Chris
12-29-2012, 12:54 PM
Many time have I argued that socialists abandoned the old tenet of socialism, ownership of the means of production, for management of it and that this is social democracy, or what progressives and liberals today tend to call democracy, the most invidious form of socialism yet invented.
Here is some history.
Around a hundred years ago, guild socialist G.D.H. Cole argued that social democrats had made a major strategic decision not to contest the way property was distributed or production organized under corporate capitalism. Instead, they would limit their agenda to a (partial) equalization of the way the rents on concentrated property, the output of these institutions, was distributed.
One reason was that challenging the actual ownership of property would be politically impossible. But another reason, Cole suggested, was that the original socialist project of attacking the institutional structures of capitalism itself, and putting labor in direct control of the production process, would undermine the power of the managerial and professional classes who made up so much of the social democratic, Fabian and Progressive movements.
Thinkers ranging from Hilaire Belloc to William English Walling argued that such calculations resulted in a grand strategic bargain by which the capitalists were guaranteed some minimum profit and stable oligopoly markets, the managerial-professional classes retained control of the large organizations that dominated society, and the working class was guaranteed job security and a minimum subsistence income. The managerial classes, for all intents and purposes, were coopted into corporate capitalism as Overseers of the Poor.
The social democratic model leaves the basic structure of power intact — and then guarantees everybody access to some minimum package of the output.
@ Social Democracy as High-Overhead “Socialism” (http://www.bastiatinstitute.org/2012/12/28/social-democracy-as-high-overhead-socialism/)
I have often pointed to Robert Reich's The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution (http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387) as the modern expression of this.
Here is some history.
Around a hundred years ago, guild socialist G.D.H. Cole argued that social democrats had made a major strategic decision not to contest the way property was distributed or production organized under corporate capitalism. Instead, they would limit their agenda to a (partial) equalization of the way the rents on concentrated property, the output of these institutions, was distributed.
One reason was that challenging the actual ownership of property would be politically impossible. But another reason, Cole suggested, was that the original socialist project of attacking the institutional structures of capitalism itself, and putting labor in direct control of the production process, would undermine the power of the managerial and professional classes who made up so much of the social democratic, Fabian and Progressive movements.
Thinkers ranging from Hilaire Belloc to William English Walling argued that such calculations resulted in a grand strategic bargain by which the capitalists were guaranteed some minimum profit and stable oligopoly markets, the managerial-professional classes retained control of the large organizations that dominated society, and the working class was guaranteed job security and a minimum subsistence income. The managerial classes, for all intents and purposes, were coopted into corporate capitalism as Overseers of the Poor.
The social democratic model leaves the basic structure of power intact — and then guarantees everybody access to some minimum package of the output.
@ Social Democracy as High-Overhead “Socialism” (http://www.bastiatinstitute.org/2012/12/28/social-democracy-as-high-overhead-socialism/)
I have often pointed to Robert Reich's The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution (http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387) as the modern expression of this.