Is it possible to be a genuine socialist and a capitalist entrepreneur?

[David__77]

Does extraction of surplus labor from one's employees automatically make one an exploiter or class enemy? What if the surplus is used to grow the firm? By socialism I mean that the operative principle for distribution would be "from each according to ability, to each according to work," as outlined in the Manifesto. There is uneven distribution in the firm because those contributions of labor are highly variable, but considerably less than with some similar entities. No one is "above" any task, and the working relations are aimed at making all feel as owners (along with everyone else) of their workplace and work.

This is my management philosophy, anchored in socialist ideology and political discipline.You cannot have an efficient enterprise if people are alienated from their work, if they feel it does not culturally develop them.

People have been terminated. Not due to financial necessity, and not even due to low levels of productivity. Rather, they were terminated for being obstructive to the strategic plans of the firm, for deliberately attempting to reduce morale divert people from their course.

I think capitalist entities can go far to learn from socialist management philosophy in order to fully liberate the economic potential of their businesses. It would take a firm ownership person/group that was committed to long-term strategic development rather than merely "taking income" in the short run.

Progressive business persons would ideally reinvest a high portion of their [income + profit] rather than consume it.

Nonsense, perhaps. Random thoughts...

[tama]

1. That question arises

from the premiss of atomized individual and identity politics.

Socialism, especially if seen as path to classless society, emphasizes social roles in various social structures and situations instead of fixed personal identities. When a stockholder owns a stock (even if by association in a Pension Fund) that is stucturally a relation of capitalistic exploitation.

Ideological identity as socialist working class should also not be idealized and individually fixed, as it is also product of capitalistic class society like all other class identities, and it can grow into major obstacle against liberation from wage slavery, which is what Marxism is about, not demanding more jobs from capitalistic "job creators".

Often it seems the be that the hardest and most difficult issue to understand about socialism is socialist internationalism. As long as a production entity (regardless of being coop, ltd, corporation, state owned, what ever form) competes in capitalistic market it works according to capitalistic structures and logic and so do workers. Modern succesful corporations are masters of supporting and using social capital inside the corporation just to compete more efficiently against other corporations and people working elsewhere. They don't want just your physical labor and fixed amount of time. They want also your soul.

[Starry Messenger]

2. Is this entrepreneur really involved in capitalist relations if the owners are working in the firm

and profits are going back into the business? A group that was committed to long-term development rather than merely taking income wouldn't be capitalist in the Marxist sense, as far as I can tell, except that it will be subject to the vagaries of a capitalist system.

Engels' family had a factory and he was a genuine socialist. As far as the individual being, I guess it depends on the class consciousness of the person. Owen, earlier, ran his factory along utopian socialist lines: http://www.newlanark.org/

[socialist_n_TN]

3. Engels is the one I thought about when I first read......

David's post too.

My take on this is pretty simple (or simplistic? . Until the revolution, we've all got to work within the capitalist system. Most of us will work as employees, but as you said, if you're an owner and making a principle contribution every day to the business, putting the profits back into the business, AND treating your employees correctly, then you're not an EXPLOITING owner anyway.

The people on the left who put down people who actually work for a living as "cooperating with the system" irritate me almost as much as the ones on the right hollering "Get a job, hippie!" As I said, until the revolution we're ALL (or most of us anyway) going to be subject to capitalism.

[Starry Messenger]

6. That irritates me too!

It's like blaming people for their own oppression. It seems like inverted right-wing thinking to say that you are "cooperating" because you work. It seems to say that all the burden is on the individual to somehow gum up the works of capitalism. It would be nice to live as though capitalism doesn't exist and you could make it go away by not working, but most of us don't have that luxury.

[BOG PERSON]

8. i have to agree

that's some Be-the-Change-You-Wish-to-See bullshit . blame liberalism.

[socialist_n_TN]

12. Well, in a sense you can make capitalism go away by not working.........

In a sense. That's the idea behind a prolonged general strike after all. But what these people don't get is that has to be an organized endeavor, not just random acts. Random acts don't do anything to bring down the system particularly when very few others are participating in those random acts. It has to be massive and organized. Until we reach that point, it doesn't do any good to rail against working people just because they work.

[joshcryer]

10. There's a distinction between being subject to capitalism and willfully being a capitalist, imo.

Last edited Sat Sep 29, 2012, 05:05 PM - Edit history (1)

This is not to say that you can't unhypocritically be an owner and call yourself a socialist, it's just that you must make the distinction beforehand. "I am a capitalist currently but I believe in socialist ideology and my capitalism is merely a pragmatic approach to the issue."

There's nothing wrong with that inherently, you do what you have to do. I do think that ultimately it won't help you achieve socialism because you remain working within the system of exploitation and no matter how hard you try, if you're not giving the employees the full product of their labor, it only perpetuates the system as it is (after all we're talking about "improving the business"; so they likely are not getting the full product of their labor).

This approach reminds me of how Wal-Mart made such a massive expansion across the United States (at one point one Wal-Mart was being build every few days). Wal-Mart was certainly putting all the profits back into the business (they couldn't otherwise have build so many Wal-Mart's so quickly).

Wal-Mart from my point of view is a perfect example of a hierarchical socialist methodology where profits go back into the company. Their profit margin is a mere 3% (compared to Apple's 25% profit margin).

[Odin2005]

19. I think co-ops need to be incouraged.

The great Mondragon co-op in the Basque Country is a good example of a VERY successful co-op, run on Syndicalist principles.

[David__77]

4. Does the consciousness matter?

Some nominal socialists suppose that the appropriation of surplus value (the value above that required for subsistence and reproduction of labor), by anyone and for any purpose, is "exploitation." This always seemed to imply to me that anything other than consumption of total output would necessarily be considered exploitative by these types. This would preclude true economic development, which requires reproducing the means of production.

In any event, I would suppose that Karl Marx was a great socialist revolutionary, and a great capitalist revolutionary as well. If the manager is the nominal owner of the means of production, that is not socialism, even in the conditions of that manager considering long-term development over short-term profit. Socialism would be, to me, the conditions under which the contradiction between private appropriation and social development has become so clear, that it is simply dispensed with having already become purely nominal.

[Starry Messenger]

7. Well, I'm hopped up on cold medicine this week so this will probably ramble--

but I'll try to take a whack at this. A couple of different things going on--I guess to me, a "socialist" is not just a label, but an activist position. Anyone can call themselves a socialist, but we can look at what that person is doing politically to help build socialism and to materially undermine capitalism if they are in a position to do this in a capitalist society.

If the person isn't an owner of a capitalist enterprise that is a monopoly that has appropriated a public good into private (his own) hands, hasn't "gone IPO", isn't anti-union, doesn't super-exploit the employees for super-profits, isn't manipulating the machinery of state to expand his gains, etc.--then he's pretty small fry as far as capitalism goes.

He's a small business owner, perhaps petty boug, but working along with his employees and not interested just in profits for the sake of profits. His consciousness matters, because it's a product of the social relations he has working with his employees in his business. It's unlikely that this guy is going to be a Sam Walton or a Hearst--the surplus value from his employees is going into long-term development, not into his pocket or that of shareholders to which he's beholden.

The Marxist capitalist is the pure owner, the boss who just profits solely from the labor of his employees and seeks to expand profit by cutting deeply into labor as much as possible from their labor time for wealth. I'm not an expert, but that's my understanding. There might well be "socialists" who say that any wage labor is exploitation, but I'm not one of them. Socialism, would be to me, a society where the profits of labor are being directed by the workers entirely, in their own state.

The private appropriation, and the conditions that lead to it, would be taken away under socialism--but I think private appropriation would be clearly defined as mostly the appropriation of the "commanding heights" or any large scale monopoly. I don't think any modern iterations of socialism would strictly do away with small business, as long as it is properly regulated. A popsicle stand or a book store, etc. doesn't really provide the scope to be a Hearst, especially in a socialist society.

If this small business owner is functioning in a capitalist society, there isn't any reason this person couldn't function politically as a socialist. I guess it would depend on how he treated his employees and what he's doing politically to help further socialism.

[socialist_n_TN]

11. I would think that consciousness matters, at least to a point.........

It would matter in that, IF you took a socialist or communist philosophical position, you would be more likely to put into practice socialistic methods of interaction with employees. Probably even to the point where, when the business has made enough money to pocket some profit rather than putting it directly back into the business, you would turn it into a co-op type of situation and bring the other employees into the ownership. You could also use your excess profits to fund and build OTHER socialist projects, whether economic or political. HOW you use whatever excess value would depend on your consciousness.

[David__77]

13. That makes sense.

Insofar as the subjective factor spurs concrete action, I see the point very much. In that sense, one needn't be a "conscious socialist" to affect objectively socialist relations (again, to the extent possible at the micro level). And, yes, turning employees into stakeholders, either through actual equity or through some other means, would be critical, although I don't think that centralism should be dispensed with in favor of pure democracy or rule by consensus. There's a dialectical relationship between democracy and centralism.

[HiPointDem]

14. Was he though? He became partner in his father's firm, retired fairly young, & lived off the profit

in a fancy neighborhood of london (Primrose hill) until his death while marx & his family were living in tenements. yes, he helped finance marx & the movement etc. but i'm not sure it's possible to be rich & also be a 'genuine' socialist in a capitalist economy. there is some kind of disconnect there for me. genuine socialists, to my mind, don't live off other people's labor, no matter what good works they do with the profits.

not dissing engels, as the alternative in a capitalist economy is to render oneself impotent, just saying. maybe it's just semantics.

[Starry Messenger]

15. Devil's advocate here-

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 01:38 PM - Edit history (1)

there are plenty of members of the working class who are thorough-going reactionaries and will never be socialists even though they are exploited by capitalists.

Granted, it is rare for a member of the capitalist ruling class to side with the workers, but I think Engels' contributions to the world body of socialist thought put him in the friendly column.

[HiPointDem]

16. yeah, i get it. i just feel some contradiction, but it is probably one of those unresolved

contradictions of capitalism.

[limpyhobbler]

5. kind of sort of.

We all have to operate in the system where we live. Thomas Jefferson believed all men were created equal but he still owned a bunch of slaves. But in his role as a slave master he tried to excercise his benevolent wisdom for the best of all, including his slaves. It might seem the height of hypocrisy today, but in his own time he was actually remarkably forward thinking.

I'm not saying exploiting wage labor is exactly the same as exploiting slave labor. But there is some similarity.

Unless there is some workplace democracy regarding what to do with the surplus, I wouldn't call it socialism, but it could still be a good job and a nice place to work. And the owners could still think of themselves as socialists in a political sense.

Similarly, I think it's wrong to eat animals but I still eat bacon cheeseburgers. I'm a vegetarian in principal, but not in practice. But I try to use a little wisdom in my meat purchases by supporting smaller farms, cage free animals, and stuff like that, when possible.

[joshcryer]

9. Can you be a landlord and consider yourself a socialist?

I do not think you can.

Likewise, I do not think that it is possible for a firm to lastingly provide work for individuals without power concentrating within the management itself and within the leaders or owners. No one is so pure.

I do think that capitalist entities (specifically large corporations) already do employ a hierarchical socialist model.

[David__77]

17. You make a good point.

Of course I was referring to what nominal anti-authoritarians would call "hierarchical socialism." And the worse perversions (or some would say examples) of that socialism would be in the Communist Party of China today, in which theorists opine that the Western joint stock corporation already has the seeds of socialism and will lay the foundation for the peaceful evolution toward socialism in the West. When I first read these theories, I believed them to be purely cynical and contrived, but I don't think so any more.

The "hierarchical" socialists might believe that power would devolve from managers as the distinction between mental and manual labor is transcended, alienation from work eliminated, and people's creative powers truly unleashed. There's been far too much faith put in the inevitability of such things by such socialists.

Aside from that, I consider the broader question: if one wants a socialist society in which labor is free (not alienated), and "from each according to ability, to each according to need" is a reality, how should one lives one's life presently? If one cannot be an entrepreneur, must one be a member of an "alternative community?"

[Odin2005]

20. I always tell people that multinational corps are Stalinist oligarchies...

...with planned economies. It throws the Right-Libertarians for a loop.

[Odin2005]

18. Didn't Engels own cloth factories in the UK?