Quote:
Originally Posted by VanishingPoi
You changed the word to power. That changes everything. It has to be democratic in nature.
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Whoever decides what is done with the surplus does so by virtue of having the power to do so. "Democratic" is in danger of becoming a glittering generality in this discussion; the devil is very much in the details.
If the workers and nobody else decides, or votes up the committee that decides, then they have all the power. But any kind of modern manufacturing requires millions for equipment. If you try to create a scheme where nothing goes back to wherever those millions came from, things get 'complicated.'
Of course, you probably want to expropriate all that owned capital. But 'power' rears it's head again. Only a revolution would give a regime the power to do that. And even assuming this can be brought off, with 'relatively little' violence, you now have the totalitarian problem. The new regime has, with violence or the threat of violence, gathered all power to itself, swept away all opposition, dispossessed the capitalists, and dictated radical economic change. I do not think any sort of democracy can exist in the presence of such concentrated power. And I'm afraid history bears me out on this. The people's revolution, to implement the economic revolution, must destroy the rights of the people. I see no way around this dilemma.
I want, by lawful means augmented perhaps by some levels of direct action, to put back the harness and collar on a runaway capitalism that has thrown them all off. But I surely fear revolution, and therefore, the radical ideas that must require it for their implementation.