In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels analyzed the objective socialization of the economy which was creating the potential for a socialist society within the shell of capitalism -- a potential waiting only on a revolution to burst that shell. That socialization, which in Engels' day occurred primarily in the spheres of production and distribution, has now spread dramatically into the sphere of information. The Internet and especially the Web is objectively socializing economic data, not only within but more and more across corporate boundaries. Given that one of the strongest claims against socialism is its alleged inability to plan a complex industrial economy, it's ironic that the most significant change in capitalist technique since the fall of the Stalinist regimes states has been in the socialization of information upon which planning must rest.
This website will try to show how, if there were a revolution, the technical apparatus already in place -- and the organizational initiatives taken to make a buck out of this new technique -- could allow a workers' government to move quickly and efficiently to a democratically managed economy.
Below are links to pages on this site giving examples of this process in various sectors of the economy. On those pages are examples of technologies, and the institutions using them, at this very moment, and brief descriptions of their potential uses after a revolution taking them -- and the rest of capital's property -- out of the hands of the ruling class.
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Pages still to come:
* Services
* Trade
* Unions, workers' parties and other organizations on the net: making the link and taking over
(Note: at the moment the pages on this site give examples only for one national economy, that of the U.S., but the logic can -- and will -- be extended to the international sphere in coming posts.)
In "Capitalism and the Information Age," (Monthly Review, Robert McChesney, ed., 1998), I have an article outlining some of these themes. This page will extend the analysis in the article --and hopefully generate discussion about how we can actually make some of these ideas happen.
Email me at andypollack@juno.com with examples of your own or comments on any of the ideas raised here. And for more reading on socialist self-management, follow this link:
Past postings
Warning: as I mention in my article, all of this speculation assumes the working class gets itself together enough to seize power: IT is a tool, not a panacea, and certainly no substitute for consciousness and mobilization!!!):
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