First world social democracy has only been in decline since dissolution of USSR and rise of neoliberalism. The threat of socialist revolution kept capitalists from being too exploitative. It is unsustainable, capitalists will want their power back. Look at what happened to NHS in the U.K.
Also 'freedoms' for private enterprises and 'rights' for workers are straight up contradictory.
Exactly. Marx said "between equal rights, force decides." We have a class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It doesn't matter if your form of government is a so-called "multiparty liberal democracy" or a "parliamentary representative republic" when 95+% of the people who hold office are bourgeois and primarily make money through owning means of production or speculating on financial assets, rather than selling their labor power like everyone else. If the bourgeoisie guarantees rights for the worker, it is only because they have cynically calculated that it is in their long term interests to allow some crumbs to fall from their table. They will withdraw those "rights" as soon as they see fit. As soon as capitalism's immune system detects a threat. You can only get so far with liberal democracy, trade unions, and worker-owned cooperatives, because, while those things are nice, and certainly better than feudalism, you still fundamentally have a bourgeois class-dictatorship where all the so called "rights" of the worker are granted by the bourgeoisie and enforced through their class's monopoly on violence. They decide when rules can be bent, broken, changed, or ignored. The police and the military exist purely to enforce their ownership over the means and conditions of production.
A worker coop taking care of its workers will always be less profitable than an exploitative capitalist company, and therefore out-competed. It's what happens when you design all of society around profit.
i dont really understand this need people have to contort themselves into government vs not-government argumentation. If there is a dictatorship of the proletariat what difference does it make if worker co-ops are considered private enterprise or not?
What you're thinking of is just one of numerous potential theoretical transitional states of socialism or a Frankenstein form of super military Keynesianism
But it's not something that's ever likely to happen, capitalists and the liberal states who serve them would outlaw workers coops before if ever got to a point they threaten capitalist property relations, that's the whole point of controlling the state, to prevent a hypothetical like the one you just advanced
I'm gonna copypaste what I said somewhere else ITT:
You can only get so far with liberal democracy, trade unions, and worker-owned cooperatives, because, while those things are nice, and certainly better than feudalism, you still fundamentally have a bourgeois class-dictatorship where all the so called "rights" of the worker are granted by the bourgeoisie and enforced through their class's monopoly on violence. They decide when rules can be bent, broken, changed, or ignored. The police and the military exist purely to enforce their ownership over the means and conditions of production.
TL;DR Worker Owned Co-Ops exist embedded in a capitalist economy and are subject to its laws
You really have to ignore the entire history of capitalist theory and history to pretend this is remotely a coherent take, besides the ancaps, social liberals are the most utopian of all liberal sects, they are willfully blind to the contradictions of class, property ownership, and the functions of the state
They fundamentally don't understand the social basis for the ideology they claim to uphold, it was only with the rise of socialism that liberals began to construct these social fantasies of class harmony and submission under capitalism, in the old days they were more sober about this shit as Adam Smith readily admitted
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all
But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour, civil government is not so necessary. (WN V.ii.2)
Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor. In this age of shepherds, if one man possessed 500 oxen, and another had none at all, unless there were some government to secure them to him, he would not be allowed to possess them.”
Boomer capitalization Detected, where words are capitalized for arbitrarily chosen Emphasis with no academic considerations because only wokes care about Literacy.
I see it enough on clearly WASPy boomer small business tyrant printout signs that say stuff like "because ❄ Snowflakes ❄ want Everything handed to them and dont want to Work anymore the price of our combo lunch special is up $0.10. Thank a liberal Today!!!! 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
Fuckhead vampire. Suck the vast majority of the planet dry for a few small yards with high fences and those privileged enough to reap the rewards. Also deny those same supposed "rights and services for the public" to that same majority they feed on.
Is it perfect? No, certainly not, and I don't want it to be. I like it just the way it is. It has its flaws depending on Class and Government, and I'm in a very privileged position so I'd much prefer it over communism
Communism will win and you cannot stop it.
My preferred form of Capitalism is present in all first-world nations: guaranteeing rights for Workers and Individuals, Healthcare and Services for the Public, and Freedoms for Individuals
Those so-called "first-world" nations have already lost or are actively losing all their social safety nets, affordable housing opportunities, manufacturing base, and public services to privatization and outsourcing. What you mean is you're privileged and likely wealthy enough to be in an exceptional position of being able to benefit from whatever's left of them. They're also all cracking down on dissent brought about by civil unrest, and arbitrarily oppressing vulnerable groups in an ever escalating war on happiness and prosperity. What freedoms?
These posts do nothing but further antagonize and gaslight people who know full well their material and social conditions directly contradict your sick-to-death narratives about "capitalist exceptionalism".
While I maintain you don't have to read theory to have a reasonable understanding of things it is very clear it really really help some folk's understanding. Like just read the manifesto, it's short and a little outdated by this point but it gives you the basic gist of things and dispells some of the more inane counter arguments.