Vogel
19th March 2015, 01:10
If ya don't know, I like Richard Wolff, rdwolff.com .
Recently he came out with a piece explaining how he thinks a non-capitalist (Dare I say communist?) enterprise could work.
http://www.democracyatwork.info/articles/2012/07/cooperative-vs-wsde/
Here is that article.
July 4, 2012
Cooperative vs. WSDE
by Professor Richard D. Wolff
I’d like to take this blog to expand a bit on what is in my mind in thinking about the relation between what we are talking about at Democracy at Work: Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE’s) in relation to other kinds of cooperatives.
Cooperative is a term with a long, complex history that has given it multiple meanings. Sometimes it refers to a situation where the workers in an enterprise all collectively/cooperatively own its assets. Sometimes it refers to separate enterprises collectively or cooperatively purchasing inputs and/or marketing their products. Sometimes it refers to work arrangements in which the management functions are performed collectively, say by the workers themselves (workers’ self-management).
WSDEs refer to something else, to another meaning of the term coop. In WSDE’s what is done collectively/cooperatively is the appropriation and distribution of the surpluses produced in and by the enterprise; moreover it is done by those workers who produce the surplus: the surplus-producing workers. The key word here is “director.” Surplus-producing workers are to self-direct the enterprise in the precise sense of such workers replacing the typical capitalist corporation’s board of directors.
To be clear, we need to distinguish surplus-producing workers from the other kind of workers typically found in enterprises. Examples will help here: consider enterprises that make, say, cars, software programs, and cut hair. In each case the surplus-producing workers are those who literally work (use their brains and muscles) to fashion the final product (cars, software programs, haircuts) using raw materials and tools. The other kind of workers are those whose labor provides the conditions which enable the surplus-producing workers to function. Examples include clerks who keep records, purchasing managers who secure inputs, sales personnel who find buyers for the final products, security personnel who prevent thefts. None of these workers actually produce the commodities sold by the enterprise. We might call these other workers – whose labor is every bit as important as the surplus-producers, but important in a different way – “enablers” or “enabler-workers” to differentiate them from surplus-producing workers.
The surplus-producer is the kind of worker whose labor adds to the value of the raw materials and tools/equipment used up in producing the enterprise’s output. So, for example, if a worker’s 8 hour working day adds $8 to the raw materials and tools used up in production (say, for example, worth $4 of raw materials and tools), then the value of the day’s physical output is $12, the sum of $8 + $4. If the employer pays the worker in this example a daily wage of $4, then the surplus value produced by this worker is $4 per day.
In corporate capitalist enterprises, this surplus value is received by the board of directors when they sell the day’s output (at $12) and subtract their costs ($4 for the used-up raw materials and tools + $4 wage paid to the worker). The board of directors receives $4 in surplus value per day per worker. In capitalist enterprises, this surplus value is the fund that the corporation’s board uses to pay all the enabler workers it hires (from clerks to top managers), to pay dividends to shareholders, to pay for additional workers, tools, and raw materials (for enterprise growth), to pay taxes and so on.
WSDEs are then an alternative social organization of the surplus inside enterprises. Instead of a board of directors (selected by the major shareholders), in a WSDE, the surplus producing workers themselves cooperatively function as the board of directors. These workers themselves appropriate and distribute the surplus their labor produces – the excess of the value added by their labor over the value paid to them individually as their wage income.
The reasoning here – the rationale for WSDEs – is basic and drawn from the same analysis of production inside enterprises that we used above. It is taken from Karl Marx’s surplus-focused analysis. In capitalism the surplus-producing workers are excluded from appropriating and distributing that surplus. Other people, not themselves engaged directly in producing the surplus, take it and distribute it. This is damaging to workers in countless ways that Marx catalogs in his work.
The key problem is what Marx calls exploitation: the fact that the producers of surplus are different people from those who appropriate and distribute it. Exploitation creates division, opposition, tension, and conflict at the core of capitalist production (from where it infects the rest of capitalist society with inequality and many other social costs and problems. WSDE’s represent the end of exploitation which means (1) the end of excluding the surplus-producing workers from appropriating and distributing the surpluses they produce and (2) end of allowing persons (e.g., capitalist boards of directors) other than surplus producers to appropriate and distribute surpluses.
The social transition from capitalism to WSDE’s represents the abolition of/emancipation from the institution of exploitation. It thus historically parallels the transition from slavery to capitalism whose central component was the abolition of/emancipation from the institution of slavery.
In capitalist corporations, once the board of directors has appropriated the surplus produced by the surplus-producing workers, multiple influences shape how the appropriated surplus is distributed: to whom, in what amounts, and for what purposes. Thus, for example, the major shareholders can and do weigh in (they may push, for example, to receive larger dividends), so do other lesser shareholders, government officials wanting higher taxes, managers demanding larger operating budgets, clerks demanding raises, and so on. Even workers can demand that a portion of the surplus be used for day-care services for workers’ children, for pension benefits, and so on. Indeed, all those who do or who might get distributions of capitalists’ appropriated surpluses – including all the enabler workers inside the enterprise – may be expected to use what influence they have to help shape how the board of directors distributes the various portions of the surplus they have appropriated.
In WSDE’s, once the surplus-producing workers have appropriated their own surplus collectively/cooperatively, their commitment to democracy requires them to share equally with two key groups the power to decide how the surplus-producing workers will distribute the surplus. Those two groups are the enabler workers and the communities (local, regional and national) with whom the enterprise interacts. Together, these three groups will (1) democratically co-determine the size of the surplus in production and its division among enablers and among the communities that interact with the enterprise, and (2) democratically co-determine those directorial decisions of enterprises and of communities that most impact them both.
The productive workers together with the enabler workers will democratically direct the enterprise. They will together decide what, how, and where the enterprise will produce. When their decisions impact the communities they interact with, the final decisions will have to be reached democratically by all three groups. And the same applies to the three groups’ participation in those community-directing decisions that significantly impact enterprises.
Some folks wonder why only surplus-producing workers appropriate and distributed surpluses in WSDEs. Part of the answer is the goal of ending exploitation as explained above. Another part of the explanation has to do with respecting surplus-producing workers’ autonomy and freedom.
To show this, consider how democracy handles the individual. On the one hand, since what an individuals does always impacts the community in which he/she exists, one could interpret democracy to mean that everything an individual does must be codetermined by and with the community. Yet to do that would remove the individual’s autonomy and freedom.
Hence, modern democracies develop limits on the community’s influence over individual behavior (via historical understandings, rules, and laws) in order to leave him/her a certain autonomy and freedom deemed to be more or less an “inalienable right.”
In the same spirit, WSDE’s respect surplus-producing workers basic entitlement not to be exploited, not to see their surplus appropriated by persons other than themselves. And just as democracies constantly debate, renegotiate and change the individual-community relation, so too would WSDE-based societies constantly debate, renegotiate, and change the surplus-producer relation to enabler workers and surrounding communities.
As I am but a lone fledgling high school commie, what are your opinions on this? I would prefer answers based on the Surplus Labor Theory of Value and other works by Karl, but by all means use whichever schools of thought you subscribe to.
If you feel like, Wolff also has 3 videos where he gives a basic view of the benefits this has to American Audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZeVd_0ydc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQqpivh8ZqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjfLfK_nn4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-lGh0KvK2M
Recently he came out with a piece explaining how he thinks a non-capitalist (Dare I say communist?) enterprise could work.
http://www.democracyatwork.info/articles/2012/07/cooperative-vs-wsde/
Here is that article.
July 4, 2012
Cooperative vs. WSDE
by Professor Richard D. Wolff
I’d like to take this blog to expand a bit on what is in my mind in thinking about the relation between what we are talking about at Democracy at Work: Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE’s) in relation to other kinds of cooperatives.
Cooperative is a term with a long, complex history that has given it multiple meanings. Sometimes it refers to a situation where the workers in an enterprise all collectively/cooperatively own its assets. Sometimes it refers to separate enterprises collectively or cooperatively purchasing inputs and/or marketing their products. Sometimes it refers to work arrangements in which the management functions are performed collectively, say by the workers themselves (workers’ self-management).
WSDEs refer to something else, to another meaning of the term coop. In WSDE’s what is done collectively/cooperatively is the appropriation and distribution of the surpluses produced in and by the enterprise; moreover it is done by those workers who produce the surplus: the surplus-producing workers. The key word here is “director.” Surplus-producing workers are to self-direct the enterprise in the precise sense of such workers replacing the typical capitalist corporation’s board of directors.
To be clear, we need to distinguish surplus-producing workers from the other kind of workers typically found in enterprises. Examples will help here: consider enterprises that make, say, cars, software programs, and cut hair. In each case the surplus-producing workers are those who literally work (use their brains and muscles) to fashion the final product (cars, software programs, haircuts) using raw materials and tools. The other kind of workers are those whose labor provides the conditions which enable the surplus-producing workers to function. Examples include clerks who keep records, purchasing managers who secure inputs, sales personnel who find buyers for the final products, security personnel who prevent thefts. None of these workers actually produce the commodities sold by the enterprise. We might call these other workers – whose labor is every bit as important as the surplus-producers, but important in a different way – “enablers” or “enabler-workers” to differentiate them from surplus-producing workers.
The surplus-producer is the kind of worker whose labor adds to the value of the raw materials and tools/equipment used up in producing the enterprise’s output. So, for example, if a worker’s 8 hour working day adds $8 to the raw materials and tools used up in production (say, for example, worth $4 of raw materials and tools), then the value of the day’s physical output is $12, the sum of $8 + $4. If the employer pays the worker in this example a daily wage of $4, then the surplus value produced by this worker is $4 per day.
In corporate capitalist enterprises, this surplus value is received by the board of directors when they sell the day’s output (at $12) and subtract their costs ($4 for the used-up raw materials and tools + $4 wage paid to the worker). The board of directors receives $4 in surplus value per day per worker. In capitalist enterprises, this surplus value is the fund that the corporation’s board uses to pay all the enabler workers it hires (from clerks to top managers), to pay dividends to shareholders, to pay for additional workers, tools, and raw materials (for enterprise growth), to pay taxes and so on.
WSDEs are then an alternative social organization of the surplus inside enterprises. Instead of a board of directors (selected by the major shareholders), in a WSDE, the surplus producing workers themselves cooperatively function as the board of directors. These workers themselves appropriate and distribute the surplus their labor produces – the excess of the value added by their labor over the value paid to them individually as their wage income.
The reasoning here – the rationale for WSDEs – is basic and drawn from the same analysis of production inside enterprises that we used above. It is taken from Karl Marx’s surplus-focused analysis. In capitalism the surplus-producing workers are excluded from appropriating and distributing that surplus. Other people, not themselves engaged directly in producing the surplus, take it and distribute it. This is damaging to workers in countless ways that Marx catalogs in his work.
The key problem is what Marx calls exploitation: the fact that the producers of surplus are different people from those who appropriate and distribute it. Exploitation creates division, opposition, tension, and conflict at the core of capitalist production (from where it infects the rest of capitalist society with inequality and many other social costs and problems. WSDE’s represent the end of exploitation which means (1) the end of excluding the surplus-producing workers from appropriating and distributing the surpluses they produce and (2) end of allowing persons (e.g., capitalist boards of directors) other than surplus producers to appropriate and distribute surpluses.
The social transition from capitalism to WSDE’s represents the abolition of/emancipation from the institution of exploitation. It thus historically parallels the transition from slavery to capitalism whose central component was the abolition of/emancipation from the institution of slavery.
In capitalist corporations, once the board of directors has appropriated the surplus produced by the surplus-producing workers, multiple influences shape how the appropriated surplus is distributed: to whom, in what amounts, and for what purposes. Thus, for example, the major shareholders can and do weigh in (they may push, for example, to receive larger dividends), so do other lesser shareholders, government officials wanting higher taxes, managers demanding larger operating budgets, clerks demanding raises, and so on. Even workers can demand that a portion of the surplus be used for day-care services for workers’ children, for pension benefits, and so on. Indeed, all those who do or who might get distributions of capitalists’ appropriated surpluses – including all the enabler workers inside the enterprise – may be expected to use what influence they have to help shape how the board of directors distributes the various portions of the surplus they have appropriated.
In WSDE’s, once the surplus-producing workers have appropriated their own surplus collectively/cooperatively, their commitment to democracy requires them to share equally with two key groups the power to decide how the surplus-producing workers will distribute the surplus. Those two groups are the enabler workers and the communities (local, regional and national) with whom the enterprise interacts. Together, these three groups will (1) democratically co-determine the size of the surplus in production and its division among enablers and among the communities that interact with the enterprise, and (2) democratically co-determine those directorial decisions of enterprises and of communities that most impact them both.
The productive workers together with the enabler workers will democratically direct the enterprise. They will together decide what, how, and where the enterprise will produce. When their decisions impact the communities they interact with, the final decisions will have to be reached democratically by all three groups. And the same applies to the three groups’ participation in those community-directing decisions that significantly impact enterprises.
Some folks wonder why only surplus-producing workers appropriate and distributed surpluses in WSDEs. Part of the answer is the goal of ending exploitation as explained above. Another part of the explanation has to do with respecting surplus-producing workers’ autonomy and freedom.
To show this, consider how democracy handles the individual. On the one hand, since what an individuals does always impacts the community in which he/she exists, one could interpret democracy to mean that everything an individual does must be codetermined by and with the community. Yet to do that would remove the individual’s autonomy and freedom.
Hence, modern democracies develop limits on the community’s influence over individual behavior (via historical understandings, rules, and laws) in order to leave him/her a certain autonomy and freedom deemed to be more or less an “inalienable right.”
In the same spirit, WSDE’s respect surplus-producing workers basic entitlement not to be exploited, not to see their surplus appropriated by persons other than themselves. And just as democracies constantly debate, renegotiate and change the individual-community relation, so too would WSDE-based societies constantly debate, renegotiate, and change the surplus-producer relation to enabler workers and surrounding communities.
As I am but a lone fledgling high school commie, what are your opinions on this? I would prefer answers based on the Surplus Labor Theory of Value and other works by Karl, but by all means use whichever schools of thought you subscribe to.
If you feel like, Wolff also has 3 videos where he gives a basic view of the benefits this has to American Audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZeVd_0ydc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQqpivh8ZqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjfLfK_nn4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-lGh0KvK2M