Section I — The Central Contradiction: You Cannot Change Ownership Without Changing Ownership
The DSA's stated goal is “the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a democratically run economy.” This is not rhetorical flourish — it is the literal text of their national platform. The question this paper asks is simple: How, exactly, does that happen?
Capitalism, stripped to its essence, is a system in which productive assets — factories, land, intellectual property, financial instruments — are owned by private individuals and organizations. The system's behavior flows directly from that ownership structure. Owners allocate capital toward their highest expected return. Workers sell their labor. Prices emerge from supply and demand. This is not ideology; it is mechanism.
To “abolish” this system means, by definition, changing who controls those productive assets. There are exactly three mechanisms by which ownership transfers in any legal system:
- Purchase — the new owner buys the asset at market value. Requires vast capital.
- Taxation to extinction — tax the asset's returns until ownership becomes worthless. Destroys the asset's productive value in the process.
- Expropriation — the state seizes the asset, with or without compensation. Requires coercive state power.
DSA's platform lists option 3 explicitly. The housing commission documents use the word “expropriate.” The platform calls for corporations to be “put under public ownership.” These are not ambiguous words.
| The Ownership Equation There is no fourth mechanism. You cannot tax your way to socialism — taxation redistributes income from ownership, it does not transfer ownership itself. A corporation paying 90% of its profits in taxes still has a board of directors making capital allocation decisions. The shareholders still own the enterprise. The government has become a very expensive creditor, not an owner. |
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