Thanks again!

In other words, Market Socialism is nice in that it removes exploitation, but is no nearer to Communism than Capitalism. The leap to public ownership is no closer, just the relations of exploitation are removed. How do we get to Communism, and what role can worker cooperatives play in that? The solution is to perform a revolution and establish a Proletarian State. This is a hard requirement to begin with, otherwise you can’t simply accomplish Market Socialism, the bourgeoisie would never allow it.

Right, so market socialism is better than capitalism, and I’m arguing it is easier to get there than revolution. I’m also kinda arguing that market socialism will naturally lead to everyone just donating their belongings to the greater good once everyone is content with what they get from market socialism, otherwise I see it impractical to simply snatch private assets for public ownership. Lastly, I agree it would seem like the bourgeoise would never allow it, but things like Linux and the fediverse exist and they’ll only get stronger and harder to beat with network effect.

Thanks, Cowbee! It seems to me, that in practice (as opposed to theory, not game), if socialism is 5 steps away on the chessboard, then market socialism has to be step 1, simply because that’s where we are (1. markets aren’t going away tomorrow, and 2. everyone currently has to engage in the economy one way or another). It’s what is the ‘adjacent next’. Changing everyone’s minds all at once seems mathematically impossible. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that all our collective energies might be better spent focusing on just step 1.

Suppose we replace all capitalists with worker cooperatives. What happens when two worker cooperatives compete in free market? We’ll still be at capitalism, wont we?