05-16-2016, 10:46 AM
The modern world has five classes of potential exploiters:
1. Traditional big landlords
2. Tycoons and financiers, the owners who can enforce poverty upon workers who have no viable alternatives.
3. Bureaucratic elitists
4. Intellectual shysters (from shamans to political hacks)
5. Organized crime
The absence of these elites allow people to live better lives even with a lower level of productivity. If most of the income is going to those elites, then much of the productivity of a society is for naught aside from the elites. A well-functioning capitalist system can function on capitalists getting small margins on huge volumes of productivity.
Marxist-Leninist regimes generally killed or exiled the big landowners and tycoons. But Marxist-Leninist regimes often allowed bureaucratic elitists to take much of the role of capitalists, and because they did not own the property, they could not exploit as capitalists did. Sometimes they simply exploited in different ways, like granting themselves huge salaries while sweating and starving their workers. There's plenty of money to be had as a government official in charge of some ministry charged with production through embezzlement if people get away with it. It is far easier to steal and get away with it if one is a director than if one is a checker-cashier.
Co-ops are private sector, so they are not socialism. If they can operate without bureaucratic elites, then that is one way to avoid some exploitation.
Are they effective? They might not be as responsive as companies with despotic management and ownership. If they have some internal democracy, then they can be very political. But unlike bad business organizations, the worker at the least has a stake in the system other than avoiding getting fired.
1. Traditional big landlords
2. Tycoons and financiers, the owners who can enforce poverty upon workers who have no viable alternatives.
3. Bureaucratic elitists
4. Intellectual shysters (from shamans to political hacks)
5. Organized crime
The absence of these elites allow people to live better lives even with a lower level of productivity. If most of the income is going to those elites, then much of the productivity of a society is for naught aside from the elites. A well-functioning capitalist system can function on capitalists getting small margins on huge volumes of productivity.
Marxist-Leninist regimes generally killed or exiled the big landowners and tycoons. But Marxist-Leninist regimes often allowed bureaucratic elitists to take much of the role of capitalists, and because they did not own the property, they could not exploit as capitalists did. Sometimes they simply exploited in different ways, like granting themselves huge salaries while sweating and starving their workers. There's plenty of money to be had as a government official in charge of some ministry charged with production through embezzlement if people get away with it. It is far easier to steal and get away with it if one is a director than if one is a checker-cashier.
Co-ops are private sector, so they are not socialism. If they can operate without bureaucratic elites, then that is one way to avoid some exploitation.
Are they effective? They might not be as responsive as companies with despotic management and ownership. If they have some internal democracy, then they can be very political. But unlike bad business organizations, the worker at the least has a stake in the system other than avoiding getting fired.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.