by Endovelico » Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:33 am
Part of the problem has been reducing human activity to production. Capitalists are good at producing things at low cost (to themselves), so they became the beacons of our civilization (?). They were given a free hand and they simply took over. Communists were too stupid to understand that the state was unable to cope with the complexities of a modern economy. Fascists were smarter. They allowed capitalists to make money but they kept them under very strict control. Once communists and fascists were defeated, nothing stood in the way of capitalists who ran completely amok. Which was made easier because we swallowed the idea that they were good for the community. Mr. Perfect is a perfect example of how people became incapable of criticizing capitalism.
We need production to be efficient and thus we need free markets. Going back to the classic socialist ideas is totally out of the question. What we need is to dilute the power of those who produce things, and that can only be achieved by transforming all firms into cooperatives. In a cooperative you merge the interests of capital and labour, because the owners of the means of production are the workers themselves. You keep the efficiency of production without the exploitation, and without the grab for power which goes with the capitalist corporation. In a cooperative society the economic and financial power is too diluted to become a threat to society, and thus the political community is free from money oppression. However, as things are I don't think that our societies can be transformed into cooperative societies without recourse to force. Blood will have to run for such a transformation to be achieved, and we better know on which side we want to be.