As I understand, scientific socialism acknowledges class struggle and current material conditions, but still requires overthrow of capitalist systems. You’re suggesting it’s easier to convince people to overthrow their banks (and have no personal banking?) rather than switch to a global credit union.
Under Capitalism, even with a unified Credit Union, people still suffer from being at the whims of wealthy Capitalists, and likely wouldn’t be willing to or able to donate en mass.
If you can imagine a global unified credit union, where everyone is equal, with better benefits than traditional banks, you’ve essentially removed capitalists from banking - think about that. You could do the same with other essential industries like education, healthcare, food etc.
Revolution requires convincing 8 billion people of a possible utopia whereas market socialism exists right now to some degree - FOSS, cooperatives, credit unions etc. are all part of market socialism. 120 million Americans for example are part of credit unions - more than any big bank in America. If we connected all the credit unions so they could talk to each other, you could transact with any branch or ATM - it could rival any big bank. It is harder to convince someone to upend their life for revolution than to convince them the benefits of credit unions over regular banking (again, markets, or in this case banking exists, and we need to engage with it currently). As for donating, many donate to Wikipedia, fediverse etc. When we are not starving, we’ll donate it all to a good cause.
Thanks again!
In other words, Market Socialism is nice in that it removes exploitation, but is no nearer to Communism than Capitalism. The leap to public ownership is no closer, just the relations of exploitation are removed. How do we get to Communism, and what role can worker cooperatives play in that? The solution is to perform a revolution and establish a Proletarian State. This is a hard requirement to begin with, otherwise you can’t simply accomplish Market Socialism, the bourgeoisie would never allow it.
Right, so market socialism is better than capitalism, and I’m arguing it is easier to get there than revolution. I’m also kinda arguing that market socialism will naturally lead to everyone just donating their belongings to the greater good once everyone is content with what they get from market socialism, otherwise I see it impractical to simply snatch private assets for public ownership. Lastly, I agree it would seem like the bourgeoise would never allow it, but things like Linux and the fediverse exist and they’ll only get stronger and harder to beat with network effect.
Thanks, Cowbee! It seems to me, that in practice (as opposed to theory, not game), if socialism is 5 steps away on the chessboard, then market socialism has to be step 1, simply because that’s where we are (1. markets aren’t going away tomorrow, and 2. everyone currently has to engage in the economy one way or another). It’s what is the ‘adjacent next’. Changing everyone’s minds all at once seems mathematically impossible. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that all our collective energies might be better spent focusing on just step 1.
Suppose we replace all capitalists with worker cooperatives. What happens when two worker cooperatives compete in free market? We’ll still be at capitalism, wont we?
Yes, understanding oneself and what we really control is part of understanding nature. Understanding trauma and stress are part of understanding & accepting nature.
Anger is our inability to understand or accept the true nature of things.
Okay, at least we’re talking about execution now. I’ll read the essay, but like unix and fediverse and credit unions exist right now and capitalists can’t stop them. They can only compete with them in the free market. They certainly won’t be able to stop them once they get even bigger and more mainstream.