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Professor Richard Wolff: Socialism and Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises
Socialism and Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises
by Richard D. Wolff
Global capitalism has huge problems coping with the second worst collapse in its history. Its extreme and deepening inequalities have provoked millions to question and challenge capitalism. Yet socialists of all sorts now find it more difficult than ever to make effective criticisms and offer alternatives that inspire.
Part of the problem lies with classic socialism as it evolved over the last 150 years. Positions and strategies that once mobilized the victims and critics of capitalism are no longer, by themselves, effective. Not only has capitalism changed, but its celebrants also developed powerful critiques of socialist theory and especially of actually existing socialisms such as the Soviet Union (USSR). Socialism has not responded well to capitalisms changes nor to its critiques; it has not made the necessary strategic and tactical shifts. Nonetheless, socialism retains the means to overcome its problems with some long-overdue self-criticism and innovation.
By classic socialism I mean the tradition that differentiated itself from capitalism chiefly in terms of macro-economic institutions. Classic socialists defined capitalism as (1) private ownership of means of production and (2) distribution of resources and products by means of market exchanges. The socialist alternative entailed (1) socialized or public ownership of means of production (operated by the state as agent of the people as a whole) and (2) distribution of resources and products via state planning. Socialists attacked capitalism for the injustices, cyclical instability, and gross productive inefficiencies (e.g. unemployment, stagnation, etc.) that they traced to private enterprises and markets. In the socialists alternative, a workers state would control or own enterprises and plan the distribution of resources and products in the democratically determined interests of the majority.
Such criticisms of capitalism and that transitional program to an alternative system rewarded socialists in their political, economic, and cultural work. Socialist movements spread across the countries of the world during the nineteenth and to the last third of the twentieth century. Socialists effectively challenged capitalism, often took and held political power, and influenced many academics, intellectuals, popular organizations, artistic projects, and so on. But now socialisms growth in many places has stalled or reversed. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/wolff140914.html
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Professor Richard Wolff: Socialism and Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises (Original Post)
marmar
Sep 2014
OP
I believe everything I've ever read by Professor Richard Wolff has changed my...
BlueJazz
Sep 2014
#2
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)1. signature worthy quote
Positions and strategies that once mobilized the victims and critics of capitalism are no longer, by themselves, effective. Not only has capitalism changed, but its celebrants also developed powerful critiques of socialist theory and especially of actually existing socialisms such as the Soviet Union (USSR).
Socialism has not responded well to capitalisms changes nor to its critiques; it has not made the necessary strategic and tactical shifts. Nonetheless, socialism retains the means to overcome its problems with some long-overdue self-criticism and innovation.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)2. I believe everything I've ever read by Professor Richard Wolff has changed my...
...life for the better. He says things that I've always felt but says them more deep and cerebral.