What does it mean for workers to collectively own means of production? Am I supposed to own only the laboratory I work at or everything everywhere? What if I decide to change a place of employment? Why doesn't owning it though the intermediary of the state and your representative in the communist party qualify?

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Sigh

    Marx addresses this in his Conspectus of Bakunin's State and Anarchy, which reads like a passive aggressive forum post where one person quotes another and responds.

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

    Bakunin This dilemma is simply solved in the Marxists' theory. By people's government they understand (i.e. Bakunin) the government of the people by means of a small number of leaders, chosen (elected) by the people.

    Marx: Asine! This is democratic twaddle, political drivel. Election is a political form present in the smallest Russian commune and artel. The character of the election does not depend on this name, but on the economic foundation, the economic situation of the voters, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political ones, there exists 1) no government function, 2) the distribution of the general functions has become a business matter, that gives no one domination, 3) election has nothing of its present political character.

    Bakunin: The universal suffrage of the whole people...

    Marx: Such a thing as the whole people in today's sense is a chimera --

    Bakunin: ... in the election of people's representatives and rulers of the state -- that is the last word of the Marxists, as also of the democratic school -- [is] a lie, behind which is concealed the despotism of the governing minority, and only the more dangerously in so far as it appears as expression of the so-called people's will.

    Marx: With collective ownership the so-called people's will vanishes, to make way for the real will of the cooperative.

    Anyway the point is that politics currently are a matter of voting for political ideology driven by economic class. The political parties are formed as representatives of class groups that are formed by the economic base of the nation. When you change the economic base to eliminate class then you also eliminate the formation of political parties based on class groups because they literally do not exist.

    This creates a scenario where policy is determined by the true will of the collective and not by economic motives.

    However this assumes that you don't have wrecker groups taking part to achieve counter-revolution. Which you most certainly will have until capitalism is eliminated worldwide.

    • PasswordRememberer [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      God damn, beginning a paragraph with "Asinine!" is such an incredible chad move :marx-chad:

      Death to America