A Plan for Socialism

>Robin wrote:

The idea that you can challenge capitalism by starting up businesses oneself is about as plausible as wanting to strike a blow for pacifism by joining the army.

Mike Morin replies:

This leaves us between a rock and a hard place.

The only ones who can start businesses in today's Capitalist environments are well endowed individuals and/or Corporate Capitalists who are diversified and can afford to take a loss in the new sector in the short run with the (illusory) hopes that the economic system will "recover". It won't. So what we have is a lot of irrational dysfunctional Capitalist businesses running their course and withering away. It is our remote hope that we can transition to something better before the world is totally destitute.

It is my pipe dream that we can enlist the holders of equity and assets to reallocate their holdings not to businesses but to community betterment organizations and or workers' cooperative (or as in rare cases functioning within the Capitalist systems community/worker hybrids). But we must do more than that we must organize the workers in socialist solidarity within and among communities, regions, and world wide. We must organize workers within and among economic sectors.

There needs to be democratic ecological economic planning to radically alter the way in which resources are allocated to and within communities and within and among economic sectors.My dream seems to be consistent with the orientation, plans and programs of the Latin American leaders of ALBA (Latin American Bolivarian Alliance). Hugo Chavez and associates have been using oil wealth and other equity and assets to finance such programs and there appears to have been some hopeful success thus far.

Where we are at significant disadvantage in the English speaking world is that our resource holders, Capitalists and Capitalist lackey Governments are not hip to this plan.

>Robin wrote:

It is only by engaging in and helping to expand activities that transcend commodity-productio n and by pushing forward with a clear vision of a future ouside capitalism that you stand any chance of actually realising that future.