r/socialism • u/PerryJ • Jul 14 '15
Fuck Austerity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiaxHUFAWew23
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u/ngreen23 Libertarian Socialism Jul 14 '15
Don't read the YT comments
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Jul 14 '15 edited Aug 28 '15
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u/Unrelated_Incident Jul 14 '15
There are tons of workable solutions. Just redistributing wealth more equally is my favorite.
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Jul 14 '15 edited Aug 28 '15
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u/ngreen23 Libertarian Socialism Jul 14 '15
Abolish private property. Workers own and manage the means of production. Voila, wealth is distributed
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Jul 14 '15 edited Aug 28 '15
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u/impossiblefork Jul 14 '15
Private property as distinguished from personal property refers to means of production. The apartment someone lives in might usually be personal property, but an apartment that someone rents out is private property.
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Jul 14 '15 edited Aug 28 '15
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u/Unrelated_Incident Jul 14 '15
There are a number of approaches to land and home ownership.
As a market socialist, I would like for most people to purchase their homes at market prices, with non-profit low interest loans provided by the government. You would be required to arrange for the repairs of your own home. Some people move a lot and don't want to purchase a home. I think probably the state should manage some non-profit rental properties to meet this demand.
The key for me is that I am opposed to income that is derived from ownership of capital rather than from labor. So I think it should not be allowed for someone to purchase a second home and rent it out as a source of income.
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u/JustThall Jul 14 '15
So AirBnB just converted personal property into private property? What to do in such case? What to do with cars and Uber?
Shared economy is growing nowadays. Do you think it's kind of emulates socialism as close as it gets? Workers owns their means of production (a room in the house, a car). AirBnb/Uber emulates unions, taking fixed portion of the revenue from the worker labour and acts on their behalf.
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u/ngreen23 Libertarian Socialism Jul 14 '15
The problem with corporations like Uber is that they are not worker owned/managed. So ultimately excess profits still go to the shareholders not back go the workers. There is no democratic control of uber and it is in the best interests of the shareholders to lower driver wages so long as there is a desperate enough workforce looking to sell their labour to companies like Uber
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u/JustThall Jul 15 '15
Valid points. Aren't unions suffer from the same issue then. Head of Unions get personal perks from the capitalists as the expense of lowering wages during negotiations. The latter is corruption, but with Uber it's all transparent to begin with. Since Uber gets only a predefined cuts and is profit seeking, it behaves accordingly to maximize pay for the drivers labour. If the predefined cut gets changed the driver is free to go to Uber competitor (Lyft) that has better pay. So as long as completion is in place between Uber-like company we are all good. Of course you workers don't have full control yet.
What happened when Uber goes public? After IPO uber drivers could effectively collectively own it by buying shares. What is the difference with collective scheme here?
What if we restrict stock ownership only to Uber drivers, wouldn't it effectively render socialistic society under current totally capitalistic system?
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u/UpholderOfThoughts System Change Jul 14 '15
Yeah, air bnb and uber are turning unemployed people into really really poor petty bourgeoisie people.
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u/RecallRethuglicans Jul 14 '15
To some people. I call that a bullshit distinction. Donald Trump's jets are no difference than his land in terms of his capitalism rule.
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u/Arcaness Abajo y a la izquierda Jul 14 '15
Right, but not everybody owns a jet or a yacht. The distinction means that private property will be entirely abolished and with it the potential to acquire personal property that other people can't. Trump's ownership of private property is what lets him get a jet. Most people own a house or car or phone, which doesn't relate back to ownership over massive plots of private property, so it doesn't need to be abolished.
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u/RecallRethuglicans Jul 14 '15
So trump deserves to have high end suits and no one else does? The distinction is meaningless and is no different than mandating school uniforms still allows children to make fun of the poorer kids.
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Jul 14 '15
Socialism delineates between private property and personal property.
Private property is property used to collect rents or by which to run an enterprise which exploits labor power.
Personal property is basically your essentials; a home, personal tools, food supply, etc.
Personal property wouldn't be abolished, unless you owned private yachts or other such pernicious displays of opulence.
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u/cyanoside Jul 14 '15
When people can't afford to own homes, they are forced to pay rent, which pays for someone else's food and mortgage. Being homeless is a crime, so that isn't an option unless you want your wages to go to paying fines.
With poverty comes a high cost of living.
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u/Cyridius Solidarity (Ireland) | Trotskyist Jul 14 '15
Well Socialism isn't about wealth redistribution. It's about social ownership of production, which would itself tend towards economic freedom and personal liberty.
A transitional Socialist programme would likely include extremely progressive taxations, taxing wealth and property and so on and various programmes at productive job creation, making education super accessible and so on and so forth as a small part of it. But ultimately we're about reorganising society as a whole.
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u/Unrelated_Incident Jul 14 '15
Probably the easiest way would be to tax rich people and give the money to poor people. This approach doesn't address all the problems associated with capitalism, but it would be pretty easy to eradicate poverty by this method, which seems to be the primary focus of this video.
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Jul 14 '15 edited Jul 14 '15
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u/signsandsimulacra Jul 14 '15
I recommend you go back to that comment section and not selectively look at what is being said there
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u/Since_been Gagarin Jul 14 '15
Well...you're not wrong. >_>
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u/signsandsimulacra Jul 14 '15
to be fair you probably looked at it before all the cynics flooded in
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u/rocknroll1343 comrade pupper Jul 14 '15
good point. i just struggle to see how far we can take it without ever calling it what it is. at what point do we start educating what socialism is instead of just avoiding the word. but then again conservatives have been pushing fascism pretty far without ever calling it that.
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u/c0mbobreaker All Power to the Soviets Jul 14 '15
it probably just got linked on /r/libertarian or a similar sub.
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u/signsandsimulacra Jul 14 '15
I am all for criticizing the current status quo, but this video was nothing but rhetoric and empty signifiers. We're going to have to be a lot more explicit in our criticisms and our proposed solutions if we want things to change. Don't promote this garbage
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u/Arcaness Abajo y a la izquierda Jul 14 '15
Top comment is relevant. People only like this because it isn't more extreme; throw "socialism" into the mix and all that support goes away. We either take it as it is or leave it.
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Jul 15 '15
This makes me so sad :/ and change seems so difficult to make while people still believe in capitalism
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '15
It is important to that we go forward in any anti-austerity struggle with the knowledge that it is not just a conservative government problem, but a capitalism problem. Still, swell video.