Hey there! I read through Worker’s Paradise and have some thoughts I’d like to discuss if you have the time:

It is not merely voting that is necessary for workers to truly be in charge in production. It does not matter how many votes are cast if the infrastructure simply does not exist to transform those inputs into outputs. If there is no infrastructure for actually developing the economy, all these votes will never lead to the democratic will of the voter actually being expressed.

Utopians believe that the problem is always lack of direct democracy. More and more direct democracy is always their solution. More and more voting. Voting is insufficient here. Without the tools to actually carry out economic plans, these votes will be for naught. The economy will never reflect the will of the workers.

The author does not elaborate on the reasoning for their assertion that voting will never bring into manifestation the will of the workers, except to say:

It had grown to the largest economy in the world while still largely planning everything by hand, and the planning technology and infrastructure was lagging far behind.

You can’t solve this problem by just having “more democracy”. It’s a problem of information. The economy was too enormous and complex to actually gather all that information and then respond to consumer demand. The USSR had tons of places for workers to have democratic input, but it did not matter. As its clunky system aged, it continually lacked the ability to efficiently transform any sort of democratic input into economic output.

The Soviet Union lacked the communication infrastructure to be able to allow democracy to actually be able to control the entirety of the huge system. Which is true, for the Soviet Union. At that time.

We have the technology today. We have the computers. We have the AI which can quickly and easily determine the most efficient options for our democratic processes to choose from.

Lenin instead encouraged encouraging market development in order to lay the foundations for socialized production.

socialism requires economic planning, economic planning requires big industry, and big industry can only be developed through market competition.

Why do they think big industry can ONLY be developed through market competition? What is the reasoning behind that? (Aside from what they have seen happen in the past, for older generations of people with very different material conditions to our own today?)

The transformation of capitalism into socialism must necessarily be a gradual process inline with gradual economic development, and complete abolition of private property would only be possible with incredibly, incredibly high levels of economic development.

This is true. So why are you all so against voting in the United States’ two-party system, when that very voting will continue to allow incredibly high levels of economic development and the GRADUAL socialization of industry and society?

Economic democracy implies that the will of the workers is directing, planning, the economy. Economic planning inherently requires large-scale infrastructure. Large-scale infrastructure cannot be decreed into existence, but can only come into existence efficiently through market mechanisms.

The market has created that large-scale infrastructure. Let’s use it to make the world better.

Marxists should drop the obsession of implementing some “workers’ utopia”.

Then what is it all for? Why do anything if it doesn’t lead to an eventual utopia where everyone has their needs met and we can just hang out in parks and play games all day? Isn’t that what the whole point of this thing is?? Is that NOT what we are striving for?

people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity.

Marx himself wanted that utopia. We have the means of achieving it today, because, as the author says, we allowed the market to create that large-scale infrastructure. The process worked. We’re here now, and now we inherently deserve to be able to have a say in what we do with it. Because we’re sentient beings. We deserve to have control over our own lives.

This article is merely a defense of capitalism (and the way that China has structured itself in particular). There’s logic behind it, of course, and that’s clearly laid out. But it’s based on presuppositions. It’s based on the idea that this is the ONLY way to achieve that utopia.

In fact, the article itself basically says “resign yourself to the idea of never having control over your life, because you’re never going to create a utopia, so you might as well just be content being a cog in the wheel of the system and be thankful that we who are in control continue to allow you to live” which is no better than the slavery system that (I thought) we (and marx) are trying to get society away from!