this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

There are no countries with socialist policies.

Can you name a country that has workplace democracy? No? Then there isn't a socialist country out there.

Would I move to the social democracies of the world? I love norway and whatnot politically (as much as a communist can love the state of any country)... but I love having warm air and nature I can enjoy without a coat much more.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't any country with cooperatives have workplace democracy?

Norway is cheating because they have many natural resources to sell.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yes, they have a tiny, insignificant amount.

An entire country has to have workplace democracy for the country to be socialist.

This is kinda like saying "doesn't any country with a slice of bread have food"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

What would change if every company would be democratic?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

To begin with, there wouldn't be an unspoken agreement between companies to keep wages as low as they can be because more than half of the companies in that market agree that the best they can do is starvation wages.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Y'know how totalitarian regimes are incentivized to be shitholes because of the keys to power problem?

https://invidious.asir.dev/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

at the very least, that goes away. But there's many more other things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

autistic people could actually get hired

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You think a co-op only has a tiny amount of democracy? I think it's the best form of workers owning the means of production - the definition of socialism.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

I believe they meant that worker cooperatives are a small, almost insignificant part of the overall economy in every country that has them. Often co-ops end up serving a small niche market because they really can't compete with the anti-competitive nature of capitalist big business.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's not what I said, my point is that co-ops make up a tiny fraction of a percentage of the economy. If they made up all of it, that would be socialism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Ah - I misunderstood. My mistake.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What is workplace democracy? Would love to finally hear some socialist philosophy from someone that isn't a goddamn Hexbear user.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they're really indoctrinated by chinese propaganda, I can't stand them, and I'm a damn communist.

Workplace democracy can work a vast number of ways, and I can't claim to have figured out what the best way of doing it is, and this is one of the most contentious areas in socialist theory, but I'll give a relatively easy to understand example:

A business running democratically, instead of having a CEO who decides everything, could have weekly meetings where everyone gets together and decides what is needed, pay structure, schedules, etc, building decisions through consensus, and then falling back to a vote if people disagree, they could also work like a modern democratic republic and have the workers elect people to various positions, and then maintain heirarchy, if the business is far too large for consensus building to work.

The way a business works currently, under capitalism, is often with a CEO at the top, who controls a group of people directly below him, and so forth, this results in bad divergent incentives, due to the keys to power problem (if you're not familiar, watch this: https://invidious.asir.dev/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs ). One such example is if i'm a walmart employee, do I give a fuck if walmart does well? No. As long as they don't go out of business, i'll be paid the same, who gives a fuck how well the business does if I'm not a partial owner and have no say?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

"and I'm a communist--"

"Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now β€œMarxists” (don’t laugh!)."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, that is exactly what hexbear does.