I do not see how
Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism[1][2] or left-libertarianism)[3][4] is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic society without private property in the means of production.
is compatable with:
I think I actually explained it pretty well up there; the word "socialist" doesn't equate to "no money" or even "no capitalism". Just heavily regulated capitalism, higher corporate taxes, with a solid, graduated tax scale; people argue this would hurt business, and I disagree. It would hurt giant mega-corporations, and encourage smaller businesses in their place.
Not only does capitalism by definition require some private ownership of the "means of production," but large regulatory bodies and taxation based governance goes up against the "non-hierachical, non-bureaucratic" part.
Or did you acutally just mean that bit as a transition thing? If so what sort of "end state" do you envision? Heh, or should I say "end no-state" for a Libertarian
There have to be a number of transitional phases (as Trotsky knew and advocated) before you can reach the end goal of a real Socialist state; you can't just dump out all the rich people's pockets and try to use what you stole to build it. A gradual phasing in of more regulations on corporations, and increasing control by the people of both the state and corporations, corresponding with increased education and increasing living standards, could allow this type of structure to come into play after two or three generations. Add in a meritocracy for reasonably increased benefits, and people will play ball just fine. The argument that no one will innovate or excel if they can't have a 300-room mansion full of indentured servants just isn't realistic.
I think maybe some perspective is in order. The whole Marxist thing is that businesses generate a profit which is given to the owners, therefore the wage earners are not paid the full value of their labor. He then calls the transfer of this "labor surplus" from wage earner to owner exploitation.
How much is that? Well, off the top of my head I recal that when the US government is involved with these things a 10% profit is considered "normal and fair" or somesuch. That is going to be taxed by the government at multiple levels and in multiple ways though, and by my back of the envelope math should correspond to roughly a 3% transfer into the capitalist's pockets.
Granted a 3% transfer from hundreds of thousands of people to one person means they can have mansions and mega-yachts. But 3% isn't really that much of a raise.
And not only do you lose the incentives of capitalism if you throw it out, but you also loose the mechanisms. In state socialism you have to go through the government beurocracy to try and start a new business or product, which works I guess but doens't exactly result in being swift or innovative. I don't even know how how a Libertarian Socialist society would manage that (and I'm curious how you think it would go).
Also again, the middle class is more aligned with the petit bourgeois. For one thing in a knowledge economy those with the skills already control their means of production. But more than that the middle class owns stock. We have 401Ks and probably some other more liquid investments. That means at some point those in the middle class can't be said to be "exploited" because they gain more "surplus labor" through their stocks than the ~3% they "lose" to their company.
On that note the people living in wealthier countries are able to gain significant "surplus labor" from owning stock in companies abroad. If you whack the capitalistic engine than presumably you're destroying that transfer of wealth into our nations.
Of course while 3% isn't much you still have poor burger flippers out there. But that's because of the inequalities in the value of the labor from a part time stoned burger flipper and a star engineer that puts in 70 hour weeks. Doing the USSR redistribution thing to these groups can be more meaningful, but probably even more catastrophic than going after stock ownership or the very rich. Because you are no longer going after airships and tennis courts and are instead punishing the harder working, smarter, etc members of the "proletariat."
