Collectivization in no way implies a collectivization of the primary capital good, but the collectivization of the aggregate social capital [fixed, flow, however one wishes to choose to define the means or production]. This in no way predicts a lack of self-ownership as you imply here - de facto or otherwise. I discuss the necessary product of collectivization below, though.
It does indeed. There are several ways of showing this, one in particular: In pure barter society in order to collectivize there would have to individual/oligarchal control over the labor of all citizens. The shoe maker would only produce on demand, the florist, the cattle rancher, etc. The ability of a person to produce on their own and for their own ends is eliminated; they may only produce for the collective at its request.
In a modern economy when you strip away the viel of money all goods and services are still paid for with other goods and services. The slavery is no less real. Capital to the extent is exists merely represents foregone purchases which is what most socialists don't get. The only reason we have a capital structure is because people decided
not to buy stuff but to save and extend the structure of production. As such the existence of a structure of capital is no less the result of demand than the existence on consumer goods. Both are dictated from the bottom up. Socialism tries to put a top down approach on directly production. This is necessarily at odds with the very nature of production.
Semantics aside, there is no way to accomplish socialization without a claim of ownership over all laborers that supercedes their self ownership. If I own myself it follows I may do with myself that which I wish with myself and my own resources. Whatever
reasoning is given to justify a curtailment of this freedom, it must rest on the basis of a claim of ownership. And even if no overt act towards enslavementis taken, I may just as easily be de facto enslaved by taking overt actions to limit my opportunities.
One can dress it up with fancy sociological/economical jargon and say "social contract" this or "implied consent" that. It's a lot of logical and linguistic gymnastics to obscure a basic, obvious truth: to the extent the state or any other organization claims authority over you, they claim
ownership over you. To follow your analogy in a simple example, to the extent the state tells me what I can and cannot ingest, they claim ownership over me. If I owned myself the end judgement is clear: I should be able to ingest whatever the hell I please.
To some of your other points and to avoid excessive quoting: macro and micro were seperable, they are not. Just like distribution flows from production, macro flows from micro. It is true one can voluntarily subvert one's own will to another, but the key point is socialism is not voluntary even if aspects of volunteerism are on display. The voluntary system of capitalism extends upward in structure from the vountary individual exchange. In socialism at some point this exchange becomes forced and the effects of this travel up and down the structure of production. Opportunies to trade are more less than they were before, putting some people at an advantage and others at a loss compared to where they would otherwise be.
What I know of Mandel, which is pretty little, is that it's just more "Third Way" stuff. Democracy doesn't deal with the basic problem of socialism and communism: calculation. It's not a matter of efficiency, it's a matter of a complete lack of economy. That got very clouded in the debates especially when Hayek gave his spin on things. What results when you eliminate the price system is a complete beak down of economizing activity, not just a loss of efficiency.
Bureaucratic oligarchies have characterized "actually existing socialism" thus far, this is correct; however, as I say, interpreting the collectivization of the means or production as slavery is a misinterpretation of both terms. Slavery as a concept defines three things that a pure socialist system does not: an exclusively controlled distribution of return to only one party in the productive relationship;
Incorrect: slaves must live. As such some of their product always does return to them in the form of basic wages or payment in kind: barely adequate housing and food. And while the condition is deplorable, there were so called 'good' masters who shared even more with their slaves. Some of them lived quite good, learned to read, ate well, kept their families together, etc. But in the end they live no less at the beck and call of their masters than any collectivized labor. The slave masters could have been clever like socialists, and paid their slaves, but severely restricted the use of the plows, the live stock, etc., and 'taxed' their wages into nonexistence 'for their own good' to pay for their medical care and education, etc. They would be no less slaves.
a unilateral ownership and control of the means of production,
Socialism
is the ownership of the means of production.
as we have discussed, proxy ownership of the labor good itself via coercion. No such elements exist in a socialist system.
Yes they do, they're just hidden in jargon and sociological newspeak.
Further, oligarchy immediately implies an absence of democratic representation.
No it doesn't. Oligarchs may be elected. To the extent pure democracy is impractical, it implies oligarchy.
-
Production and distribution are not seperate things, the latter flows from the former. Especially in this example you show, the collective owns the hat making machine and there is by default no price system in place for such machines. So, how do we determine how many hats are made, and of what quality, and of what material? What is the replacement cost of the machine? How much time/effort should we spend maintaining it? What is its contribution to the production process? All of these things are impossible to determine once you sever the connection between demand and production. How do we stop capital from flowing into making too many hats, or too many hat making machines, or determine if not enough is flowing? The only way to do this is through the price system which socialism can only ape, but never generate. Only the price system generates the cardinal numbers that allow a truly objective cost benefit analysis.
In each system, the laborer is free to use his labor-power in the manner he so chooses: in Capitalism, he must adhere to the goals of production which are negotiated and maintained on a firm-by-firm basis; in Socialism, the goals of production are maintained centrally.
And this is impossible to do centrally. That's the problem. Demand is by nature
decentralized and impossible to aggregate. Many people want shoes, but not everyone wants the same shoe of the same quality of the same color of the same material at the same price at the same time and, most importantly, at the foregoance of another possible purchase of something entirely different at that given time. The spacial and temporal structure of capital develops over time and changes as time goes on in direct response to demand; it is always following one step behind. It is impossible to scientifically predict those changes and adjust production schedules accordingly. The only thing that allows this type of activity to be organized is a price system.
A price system is a social phenomena. It is at once the result of the actions of all market participants but also beyond any one or group of them to encompass. It embodies each participant's judgement about the past, current, and future market conditions. But here is where the mistake is made by socialists. While the price system embodies a judgement about the future, it contains no
information about the future. That would be impossible. Once the system of voluntary exchange is stopped at any level of production, what remains is a forever receding picture of where the market
was, to which planners can only refer to less and less reliably as a guide to where it in fact was
going.
Central planning does not suggest "one worker, one job", however. So, if we assume the de-facto slavery-esque quality to Socialism that you claim, the same process exists in Capitalism just, as I said, in differing degrees of central organization.
No again, and here the critical issue is how production is decided. In a capitalist system the opportunities for production are dictated by demand through demonstrated actions: preferences. In a socialist structure they dictated by fiat. In a capitalist system demand can change, be lead, and opened up to new products. In a socialist system demand is fixed; x number of people means x pairs of shoes. There's a reason why things like the ipod don't come out of socialist economies. It has to do with the price system. He who can guess beforehand where the economy is going vis vi demand can get those resources moving before prices shift and earn a profit which is essentially residual income on underpriced resources. This is literally impossible to do in a socialist economy.
In socialism the value paradox becomes paramount. It is irrelevant in a capitalist system as marginal utility rules the day. In socialism however the production and existence of each marginal unit becomes the subject of philosphical meandering and musing. In socialism one must truly decide between bread and diamonds, whereas the free market delivers both.
-
Equilibrium is a pretty useless concept as it never exists. It's not bad to assume an evenly rotating economy for pedagocal purposes. Equilibrium to my mind is meaningless in economics. It never existed, never has existed, never will exist, and while I still use the term in my mind it sends the wrong idea vis a vi organization to students and laymen. As if the market is working toward something destinationwise. It isn't.
While I agree your two points are the practical way to implement a socialized economy, they have a myriad of problems. One, socialization of strategic and necessary industries means a loss of efficiency in those industries and economywide; destroyed wealth in other words. Removing a set of industries from the profit loss test at any level means they will eventually, if not immediatly, start eating capital. As there is a fixed supply of anything at any given time including capital, and given its heterogenous nature, that means resources will be lost to those industries at the expense of their use elsewhere. Plant and equipment, labor and even liquid capital will flow into those industries and a good amount will be destroyed.
A parliamentary government sounds all well and good, but the nature of all government is parasitic. No matter how it is organized, no matter how it is executed, all governments in their interaction with society boil down to the existence of two groups: net tax payers and net tax consumers, and everyone fighting to be in the latter group as opposed to the former. There is no way, outside massive public mobilization preceeded by education and aggetation, to get out of the Public Choice trap.
Countries demonstrative of this approach, again, sacrifice the possibility for potential standard of living for a higher absolute average-actual standard of living.
Indeed, but what often gets left out is that before those countries became models of success for socialism, they were privatized powerhouses. Sweden is a perfect example. During the latter half of the 19th century they had massive reforms in favor of the free market and rode the industrial revolution pretty high. Even up until the middle of last century Sweden's spending as a portion of their GDP was low and their market was relatively free.
In this regard, Norway's nationalized approach to key industries is an exemplar: it has one of the consistently highest PPP averages, has a large proportion of millionaires, high standard of living, and universal health care/education. Despite Norway's incredibly high proportion of millionaires in nominal dollars, the taxation system on all commodity types and earnings tends to curb this trend toward equality on a systemic scale. The results have been discussed.
See above. Holds true for Norway too.
Finally, the productive capacity of the macroeconomy is thus obviously less in a Socialist economy as a function of equality - i.e., maybe there is only Honda and Civic, no Rolls Royce, but everybody has a fully functioning version of the former two.
That is not what happens though. What happens is over time 'everyone' has access to a Honda of failing quality and eventually, due to shortages, even that is limited to a smaller and smaller group. The reason being you can not continually destroy capital without long term consequences.
But, this is not to suggest that a Parliamentary Socialist system need be undemocratic and/or contain a small proportion of total goods to access [again see: Norway]. Which ideological set you privilege, however, depends on whether or not you feel Rolls Royces [using these as an example] serve a valid philosophical role in man's life. From what I glean from you, they serve no purpose save for validating the ultimate right of free choice at the expense of equality. Myself, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice Rolls Royces to provide Universal Health Care and education, for example.
While I would defend capitalism on those moral and ethical grounds and indeed at base do, that isn't the bulk of the argument. Even if you advocate trying to equalize wealth the question still remains what is the best way to accomplish that: production or confiscation and redistribution? The latter has always failed in the end however well meaning, the former has always delivered to the extent it has been allowed to by governments.
Man steals no matter from each other or the state - a complete lack of regulation necessarily predicts coercion in the temporary, particularly on the level of the micro-firm [though entire markets do not tend toward coercion - it is impractical]. Again, we come back to the contradiction of either system in regard to the interaction of the micro and macroeconomy, and the introduction of government regulation in varying magnitudes to "correct" these issues. What is good for a pure Capitalist macroeconomy is precisely what does not, and never would occur on the level of the micro-firm, unfortunately. Both systems necessitate a man-in-general that does not exist, unfortunately.
Capitalism does not necessitate any particular type of man in general. Modern economists use homo economicus merely because controlled experiments are impossible. And, once more, there is no seperation between the micro and the macro. The latter flows from the former, and they are in the end one in the same.
To expand, a self-regulating, perfect Capitalist system assumes [edit: depends upon] a lack of certain fundamental characteristics of man: manipulation, coercion, and the application of force [whether physical or intellectual].
No, it doesn't. If it did, anarcho capitalists wouldn't bother even pondering about free market arbiters of disputes as they'd be arguing for a peaches and *******s world where there are no disputes. It the
means of dealing with these tendencies that's at issue.
Again, on the level of the individual firm Capitalism's logic contradicts with its systemic operation. Pure Capitalism is impossible for precisely the same reasons as a pure Socialist system: they both suffer from issues endemic to their nature, because they suffer from issues endemic to human nature.
Incorrect. Socialism suffers from much more. There are two sets of problems one may have with such systems: systemic or philosphical. The philosophical has to do with man and his nature. The systemic has to do with the mechanics of the system itself. Even if one were to solve all the philosophical problems associated with socialism it would still fail because systemically it would still be impossible to allocate resources efficiently. Economizing activity is still destroyed even if you create the perfect socialist man. In capitalism the issue is man's propensity to steal. Show him or the majority of himm that theft is wrong on all levels and you have a workable system. The mechanics of the system work just fine. The only problem is man tends to steal and wants to institutionalize this tendency to legitimize it.
I just suspect it may have been used loosely in different contexts in the preceding discussions. A sharper standard definition that you all accept might make your arguments tighter. My recollection is that "collectivization" has a precise meaning and context within Marxian Economics and was not used in any significant sense in Classical Economics or Political Economy.