I am currently registered as a candidate in the parliamentary elections for Lanark, standing on the platform of the Scottish Socialist Party. This party was formed 2 years ago and now has about 2000 members. It has achieved an unprecedented level of unity among socialists here. Almost all the organised socialist groupings with the exception of the Communist Party of Britain have now joined in it. We are putting forward candidates in all 72 constituencies in Scotland - not in the immediate hope of winning, but with the intention of providing voters with the chance of voting for a socialist alternative. The act of standing as a candidate forces me to think in a practical way about mechanisms by which a socialist government, if elected, could set about expropriating the property owning classes and transfering the means of production to public ownership. I want to try and start a discussion about the practical measures that might be taken to do this, bearing in mind issues like: 1. How do you distinguish between shareholders/property owners with small and major amounts of funds - obviously one wants the richest to be expropriated first. 2. How do you deal with the problem of capital flight. 3. How does one deal with the problem of the liquidity of the insurance and pension funds in the transition to an adequate system of public pensions - bearing in mind that threats to pensions would be a real oublic relations disaster, but that pensions funded on industrial profits are clearly going to be threatened by socialisation. Could one for example effectively expropriate the capitalist class with a wealth tax levied at about 15% per annum - which should be significantly above the real rate of return on capital. What would the practical impact of such a tax be on share values, would they plumet so fast that the effective expropriation would be much faster? -- Paul Cockshott paul@cockshott.com
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