From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner Newsgroups: net.politics Title: Re: When My Life Is Not My Own - (nf) Article-I.D.: ucbcad.832 Posted: Sat Mar 12 02:02:33 1983 Received: Sun Mar 13 06:02:58 1983 #R:genradbo:-173400:ucbesvax:7100010:000:2614 ucbesvax!turner Mar 11 05:48:00 1983 I, for one, would like to know what's INTRINSICALLY sinister about the phrase "owning the means of production." A good case is made that supposedly collective ownership by those who staff the productive apparatus might lead to deprivation of others of what they have rightfully earned -- more, in fact, than happens in capitalism as it appears in the Western World. (I won't say "Free World" -- sorry.) I am opposed to State ownership of the means of production, much more so than private ownership. I don't think, however, that State ownership is necessarily equal to collective ownership. Collective ownership AND management BY the people who work in a business is a case where the objections and ambiguities in both Capitalism and Socialism (as discussed here) can be thrashed out and resolved as appropriate for each workplace. Note that I don't defend the distributive powers of such a "system" (as both sides of this Cap/Soc issue try to do.) I think self-management is, in itself, so radically distributive of power and wealth that it's already like "asking too much". I am for worker's control of enterprise AS A GOOD TENDENCY, which requires individual initiative to maintain and advance. I am not advocating State-level expropriation and intervention. This, to me, applies no less to software houses than to shop floors. As a general rule, I think that if the scale of an industry renders self-management impractical, some thought and work should be put into rendering that industry impractical. (A nuclear reactor is an industrial plant, a bureacracy, a large plot of land, and a large set of assumptions and commitments. To me, the safety issues COME OUT OF the unwieldiness of the technology -- they are not in themselves the main argument against reactors. This is not necessarily the case with a Space Program, which could be a large federation of fairly small concerns working for eventual profit, and maintaining whatever shared facilities they might not be able to individually afford.) Of course, this whole idea is untenable -- it's utopian. But so are both Scientific Socialism (with it's State-Capitalist realization) and Laissez-Faire Capitalism (with it's own State-Capitalist outcome.) There's too much binary logic here. (Socialism/Capitalism, "right"/"wrong".) Let's not throw up the usual straw men. The sterility of the thinking here doesn't befit the intelligence of the participants. None Of The Above, Michael Turner