#liberal #anticapitalism #EconomicDemocrat
An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.
@IanAtCambio The difference between something natural and artificial (man made) is that no one is responsible for the natural. People are responsible for producing the artificial. Animals, for example, are moral patients, so bear no responsibility for the results of their actions. That is why animals are a part of nature. @asklemmy
I would recommend reading David Ellerman to get more of this perspective. Here is a link to a text where he argues that the employment contract is illiberal, which means that it violates liberalism’s fundamental principles, and the only kind of economy that is compatible with liberalism is an economic democracy where all firms are democratic: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf
The workers should not have to negotiate for their inalienable rights to appropriate the fruits of their labor, the moral basis for private property. A system that really defends private property should guarantee and secure their rights. You might respond that workers consent to give up their rights, but the rights are inalienable meaning they cannot be transferred even with consent. They’re inalienable because they follow from de facto responsibility, which can’t be given up even with consent
The workers do produce sprockets and are jointly de facto responsible for them. A group is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their joint intentional actions. Responsibility cannot be cut off like this just like it cannot be cut off at the trigger pull and ignore the resulting crime. The sprockets are a purposeful result.
Selling labor is different. I can transfer capital and the person can use it independently of me, but I can’t do so with myself @asklemmy
Capital is causally efficacious in workers use of it. However, capital is a dead tool. It cannot be de facto responsible for anything. The person that uses the capital is the one that is de facto responsible for what they do with it positive and negative. Your assumption that critics of capitalism are merely criticizing improper application of fundamentally sound principles is wrong. The sophisticated critiques of capitalism apply even in its “perfect” form found in econ 101 textbooks @asklemmy
Referencing property not value. The workers in the firm are selling their labor itself to the employer not the outputs because the employees never jointly legally own the produced outputs and do not jointly legally hold the liabilities for the used-up inputs. If they did, it would just be a coop selling products to a buyer.
This position is similar to a minimum “wage” where the “wage” is control rights.
That’s all that fits in a toot. Will respond to other points later in the conversation
The anti-capitalist left should steal the term classical liberal from them: https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf
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
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 @asklemmy
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
What I meant was blacklisting certain destinations. It obviously wouldn’t prevent all malicious traffic