Socialist Progressives

I've seen fights started over whose version of "The Internationale" used the correct lyrics!

The truth is -- in so far as nationalization of industry is concerned -- that it solves very little. Even Marx new this when he wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Programme" that the initial phase of communism would make the state seem like "the universal capitalist" -- and that it was the task of the revolution to remove the values and ethos of capitalism from publicly owned enterprise. In other words, just simply taking over the means of production means little if it does not change the conditions of production.

And there are all sorts of as alternative models starting to crop up in the West -- different forms of ownership, different forms of worker managed enterprise, that don't fit into any neat and clean category.

I might warn you that even Marx was loathe to describe the socialist future ... from the standpoint of the second half of the 19th Century he felt it either convenient or wise to say that the workers themselves would define the promised land in their own time.