Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
Common ownership of the means of production
Please identify where this concept currently exists in the real world and is currently successful.
It’s hard to when any of those experiments have been met with bombs, embargoes, coups, and other fuckery
Worker cooperatives (and often cooperatives in general) are an example of this. They almost always exist within a capitalist system, so are not able to completely separate themselves from all aspects of capitalism, but they are definitely examples of common ownership of means of production.
Specifically you can look up the Mondragon Corporation which is probably the biggest/best known example of a workers cooperative but there are many others. There are lots of variations on this same concept - one where risk, rewards, and decision-making are shared more equitably among everybody participating. I think the most interesting are food co-ops (and sometimes CSAs), utility cooperatives, and housing cooperatives. These are all over the place and are often quietly successful examples of common ownership.
May sound good on paper, but everywhere where it was tried, nothing good happened. There is something in human nature that makes it inefficient and have tendency to become dictatorial state. Socialism (in classical sense) is just worse system in practice, as many countries in 20th century demonstrated.
If I try to grow some tomatoes, and by the time they’re sprouting out of the ground, my neighbor tramples them and lights them on fire, does that mean that I can’t ever grow tomatoes and they’re doomed to fail?