this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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"to compel". That's power. Authority is more like "to convince".
No.
It is not in the interest of workers to cut corners. That interest is coming from somewhere else. That is why OSHA needs power. Without those external interests, all that OSHA needs to do is convince that certain practices are beneficial to the worker's own self-interest. If they are any good at their job, they will be very convincing, they will have much authority.
This is the fundamental stuff that Marx, and by extension many Marxists, miss in their analysis. That's why the revolution failed: Because it was not, systemically, beneficial to the worker, because it was the exchange of one boot for another boot. Advances such as healthcare? Goddammit SocDems caused Germany to introduce universal public healthcare under Monarchism. "We need the dictatorship of the vanguard to introduce these advances" is not an argument, it never has been necessary and with the likes of OSHA: The USSR was not great, not terrible. Bosses could override safety concerns because higher-ups want production quota, and they did. The reason it wasn't terrible is because the people engineering factories cared about that stuff, and worked it into the design.
The same misappreciation btw also extends to histography: "The peasant has no class consciousness". Peasant revolt after constant peasant revolt attested in history would beg to differ.
Okay, so OSHA needs power. If a factory is producing in unsafe conditions or produce toxic or unsafe goods for the public. Not every situation can be solved via "convincing." Depending on OSHA to be "convincing" is silly, all such Utopian formations of societies like the Owenites and Saint-Simon's commune failed for similar reasons.
I think you need to revisit Marxist theory and history, and you honestly should revisit Anarchist theory which today understands the necessity of just hierarchy. The USSR was great, not perfect but absolutely massive for Workers around the world.
Well, you need to convince the KGB to stop enforcing the bosses' commands, taking away the bosses' power, as that is where the necessity for OSHA to have power even arises. Of course, enforcement of power is all the KGB is there for so you have to convince power-hungry authoritarians to stop doing what they do and retire. It'd be in their own interest, but their neuroses doesn't let them see it.
We can talk about the need to coerce to get rid of the KGB to bring about a system that is free from the KGB, we can talk about the need of defences against the resurgence of a KGB while the very notion of ordering people about is not relegated to the history books, but we do not need to even entertain the idea of power being necessary in actually realised socialism as it would be a contradiction in terms.
The necessity for OSHA to have power is that people act in their own self-interest as a rule. Humanity can collectively plan and produce, and eventually as production is improved these measures will not need to be as strict, but they remain a necessity for administration and planning.
Again, it is awfully dishonest to attempt to redefine Socialism as Anarchism.
It is the self-interest of the bosses to ignore safety concerns. It is not, ever, in the interest of workers to ignore safety concerns.
Thus there exist a configuration of society in which OSHA does not require power, and that is when the self-interest of the workers is not infringed upon by other factors. In other words: Socialism.
Because what else would you define socialism as if not a state of things where worker's self-interest is not infringed upon. How can you claim that anything that infringes on worker's righteous self-interest could ever be socialism. "Socialism is when the interests of the working class is infringed upon, and the more its interests get infringed upon, the more socialist it is", or what?
It is absolutely in the interest of workers to ignore safety concerns. They want to go home earlier, they don't care enough, they don't think it's important enough, etc. If you work in the trades, or in factories, or another industrial environment, you can find dozens of safety violations even in a well-kept place. Your following points don't follow because the base is wrong.
Furthermore, identifying Anarchism as the only form of Socialism, is dishonest. Socialism isn't about abolition of hierarchy, Anarchism is specificially. Socialism is an economic mode of production based around collectivization of property, but not necessarily abolition of class or hierarchy. Anarchism seeks to turn everyone into Petite Bourgeoisie out of a desire to eliminate hierarchy, Marxisk seeks to collectivize property equally among everyone out of a desire to eliminate class. Both are Socialist.
Power, authority, hierarchy, whatever you wish to call it, is a tool. The goal of Socialism is the uplifting and abolition of the Proletariat, simple as. It is not about "ceasing to infringe on any other worker's self-interests," such a mischaracterization is idealist. It is not "infringing on worker's interests" for OSHA to be able to shut down unsafe production even if the people there want to keep going, rather, it protects them and the people that could have been hurt.
At the end of the day, by trying to redefine Socialism as Anarchism and say Marxism isn't Socialist, you aren't going to convince anyone. You're not convincing me, and you sure aren't convincing anyone else. You say Marx gets stuff "wrong," but the stuff he supposedly got wrong is all stuff you seemed to have made up. It's silly, and this isn't going anymore.
Disengage.
And why would workers want that? Or, differently put: If they don't care, why are they working in the first place?
Any job worth doing is worth doing right. That's the intrinsic value of work, those things you mentioned only come into play when work is compelled by external factors. Convince people to work instead of compelling them and there will be intrinsic motivation and yes they're going to do it right.
"Marxism isn't proper socialism" is a story as old as Marx, btw. There were always people who disagreed with him, vehemently so, and he didn't found the worker's movement.
A lot of necessary jobs go undone if nobody wants to do them, like garbage disposal, sewer maintenance, etc. The notion that if everyone did only what everyone wanted, at least without moving to the far, far future, that everything necessary for society to function would get done is baseless.
Furthermore, the idea that Marxism isn't Socialist is old, yes. However, Marxism is based on collectivization of property and worker's rights, so it is Socialist. Further, it's by far the most historically relevant and the most relevant at a modern point because there are several Marxist states.
I'm not sure what you're trying to do here, you're taking a hard-line stance abandoned by most Anarchists a century ago, all you're doing is making Anarchism look silly when there has been advancements in Anarchist theory. Trying to discredit Marxism as validly Socialist and pretending Socialism means Anarchism only further alienates what you're saying from actually convincing anyone.