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Originally Posted by mafia_man
Workers own the fruits of their labour. Therefore they own what they create not the fucking State or Government which doesn't exist in a Communist society, as detailed by Marx.
So say if you work for Apple in China and you make iPods which are shipped to the US and sold for astronomical markups of $500+ when the workers in the factories are paid 50 cents an hour to produce wealth for the shareholders and Jobs. CEOs and shareholders direct the investment in the company and workers have no say in either their future or the future of the company.
They could unionise but corporations have castrated this ability.
That's a typical capitalist setup in this global economic market.
Now imagine that a factory produces goods and the workers of that factory made the decisions on what to produce for the people. There's no competition because corporations competiting for marketshare don't exist, so the best technology is freely available to everyone (think open source everything).
The workers work at the factory because they choose to, producing goods for the world population based upon the needs of the people.
A communist system isn't Chairman Mao or Stalin sitting on a throne telling people what to do. Ditch your American propoganda and do some reading.
Start with Hengel, Marx, Chomsky and Adam Smith. Smith is particularly interesting as he is championed as being a father of modern capitalism. They quote him when arguing for free-markets, if you actually read The Wealth of Nations then you will know that Smith argued for tight reins to control a capitalist system.
The fact that these reins fail to stop capitalism from spiriling wildly out of control is why the system is doomed to fail. Deregulation bought by those wishing to profit will see the system crash over and over again.
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1. Right now, nowhere in this world do we have a so called capitalist system. The system that is in place in most of the world is a corporatist system.
2. People own their own body and the fruits of their labour (read: John Locke, Hans Herman Hoppe and Frank van Dun). Because people own the fruits of their own labour they are free to use it any way they want as long as they don't cause damage to another human being or his property. So people are free to produce products and sell them, people are free to deliver services in exchange for something else,... People are free to work for an employer if they want. They are free to agree to perform certain duties during certain hours for a certain wage.
If a worker produces something in a factory while being employed by the owner of the factory, the worker does not own the product he just produced. The worker voluntarily agreed to work there in exchange for a certain salary. (he agreed to sell his labour for a certain price).
One thing people like Marx, Chomsky, Kropotkin,... fail to realize is that labour is not the only factor of production that determines the value of a product. Fact is that raw materials are rare, that skilled labour is rare, that there exist is such a thing as risk, that there exist such a thing as time, that people aren't psychic and can't predict how many people will want a certain product at a certain moment in time and can't predict how badly they'll want the product at that moment in time,... (I recommend reading Mises, Hayek and Rothbard)
3. Torcetrapib, Torcetrapib, Torcetrapib. In the early 1990's Pfizer started developing a new drug for people with high cholesterol; Torcetrapib. They worked on the product for about 16 years. In 2006, they suspended their clinical trials due to possible heart risks and they cancelled the project. The drug was never on the market. Pfizer didn't make a penny, while they had invested I think around 800mil USD.
Even though, Pfizer didn't make a penny, all people working on the project (lab technicians, doctors, secretaries, cleaning ladies, managers,...) all got paid at the end of the month for the duration of the product (or at least the time they were employed there).
Now, let's say we'd have a communist system where all people working on the project get an equal share of the profits. If Pfizer said: "
We are looking for people to work on our new project. We want to develop a new drug, but we don't know how long it will take. It could be 2 years, it could be 10 years, it could be 16 years,... It is even possible we won't be able to sell it. But if we come up with something and are able to sell it, everyone will get an equal share of the profits.", how many people do you think would be willing to do the work?
Fact is, in a free world (or capitalist world), the entrepreneur carries the risk and the factor time. He supplies the capital, he takes a bigger risk, but may also get a bigger reward for taking a bigger risk.
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The workers work at the factory because they choose to, producing goods for the world population based upon the needs of the people.
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How do you know how many ipods you'll need, how many htc phones you'll need, how many nokia's you'll need? Without a free market and market prices, there's no economic calculation. Without economic calculation, you'll always have a shortage of certain goods and services and you'll always be wasting others. (Again, read Ludwig von Mises. In the 1920's he wrote a great paper about how the Soviet Union would fail because of the lack of economic calculation.)
4. Rest assured, I've read Marx (and was amazed by his lack of understanding of basic principals of economics, was disgusted by his moral arrogance and horrified when he sugested that certain groups of people should be eliminated for the greater good). I've read Chomsky (and have great respect for his research in the field of propaganda, and can't understand why he doesn't see the flaws in his anarchosyndicalist or mutualist thinking). I've read Smith (and i actually understood what he was saying when he mentioned the invisible hand. Smith defended markets (voluntary transactions) and opposed any kind of intervention).
5. If you want to understand how the economy really works, I recommend reading Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat,...