#liberal #anticapitalism

An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.

#liberalism
#coops #cooperatives

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  • 124 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

    @196



  • The employer-employee contract

    It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.

    Inalienable means something that can’t be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor

    @asklemmy


  • The challenges you mention don’t really refute the main arguments for worker coops, inalienable rights theory, even if they were unsolvable problems that couldn’t be solved no matter what other changes were made. Economic democracy aims for workers to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor in property rights terms not value. This is based on the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Capitalist firms don’t satisfy this basic tenet. They are thus illegitimate @196



  • Capitalism v. communism is certainly a false dilemma. There are other alternatives such as Georgism as you noted. I would go further and advocate a Georgist economic democracy where all firms are structured as worker coops. Similar to the problem you identify with capitalism in that it fails to treat land and capital differently, the mainstream of Georgist thought fails to differentiate labor from capital in an important respect. Labor can’t factually be transferred unlike capital @196


  • J Lou@mastodon.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    7 months ago

    Perhaps, but there isn’t a good reason to place such a restriction on worker co-ops. Worker co-ops shouldn’t be forced to buy the entire thing when a segment of its services would do.

    Liberals as a group tend to support capitalism. Liberalism as a political philosophy can have implications that claimed adherents don’t endorse. After mapping out all the logical implications of liberal principles, it becomes clear that coherent liberalism is anti-capitalist @asklemmy



  • J Lou@mastodon.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    7 months ago

    Worker co-ops don’t necessarily have full worker ownership of the means of production because a worker coop can lease means of production from a third party. It is not socialist. Nor do I mean to suggest it is capitalist. It can’t be capitalism as it has no capitalists as you correctly point out. Since you recognize that it is technically correct to say a worker co-op market economy has private property, you recognize

    Capitalism ≠ private property @asklemmy


  • J Lou@mastodon.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    7 months ago

    When I said capitalists there I meant liberal defenders of capitalism.

    A market economy of worker coops has private property, so can’t be socialist. Market socialism is a misnomer and unnecessarily associates with a label people already have preconceived notions about @asklemmy


  • J Lou@mastodon.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    7 months ago

    The normative basis of private property, which capitalists claim to adhere to, is people’s inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism routinely violates this principle in the employment contract. Satisfying the principles of private property would require that all firms be worker cooperatives. The principles of liberalism imply anti-capitalism. It is entirely compatible to be a liberal and an anti-capitalist @asklemmy




  • J Lou@mastodon.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlDeleted
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    7 months ago

    Many liberals are anti-worker, but the political philosophy of liberalism is not inherently anti-worker. Liberal anti-capitalists like David Ellerman illustrate this using liberal principles of justice to argue for a universal inalienable right to workers’ self-management and abolition of the employer-employee relationship @asklemmy


  • You’re right that wasn’t very clear.

    Capitalism is exploitative due to the employment contract not non-worker capital ownership. The employment contract is bad because it gives the employer 100% of the property right to the produced output (i.e. ownership of new cars in a car firm) and 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs (i.e. factory machine services) while employees get 0%. The workers don’t create the output out of nothing they use input materials @lemmyshitpost


  • The payment to investors in this case isn’t based on a non-worker solely appropriating the fruits of labor. The payment is satisfaction of the liability workers jointly appropriate as part of the negative product. Paying covers the costs of the negative product. It is compensation to the investors for the capital they supplied and the work they did building up that much capital @lemmyshitpost


  • The workers aren’t exploited in a worker coop. The workers jointly appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The workers don’t create the product ex nihilo they use up inputs (e.g. the services of capital). Paying lease is satisfaction of liabilities for using up capital services. Leasing out labor’s product allows workers to sell a part of the product’s services rather than sell the entire product. The employment contract gives the employer the product @lemmyshitpost


  • The point is not necessarily about profit rather about what the profit comes from namely the positive (property rights to produced outputs) and negative product (liabilities for used-up inputs), which together are the whole product. A basic tenet of justice that capitalism violates is that legal and de facto responsibility should match. In a worker coop, the workers are held jointly legally responsible for the whole product matching their de facto responsibility for producing it @lemmyshitpost


  • There is no reason why only workers should own the means of production nor why the means of production a firm uses must be owned by the workers of the same firm. Leasing out means of production to other firms is a perfectly valid way for worker coops to exchange products of labor. What is illegitimate is the employment contract as it violates inalienable rights. There are distributive justice and efficiency arguments for common ownership of capital, but that includes non-workers


  • The system is usually called economic democracy because it democratizes the economic sphere. All firms in economic democracy are required to be worker coops. As a result, voting shares are exclusively held by those that are actually working the firm. Non-voting preferred stock can be free floating property rights that can be held by outside investors. it is democratic because only the people actually governed in the firm (i.e. workers) have voting rights over management