3 ms·
Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than USSR which basically had everything state owned.
by thriftwy 5y ago
Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than USSR which basically had everything state owned.
- beaconstudios 5y agoI know this was a snarky comment, but I have to point out - you know pensioners don't work, right?
- thriftwy 5y agoYou know that people invest in their pensions long before they get to stop working, right? At least how it worked in mid-to-late XX century.
- beaconstudios 5y agoOK I'll give you that one - my counter-snark was not well thought out. However, I assume you realise that pension funds do not constitute a worker-controlled economy.
- germandiago 5y agoIn my country the pensions are a poncy system. I will not participate of that as much as possible. I will not even ask for it. I am saving myself.
- int_19h 5y agoYou're joking, but it's actually correct. Insofar as USA is far more democratic and has legal trade unions, the ability of the workers to control the means of production is greater than in the USSR. When Marx came up with his "modes of production", one of those was what he called the "Asiatic mode of production" (because it was ostensibly widespread in Asia). The idea is that it's basically a society where all property is collectively owned by the ruling class, which uses violence or threat thereof to directly extract surplus from the rest of the population. Whether this accurately describes any historical society in Asia or elsewhere is debatable, but it does seem to very accurately describe the USSR. Which is probably why Stalin personally cracked down on that definition, and had it purged from the Soviet interpretation of Marxism.