What is the definition of capitalism? Is it compatible with people owning the things they produce?
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social Posts 57Comments 262Joined 2 yr. ago
J Lou @ jlou @mastodon.social
Posts
57
Comments
262
Joined
2 yr. ago
Here, worker coop means a worker-controlled firm. A specific legal entity in the current legal system is not meant. Forming a democratic firm without jeopardizing personal assets is possible.
Labor is inalienable. De facto transfers of labor that make de facto and legal responsibility align in the employment contract do not exist. Thus, this does not rule out any de facto transfers in any situation just changes legal overlay.
Can
Own land with 100% land value tax
Resell
@asklemmy
I am curious if you would consider my position to be capitalism.
The market economy I advocate legally protects an inalienable right to workplace democracy just like what some countries have today with political democracy. The employer-employee contract is legally recognized as invalid, so all firms are worker coops. While there is a fruits-of-labor-based claim to products of labor, products of nature there is no such claim, so there is common ownership of natural resources
@asklemmy
When it is a buyer that has excessive market power it can be called monopsony or oligopsony.
This is framing things in terms of the pie metaphor that economists use. While that metaphor is accurate as a metaphor, it obfuscates the issues in discussions of anti-capitalism. The discussion should be about property not value. The workers in the firm don't jointly get ownership of what they produce. Instead, the employer has sole ownership violating the moral basis of property rights
Capitalism has 3 main features:
Private property (even in land)
Employer-employee relationships
Markets
Capitalism is misnamed. Early theorists mistakenly identified capital ownership as the root feature that gave the employer the right to the whole product that workers produce. The employment contract gives the employer the right to the whole product of the firm. Coops correct this. Power leads to employers typically being capital owners, which is why the misnomer stuck. @asklemmy
Marginal productivity theory is a better analysis. I don't approve of the ideological way economists present it though.
There is a need for a labor theory to recognize flaws in capitalism, but the labor theory that is needed is one of property (LTP) not of value after all capitalism is a property system. LTV is insufficiently decisive in its critique. At best, it says that workers are underpaid. LTP, on the other hand, demonstrates that workers legally own 0% of what they produce
The employment contract not private property gives the employer the legal right to the whole product and control rights to the firm.
Why do you believe that privately owned capital goods imply a lack of workers' control? A worker coop remains a coop even if a third party rents them a factory.
Oh, you include private land ownership.
Modern social democrats are capitalist of course.
Socialists aren't the only anti-capitalists. "Market socialism" is not socialism.
I cannot fit more in a toot
This is the wrong argument to make. By normal juridical standards, wage labor is not coercive. Capitalist wage labor's voluntary nature, unlike other systems such as historical slavery, allows for other anti-capitalist critiques. The workers are fully de facto responsible for the results of their actions (the whole product of the firm). This observation makes the flaw in the system clear. Even if wage labor was coercive, the solution to that would be just a basic income
This understanding rejects all criticism of capitalism based on its denial of workers' control as not a critique of capitalism per se. It takes the position that an economy where all firms are worker coops is capitalist, which is strange due to labor's special role in controlling all firms.
Is the capitalist's appropriation of 100% of the product of the workers' labor not a defining aspect of capitalism?
It also makes climate critiques not of capitalism. Those involve private property in land
They are not welfare capitalists. They advocate an economy where all firms are democratically-run worker coops. The idea that such worker coops are based on social ownership of the means of production and that an economy consisting of worker coops does not have private ownership of the means of production is based on a misunderstanding of worker coops and capitalism. For example, it is possible for a democratically-run worker coop to rent a factory from a private third party
The anti-capitalist tradition I am speaking from is descended from Proudhon and other classical laborists not Marx. I reject the labor theory of value.
The difference from capitalism is that legal system recognizes the employer-employee contract as invalid, and thus all businesses are required to be worker coops. I am fine with calling it capitalism if necessary, but many defenders of capitalism would not consider it to be so
The system I am describing has full private ownership. I am not taking the socialist position of collectivizing the means of production. Capital can be privately owned including by individuals. For example, an individual could own a factory and rent it out to a worker coop.
Key inputs would have more value. That does not amount to more fruits of labor because by fruits of labor, I mean the literal property rights to the production output and the liabilities for the used-up inputs not the value
This is a great rationale for markets and prices, but it isn't a rationale for capitalism per se. It is possible for non-capitalist systems to use markets and prices.
I am not a Marxist.
There is a different philosophical rationale for what is wrong with capitalism and why an alternative is necessary. I can provide links to the comments in this thread where I try to explain it if you are interested. I am on Mastodon, so I have a character limit to deal with
By democratic membership in the firm, I mean just the workers in the firm being members not the entire society because the workers in the firm are governed by management. Worker coops do not prevents individuals from owning private property in the means of production. In a worker coop, the whole product of the firm is joint property of the workers in the firm, but this is ironically necessary for private property's moral basis, which is getting the fruits of your labor
Classical liberal principles like the principle that legal responsibility should be assigned in accordance with de facto responsibility actually philosophically imply anti-capitalist workplace democracy, and are not philosophically consistent with wage labor. Classical liberalism needs to return to its spot on the left
Not defining the term. I am using the term how it is used. I hate to appeal to wikipedia, but they include wage labor in capitalism's central characteristics.
Happy to call economic democracy a variant of capitalism depending on the audience. It is odd tho with labor having a special role.
The difference from capitalism is the right to worker coop is inalienable in economic democracy, so working in a firm automatically grants control rights.
I am not a socialist, so cannot comment there
The reason I include the employer-employee contract is the workers' self-management centering traditions of anti-capitalist thought. In a proper analysis, the employer-employee contract plays a much more crucial role in alienated capitalist appropriation that anti-capitalists like to point to, but cannot usually properly criticize. The employer-employee contract is where the workers give up the right to democracy and the right to the fruits of their labor
Being in favor of private property and private incentive does not even necessarily mean that you are pro-capitalism. Capitalism as the term is used has three defining features:
Markets
Private property
Employer-employee relationship
One could have a non-capitalist economy that replaced the last one with democratic membership in the firm and still kept the other two features such as a market economy consisting of worker coops
Capitalism is misnamed. Marx's analysis that capital has a special theoretical role in the system is wrong. Accepting the pie metaphor means falling for the capitalist framing. Capitalism is a property system, so criticize it in property theoretic terms. The problem with the system becomes clear as the capitalist legally owns 100% of the positive and negative product of the firm and employees own 0% of the product. Whole analysis doesn't fit in a toot, so link: https://www.ellerman.org/rethinking-common-vs-private-property/
How would a planned economy decide between 2 new projects to develop new untested technologies competing for the same resource?
Proposals for a planned economy seem to compromise on workers' control, one of the main motivators of anti-capitalism, and end up just making society take on the role of the capitalist. From a democratic perspective, the party governed in the firm is the people that work in that firm. By democratic principle, only they should have control
What do you mean by valid input?
Both capital and labor are causally efficacious in production. Why would people use them otherwise? Capital is also the fruits of past labor, so denying capital remuneration denies remuneration to the workers that created that capital @asklemmy