Socialism and the Collective Ownership of the Means of Production (joint work with Jan Kandiyali)

About the session: Historically, socialism has been identified with collective ownership of the means of production. However, in the face of the purported failure of central planning, and influential arguments about the necessity of markets and private ownership, many contemporary socialists have sought to sever the link between socialism and collective ownership. Here, we aim to rehabilitate a constitutive relationship between them. The argument proceeds in three main steps. First, the heart of socialism is an ideal of caring solidarity. The idea of caring solidarity enjoins us to engage in the shared activity of caring about one another, or in other words, to do what we can to meet others’ needs collaboratively. Second, caring solidarity constitutively involves collective planning of the means of production, and that planning is possible only if there is collective control of those means. Third, collective control is incompatible with private ownership of the means of production, but instead would constitutively involve collective ownership. Hence socialism, as caring solidarity, would constitutively involve the collective ownership of the means of production.

About the speaker: ​Barry Maguire is a Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at The University of Edinburgh. He previously held academic positions at Stanford University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and New York University. He received his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University, supervised by Gideon Rosen, and a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford. His main research project is the development of an ethical theory based on an ideal of caring solidarity. This approach aims to integrate standards of justification in the ethics of economics, political philosophy, and moral philosophy.

If you would like to receive information about the speaker series, please email Catarina Neves at a.c.moiteirodasneves@uu.nl.