Democratic Capitalism

[spartan]

Everyone knows that democracy in a capitalist world is a sham as our elected officials have their policy dictated to them by the owners of big corporations who have their own agendas (such as securing higher rating figures for programs and channels on TV networks which they own or selling more of their newspapers e.g. Rupert Murdoch) which politicians are forced to carry out (usually by blackmail such as revealing sensitive information in one of their many media outlets).

As such our alternative to all this crap is socialism. Now one aspect of socialism is cooperatives which are companies owned by it's customers or workers or both who each own one share (and thus one vote each at general meetings to decide company policy) in the company.

But i think that cooperatives aren't socialist at all but are still capitalist albeit democratic capitalist in that it is fair as everyone involved in the company (not the majority shareholder) owns equal shares and has an equal vote (and thus voice) in the running of it (i.e. everyone is a shareholder).

What makes it capitalist? Well it still operates in a society that has currency and a market where these companies (even cooperatives) can compete against each other.

Could we theoretically one day live in a society where all companies are owned by all the people who work in them? And if so does this mean that we are in a socialist society or a capitalist society made as democratic as possible?

What do you think?

All this just entered my head as i was looking up about companies and all there various guises (cooperatives, public companies, etc).

[Decolonize The Left]

Yes, cooperatives within a capitalist economic system remain a part of that system.

Yes, it is possible to have cooperatives exist outside of this system, such as under another economic system like socialism/communism.


Could we theoretically one day live in a society where all companies are owned by all the people who work in them? And if so does this mean that we are in a socialist society or a capitalist society made as democratic as possible?

A society where "all companies are owned by all the people who work in them" is known as socialism. Take it a step further and declare that all the means of production are owned by the workers and you have communism. The state, of course, gradually dissolves under this form of worker-management.

- August

[spartan]

A society where "all companies are owned by all the people who work in them" is known as socialism.

What i mean is the workers own it financially. Each worker owns one share and has one vote he/she can use at general meetings to decide company policy.

If this happened then it would still be the same as a normal Capitalist company except that instead of a few people who own the majority of shares in the company deciding it's policy it would be the workers themselves as they own all shares which are distributed equally amongst them all.

Just to make it clear when i am talking about this i am not talking about a scenario where we are rising up and taking over the company by force from it's previous owners (though this could be done and a cooperative set up after) but workers owning and running it like say Rupert Murdoch owns and runs News Corporation (bad example i know) on account of him being the majority shareholder except it would be the workers doing this in a cooperative, instead of one majority shareholder, as all shares in the company are distributed equally amongst it's employees.

This would effectively mean workplace democracy in a capitalist system!

So if this was done with all or a majority of companies and they still competed against each other in a market with currency would it still be capitalism or socialism?

[trivas7]

No, companies -- even cooperatives that are collectively owned -- but function for profit is not consistent with socialism. What you outline sounds like Michael Albert's participatory economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics), check it out.

[ChristianV777]

I'm not sure how your idea of "workers owning the places they work" is any different than Socialism. Other than you're proposing that markets still exist.
What sense are you using the term "markets"?

It wouldn't be Capitalism, since Capitalism entails that there is a Capitalist class who owns the means of production and makes wealth off of labour power.
But, you're suggesting that people would still get wealthy off their own work, because they'd be competiting with other businesses?

I'm also not sure what you mean, because you say the workers wouldn't take over the companies.
Are you proposing a mixed economy?

So, are you saying, like a small business owner deciding he can't make it by himself, so he decides to share his business equitably with all the workers in a cooperative, splitting the earnings equally, and thereby, there is no longer an owner?

Like the workers' cooperatives in Argentina?
Like the independent, cooperative Left-Wing book publishers (AK Press, etc.)?

[Niccolò Rossi]

A society where "all companies are owned by all the people who work in them" is known as socialism. Take it a step further and declare that all the means of production are owned by the workers and you have communism.

This is certainly not how I define either socialism or communism.

Of course before we can discuss this issue properly we must define our terms. Socialism and Communism, are as used by Marx, interchangeable terms for a single mode of production. The difference between the two is of course that Socialism is the "Lower phase of communism". What does this mean exactly?

Socialism is defined differently by different groups. Many would define it as a transitional stage between Capitalism and Communism which still exhibited the existence of the state, classes, money/labour-vouchers, bourgeois private property (albeit in a state of dissolution) etc. For others such as Bordiga, socialism was much more:


The following schema can serve as a re-capitulation of our difficult subject... :

Transition stage: the proletariat has conquered power and must withdraw legal protection from the non-proletarian classes, precisely because it cannot 'abolish' them in one go. This means that the proletarian state controls an economy of which a part, a decreasing part it is true, knows commercial distribution and even forms of private disposition of the product and the means of production (whether these be concentrated or scattered). Economy not yet socialist, a transitional economy.



Lower stage of communism: or, if you want, socialism. Society has already come to dispose of the products in general and allocates them to its members by means of a plan for 'rationing'. Exchange and money have ceased to perform this function. It cannot be conceded to Stalin that simple exchange without money although still in accordance with the law of value could be a perspective for arriving at communism: on the contrary that would mean a sort of relapse into the barter system. The allocation of products starts rather from the centre and takes place without any equivalent in exchange. Example: when a malaria epidemic breaks out, quinine is distributed free in the area concerned, but in the proportion of a single tube per inhabitant.


In this stage, apart from the obligation to work continuing, the recording of the labour time supplied and the certificate attesting this are necessary, i.e. the famous labour voucher so much discussed for a hundred years. The voucher cannot be accumulated and any attempt to do so will involve the loss of a given amount of labour without restitution of any equivalent. The law of value is buried (Engels: society no longer attributes a 'value' to products).



Higher stage of communism which can also without hesitation be called full socialism. The productivity of labour has become such that neither constraint nor rationing are any longer necessary (except for pathological cases) as a means of avoiding the waste of products and human energy. Freedom for all to take for consumption. Example: the pharmacies distribute quinine freely and without restriction.

The question of what defines socialism is another debate, however, what can be said is that an economy where "all companies are owned by all the people who work in them" is certainly not socialist. (For Bordiga) Socialism is the abolition of ownership, not the transfer of ownership to the one section of the producers.


Thus [for Bordiga], demands such as 'the factories for the workers', 'the mines for the miners' and other such schemes for 'workers' control' were not socialist demands, since a society in which they were realised would still be a property society in the sense that parts of the productive apparatus would be controlled by sections only of society to the exclusion of other sections.

Now however we define socialism, both it and communism represent a single mode of production, this is why Marx referred to the former as the "lower phase of communism" and not as a distinct mode of production. To say that in one the concept of "ownership" and "property" still exist during socialism (albeit in a collective and co-operative form) amounts to calling socialism a distinct mode of production with it's own relations of production individual to it.

Further, your definition of communism is also dubious. Communism is not the ownership of the means of production by the workers as workers as a distinct social class will cease to exist. Communism is the ownership of the means of production by society as a whole, and as such is the abolition of the concept of ownership altogether.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

What i mean is the workers own it financially. Each worker owns one share and has one vote he/she can use at general meetings to decide company policy.

If this happened then it would still be the same as a normal Capitalist company except that instead of a few people who own the majority of shares in the company deciding it's policy it would be the workers themselves as they own all shares which are distributed equally amongst them all.

Just to make it clear when i am talking about this i am not talking about a scenario where we are rising up and taking over the company by force from it's previous owners (though this could be done and a cooperative set up after) but workers owning and running it like say Rupert Murdoch owns and runs News Corporation (bad example i know) on account of him being the majority shareholder except it would be the workers doing this in a cooperative, instead of one majority shareholder, as all shares in the company are distributed equally amongst it's employees.

This would effectively mean workplace democracy in a capitalist system!

So if this was done with all or a majority of companies and they still competed against each other in a market with currency would it still be capitalism or socialism?
It would still be capitalism - indeed it could even be exactly the same kind of capitalism that we have today. If you keep the market system and current forms of property over the means of production, but make every company a collective owned by its employees, you would very quickly see the rise of "owners' collectives" and "workers' collectives". Remember that, in a capitalist market economy, companies can subcontract. A company can hire another company just like a capitalist can hire a worker.

So, in the system you describe, you'd have powerful, rich collectives that own the means of production subcontracting their work to less powerful, poor collectives that don't own the means of production. Same kind of exploitation as in capitalism. The only way to avoid such exploitation is to have ALL the means of production owned by ALL people, rather than have the means of production divided into chunks that are owned privately by some people - and it doesn't make much difference if those "some people" divide the profits equally among themselves or not.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Ooooh. Let me think about adding this "subcontracting" issue to my Appendix... On the other hand, it's mentioned in Chapter 3 (Invepal) and implied in the Appendix - "pension fund socialism" CAN eliminate the subcontracting issue.