Update on the green party's movement to "socialism"

So, apparently that amendment I talked about yesterday passed, and I finally got to take a good look at it. It's a bit to the left of my personal beliefs, but at the same time, it's not really bad. Here's the original language in the platform that exists now:

Sustaining our quality of life, economic prosperity, environmental health, and long-term survival demands that we adopt new ways of doing business. We need to remake commerce to encourage diversity and variety, responding to the enormous complexity of global and local conditions. Big business is not about appropriateness and adaptability, but about power and market control. Greens support small business, responsible stakeholder capitalism, and broad and diverse forms of economic cooperation. We argue that economic diversity is more responsive than big business to the needs of diverse human populations.

 I actually largely like that platform and it is fairly close to my own beliefs. It talks about moving toward decentralized capitalism with small business, as opposed to big corporations, and responsible capitalism. While I think large business can occasionally do good things due to economies of scale, and think they can fund research efforts little guys simply cannot (think Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.), I do see a problem with big corporations dominating capitalism. It's a huge reason capital is so mobile, why people can afford to go overseas and avoid regulations and taxes. Forget too big to fail, a lot of corporations as they exist are too big to govern, and pose a threat to state sovereignty in my opinion, subjecting them to market forces.

The new language this amendment is being replaced with is the following:

The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We believe the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.

Instead we will build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy. Some call this decentralized system ecological socialism, communalism, or the cooperative commonwealth, but whatever the terminology, we believe it will help end labor exploitation, environmental exploitation, and racial, gender, and wealth inequality and bring about economic and social justice due to the positive effects of democratic decision making.

Production is best for people and planet when democratically owned and operated by those who do the work and those most affected by production decisions. This model of worker and community empowerment will ensure that decisions that greatly affect our lives are made in the interests of our communities, not at the whim of centralized power structures of state administrators or of capitalist CEOs and distant boards of directors. Small, democratically run enterprises, when embedded in and accountable to our communities, will make more ecologically sound decisions in materials sourcing, waste disposal, recycling, reuse, and more. Democratic, diverse ownership of production would decentralize power in the workplace, which would in turn decentralize economic power more broadly.

So, let me break this down. The green party is essentially rejecting "capitalism" and private ownership of the means of production, but it also rejects Soviet style communism/socialism. So before right wingers get their torches and pitchforks out, the green party explicitly rejects what we generally know of to be "socialism" or "communism" in the United States. They're not doing the Soviet thing at all.

They are instead supporting things like public works projects (think FDR), local government control of business (think your local water authority), and basically worker coops. I get that impression since they seem to reject both capitalist enterprises, but also state owned enterprises too. Which is good, if worker coops are implemented, we should have the best aspects of the market system in place like competition and decentralization, while reducing worker exploitation. While there are potential efficiency concerns, I'm largely supportive of the idea of worker coops, and it's the one form of socialism I'm okay with. Basically, the issues with socialism generally are that centrally planned economies like Russia's or Venezuela's don't work, they lead to shortages, and they also stifle productivity and innovation and are very resistant to change, being run by bureaucrats. But since the greens are explicitly rejecting that form of socialism and pushing for a decentralized worker owned democratic model, their views sound a lot closer to market socialism to me, or in the worst case scenario, democratic socialism.

The only thing I don't like is the idea of these enterprises being "accountable to our communities". What is meant by this? Will local governments run them? Regulate them? What? There's not a lot of details on the logistics here, and the big problem with supporting any kind of socialism is the logistics that govern it. That's what really makes or breaks the concept, and why so many socialist states have been failures. I mean a lot of what is said here sounds good on paper, but I'm having trouble thinking through how this would actually work, and the details of implementation are important. Still, considering how the point of all of this is to decentralize power in the market and make it accountable to the people, I guess it won't matter. The greens seem to be intentionally vague and open ended here to imply a diversity of different management and leadership styles on the local level. And if one community or enterprise fails, much like in capitalism, others will step in to pick up the slack so we will never really see the abuses of the Soviet system. There will be plenty of competition to keep power from getting out of hand here, and that seems to be their ultimate goal.

That being said, the way it's presented, it sounds like a good idea on the surface at least and I have to say I'm for it tentatively unless I find a fatal flaw in the implementation here. As I said, I wanted to read the language of the amendment before deciding whether or not to stop supporting the greens, and with this language, I still largely support the concept and still plan on supporting Jill Stein. I would have preferred the old language better since I am ultimately pro capitalism, but I do think some light forms of socialism as presented here introduced to our capitalist dominated political system would produce good results, moving us toward social justice. At the very least, it's a good plank to use to pressure the democrats to do better, and after all, I don't expect the greens to ever win, I just want them to put pressure on the democrats to move left and be more compatible with my kind of politics. As such, I'm open minded to the ideas presented here.