Social ownership
Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it.
[5] Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society.
[7] The goal of social ownership is to eliminate the distinction between the class of private owners who are the recipients of passive property income and workers who are the recipients of labor income (wages, salaries and commissions), so that the surplus product (or economic profits in the case of market socialism) belong either to society as a whole or to the members of a given enterprise.
Social ownership would enable productivity gains from labor automation to progressively reduce the average length of the working day instead of creating job insecurity and unemployment.
[8][9] Socialization as a process is the restructuring of the economic framework, organizational structure and institutions of an economy on a socialist basis.
[11][12] Social ownership is variously advocated to end the Marxian concept of exploitation, to ensure that income distribution reflects individual contributions to the social product, to eliminate unemployment arising from technological change, to ensure a more egalitarian distribution of the economy's surplus,[13] or to create the foundations for a non-market socialist economy.
The ultimate goal of social ownership of productive property for Marx was to expand the "realm of freedom" by shortening average work hours so that individuals would have progressively larger portion of their time to pursue their genuine and creative interests.
[18] Notable non-Marxist and Marxist socialist theorists alike have argued that the most significant argument for social ownership of the means of production is to enable productivity gains to ease the work burden for all individuals in society, resulting in progressively shorter hours of work with increasing automation and thus a greater amount of free time for individuals to engage in creative pursuits and leisure.
By contrast, non-market socialists argue that the major problems with capitalism arise from its contradictory economic laws that make it unsustainable and historically limited.
Therefore, social ownership is seen as a component of the establishment of non-market coordination and alternative "socialist laws of motion" that overcome the systemic issues of capital accumulation.
The property-owning (capitalist) class lives off passive property income produced by the working population by virtue of their claim to ownership in the form of stock, bonds or private equity.
Yunker argues that because passive property income requires no mental or physical exertion on the part of the recipient and because its appropriation by a small group of private owners is the source of the vast inequalities in contemporary capitalism, this establishes the ethical case for social ownership and socialist transformation.
", Albert Einstein wrote of a broad definition involving economic planning:[29] I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate [the] grave evils [of capitalism], namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
[33] The most notable thinker belonging to this school of thought was the Viennese philosopher and economist Otto Neurath, whose conception of socialism as a natural, non-monetary economic system became widespread within the socialist movement following the end of World War I. Neurath's position was held in contrast to other socialists in this period, including the revisionist perspective stemming from Eduard Bernstein, the orthodox social democratic perspective of Karl Kautsky, the Austro-Marxism models of labor-time calculation from Otto Bauer and the emerging school of neoclassical market socialism.
"Partial socialization" involved the use of in-kind calculation and planning within a single organization, which externally operated within the framework of a monetary market economy.
Neurath's conception of socialism was the initial point of criticism of Ludwig von Mises in the socialist calculation debate.
A further distinction arose between market socialists who argued that social ownership can be achieved within the context of a market economy, where worker-owned or publicly owned enterprises maximized profit and those who argued that socially owned enterprises operate according to other criteria, like marginal cost pricing.
[46] Rudolf Meidner's original plan was to require Swedish companies over a certain size to issue shares equal to 20 percent of profits, which would be owned by wage-earner funds controlled by employees through their trade unions.
This plan was rejected and a watered-down proposal was adopted in 1984, which left corporate decision making just as it was and limited the scope of employee ownership to less than 3.5% of listed company shares in 1990.
Cooperatives are often proposed by proponents of market socialism, most notably by the economists Branko Horvat, Jaroslav Vanek and Richard Wolff.
In this system, the state would be abolished and economic enterprises would be owned and operated as producer cooperatives, with worker-members compensated in labor vouchers.
Commons-based peer production involves the distribution of a critical mass of inputs and all outputs through information networks as free goods rather than commodities to be sold for profit by capitalist firms.
State enterprises were integrated into a national planning system, where factor inputs were allocated to them by the Ministry for Technical Supply (Gossnab).
Social ownership arises out of the course of capitalist development, creating the objective conditions for further socialist transformation and for the emergence of a planned economy with the aim of raising the living standards for everyone in society.
