Capitalism's Fatal Flaw, and the Way Forward: Real Socialism Means 3 New Forms of Property for Each Citizen.

Real Socialism Means 3 New Forms of Property for Each Citizen, NOT even deeper proletarian “property-less-ness’.

Dear Readers,

The old capitalist-ideological bug-a-boo to the effect that socialism or communism means the absolute abolition of all property, including the abolition of personal property -- i.e., “sharing your toothbrush” -- may have had some foundation in the practices of early Maoist-Stalinist state-capitalism, masquerading as its most extreme opposite, real socialism.

But this malarkey has absolutely no foundation in the “scientific socialism” articulated by Marx and Engels.

Engels in particular, in “Anti-Duhring”, emphasized the opposition of state-capitalism and real socialism.

Even if this “abolition” is confined to “the abolition of private property”, with “private property” defined as capital, especially in the form of “property in the means of [social re]production”, this concept belongs to the violent, coercive, and dictatorial regimes of especially Stalinist state-capitalism, not to real socialism.

In the Stalinist species of “semi-peripheral” national state-capitalism, a Stalinist, neo-Jacobinoid, putschist “Communist” Party, may achieve a coup d’état, against the state power of a weak, backward, comprador national private-capitalist ruling class, which, typically, has been emasculated by the imperialism, and by the military interventionism, of foreign capital, wielded by the strong private-capitalist classes of the original capitalist core nation-states.

A successful such coup may then allow that Stalinist Party to form a dictatorial “One-Party State”.

This “One Party” then becomes the nucleus around which a new, state-bureaucratic, state-capitalist, totalitarian ruling class may form.

The “abolition of private property in the means of production” simply means that this new Stalinist, state-bureaucratic, state-capitalist ruling class uses the violent, coercive apparatus of the state to expropriate the private capitalist class, transferring by this thievery the property of that comprador bourgeoisie to the new ruling class, including by means of legislation outlawing private capital.

The new, state-bureaucratic ruling class does this, NOT to “free the proletariat”, but, precisely to secure its own monopoly on all capital, its collective ownership of the means of production, over against the wage-working class, now viciously exploited by this state-bureaucratic ruling class itself, in place of their former exploitation by their former private-capitalist national ruling class, the one that this new, state-capitalist ruling class has “liquidated”, and also in place of the workers’ former exploitation by the imperialist international capitalists, whom the new ruling class expels, e.g., by military force.

All of these ‘abolishmental’ terms and phrases mis-translate variants of the Marxian, dialectical term «aufheben» -- raised up out of colloquial German by Hegel, to champion the very opposite of “abstract negation” -- to the word “abolition”, a word which does not even preserve the ‘dialectical, determinate negation’ moment of the meaning of the core-dialectical term «aufheben», but which connotes, precisely, absolute “abstract negation”, suppressing entirely the other moments of the meaning of “«aufheben»” -- “elevation” and “conservation”.

What the construction of real socialism requires is the ‘«aufheben»-ation’ of private-capitalist property -- in actual, daily human social praxis, and in the actual, organically-arising social relations of production -- and NOT the “abstract negation” abolition of private-capitalist property, which, in actuality, only gets you to state-property, to wage-slavery on behalf of the state-bureaucratic ruling class, to the misery of the liberty-less “life” of the totalitarian police state which the state-bureaucratic ruling class sets up to protect its political-only claims to power -- i.e., to still-capitalist, state-capitalist property.

This mis-translation has well-served the interests of both the Stalinist state-capitalist, state-bureaucratic ruling classes, and the capitalist core ruling classes, themselves also verging toward a different -- “Fascist” -- species of totalitarian state-capitalism, in the ‘antagonist cooperation’ between these two pseudo-opposites.

This mis-translation has cripplingly ‘dis-served’ the interests of the majority of humanity, the working classes, for it has formed part of the still largely successful ideological attempt to ideologically blind that majority to the real alternative to the vicious, totalitarian, ‘humanocidal’ end-state to which all forms of national capitalism “lawfully” converge.

They all “lawfully” converge to Orwellian, Malthusian, ‘‘‘Eugenocidal’’’ -- ‘humanocidal’ -- state-capitalism.

The alternative to that horrific demise of humanity is ‘Grass-Roots, Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’.

As Marx made clear in volume 3 of his Capital, the seeds of real socialism, emerging within modern capitalism, are to be found in two transitional, ‘intra-dual’, “self-contradictory” forms --

(1) the joint-stock company principle of “capital-equity” -- of economic democracy for capitalists only, in the form of capital stock shares-based voting; ‘shareholders’ democracy’ -- however much that principle may be honored mainly in the breach in today’s hyper-corrupt, degenerated core capitalism;

(2) workers-owned industrial producers’ cooperatives -- ‘workers’ capital’; ‘workers’ capitalism’.

The new, core ‘social relation of production’ that is to form the social basis of real socialism cannot be imposed by legislation, by state decree, and by the violent, coercive ‘expropriatory activity’ of the national state-bureaucracy, and its police-state police, in favor of its own monopoly ownership of society’s property.

That way leads only to the Orwellian nightmare of end-stage state-capitalism.

As Marx makes clear, at the end of the penultimate chapter of volume I of his Capital, real socialism is founded upon -- not the absolute, “abstract negation” of all property, but on the formation of a new kind of workers’ property, of property for the producing majority, the former wage-labor “proletariat” -- “individual property”, in the context of a kind of ‘‘‘social property’’’ that is NOT state-property.

[Marx]: “The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property.”

“This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor.”

“But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own [F.E.D.: «aufheben»] negation.”

“It is the negation of the negation.”

[F.E.D.: i.e., it is the ‘[re-]«aufheben»-ation of the [earlier] «aufheben»-ation’.].

“This does not re-establish private property of the producer [F.E.D.: i.e., the dialectical process is not the “Flatland”, gain-less, viciously-circular process of formal logic -- P = ~~P -- but is ‘gain-ful’, and better ‘metaphorized’ by an upward-opening helical course of development], but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.” [Capital, volume I., New World, p. 763].

In our, Seldonian, view, this real socialist, new-social-relation-of-production-expressing “individual property” involves three new species of “grass-roots”, non-capital equity property, owned by each citizen, as such, as a matter of fundamental human right [at the capitalistically attained, and then capitalistically regressed, and socialistically, ‘renewedly’-growing level of the social forces of production].

These newly-recognized fundamental human rights CAN be established constitutionally, within the rule-of-law of capitalist nation-states, in each national “Bill of Rights”.

This can only be achieved as the fruition of a sufficiently-majoritarian, non-violent, law-abiding movement, within national-majority working classes, reflecting an inter-national non-violent, rule-of-law-compliant movement of those working-classes, without requiring any juridical “abolition” of capital, but creating a new social-relations-of-production context in which the capital-social-relation-of-production is likely to increasingly “wither-away” --

1. Citizen Externality Equity -- A grass-roots, local, collective property human right regarding the pollution, etc., “externalities” produced by remaining private capitalist and by socialized producers’-cooperative enterprises. This right is exercised by each citizen-resident of each locality, by voting their equal “share” in the ‘externality-equity property’ of that locale, in elections of ‘Public Directors’, to ‘Boards of Public Directors’ operating inside each externality-producing, e.g., polluting, enterprise, checking and balancing, by negotiation with each such enterprise’s local management committee, regarding the ‘externalities budget’ in the Annual Operating Plans of that enterprise, with recourse to a popularly-elected [and popularly recallable] ‘Tribunal for Externality Equity’ in the event of deadlock in those negotiations. Enterprises would no longer be allowed to commit ‘mass murder by pollution’ for profit. This new property right is individual property in the context of a collective property solution to the “market failures” of capitalism.

2. Citizen Birthright Equity -- Every citizen, regardless of the “side of the tracks” upon which they were born, is granted, from birth, as a fundamental human right of birth, a personal ‘socialized trust fund’. This fund would be their personal property, but would have legal constraints on its expenditure in light of its provision, to each individual, from the resources of the whole society. This fundamental human right is designed to provide a unified, ultra-portable social safety net to each individual, plus access to the basic opportunities of human life -- medical care, education, home purchase, unemployment insurance, etc. -- regardless of that individual’s family connections or income level. It constitutes a form of ‘societal self-investment’, and gives society a stake in each individual citizen, and each individual citizen “skin in the game”, a stake in society, something gained from their society, and also something to lose in the event of victimizing, criminal, anti-social conduct by that individual. That is, courts, by law, order portions of, up to all of, a jury-convicted criminal’s ‘socialized trust funds’ to go in reparation for damages to the victim(s) of jury-declared crimes by that individual, so that the crime-committing individual forfeits part or all of their former individual property in the assigned ‘socialized trust fund’, and is left, e.g., after incarceration, to fall back upon a more meager general social welfare safety net.

3. Citizen Stewardship Equity -- The property-right, and fundamental human right, of business-plan-qualifying collectives of citizen’s to self-organize socialized, mutually-competing producers’ cooperatives, competing also against remaining capitalist firms in their field; co-ops internally managed democratically, e.g., by votings, to elect -- and to recall, if needed -- the cooperative’s management board, and/or its individual managers, etc., by the majority of the members of that collective enterprise, or “association of producers”. Qualifying collectives are granted stewardship [not local ownership] of means of production, from out of the stock of Social Property, according to their Social-Bank-qualified business plan -- qualified by a Citizen-Stewardship-Equity, democratically self-managed ‘Social Bank cooperative’, itself competing against other ‘Social Bank cooperatives’, and against remaining-capitalist financing sources. Each citizen-member of each such cooperative personally owns an “individual property” of membership rights in that socialized producers’ cooperative, which cannot be removed from that member without due process of law. This “individual property” entitles each member to two streams of personal income by virtue of their membership -- to an equal share in the net operating surplus of their co-op, as well as to compensation for the work that they contribute thereto, in accord with their skill-level, performance, etc.

For more information regarding, and for [further] instantiations of, these Seldonian insights, please see --

www.dialectics.info