I thought I'd tackle some comments left on a previous blog post so I can get more into detail. This left from Anthony:
My point is simple. How could 1 person make such outragous promises. Say in theory you make valid points. That doesnt mean you would be able to enact anything.
Obviously one would need a majority within parliament and an organised working people ready to defend themselves from any counter attack.
Capitalism is simple and it works if people are educated enough to understand the system.
Capitalism doesn't work, 35 million people dying every year isn't "working", 6 billion people being exploited by a few thousand tyrants isn't "working", never ending war between capitalists struggling for new markets isn't "working", it's a bloody disaster.
Capitalism does pay the employee thier rightful wage. The employee has the free will to turn down any job they do not feel like is worth thier time.
Workers sell their labour-power on a market; they're being forced to compete on a market, which forces their wages down. Capitalists also compete on a market; capitalists who can force wages lower have an advantage in competing with other capitalists. The workers produce all the wealth in society, yet a tiny minority profit out of it. That is theft; the wealth created by the workers is robbed under the guise of private ownership.
The reserve labour army, commonly called the unemployed also keeps wages down. Unemployment is almost a universal law under capitalism, the capitalists love it because it reduces their costs (your wages).
Owning a human being wholesale, classical slavery. Renting a human being by the hour, or by the year, or by the quota, wage slavery, is nothing less than theft and utter exploitation.
The minority of tyrants hide behind private ownership of the means of production to get away with it.
Since when did the government start caring what stressed people out? I would agree some people dont have the technical knowledge to properly invest thier pensions but to remove all peoples pensions would be folly. I suggest that you make it optional. Something people can choose. After all you want to give people as much freedom as possible right?
People that are stressed out are less productive, it damages the whole society. Having a state pension does not prevent an individual from putting money aside every month to save for a rainy day, or to top up their state pension when they retire.
1. You cant nationalize the countries total economy due to international companies operating on your soil.
Yes you can. Venezuela just nationalised the oil industry. Chile 1973, I can go on and on.
Of course to guarentee the victory of the socialist revolution and not just nationalisation it must be worldwide, and that is why socialists are internationalists, as Marx predicted capitalism created a single world market, with a single global working class.
After thousands of years of class struggle, in our epoch it is our class and our class alone throughout all of history which has the ability to end class society. It is in the era of capital that the class struggle can be simplified to its most basic element, the wage-profit battle, two grand classes directly facing each other, one which produces everything in society and one that like a vampire bat sucks the blood of the producers.
2. Buisness will not lose money they will simply pass the cost to the consumer.
An economy owned and controlled democractically by the people doesn't have to run with a surplus. There are no businesses in the sense you're using the term. The workers take back the surplus value that is stolen from them.
Reducing the work week is a novel idea. But reduced hours would mean reduced pay. Perhaps they pay you 40hrs worth. But they reduce your salary to make up the difference.
Factories under control by the workers in Venezuela recently voted to reduce the working week, with no loss of pay. Why? Because it takes up the surplus value that the former owners extracted from them. It is also necessary to give people time to participate in running the economy and politics.
Instead of new technologies being used to increase profits for the minority, new technologies increase productivity so people can make a bit more money or can spend less time at work, and more time educating themselves, doing art, developing culture, technology, science, which will push civilisation forward at a rate faster than ever seen before.
If you raise minimum wage that just means that the prices go up and you dont actually help anyone.
Take the United Kingdom. The Labour government introduced the minimum wage, before then workers could be paid anything between bugger all and £3 per hour. Nowadays the minimum wage is £5.35. It hasn't impacted employment; employment is higher now than in 1997. It hasn't impacted prices; inflation has been running at a couple of percent, below the increases in the minimum wage every year.
So it isn't even true in a market economy, let alone an economy owned and controlled by the people.
The new society that you speak of seems like one where there are little to no freedoms.
Under socialism some people (the former capitalists) no longer have the freedom to exploit the people, so they have to work like everybody else for a living. Like abolishing slavery, people no longer have the "freedom" to own slaves or the "freedom" to rent slaves by the hour.
This is a freedom that normal people cannot make use of, because they don't have the capital to exploit people. So it is no loss for the vast majority. It is a huge gain for the vast majority, who get the full value of their labour; they no longer have to work to maintain a parasitic class.
After all if the government owns everything.
Public ownership, controlled democratically by the people. You wouldn't use a political government to manage an economy. In my opinion you'd use enhanced and extremely democratic versions of trade unions.