An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.
"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln
This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups
A moneyless society that scales up to billions of people is unlikely to be possible
Postcapitalist alternatives that use currency to facilitate trade between actors without social ties seem much more plausible
@asklemmy
This would be joint self-employment as in a worker coop
I would argue that all employment contracts are terrible due to their violation of the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. De facto responsibility is de facto non-transferable, so there is no way for legal and de facto responsibility to match in an employment contract. Instead, workers should always be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop
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
100% land value tax would solve this @asklemmy
The ancap vision lacks necessities for stable stateless societies besides the dual logics of exit and commitment. By having some rights be non-transferable, it prevents them from accumulating and concentrating maintaining decentralization and preventing collusion to form a state. There is no middle ground, in the ancap vision, between full economic planning of the firm and completely uncoordinated atomized individuals in the market. The groups I describe provide that.
@technology
Abolishing the employment contract isn’t more constraints than ancap. It is part of legitimate contracts’ non-fraudulent nature.
Groups enable the large-scale cooperation needed for an ordered stateless society.
Groups could have judicial systems. Judicial agreements could exist between groups. Thieves would pay damages to the victim. For serious crimes, there could be expulsion from group(s) and blocklists
For arguments, groups could subsidize agreement across social distance
1 individual can be a part of many groups. Being a part of zero groups would make people pay steep exit fees for every economic transaction with you and you wouldn’t be able to access any group collective property, group currencies or receive mutual aid that these groups provide. There would be strong economic incentives to participate in these groups. Since all firms would be mandated to be worker coops, these groups would be a new way to provide startup capital to new firms
The employment contract is such a contract. It involves a legal transfer of legal responsibility for the positive and negative results of production from the employees to the solely the employer. However, there is no corresponding de facto transfer of de facto responsibility. The contract is unfulfillable.
Groups set exit fees for transferring out community value. They can lower the exit fees for mutually-recognized groups, and exclude “groups” with no public goods funding
@technology
So you agree that the employer-employee contract must be abolished due to it violating workers’ inalienable right to workplace democracy?
The way collective property works is that each group member that possesses collective property self-assess and declares the price they would be willing to turn over the possession to another group member. Then, they pay a percentage fee on this self-assessed price to the group. Groups democratically decide what to do with the collective funds @technology
Cooperatives existing doesn’t solve the problem as it doesn’t address the violation of inalienable rights in all non-coop firms. Consent doesn’t transfer responsibility. The solution is to abolish the employment contract and secure universal self-employment as in a worker coop.
Markets have a place, but non-market mechanisms and mutual aid should flourish within groups. Ancaps see the logic of exit, but ignore the dual logic of commitment and voice e.g. democracy and social property
@technology
Capitalism puts de facto persons into a thing’s legal role. Consenting to a contract doesn’t alienate personhood. As labor-sellers, workers are treated as persons. The issue arises with the workers as labor performers. The employees are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but get 0% of property and liabilities for the results of production. Instead, the employer has 100% sole legal responsibility.
Individuals are the basic entity. Groups’ rules vary
@technology
Capitalism is inherently based on dishonesty. It routinely treats people as things in the employer-employee relationship. When the factual and legal situation don’t match, that is morally a fraud.
Postcapitalism would consists of various intersecting and overlapping voluntary democratic associations managing their own collectivized means of production. Within these groups, there would still be a notion of possession of the shared asset.
Here are a few anarchist and anarchist-adjacent sources to go into specifics about institutions that an anarchist society might have:
The Possibility of Cooperation by Michael Taylor - A critique of Hobbes’s argument for the state with modern game theory
https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/plural-money-a-new-currency-design/ - A currency design that encourages mutual aid. Mentions how collective ownership can be achieved without a state.
Ancaps support employment contracts. This is contradictory: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
I have a specific theory of rights in mind. This theory of rights proposes worker coops as the only rights respecting way of organizing labor relations based on the inalienability of responsibility. I’m not using rights in a general vague sense to refer to harm.
Worker coops view workers differently than capitalist firms. They see labor as a fixed factor e.g. worker coops cut wages not jobs during economic, downturns.
The theory of rights I have in mind can fit in a license @programming
Far left as in explicit restrictions on capitalist firms using the software without paying for it while still allowing full software freedom for worker coops, which don’t violate workers’ rights.
Copyfarleft should set up a whole family of licenses of varying strengths and its own alternative ideology from the FSF. The first principle is an almost complete rejection of permissive open source licenses as enabling capitalist free riding @programming
I wouldn’t say FSF is too ideological. They just don’t have a political strategy for how they will bring about the changes they desire. To really change things towards a new mode of production, you need a way for people in the new mode of production to earn a living. Also, their ideology is wrong in its lack of emphasis on software workers’ rights and the relations of production
If you look at property rights, the contrast is even stronger. The employer owns 100% of the property rights to the produced outputs and owes 100% of the liabilities for the used-up inputs. Meanwhile, workers qua employee receive 0% of both. This is despite their joint de facto responsibility for producing those results violating the basic principle of justice.
We need to move towards a copyfarleft model that considers the rights of both software users and developers unlike copyleft
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