u/Square-Listen-3839

After regular socialism (banning trade, forcing everyone to work for the state and shooting anyone who complains) failed to make everyone rich and somehow caused a few famines, we’ve finally cracked it.

New plan: Force everyone in the world to become a capitalist.

It's like this;

• Capitalists are rich
• So just force everyone to be capitalists
• And then everyone will be rich

Genius. This is the actual true real socialism that we actually really meant to do.

• Just make every worker take out massive loans to buy their share of the company they work for.
• Machinists, engineers and line workers can personally finance the next car factory or semiconductor plant.
• Poverty in Africa? Simple. Force villagers in mud huts to be capitalists and then they'll be rich.

We’ll ban outside investment. Because the workers have to own everything. Which means they have to pay for everything. We'll force workers to pay for everything themselves because... someone might use a machine they don’t own. Which actually makes you poor, or something.

And obviously risk and time preference don’t exist. That's just reactionary propaganda. Anyone who spends vast sums of money on machines, buildings, materials, marketing, R&D and shipping just becomes instantly rich.

What is the actual goal of socialism?

Is it to make the average person materially richer with bigger houses, better cars, nicer vacations, more stuff to get and higher overall living standards than they would get under capitalism?

Or is it something else?

It's funny because socialists constantly seethe about "consumerism", "materialism" and "chasing the buck" yet a huge part of their pitch is that under socialism everyone will have more stuff.

So is socialism just a consumerist ideology at heart, just with a different (and supposedly better) way for everyone to get more stuff? Or is consuming more stuff not the goal?

Socialists say the solution is workers controlling their own workplaces.

Let’s test that idea:

Imagine two workplaces in a fully socialist society:

The power plant workers control the electricity for the entire region.

Joe’s Donuts workers control... some donuts.

If both groups democratically control their own workplaces, don’t the power plant workers have massively more real power and leverage than the donut workers?

The power plant can shut off the lights for the whole city if they want better conditions or higher pay. Joe’s Donuts can… withhold pastries.

How does "worker control" prevent the workers in critical/strategic industries (power, water, ports, railways, oil, semiconductors, etc.) from becoming a new privileged class with way more influence than workers in less critical businesses?