Re Paul C's [5645]: > 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 share Charlie's hesitations about offering tactical advice on such questions: these are the types of questions that have to be answered concretely by workers in struggle rather than merely by 'experts' (no matter how well- intentioned or progressive they are.) Before I get to specifics, I want to sound a precautionary note: a) remember what happened to the Meidner Plan in Sweden; b) recall what happened in the fictional BBC movie "A very British coup". > 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. This shouldn't be a difficult problem although, of necessity, it requires a somewhat arbitrary solution. I.e. one has to set some arbitrary cut-off point re either income or primary source of income. Or, perhaps, the legislation could be written in such a way that it would be "phased-in" with it taking effect most *immediately* on the wealthiest families. One could perhaps connect this to a dramatic increase in the capital-gains tax (with a threshold over a certain level) or a change in the personal tax structure such that there would be a prohibitively large penalty on income earned through stocks and profits for the highest income earners. > 2. How do you deal with the problem of capital > flight. There might be constraints on what a government in "Socialist Scotland" could do. E.g. if it was part of the U.K. and/or the Common Market, then the following options might not be legally possible. One option might be to pass legislation requiring that corporations may not re-locate unless they receive the prior consent of their workers (this is the case, by virtue of collective bargaining agreement, for many Swedish firms). Another alternative might require that for firms to be allowed to sell goods in your 'socialist' country, they must first agree to produce goods there and not 'fly'. As for individuals 'flying', let them fly but either confiscate their physical and monetary property as a condition for flight or have a prohibitively high "exit tax" on their property. Perhaps this could be written in such a way that it would only affect individuals having property that is worth an amount customarily associated with capitalist property (so as not to create barriers for working-class citizens from traveling and migrating.) > Could one for example effectively expropriate > e capitalist class with a wealth tax levied at > out 15% per annum - which > should be significantly above the real rate of > turn on capital. This sounds like a variation of the Meidner Plan -- but without workers' ownership. > met so fast that the effective expropriation > would be much faster? Well, what would come faster (and more furious) would be capitalist resistance to such a plan. Even if such legislation was passed, it would obviously have to be connected to controls on capital flight (discussed above) to be effective. It is not such a bad thing for a socialist member of parliament, though, to remember that such questions will be decided in the streets. If you had a _real_ socialist government (as distinct from a social-democratic caretaker government for capitalism), then until such time as the revolution, there would be a 'dual power' situation. These situations ultimately end with the victory of one class or the other -- in this instance, a repressive capitalist movement, including the possibility of a fascist movement, is a distinct possibility. I accidentally deleted your question about how to deal with workers' insurance and pension funds. This is a tough question since workers can view this as savings. Unless one is willing to accept the inequality caused by a buy-out, there has to be instead the creation of insurance and pensions as a *right* guaranteed by law. Then one would have to make the case that one is not taking anything away from the group that has these programs already but rather that one is taking action to *universalize* these benefits so that all can have access to them. This might be a 'tough sell', however. In solidarity, Jerry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Jun 02 2001 - 00:00:08 EDT