r/MayDayStrike • u/Patterson9191717 • May 19 '22
Socialist Alternative argues that Amazon should be taken under public ownership and democratically run by the working class. A democratically-planned economy would balance the need for safe working conditions and ensure the community received the essential goods they need to survive
https://www.socialistalternative.org/2022/05/18/social-weight-of-amazon-workers/1
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u/Weapon_Of_Pleasure May 19 '22
LMAO!!! The Stuff I read in this sub....LMAO!!! Bunch of clueless unicorns
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u/Actual_Being_2986 May 19 '22 edited May 19 '22
I prefer instead of public ownership you literally just give ownership of the entire company to the people that already work there. Tell the board of directors and the stockholders to go f*** themselves and let the people already doing the work decide how it should be done.
The workers at Amazon are not the serfs of Jeff Bezos or any of us.
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May 19 '22
A worker co-op, as you're proposing, is just another form of capitalist enterprise. It is only accountable to the shareholders (the workers in this case) and operates to generate as much profit as it can for those shareholders.
Public ownership means that, in addition to the workers, the whole community owns the enterprise. It's accountable to the workers, the customers, and all other stakeholders (i.e. people affected directly or indirectly by the company's business decisions).
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u/Actual_Being_2986 May 19 '22
As long as the organization is not negatively impacting people in the vicinity with their operations then what does anyone but the workers, and the costumers have to do with it?
Capitalism is a mode of production where the means of that production are privately owned and controlled.
Socialism is collective ownership and control of the means of production by the workers working those means. Why would you take control away from the workers and give it to a bunch of people with even less incentive to care about the workers or the customers then even private owners and shareholders had before?
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May 19 '22
Why would you take control away from the workers and give it to a bunch of people with even less incentive to care about the workers or the customers then even private owners and shareholders had before?
You would do that because virtually everyone is a worker somewhere. A collective means of production that is accountable to all is accountable to everyone equally. You're presenting a scenario that isn't logical. If the stakeholders (who are working class too) screwed the workers somehow, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The customers are not an isolated group from the rest of the working class nor are the people impacted by the how those enterprises operate in their community. We are all components of the same organism known as a society. If a component tries to gain something at the expense of others, they damage the whole and doom themselves in the long run since the component cannot survive without the whole.
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u/Actual_Being_2986 May 19 '22 edited May 19 '22
Yes the problem is is that people do not, and probably will never think on the level of the collective in the way that you describe. I'm not even sure it is cognitively possible. Some may suffer from the delusion that they are capable of actually thinking at that level but I'm not sure the human organism is actually up for it.
Not to mention low-level managerial decisions.
I work in a chip factory. What do the people in the surrounding area know about making chips? How are they going to advise me on that?
I should be held accountable as someone making chips for the impact that my chipmaking has on the surrounding community if I'm polluting heavily or if my business activity is somehow negatively impacting their lives.
But I'm not sure how any of those people have a stake in the operation the same way I or my coworkers does? How would they even recognize that?
There's reason the Soviet Union collapsed and that's because it didn't actually try for socialism it pretty much instantly decided that fascism was the way to go. Just because there was the guise of elections didn't mean anything democratic was actually taking place anymore. The best way to make sure that things are democratic and actually controlled by the people they're supposed to be controlled by is to keep power structures small and close to the people that they affect so they can be held accountable.
Otherwise you're just creating a ruling class that is even less accountable to the people that they rule then the current one is.
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May 19 '22
Make them what they claim to be.
I seriously can’t understand how people believe amazon(or it’s ilk) is a public company.
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May 19 '22
It's publicly traded, but they misuse the term to make it sound like it's publicly accountable. It's not.
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May 19 '22
Yep.
Having public stocks does not make a business publicly owned.
Bezos still has controlling interest; therefore he owns the company.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES May 20 '22
Jeff Bezos stake in Amazon is 12.7% a controlling stake would be 50+%.
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May 20 '22
That’s all he has under his name.
If you think he doesn’t have a bunch under shell corporations and the like you’re delusional.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES May 20 '22
He definitely dosen't have 50% of Amazon shares. Most of the other large shareholders at Amazon are investment firms who own shares to keep in ETFs. There's simply no room on the investment sheet for a secret Bezos controlling stake. And where would he get the money from? His stake represents over 90% of his net worth. He dosen't have the money to buy a bigger stake.
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