“I’m sure no one wanted to know that, but.”

as in, “but… as I’m from the communist, self-absorbed, verbal diarrhea capital of Washington, I’m going to tell you anyway.”

I prefer Larry the Cable Guy’s spin on it to be honest. And it has the added bonus of being a few shades more intelligible.

Communism is, in essence, worker ownership of the state in a context of class struggle against entrenched capital and property ownership monopolization. No significant faction has advocated for this at any time in American history, in significant part because land ownership has been sufficiently diversified that a reactionary lane-monopolizing minority never developed here.

Socialism is worker ownership of, if not capital, than primary labor employers in a context of class struggle against capital owners. Some have advocated this in American history, but capital owners have a great deal of advantages, and more to the point most workers would (secretly, really) prefer to be capital owners if only they could get rich enough, so support for this has a fairly low ceiling on it. Democratic socialism advocates a worker influenced state managing state influenced capital utilization. That became the real goal of labor organization in the US, and while never fully implemented, because the worker influenced state was transitory if it ever existed, it remains the goal of nearly all organized labor here at this time.

Anarcho-syndicalism argures for collective labor enterprises in a context of communal struggle against entrenched power, whether political, economic, or military power. This flavor actually has the best resonance with American political economy, but for various reasons its growth was initially abortive. Actually, the initial organization of the MLBPA is quite a good example of anarcho-syndicalism. That organization was a collective resistance against the power of ownership backed up by the power of the state which tacitly upheld the ‘reserve clause.’ The result was a syndicate controling prevailing labor conditions, but one in which individual players were free to contract for the best terms they could secure. . . . Which also shows the weakness of anarcho-syndicalism in that it its collective structures tend to be under-developed, and anyway shades quickly over to right wing entrenched entitlement guild-ism.

I’m sure no one wanted to know that, but.

More on Inference

If I had my own blog, I’d just say, “You’re wrong, folks. The means *are* the end.” But that would just be smug.

I should know better. It’s really my fault for selecting that link. I couldn’t help it — I dug the White Stripes reference!