> > -----Original Message-----
>> From: Doug Henwood
>
>> Subject: re: unions
>
>> When Marxists talk about socializing
>> capital, just what is the target (banks? pension funds? MNCs? the
>> corner drycleaners?), and what would be done with them?
>
>I'm not sure which Marxists you may be referring to but Marx and most
>Marxists talk about socializing the ownership of the means of production
>(i.e. land, factories, railways, etc.). It is only under certain historical
>and social conditions that the means of production serve as capital, that
>is, wealth that is used to create more wealth for sale and a view to profit.
>Banks, pension funds, MNCs, etc. are important for a capital(ist) society
>but they are redundant in a society based on the common ownership of the
>means of production.
Well no shit, Lew, but how do you conceive this "common ownership" being constructed? Via what mechanisms of ownership and control? Bourgeois experience shows that these are very complex tasks, and if you're talking about production on any kind of scale, then you can't evade this complexity by invoking received formulas like "common ownership of the means of production." How do you get there from here?
Cue to Carrol saying, we can't know, it's stupid to ask, we should just retreat into cranky fatalism while we wait for M Godot to arrive.
Doug