A pluviophile is a lover of the rain. They revel in the smell of the wet streets & grass, the sound of raindrops hitting the window.
Here’s the thing that reactionaries don’t seem to get: capitalism is going to fail. The post-war boom was an anomaly, there’s no going back to it. If you read financial papers, economists know there’s another crash on the horizon. And the economy isn’t going to be any nicer to you because you’ve repeated “Communism killed 100,000,000 people” ad nauseam. There is only one way for working people to be in control of their fate, and that way is socialism.
And what is socialism, @canadian-marxist ?
The means of production are socialized under workers’ control and run according to a democratically planned economy based on need rather than profit.
I don’t know what you’re really trying to get at?
I’m asking because it seems everyone you talk to has a different opinion. Some people would say that the UK and Finland are socialist. Others say Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was socialist. Some say Communist China and the USSR are socialist. So it’s important to understand what someone means when they say “socialist”
And what is the “means of production”? What constitutes a means of production? A building? A tractor? A computer?
In economics and sociology, the means of production (also called capital goods) are physical and non-financial inputs used in the production of economic value.
So the means of production can include buildings, tractors, computers, etc. if they’re used to produce commodities.
Well, herein lies the problem. If I own a computer, that’s personal property, right? But if I used that computer to, say, draw art or write a story that I then sold, that would make it a means of production. And I don’t really want to share my computer with every spod who ever made a Hamilton Coffee Shop AU.
The other problem is that my uncle owns a small business. But everything in that business was bought and owned by him, using money that he had to cough up, starting with one van operating out of my grans house and gradually moved up into two or three lots dotted around Scotland. So if he spent his money to buy the vans, the buildings, the computers etc, why should the people he hires get an equal share?
You’re giving examples of what’s known as the petite bourgeoisie (or petty bourgeoisie).
Marxists define classes by their relationship to the means of production. The petite bourgeoisie own their means of production and operate them themselves. They include people like freelancers and small shopkeepers. They play a minuscule role in the economy.
Who we care about expropriating are the big bourgeoisie. The idea is that you put the economy under social control, under a socialized plan. You need control of the banks, big industry and major corporations. Whatever the hell it is your uncle is doing doesn’t matter.
