this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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Simple guide to socialism (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/tankiejerk
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[–] finitebanjo -3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

This is a common misconception about socialism, or at least many forms of socialism. Under socialism, a worker running a business is not necessarily restricted - what is restricted is who, beyond the worker, can create or retire a business.

That statement doesn't really parse. They're either able to create a business or they are not. They're either able to put goods onto an exchange market or fill requests even beyond or far below requested amounts, or they're not. You will absolutely have people who start a business and make others do the work so long as the government does not directly manage the business, unless you completely disregard human nature which was already stretched pretty thin in the assumption that a worker owned government and by extension means of production were incorruptible.

[–] PugJesus 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

That statement doesn’t really parse. They’re either able to create a business or they are not. They’re either able to put goods onto an exchange market or fill requests even beyond or far below requested amounts, or they’re not.

I think you're misreading the statement. The statement is trying to say that workers can create businesses. In start-up businesses, there very often (though not always) is no difference between the founders and the workers - and management work is work, mind you.

You will absolutely have people who start a business and make others do the work so long as the government does not directly manage the business,

That's just the thing - as mentioned here, the two, broadly speaking, ways that socialism addresses this would be either:

  • The worker who started the firm does not have private ownership of the firm's capital (and there are no outside investors which have ownership or part-ownership of the firm's capital); if he is the only worker, the difference is purely formal, but if he is not the only worker, he does not have the right to, say, sell everything the firm has and take the proceeds to his bank account, the way a modern private company could. The worker who started the firm, in this case, would be in a position akin to a public corporation in which the executive(s) must answer to shareholders for financial decisions - only instead of shareholders, it's the firm's workers. Even if he sold the firm's capital, the firm itself would still own the proceeds of the sales, and he could not simply regard it as 'his' and write it down on his personal income tax form as liquidation of capital gains.

  • The worker who started the firm does not have exclusive executive control over the firm unless he is the only worker in the firm.

unless you completely disregard human nature which was already stretched pretty thin in the assumption that a worker owned government were incorruptible.

It's not about corruption. Corruption isn't even in the conversation here.