A one-class society is one where each adult person has reasonable access to the means of production at a scale that allows them to participate in the economy. For example, a person might be a craftsperson or a small farmer. They own their own tools and some inputs and can live fairly independently. They associate with others through fair trade in limited markets that are mostly local. When pre-industrial social thought emphasized equality, they usually meant in terms of a sort of society of independent producers.
Industrialization changed this picture by grouping large numbers of people in precarious urban environments, concentrating them into large factories. Through enormous violence, the craft tendencies of each family were torn away and labour was directed towards alienating limited tasks rather than a global product. For example, much of clothing became mass-produced, rather than handmade. These changes expanded production greatly, and the population expanded as well, but it was associated with new social ills. The spread of hired labour was often considered a sort of dependency, and many 19th Century socialists held a vision of craft socialism which would wed together modern technique with traditional independence for producers.
With the failure of Marxism to provide a classless society, there has been a return to thought about one-class societies. This ranges from talk of an ownership society to Catholic social teaching and other ideas of equality in property. None of these models suggest that social problems will ever be completely fixed, but they offer an alternative to top-down socialist ideas of how to organize life. Importantly, these ideas tend to reorient towards justice as a principle that must unite with charity and service, such that statist solutions need to be combined with personal striving. Rather than simply trying to perfect institutions or engage in class struggle, then, we need to think of how we can individually help others.
What would this mean in practice? First, it means we need to aim to democratize the economy through reforms aimed at encouraging small-scale independent production. An important part of this is to bring humility to our financial architecture, through more local credit unions and other cooperatives. This will only happen if there is a mass movement for it. But this mass movement can't be arrogant - it can't assume that it can tear down all the existing institutions and substitute for them a giant state. Rather, it must be strong but measured in decentralizing from both state and private interests into networks of local communities. New taxes on wealth and the mobilization of charity funds and service, combined with general personal debt relief, can help move towards a system where most people have significant assets and a real stake in the social order.
What sort of macroeconomic model would this endorse? Perhaps one which is less consumer-debt-oriented and more sustainable. There could still be a great deal of planning and coordination within such a model, but a lot of this would happen through labour and cooperative organizing rather than in a simple state-run planning system. Of course, economic pluralism would be the order of the day: There would still be large corporations, some state-owned, some privately owned. There would probaly be many businesses catering to frivolous pursuits. Maybe some young people would be hired labour, others would be at the social margins, even if not perhaps in absolute poverty. The ongoing challenge, then, would be to renew the economy to be more equitable and prosperous.
getfiscal posted:What would this mean in practice?
Getting a job.
littlegreenpills posted:steel furnace in the back yard. an iron ore mine for every family. lifesaving drugs and antibiotics produced on the kitchen stove. DIY microelectronics using a cleanroom in your garage. oh yes this is happening and will be glorious
well strategic industries that require scale can be done in a traditional hired labour way, although we might want to break them down into work teams that can be organized as self-managed cooperatives or something. if not, then we can't, no real reason to get too worked up about it. the only thing is that most things don't have to be organized that way. and even if we are technically working for someone else, we can be skilled and somewhat autonomous. for example, a doctor often works one-on-one with a person, and they still have some level of professional independence, even though they might work for or at a hospital.
littlegreenpills posted:steel furnace in the back yard. an iron ore mine for every family. lifesaving drugs and antibiotics produced on the kitchen stove. DIY microelectronics using a cleanroom in your garage. oh yes this is happening and will be glorious
read "selected essays on the study of philosophy by workers, peasants and soldiers" for more on this, plus collectivism and indomitable mao tse tung thought
discipline posted:so neoliberalism's dream
please don't be condescending to me.
Yah
This is the most retarded thing I have ever read.
getfiscal posted:I repudiate this thread for being rooted in pre-Islamic ignorance.
donald have i got the party for you
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Labor_Party
