Why socialism won't solve the structural problems of work

 I know, I know, another article bashing socialism. I've written what, 10 on this exact subject that you can find just by typing "socialism" into the search bar provided on this blog? This isn't really intended to be another one of THOSE. Rather, I had a socialist respond to me directly on reddit and I wanted to discuss their response here.

The response:

Socialism removes the distinction between employer and employee. It empowers workers to share in the ownership of capital, which means that there are not longer conflicting interests between owners who want to maximize profits while minimizing wages and workers who primarily only want to maximize wages. It means that workers actually get to be involved in the decision-making processes which affect them and their company, and they must all work together to make decisions based on real business constraints and their own needs at the same time, as opposed to separating the business constraints with workers' needs.

It would absolutely reduce, mitigate, or outright eliminate this exact problem.

So....my response. 

Here's the problem with socialism. Everything is this weird antagonism between workers and employers. While I get it, they seem to think that capitalism is the root cause of this, and that if we eliminated capitalism, that the problem would disappear. As if the only problem with work is "alienation" in terms of capitalism alienating from our true role in labor. 

Uh....no. My problems with work go deeper. I don't just want to get rid of whatever alienation happens in capitalism, I want to get rid of all work. All problems with work are related to the nature of work itself. It doesnt matter what system i work in, I'm still going to be "alienated" and trying to maximize mine and do the minimum. Socialists fundamentally get human nature wrong. I dont think human nature is evil per se but i do think it trends selfish. And honestly? In socialism, we just end up replacing one class of people that forces people to work (the bourgeoisie) with another (the state). And while not all forms of socialism have that issue, the only form so socialism worth discussing is market socialism and no, market socialism wont solve unemployment. 

In a socialist's mind, work is inherently good. We should pursue some concept of full employment, and most socialists have done so through force in past and present socialist regimes. And in many ways, these systems are more oppressive than what happens under capitalism in the first place. 

I'm going to be honest. I don't really WANT to work in the first place. I think work is inherently evil, and I have no issue with calling most of society brainwashed on the issue. And i think this brainwashing applies both to the right, left, and center. All old political ideologies believe in work, they just differ in how it should be carried out, but they don't really question the concept. And that's all...this guy is spouting, socialist theory about how if only we had capitalism things would be great, when they wouldn't be, because I fundamentally see through and disagree with the concept of work as essential to one's being. 

I ended up expressing these concerns in a much less structured and informed way, pointing out that I fundamentally dont wanna work and dont care about being involved in the decision making process at a work place. I just wanna do the bare minimum at best and at worst i just wanna do away with working altogether. 

I got this response:

As a socialist I slightly agree with your sentiment. I don’t want to be involved with every aspect of the decision making. It’s sort of a tyranny of direct democracy, stealing your time for every minute detail. But I think you have kind of the wrong idea of how socialist organization would work and society would operate under such a system.

First of all, a ton of labor would be freed up from doing away with positions that only exist because of capitalism. Because there’s no profit incentive under a socialist system, true full employment would exist. With both these factors, working hours would be cut. It would free so much time for people to do whatever they want.

Also just because you are involved in the decision process doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be bogged down for every detail. Socialists still believe in justified hierarchies, meaning experts in their field should still have finial say. Also depending on the workplace representative democracy might be a better fit.

Here is a quote from Marx that best illustrates the goal.

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

1) I fundamentally disagree. Socialism (at least institutional socialism) is, in practice, a bigger purveyor of BS jobs than capitalism. because they believe in full employment so fiercely they'd rather make 3 clerks sell a piece of meat to avoid people being "unemployed". So let's dispel with the myth that socialism is somehow more efficient than capitalism. The argument goes the other way. 

2) This guy misses the point. I dont care about decision making, i dont wanna be there, i just wanna do the bare minimum and be left alone. Like, do people not understand the idea that people might not wanna participate in social projects under the threat of force or resource denial?

3) The marx quote is literally living in the past as far as im concerned. This dude is just pontificating 150+ year old theory at me. I disagree with work being forced on people in the first place and income being tied to livelihood. This may have, at some point of time, been a necessary evil, but by this point a lot of jobs are completely unnecessary and designed to produce luxuries and the like. As time goes on essential labor will go down and be replaced with nonessential labor producing more and more luxuries, or doing high level educated tasks that essentially replace the more basic tasks done by people in the past. Technology makes work more efficient than ever, yet we dont work less. This is a systemic problem, and it's one that exists both in capitalism and socialism. I would argue a UBI is one of the mechanisms necessary to break people out of this mindset, and it does so by breaking down the mechanism that forces a sphere of activity on a person. You are not your job. You should not be valued solely by your work. In my worldview everyone deserves a right to an income regardless of their productive capacities or actions. 

The only value of work is to produce that which we need. And as I said, over time, as technology leads to more productivity, the requirement for people to work should be lessened and lessened, and people should be able to work less and less. The fact that this does not happen is a systemic problem, similar to the one that creates poverty under capitalism. Socialism solves the issue of unemployment by making work less voluntary and more oppressive than it was before IMO. 

So no, socialism isn't the solution. Market socialism changes nothing and full on socialism replaces a bad system with an even worse one. Marxists have their heads in the clouds and are spouting pure ideology. While they often raise valid critiques of capitalism, we must remember that they suck on solutions.