of in this regard, namely Allende in Chile, the PKI in Indonesia, and of course the nationalization of oil in various middle eastern countries in the past century (Iran, for example).

For a more western example, look at Corbyn's loss in the 2019 UK elections. Part of his platform was actually a plan to get closer to workplace democracy, by offering collectives of employees a first option when a company gets sold (or something to that effect). Exactly the kind of incremental step I imagine you're talking about. I cannot help but think his loss was inevitable due to who owns the media (the owning class).

It seems to me that any small step we take will be fruitless if there's this big behemoth looming in the background.

I appreciate you putting your thoughts to paper. More than my one line question deserved.

[footnote] Actually local minimum implies that things aren't getting worse, while they are. E.g. neoliberal European governments are systematically underfunding all sorts of public institutions, which will eventually lead to them being privatized, because the free market would do a much better job than the government, which has been making a mess of it for years. Starving the beast has us barreling towards a minimum, but we're not there yet.

[AnimalMuppet]

> ... and of course the nationalization of oil in various middle eastern countries in the past century (Iran, for example).

I do not know for certain, but I strongly suspect that Iran's oil industry wasn't owned (even incrementally) by the workers. Its nationalization was not a claw back by the owning class, but a claw back from the owning class (to the government, which may be essentially the same thing).

[wesselbindt]

You suspect wrong. At the time, Iran had a democratically elected government. Nationalizing their oil did actually take away capital from private interests and put it under democratic control. The west made quick work of their democracy after that, the effects of which we can still feel today.

[AnimalMuppet]

The nation owning the means of production is not the same as the workers owning the means of production. (I will admit that in a democracy it may be closer to worker ownership. Or maybe not, depending on how well the elite have managed to control the government.)

[wesselbindt]

Yes it is. Rather than being beholden to shareholders who seek profit, the company becomes beholden to voters (which is mostly comprised of the proletariat), and hence steers toward societal goods rather than maximizing profit. It's why public health care is preferable to private.

Is it perfect and pure ownership of capital by the workers? No. But it most definitely is a step in that direction, and it was taken back by force almost immediately. The reason I bring it up is as a historical example of the incremental approach not working.

[lazide]

You’re all missing the point.

Iran’s oil company was mostly owned by foreign interests (eventually just the British Gov’t) and the Shah (king). [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company]

It was never meaningfully privately owned while it was producing, and the British (and Russians!) eventually just forced a coup - before being overthrown by a democratic government, which was then overthrown by the Shah (with the help of the CIA), which was then overthrown by the Ayatollahs in turn.

Because foreign interests were taking almost all the profits and abusing their position.

At no point, including today, were the common people of Iran meaningfully in control of the oil or had anything resembling a meaningful ownership stake.

Though there is significant socialized benefits under most modern regimes, where oil and energy costs are dramatically subsidized, and revenues get pushed into the economy in various make work type schemes.

This is similar to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. though with varying flavors of current socio/religious ruling framework.

It’s essentially buying population compliance through bribes of cheap energy and easy jobs, and it’s not just the Middle East that does it. The vast majority of oil producing nations do it.

Though notably, Russia is pretty bad at actually delivering to the population, despite being a major exporter.

Also Notably? That oil company became what is now known as British Petroleum, or BP.