Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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Hardly any socialists today would point to East Germany as an example of the kind of socialism we want. Even at the time, dissident Communists within the Soviet bloc countries, and democratic socialists everywhere, argued that the world’s choices weren’t limited to the authoritarian and economically dysfunctional system that prevailed in the East and the exploitative and wildly inegalitarian capitalism of the so-called free world.
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every time you buy a product or refrain from doing so, you’re essentially casting a vote about what should be produced. There’s some truth in this claim, but it also misses quite a bit. First and most obviously, given the massive income inequality produced by capitalist property relations, the “vote” on which consumer goods should be produced is one in which some “voters” get many times as many votes as others
✏️ The quick way to deflect the argument that everyone votes with their wallet. Income inequality guarantees a handful of people have infinitely more “voting” power than the rest of the global population. 🔗 View Highlight
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decisions about both what to produce — and which products to import from abroad — were made by a few state officials. Beyond being objectionably undemocratic, it was wildly inefficient. This wasn’t the only reason for the understocked shelves at Soviet-bloc grocery stores — geopolitical clashes with the West often played a role — but it was a major part of the problem.
✏️ One of the key problems of the east germany type of “socialism”… power of choice was still in hands of the few. 🔗 View Highlight
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conclude that even after we abolish capitalist labor markets through social ownership of the means of production, we’ll still need a market for consumer goods. Concretely, this could mean that the “commanding heights” of the economy (like energy and banking) are taken under the umbrella of state planning, as well as sectors like health care and education in which market-less state planning has already been successfully beta-tested even in many capitalist countries — but goods like bananas are produced by private or semiprivate worker-owned firms. “Voting” with price signals about which such goods should be made might not be so bad given an at least relatively much more even distribution of “votes.”
✏️ Aligns with what I generally think. Key utilities have to be state-owned and managed, but goods and services can be market-based. The difference here is ensuring that the “voting” power of each person is equal (i.e. no income/wealth inequality). Also, the state still has to be beholden to the people. 🔗 View Highlight