"Yes, there is currently no foundation in place to realize the societal system idealized by Marx. According to Marx's theory, social productivity needs to be highly developed and everyone’s cognitive level needs to reach a certain degree. If society is to evolve according to Marx’s theory, it will be a long time before that happens. I believe the historical mission of communist revolutions several decades ago was to promote the overthrow of Western colonial rule in various regions and achieve national independence. Marxism can be considered merely a tool to achieve this goal, but people became blindly devoted to it over time.
In today’s society, regardless of any ideology, the important thing is to improve productivity, enhance the level of education among people, and promote fairness and justice on a global scale. Deng Xiaoping once said that China is currently in the primary stage of socialism and that it would take a hundred generations of effort to achieve communism. However, everyone knows that China is, in reality, more like state capitalism."
"The difficult part for Marx is how to get society to have enterprise owned and operated entirely by workers." made me think of Huawei. A few days ago, I wrote a post about Huawei releasing a new phone. Huawei is a company with an employee stock ownership plan,but the employees' stocks are virtual shares and cannot be traded on the market. In other words, Huawei is not a publicly listed company, but its capital does indeed come from all its employees. Naturally, Chinese employees hold the vast majority of the shares because it's difficult to implement this virtual stock system in other countries. In fact, only Huawei operates this way in China as well.
The amount of stock an employee holds is related to their hay level within the company. This means that the more contributions you make to the company, the higher your rank, and hence the more shares you receive. Of course, these virtual shares need to be purchased, and the annual dividend rate is around 15%. It used to be as high as 25%～30% during peak times. When employees reach the age of 45, they can choose to retire while retaining the rights to their shares and dividends, ensuring a quality living standard after retirement till they die.Of course, this model is challenging to sustain over the long term, but for now, it remains in place. In the future, it might be adjusted so that dividends continue until the national statutory retirement age, after which Huawei would repurchase the shares. Subsequently, the national social security system would take over to ensure the employees' livelihoods, although the quality of life would likely decrease significantly.
If employees wish to sell their shares anytime, they can only sell them back to Huawei.
Huawei does not have external capital, which allows it to plan for the long term without being controlled by the short-term profit demands of capital investors.
This type of organization appears to be a combination of capitalism and socialism.
I am well aware of Huawei, but that's just one company. I can give examples of American firms, Israeli, and Spanish firms (Montodragon) that work like that as well. The question is scale however.
Yugoslavia was entirely worker co-ops and now that country is dead. We have plenty examples of firms that work in that structure but Yugoslavia is an example at scale and it didn't work. Maybe if another country tries again it can learn from the mistake if it tries to make all firms worker co-cops.
"Yes, there is currently no foundation in place to realize the societal system idealized by Marx. According to Marx's theory, social productivity needs to be highly developed and everyone’s cognitive level needs to reach a certain degree. If society is to evolve according to Marx’s theory, it will be a long time before that happens. I believe the historical mission of communist revolutions several decades ago was to promote the overthrow of Western colonial rule in various regions and achieve national independence. Marxism can be considered merely a tool to achieve this goal, but people became blindly devoted to it over time.
In today’s society, regardless of any ideology, the important thing is to improve productivity, enhance the level of education among people, and promote fairness and justice on a global scale. Deng Xiaoping once said that China is currently in the primary stage of socialism and that it would take a hundred generations of effort to achieve communism. However, everyone knows that China is, in reality, more like state capitalism."
"The difficult part for Marx is how to get society to have enterprise owned and operated entirely by workers." made me think of Huawei. A few days ago, I wrote a post about Huawei releasing a new phone. Huawei is a company with an employee stock ownership plan,but the employees' stocks are virtual shares and cannot be traded on the market. In other words, Huawei is not a publicly listed company, but its capital does indeed come from all its employees. Naturally, Chinese employees hold the vast majority of the shares because it's difficult to implement this virtual stock system in other countries. In fact, only Huawei operates this way in China as well.
The amount of stock an employee holds is related to their hay level within the company. This means that the more contributions you make to the company, the higher your rank, and hence the more shares you receive. Of course, these virtual shares need to be purchased, and the annual dividend rate is around 15%. It used to be as high as 25%～30% during peak times. When employees reach the age of 45, they can choose to retire while retaining the rights to their shares and dividends, ensuring a quality living standard after retirement till they die.Of course, this model is challenging to sustain over the long term, but for now, it remains in place. In the future, it might be adjusted so that dividends continue until the national statutory retirement age, after which Huawei would repurchase the shares. Subsequently, the national social security system would take over to ensure the employees' livelihoods, although the quality of life would likely decrease significantly.
If employees wish to sell their shares anytime, they can only sell them back to Huawei.
Huawei does not have external capital, which allows it to plan for the long term without being controlled by the short-term profit demands of capital investors.
This type of organization appears to be a combination of capitalism and socialism.
I am well aware of Huawei, but that's just one company. I can give examples of American firms, Israeli, and Spanish firms (Montodragon) that work like that as well. The question is scale however.
Yugoslavia was entirely worker co-ops and now that country is dead. We have plenty examples of firms that work in that structure but Yugoslavia is an example at scale and it didn't work. Maybe if another country tries again it can learn from the mistake if it tries to make all firms worker co-cops.