Socialism without state intervention by a trust.

OK I think I may have mentioned before on this site that I am a great fan of utopias indded all nineteenth century speculative literature. It is often very refreshing and optimistic compared to the cynical depression inducing stuff we get today. Now in these books there is an idea I have come across more than once and have never even heard mentioned outside of them.

Basicly in the first decade of the twentieth century (back when an American could still be a respectable socialist) there was some frustration among some American Socialists at the slowness at which goverments seemed to be implementing anything like socialist policies but unwillingness to contemplate revolution. So the idea they suggest instead is that a trust should be set up to run businesses on cooperative lines. This trust should then attempt to aquire larger and larger sections of the economy buying up businesses and land etc. Once it has aquired a decent amount of property (starting from donations from sympathetic rich and the money made from the publication of the book that put forth the idea) it should attempt to entirely take over areas by the people boycotting other businesses. Thus this trust should gradually but completely take over the entire American economy by the people refusing to buy from anyone else and going on strike for other companies. Once this trust owns all of America it should use its wealth to set up hospitals, schools etc and run the economy on a cooperative basis.

Now when I first read this idea it struck me as spectacularly unlikely to succeed. Not to mention the enourmess amount of public support such an enteprise would require would probably make it a lot simpler simply to get elected and take power by the goverment. The trust that was set up to accomplish this sank without a trace But it did fascinate me in that at the end of the process one would have the goverment and the economy entirely seperate and yet a centralised socialist economy. So you brainy people hereI challenge you to findany way under any circumstances that this plan could succeed.
Edit What an awfull title I gave this thread.
 
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sounds kind of similar to the plot of edward bellamy's 2000: Looking Backward. In that story, a bununch of monopolies combine into one giant conglomeration that reorganizes the economy into "industrial armies" and a qausi socialist utopia is built over the course of the 20th century
 
sounds kind of similar to the plot of edward bellamy's 2000: Looking Backward. In that story, a bununch of monopolies combine into one giant conglomeration that reorganizes the economy into "industrial armies" and a qausi socialist utopia is built over the course of the 20th century
Not quite. In looking backward the buch of monopolies had no intention of uniting or of setting up utopia but their tyranical rule an threat of revolution prompted the goverment to do it. In this case the trust is deliberately seizing control of the economy to create the utopia.
 
The largest network of Australian superannuation funds are managed in Trust by unions and employers. Retail and small-producer cooperatives have often been market dominant.

The largest problems is that cooperatives where the value form still plays a major role in management are just, yet another, capitalist system of management.

Hell, if you remove the Bolshevik Party's influence from the economy of the Soviet Union—and it wasn't universally predominant, relying largely on management and worker consent—the Soviet Union appears as a system of capitalist trusts.

yours,
Sam R.
 
The largest problem is that cooperatives where the value form still plays a major role in management are just, yet another, capitalist system of management
Maybe it wouldn't be desirable but is it possible?

Well I was at a conference the other week and heard about some Italian cooperatives within capitalism where there's sufficient power on the side of the workers, and social-reinvestment of profit is mandated, that value plays a limited role in management.

Similarly regarding a Spanish cooperative.

The key "post-value" cooperatives are usually the working class in revolution, Spain and Catalonia in 1936 and some of 1937, Moscow and Petrograd in 1917/1918, Budapest for about eight weeks in 1956.

Production has this relationship with distribution and exchange; if you look at average rates of profit (consider the cash rate on loans as a proxy); this forces cooperatives within capitalism to deal with the issue of value, and thus to boss labour as labour power.

yours,
Sam R.
 
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