• volodya_ilich
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    2 months ago

    Nationalized industry (or healthcare) is neither a leftist idea nor a collectivist one. It’s merely bog-standard nationalism and perfectly compatible with concepts of “social democracy,” which, if you know your history, you already understand isn’t leftist at all - it was literally invented by Otto von Bismarck as a way to protect against socialist revolution.

    Nationalising industry is a very leftist and collectivist idea, the more democratic the state the more collectivist. Social democracy protects against socialist revolution by making concessions to socialists, therefore these concessions are necessarily leftist. The fact that fascists sometimes employ national industry or infrastructure is just a matter of the fact that it’s more efficient, not out of leftist ideology. They know that in order to have a functioning society that brings profit to their capitalist owner friends, there need to be paved public roads and a functioning electric grid.

    A leftist accepts that state-control of services is still a lot better than privatized control… but it is still a very, very distant second-best to socialized control.

    If the state is truly democratic and acts on behalf and in the interest of the workers, it can be better than direct control by workers. I don’t want my hospital workers striking for higher wages than the rest of workers out of egoism, I want the public (and thus practically through the state) to have a say on that. My best bet would be some sort of dual-power structure in which the people in general (as represented by a democratic state, including things like local councils or other regional subdivisions of the state) need to reach agreements with representatives of the workers (possibly through unions).