specifically, richard wolff lays out the reality of the situation fairly well. that's the part i think is worth watching.
unfortunately, i think he's still a little too tied to historical materialism. the technology is moving too fast for workplace communes to be an answer for the future; what he's describing was an answer for the 70s or 80s, before it became so abundantly clear that the future is in automation. in fact, some of the production is moving back here, but it's being tied to almost workerless factories. how do we talk about workplace democracy in the future, when the factories of the future don't have workers in them?
it brings us back to the macro, in a way that skips that socialist stage. if we're to have automated factories, they should neither be owned by capitalists nor by phantom workers but by society itself.
what that means is talking about operating at cost, and taking the surplus out of the equation altogether.
so, it's worth watching. but, i'm still awaiting the answer to the question i posed several years ago. nobody else seems to be thinking like this.
if markets were the way to maximize individual freedom in an agrarian economy, and socialism was the way to maximize individual freedom in an industrial economy, what is the way to maximize individual freedom in a post-industrial, automated, computerized economy?
the best answer i have is full communism. but i don't know how to get there, either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl2Yx6ciFUc