this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
282 points (95.8% liked)
Memes
52090 readers
1097 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
the smugness is always the worst part.
"Um, have you considered (facile bullshit we all heard ten thousand times before even becoming leftists)?"
if only i could do a mental -"then thousand times comment"; my sanity would be much improved. lol
Yes, people should have that, but it's not that simple. Some liberals, particularly classical liberals, think a free market would bring those things to everyone. I don't necessarily disagree, though I think free markets can only ever be free under communism/socialism, not capitalism. The issue with centrally planned, universal healthcare is that a hostile government could refuse to provide you care, much like insurance companies that don't approve coverage for many things. Additionally, there needs to be strong medical privacy protections.
Markets are fundamentally profit driven, and services like healthcare or housing need to be provided regardless of the profit motive. These are a natural fit for the state owned industries. Where markets can have a role is providing nice to have things that improve general quality of life, but aren't living essentials.
*Capital markets. Commodity markets are fine as long as you align stakeholders with ownership. So worker and consumer coöps. Rental and housing coöps are a great example.
How do you prevent the commodities turning into capital?
You don't have to. If it becomes capital, then it is subject to the same multi-stakeholder analysis.
If I bought a printer, it would just be a commodity. If I start selling products made from said printer and hire more people, then it would need to be a worker coöp.
How would an authoritarian socialist system handle someone wanting a printer given that it could be used as capital?
Depending on the stage of socialist construction, private ownership is either limited, or no longer possible to begin with.
Market-based healthcare favors perpetual treatment over permanent cures or preventative medicine, like dialysis over kidney transplants, insulin instead of diet and exercise. If you have a rare disease than you are just fucked, because pharmaceutical companies just want to sell dick pills. A market's purpose is to maximize revenue, not patient well-being.
Not if it is a socialized market that disallows corporate ownership in favor of consumer coöperative ownership.
I mean that's the potential problem with any service: that the faction running it could decide they don't like you. I don't think that's a good enough reason not to build things that help society though. A government could decide not to let you on a train, i still think there should be trains
I like to take a Mutualist position on it. Things should only be socialized to their direct stakeholders. So most companies would be worker coöps. Utilities would be consumer worker coöps. And large interstate transit would be federal. Universal healthcare would fall into the later as a largescale consumer coöp.
This doesn't really solve the problems of capitalism, competing cooperatives still gives rise to class distinctions and creates an economy oriented around competition over collective interest. Cooperatives can play a part of a broader, developing socialist society, but should always be intended on being phased out. You can have local units of broader contexts without soley giving ownership to the local.
As a Mutualist, I firmly disagree. Coöps are essentially a democratic alternative to top-down coercive management styles or forms of ownership. It is a mutualist system that is antithetical to competition.
Take a renter's coöp for example. Essentially everyone owns their building and they aren't competing with other buildings or have shareholders would expect a return on investment.
With coöps you can actually respect locality. Large auth-socialist systems will often have with people competing interests who have undo control over local systems. That isn't to say broader standards shouldn't exist, but that they should be done thru voluntary industry wide syndication.
The problem with cooperative ownership is it puts local interests over global interests, and gives rise to class distinctions. Local councils can play a part in a broader system, but local coops forming the basis of organization works directly against collectivized planning and production. The Soviet Union, early on, experienced directly the consequences of having too much local control, resulting in some local factories "gaming the system."
Not all forms of managament and administration are coercive or bad. Trying to solve the issues of management under capitalism and replicating the competitive class structure in a horizontalist fashion misanalyzes the problem and thus provides a faulty conclusion.
To make clear the point Cowbee made, consider these three scenarios:-
-
The different parts of the country have different levels of natural resources / infrastructure / educational facilities. Co-ops i the wealthier areas are doing well, and all their employees are prospering. But those in the poorer areas are struggling, and all their employees are struggling.
-
There are five co-ops making the same type of product (say, radios). They each have their own design office, factory, sales networks and marketing. Would it not be more efficient to consolidate them?
-
There is a co-op that works in digging coal and running a thermal power plant. The society as a whole would benefit from switching to solar panels, but this co-op keeps blocking all such efforts since it would hurt them.
I've never encountered this type of liberal. Neolib, sure.
Liberalism is an ideology with two main parts. First is political liberalism which focuses on individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights. Second is economic liberalism which centers around free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.
Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights even when they come into direct conflict with providing necessities such as food, shelter, and healthcare. The idea that private property is a key part of individual freedom provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, all the talk of promoting freedom and democracy is nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations.
This is an excellent primer on the subject https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
load more comments
(22 replies)
view more: next ›