jlou

Because most liberals don't consistently apply their own principles. A principle that liberals are inconsistent with is the juridical principle of imputation, the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching. They ignore this norm's routine violation in the capitalist firm. Here, despite the workers joint de facto responsibility for production, the employer is solely legally responsible for 100% of the positive and negative results of production while workers as employees get 0%

@asklemmy

Private property isn't as supportive of capitalism as it initially seems. Classical laborists (e.g. Proudhon) and their modern intellectual descendants (e.g. David Ellerman) argue that the positive and negative results of production are the private property of the workers in the firm. This argument immediately implies a worker coop structure mandate on all firms and rules out capitalism. Capitalism is so indefensible that even private property requires the abolition of capitalism

@socialism

The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

Consent isn't sufficient to transfer de facto responsibility from employees to employer. Employees (and a working employer) are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs regardless of contract. Since there is no transfer, there is an inherent mismatch here

Employment isn't a contract to sell the product of labor because to sell something you must first own it, and workers never own it.

(The workers jointly own the product of their labor) → democratic firm

@neoliberal

It would be unconvincing if the article was really arguing against slavery and then ruling out employment contract by equating it with slavery. That would be a false equivalence fallacy. The employment contract is a voluntary self-rental while slavery involves coercive ownership of people. However, that isn't what the paper is doing. The reference to self-sale contracts is to recover the underlying principles of inalienable rights, and demonstrate that they apply to employment

@neoliberal

There are plenty of examples today of companies with similar structures that seem to work:

https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

It is important to note the argument is that the employer-employee contract is invalid not that the people will benefit from this change (although they probably will)

It is important to consider the political implications of a move in this direction. Having a more powerful democratic firm sector would result in more lobbyists that have an eye on workers' interests

@neoliberal

The liberal norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching determines which party should be held responsible. It doesn't determine the degree of personal liability or risk to personal assets. There is no conflict between limited liability and democratic firms.

The pure application of the liberal principle of justice is to deliberate actions.

A group of people is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their deliberate and intentional joint actions

@neoliberal

Capitalism includes the employment contract where the employer gets 100% of the property rights to produced outputs and liabilities for used-up inputs while workers as employees get 0% of that. That's a descriptive point. Morally, this assignment violates the liberal principle of justice that legal responsibility should be assigned the de facto responsible party since workers are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs but aren't legally responsible

@neoliberal

Democracy in the workplace doesn't mean that every decision would be subject to a collective vote. At a bare minimum, the board of directors must represent those governed by management, the workers. There can still be a managerial structure to support nimble decision-making. Critiques of worker representation on the board of directors would much more significantly apply to widely held corporations with far-flung shareholders. Worker can monitor management rent-seeking better

@neoliberal

Rhetorically, it doesn't matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.

The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

Most people think

Socialism = state central planning

@leftymemes

I'm not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.

Some postcapitalist policies include

- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI

@leftymemes