eat the rich
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social Posts 57Comments 262Joined 2 yr. ago
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social
Posts
57
Comments
262
Joined
2 yr. ago
Fair enough
Seize the means of production comes from a conceptually separate part of anti-capitalist critique then workers' control/workers' self-management. It is common to conflate these two strands of anti-capitalist thoughts. It is technically possible to have common ownership of the means of production without workers' self-management and workers' self-management without common ownership of the means of production. Universal worker coops only requires abolishing wage labor not private ownership
Property's moral basis is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. Capitalism denies the workers this as the employer solely appropriates the positive and negative fruits of their labor. The core of property's moral basis is the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Receiving wages is not sufficient because the workers remain de facto responsible for the whole (positive and negative) product of the enterprise and are entitled to it on that basis
It doesn't have to work like that. Instead of capital hiring labor, labor can jointly hire capital and structure the firm as a worker coop. There are good ethical reasons for organizing production in a worker coop as well
On the part of labor. No matter how causally efficacious capital is. It can never be de facto responsible for anything because responsibility is imputed through the tools back to the workers using them.
A better case for worker cooperatives is just pointing out they satisfy the moral principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs, but in a capitalist firm, the employer holds sole legal responsibility for 100% the corresponding legal claim to the positive and negative result of the enterprise while employees receive 0%. In a worker coop, this mismatch is corrected
As an anti-capitalist, I disagree. He conflated the role of the employer with the owner of the means of production, which led him to the mistaken conclusion that rejecting capitalist appropriation requires rejecting private property per se. It's really the employment contract that enables capitalist appropriation and exploitative property relations. There are other reasons to oppose private ownership, but that is another story. The classical laborists' criticisms are spot on not Marx's
Even if we ignore the artificially increased transaction costs and hold out problems associated with private ownership that make acquiring means of production more expensive, this point only justifies some sort of compensation from the workers as part of the negative fruits of their labor in production. It does not justify the capitalist appropriating 100% of the positive (legal right to produced outputs) and negative (legal liability for the used-up inputs) fruits of the workers' joint labor
Under postcapitalism, the factory would be commonly-owned. The company that operates the factory would worker-controlled. That being said, there is nothing wrong with the holder of the building even in common ownership setup being compensated. What is unfair is to demand control rights over the firm for this capital and make the workers at the company your employees. Not everyone against capitalism is a communist. There can still be economic incentives for productive activity
Why have you concluded that?
It isn't a great idea even in theory. Even ideally, workers inalienable rights to appropriate the fruits of their labor and to democracy are still violated. These rights flow from the moral principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. In a company, employees are jointly de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs, but receive 0% of property rights and liabilities. The employer is held solely legally responsible resulting in a mismatch
This paper argues that there is an inalienable right to workplace democracy/workers' self-management where inalienable means a right that cannot be given up even with consent. It discusses how the employer-employee contract inherently treats employees as things and how this can only be remedied by transitioning to a system based on workers' control over production.
Not if you use anonymizing software
Yeah free as in freedom not as in price.
The closest anyone's come to a mechanism that would allow efficient financing of public goods like free software is quadratic funding. Unfortunately, there are unsolved issues with collusion and identity verification
That makes the privacy issues with YouTube worse. They can link your YouTube watch history with your identity
Workers aren't the only factor the creates value. Capital and land also add value. Why would people use them otherwise?
That being said, the workers are jointly responsible for their actions in production while capital is merely an instrument of their will and cannot be responsible for anything. Workers are denied the positive and negative results of their actions, so we should not care
To have some sort of viable fediverse alternative to YouTube, the developers of it would have to abandon some of the free software principles that current fediverse platforms uphold. There needs to be a way to monetize to attract creators and get people to host the servers
Workers should be able to realize the value of what they produce in basically getting the pure profits of the firm.
Value doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Property rights to positive and negative fruits of labor do. When you consider what taking on the risk and initiative means in this context, it is really taking on the negative fruits of labor (liabilities for used-up inputs). Workers should get both the positive and negative fruits of their labor, and take the initiative
That is strange to me as well. He normally talks about abolishing the employer-employee relationship in favor of democratic worker membership in the firm. I speculate that it has to do with trying to explain it to a more general audience
Sure, but labor consists of the de facto responsible actions of persons while capital is a dead tool. When thinking about assigning legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of an action, we only look at the de facto responsible party and lay the legal responsibility for the whole result on them. For example, if a crime is committed with a gun, the gun isn't held liable. Inanimate objects conduct responsibility back to the persons using them and cannot be responsible