this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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There is actually not much separating capitalism and socialism other than workers being in control of the means of production.
Socialism doesn't have anything against markets. Socialism doesn't have anything against organizational structures. What it does have issue with is workers not having any democratic say in how their workplaces operate and who they choose to do business with.
That's the thing, not a lot would have to change, other than putting legal protections and norms in place for workplace elections and so on.
There is nothing preventing anyone from starting a worker-owned collective. The fact that they don’t, while having the freedom to do so, indicates that the typical arrangement of wage labor is consensual. It’s what people choose.
If socialism requires an arrangement other than the one they would freely choose, then socialism requires a non-free market where people are forced into economic arrangements they wouldn’t freely choose.
So socialist may not in principle have anything against markets, but the fact that the implementation of socialism requires curtailing markets means it does have something against markets in practice.
It's actually that most people simply don't have the capital to do so while entrenched capitalist interests do. But I guess maybe you're conveniently ignoring that wildly imbalanced scale to be able to say it's consenual. Most people are only born with their labor to sell while the capitalist class hands off their wealth to their progeny, who can live without labor, and thus do things like start a business without fear of failure. More than half of new businesses fail within 10 years. For someone without oodles of capital to fall back on, that kind of failure can be financially devastating, which makes them less likely to choose to run their own business, because the risk is far higher. The risk to the nepo-baby is negligible, because they have capital to fall back on, so they are more likely to start their own business. This is obviously an unbalanced situation so calling it "consensual" is frankly bullshit. Also it ignores the coercive nature of the risk of homelessness if your business fails badly, once again something the capital-having nepo-baby doesn't have to fear or risk.
Like, it's generally considered at this point that Monica Lewinsky didn't have consensual sex with Bill Clinton simply because the power relations were wildly off. He was the President of the United States of America at it's absolute zenith in history, while she was a random 20-something intern with no connections or power in the situation.
Nice try, tho.
It's really not that hard to start a small business. There's no grand shadowy conspiracy against your idea. If it was a superior method, it would see more widespread success. Bluntly forcing one business structure and removing freedoms when there are far less drastic tools is a big ask.