Democratic control over the means of production by workers

I’ve lived in a country with socialism for my entire life, and have studied the laws in my own and other countries without socialism.

I will talk about socialism as it is in Scandinavia, more specifically Denmark. Here’s a few things other than paid education and free healthcare:

• Getting paid to study: You get paid to study as soon as you turn 18. In that way you don’t need a job while you studying. Basic salary when living away from parents: 1.000 USD/month.

• UBI: In Denmark we have UBI for people being poor, basically. If you don’t have a job, is sick and can’t work, or any other reason you might be screwed, you get paid by the government to… well yeah, exist basically. You have to meet some requirements and actively trying to get better or find a job though, which seems fair I think. If the government thinks it’s not possible to get better, you can get the money permanently for the rest of your life without doing anything. (this is used for people with disabilities, both mental and physical, both born with it or obtained later in life)

• Shared heating system: This is maybe the biggest “socialism” thing I can mention. In Denmark your house or apartment can be hooked up to a country wide heating system, which means we all share the same heat. This is a way to make heat distribution centralised, which has major advantages such as; price, availability, maintenance. (Fun fact: every data center build in Denmark needs to be hooked up to this system, as they will “donate” all their excess heat from their servers to the central heating system)

• Flex jobbing: If you are no longer able to work 37 hours a week, you can be a flex worker. This basically means that you can work 15 hours a week and still get paid a full salary. The government will cover the rest of the pay and also cover some expenses for the company having the flex worker. This system is great for peoples mental health, as they still can feel a part of society even though they can’t work full time. While they still can live a worthy life because their pay is fine. It’s a win-win for the country, the companies and the people needing this.

I could go on, but I don’t want to be that guy praising my own country all the time. We Scandinavians tend to do that.

I like working and feeling like I’m helping others or working towards a larger goal without the constant ever present exploitation of myself and others.

Personal greed cannot grow to unlimited dimensions.

It’s one of the better -isms currently available.

Workers owning the means of production is the way it should be. Until we can mature further.

that it holds that social practices are created from social practice and not inherited from immutable law, enabling criticism of the underlying machinations of society without being hindered by the argument that such machinations are an inherited and instinctual product of nature and thus unalterable.

That it’s anticorporatist.

The part where the workers own the means of production.

Used to dismiss it out of hand because all the ‘socialist countries’ are complete authoritarian hellholes. But in hindsight this is a kind of thought-terminating cliche. I never really knew what the idea was apart from some vague notion about sharing or something that’s well intentioned but never works out in practice. I think most people share this belief.

Turns out the idea is pretty simple: Worker ownership and control. Places like the USSR and China fail this definition because they don’t have any of that. Therefore they are not socialist. Those countries replicate the worker/owner dynamic of Capitalism, so it is ‘State Capitalism’. And they both have the same problem: A small group of people have all the power and they fuck over everyone else.

I had to get sold on the specific idea of ‘market socialism’ / ’ workplace democracy ’ before I learned and realised this. The general idea is that if you can run a country like a democracy, you can run a business like one too. In fact, many are. So lets do that as much as possible in order to wrestle power away from the owner class who spend all of their money bribing politicians and ruining everything.

A friendly reminder that socialism is not communism. The latter is closer to capitalism as it’s just state-owned instead of privately owned. However, socialism and capitalism can coexist, which cannot be said the same about communism.

I like that the government is financially able to provide social services above and beyond anything Americans are used to. Those services are a reliable way to help out neighbors.

There’s no reason for any American to be unhoused, hungry, uneducated, or in need of healthcare. If wealth taxes were implemented, 95% of Americans wouldn’t have any more money taken from them than they already do and it would do so much for millions and millions of Americans.

A socialistic society lifts up the people that need it most and doesn’t hurt anyone in a way that they can’t cope with. And moreover, some studies estimate that helping out those poorest Americans allows them to add value to society in ways that makes up for the wealthy people and corporations getting taxed heavier.

What I like is that when there is progress, the progress is actually experienced by everybody and not just by a wider or narrower elite.

For instance, I love robotics but I can’t stand that adding robots to society results in unemployment. You can’t just let the owners scoop up all the capital gain.

I like the idea of a deliberate and rational society. Unfortunately we need to be cautious with this kind of thing and pay attention to where others have failed in the past.

reduction in suffering and increase in dignity of our whole race.

It addresses the crudeness of the hand that deals some people, rather than assume equal opportunism is automatic.