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Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it.[1] Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy,[2] and can take the form of community ownership,[3] state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity.[4] Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product produced by the means of production (or the wealth that comes from it) to society at large or the workers themselves.[5] Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society.[6] However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.
The two major forms of social ownership are society-wide public ownership and cooperative ownership. The distinction between these two forms lies in the distribution of the surplus product. With society-wide public ownership, the surplus is distributed to all members of the public through a social dividend whereas with co-operative ownership the economic surplus of an enterprise is controlled by all the worker-members of that specific enterprise.[7]
The goal of social ownership is to eliminate the distinction between the class of private owners who are the recipients of passive property income and workers who are the recipients of labor income (wages, salaries and commissions), so that the surplus product (or economic profits in the case of market socialism) belong either to society as a whole or to the members of a given enterprise. Social ownership would enable productivity gains from labor automation to progressively reduce the average length of the working day instead of creating job insecurity and unemployment. Reduction of necessary work time is central to the Marxist concept of human freedom and overcoming alienation, a concept widely shared by Marxist and non-Marxist socialists alike.[8][9]
Socialization as a process is the restructuring of the economic framework, organizational structure and institutions of an economy on a socialist basis.[10] The comprehensive notion of socialization and the public ownership form of social ownership implies an end to the operation of the laws of capitalism, capital accumulation and the use of money and financial valuation in the production process, along with a restructuring of workplace-level organization.[11][12]
- ^ Brus, Wlodzimierz (25 October 2013). The Economics and Politics of Socialism. Routledge. p. 88. ISBN 978-0415866477.
Ownership means that the object owned is disposed of by the owner in his own interests (broadly conceived). For ownership to be social, therefore, it must satisfy two criteria: the disposition of the object owned must be in the interest of society and the owned object must be disposed of by society.
- ^ Busky, Donald F. (2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-275-96886-1.
Socialism may be defined as movements for social ownership and control of the economy. It is this idea that is the common element found in the many forms of socialism. Yet having stated this as the common definition of socialism, one must necessarily admit that there are a wide variety of views among socialists of various stripes as to just what constitutes social ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
- ^ Horvat, Branko (2000). "Social ownership". In Michie, Jonathan (ed.). Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences, Volume 1. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 1515–1516. ISBN 9781135932268. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
Just as private ownership defines capitalism, social ownership defines socialism. The essential characteristic of socialism in theory is that it destroys social hierarchies, and therefore leads to a politically and economically egalitarian society. Two closely related consequences follow. First, every individual is entitled to an equal ownership share that earns an aliquot part of the total social dividend…Second, in order to eliminate social hierarchy in the workplace, enterprises are run by those employed, and not by the representatives of private or state capital. Thus, the well-known historical tendency of the divorce between ownership and management is brought to an end. The society—i.e. every individual equally—owns capital and those who work are entitled to manage their own economic affairs.
- ^ O'Hara, Phillip (2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 0-415-24187-1.
In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
, - ^ "Theory and Practice in Socialist Economics". Retrieved 23 August 2023.
- ^ Steele, David Ramsay (1999). From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court. pp. 175–77. ISBN 978-0-87548-449-5.
Especially before the 1930s, many socialists and anti-socialists implicitly accepted some form of the following for the incompatibility of state-owned industry and factor markets. A market transaction is an exchange of property titles between two independent transactors. Thus internal market exchanges cease when all of industry is brought into the ownership of a single entity, whether the state or some other organization...the discussion applies equally to any form of social or community ownership, where the owning entity is conceived as a single organization or administration.
- ^ Toward a Socialism for the Future, in the Wake of the Demise of the Socialism of the Past, by Weisskopf, Thomas E. 1992. Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 24, No. 3–4, p. 10: "Here again there are two principal variants of such social claims to income, depending on the nature of the community holding the claim: (1) Public surplus appropriation: the surplus of the enterprise is distributed to an agency of the government (at the national, regional, or local level), representing a corresponding community of citizens. (2) Worker surplus appropriation: the surplus of the enterprise is distributed to enterprise workers."
- ^ Peffer, Rodney G. (2014). Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice. Princeton University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-691-60888-4.
Marx believed the reduction of necessary labor time to be, evaluatively speaking, an absolute necessity. He claims that real wealth is the developed productive force of all individuals. It is no longer the labor time but the disposable time that is the measure of wealth.
- ^ Saros, Daniel E. (2014). Information Technology and Socialist Construction: The end of Capital and the Transition to Socialism. Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-415-74292-4.
Another characteristic that Marx and Engels emphasized as a central feature of a future socialist society was a shorter workday. According to Tucker, Marx had a 'vision of man in a future condition of freedom-creative leisure' that he described in volume 3 of Capital.
- ^ "the act or process of making socialistic: the socialization of industry." "Socialization" at Dictionary.com
- ^ Otto Neurath's concepts of socialization and economic calculation and his socialist critics. Retrieved July 5, 2010: "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 September 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2010.
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