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