We won't get to that fantasy land you described, so why bother creating it in our mind palaces? Utopia-building isn't a useful form of analysis when describing how we get from A to B. You need to take ownership of the State for that to work, and end Capitalism to begin with.

[–] fakir@lemm.ee -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You're the one in the fantasy land. We're already in capitalism, I'm only adding cooperatives, you know the whole workers owing the means of production that you advocate for. I'm literally taking us from where we currently are to a better place, A to B. You want to erase the whole drawing board and start over.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wrong on multiple fronts, which is why I recommended you read up more on Marxism, as it's evident that you do not in fact know what us Marxists are advocating for.

You are correct, we are already in Capitalism. Replacing the entirety of the firms within a Capitalist system with cooperatives is a monstrous task without first overthrowing the State to help facilitate things, at which point there is no reason to not implement Socialism. This is not jumping from A-B, this is jumping from A-Z.

Secondly, I do not want to start over. I want revolution, then a nationalization of key industries like the banks, railroads, airlines, energy sector, raw materials, telecommunication, etc. Not a replacement, but a nationalization. Additionally, large firms will be nationalized, ie Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia, other huge firms that dominate the private sector will be folded into the public. The small firms and sole proprietorships can remain, gradually working up to the size of public ownership, or fading away due to failing to compete.

This has an actual A-B, B-C, C-D, etc step process. The hardest part is revolution, of course, but we know it can be done because its happened before. What you describe is more akin to a grand prayer than an actual plan.

Study Marxism, even if you want to be a Capitalist, otherwise you argue against ghosts and strawmen that don't exist. After all, us Marxists have to study Capitalism, why shouldn't you study Marxism?

[–] fakir@lemm.ee -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You are correct, we are already in Capitalism. Replacing the entirety of the firms within a Capitalist system with cooperatives is a monstrous task without first overthrowing the State to help facilitate things

Disagree, cooperatives already exist. Everywhere! We just need more and more, one at a time. Bigger and stronger! Where is the need to overthrow the state?

Secondly, I do not want to start over. I want revolution, then a nationalization of key industries like the banks, railroads, airlines, energy sector, raw materials, telecommunication, etc. Not a replacement, but a nationalization. Additionally, large firms will be nationalized, ie Amazon, Google, Meta, Nvidia, other huge firms that dominate the private sector will be folded into the public.

And I want the same level of nationalization as you here, but you are still asking for a revolution as a starting point, i.e erase the entire drawing board and start over.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There is no evidence of cooperatives being capable of out-competing the megacorps of today in a system already controlled by megacorps. There is no growing systemic pressure for cooperatives to overwhelm megacorps, only further proletarianizaton and social stratification.

Further, revolution is not erasing the entire drawing board and starting over. We do not nuke the entire country back to the stone age and go at it again, we erase the oppressive bourgeois state and replace it with one run by and for the Proletariat. This has been done successfully many times.

[–] fakir@lemm.ee 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There is no evidence of cooperatives being capable of out-competing the megacorps of today in a system already controlled by megacorps. There is no growing systemic pressure for cooperatives to overwhelm megacorps, only further proletarianizaton and social stratification.

Nature tells you the power of cooperative working, look at ants, bees, fungi. The fediverse is a smack in the face of Reddit, Unix in the face of Microsoft. These things only grow, never shrink. There are more people in credit unions in America than any private bank. There are so many cooperatives in the agriculture space you wouldn't believe. Look up mondragon, the largest cooperative employer with over 70k employees. Look up IFFCO, the largest agriculture cooperative connecting farmers in India, which has a revenue of over $7 billion/yr. These are behemoths, a force for good. They are not being overwhelmed by megacorps, rather they overwhelm the megacorps.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

I am not against cooperation, I'm a Communist. What there isn't any evidence of is worker cooperatives like Mondragon being capable of working within systems owned by large megacorps and overpowering them and outscaling them. There's plenty of evidence for Socialism.

We are not bees, nor mushrooms, nor ants. FOSS is fantastic, and has many benefits, otherwise I would not be here. However, the idea that we can carve a cooperative niche out in a system dominated by Capital is Utopianism a la Saint-Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, etc, and this Utopian model has been discredited for centuries.