After Capitalism... discussion

http://www.amazon.com/After-Capitali.../dp/0742513009

Really important piece I believe. Clearly explains that the role of the revolutionary party is to get elected and implement revolutionary legislation combined with use of state power.

The revolutionaries need to gain mass support, they need to get into state power to implement a revolutionary program (can also be implemented with traditional violent overthrow)

I would advise all revolutionary Marxists to read this book in its entirety (at many public libraries) and discuss the system outlined and the transformation plan outlined.

(Its a type of market socialism with worker ownership, a flat tax on worker enterprises, public-owned investment bank)

EDIT: The system actually calls for democratic worker control, but public ownership. The workers pay their "rent" to the public for the capital they use to produce goods for profit through the aforementioned flat tax.

I'll get into the plan with more detail later.

There Is An Alternative:
Market Socialism
with Radical Democracy

Some Notes On Reading
‘After Capitalism’
By David Schweickart

Published by:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
PB: $23.95; 193pp.


Reviewed By Carl Davidson

In this short book, building on his earlier work, ‘Against Capitalism,’ David Schweickart has given us an excellent breakthrough in finding the road to a new socialism for the 21st century. Using both practical and ethical arguments, his main objective is to take on the ‘TINA’ argument-‘There Is No Alternative’-of the neoliberals. He convincingly shows there is at least one alternative, a ‘successor system’ that he calls ‘Economic Democracy.’ His critics will find it hard to dismiss his ideas lightly.

First, Schweickart’s Economic Democracy alternative is a working hypothesis, and not a rigid or doctrinaire model. While rooted in historical materialism, Schweickart’s Marxian notions of science are more in tune with the ‘open systems’ and critical instrumentalism of modern pragmatism. He casts a wide net to draw lessons from practice-from the failed Soviet-led command economies, to the ongoing surge of China’s market socialism, to the new smaller and more tentative projects in Spain’s Mondragon Cooperatives and Brazil’s Worker’s Party projects. He uses all these as resources, but he returns to American soil to work out his basic ideas and proposals.

‘Successor-system theory’, Schweickart explains, ‘is meant to be theory with practical intent. If it cannot offer a plausible projection as to how we might get from here to there, successor-system theory remains an intellectual exercise in model building-interesting in its own right, perhaps, and capable of providing a rejoinder to the smug apologists for capital, but useless to people trying to change the world.’

So what is ‘Economic Democracy’? The core idea is that the workers themselves democratically elect the managers of their firms. They also share the wealth they create by sharing the profit among themselves. They make their money the old-fashioned way: by finding consumer needs, meeting those needs with decent products, and selling them to satisfied customers at reasonable prices.

But how are things like costs, prices, new products and production goals determined? Here Schweickart departs from traditional socialist conceptions; he affirms the primary role of the market rather than relying on nationally centralized planning. What to produce is shaped mainly by consumer demand; what to charge for products or services is determined by competition for market share with other worker-controlled or private enterprises; and what to pay the workforce is limited by what’s left over after total costs are deducted from total sales.

What about ownership? Each Economic Democracy plant or workplace is controlled by each respective group of workers, but the firm is not owned by each particular group. The firms are socially owned by the public at large. Because of this public ownership, the local workers are also required to meet the cost of paying into two funds: a depreciation fund, to be used locally by the firm for capital expenditures, and a government-controlled capital investment fund. This latter payment is in the form of a capital assets tax also added to the firm’s costs. In a sense, the workplace is leased by the workers from the government. But what’s left after all the costs are met, the profit, the workers divide among themselves as they see fit. The capital assets taxes that the government takes in is used to finance new enterprises, to maintain and develop infrastructure projects, and other costs spread across the whole of society.

That’s the bare-bones model. Naturally, it has further implications and raises many more questions, not the least of which is how we get from today’s globalized capitalism to the ‘successor system’ of Economic Democracy . In the course of the book, Schweickart addresses a good deal of these problems; but for some issues, he has only hints or open possibilities.

Here are some of the critical implications of his theory:

1. Labor is not a cost, as it is under capitalism. Rather, labor gets its return from the local profits. This means there is no pressure to keep the workers’ compensation low. Just the opposite: the pressure is for the local workers to produce good quality, desired products efficiently, since that is the best way to gain better profits and a thus a better share for each of them.

2. Firms are under no pressure to ‘expand or die’, as they are under capitalism. If the workers produce and sell to a share of the market that gives them a comfortable living, all they need to do is maintain it over time. If the firm grew its market share simply by adding more and more workers to produce more and more products to sell, it would just mean that the resulting greater profit would be divided by a greater number on workers. Each worker would still receive about the same. Economic Democracy’s tendency, then, is to maintain small and medium-sized firms supplying more local and regional markets, rather than to expand into larger firms reaching a global scale.

3. Worker-controlled firms do have an incentive for technological innovation, but differently than under capitalism. They will want to increase productivity per worker, but not to eliminate workers, expect perhaps through attrition. They will, however, want to eliminate drudgery, but in a way that enhances and upgrades the skills of all workers, and/or in a way that shortens the working hours per worker. But they will not want to enhance profits via automation at the expense of themselves, as the current system works now.

4. Inequality will exist in worker-controlled firms, but not to the degree of the huge inequalities between CEOs and production workers under capitalism. To keep especially good or skilled workers and managers, or to account for the difference s between new and older workers, the factory council will likely give some categories a greater share in compensation or benefits. Otherwise a competing firm may lure them away. But the varying compensation packages will be set by a process of one vote per worker in the enterprise. This creates a different and more restricted dynamic than the current setup, where decisions are made by management arbitrarily or by stockholders with one vote per share of stock, with vast differences in the amounts of shares held per voter.

5. Entrepreneurship will encouraged under Economic Democracy, but in a different way. Groups of individuals with projects for new products or enterprises could apply to the government’s capital investment fund and its subsidiaries, rather than relying on venture capitalists. If approved as risk worthy, socially appropriate and capable or generating new wealth, the project would be funded with a grant, not a loan. The grant, however, would become part of the new enterprise’s capital assets and hence taxed over time, assuming the project is successful. The creators of a successful project could pay themselves a startup fee for launching a successful enterprise, but afterwards would only be compensated if they were a worker or working manager. Straight-up capitalist entrepreneurs can apply to the capital assets fund, or even raise money privately, and make money from their ventures (subject to being taxed, of course). Under Schweickart’s model, however, a capitalist firm, when sold, must be sold to the state.

6. All information about a firm and its finances is open to all workers in the firm, unlike the many restrictions on information needed for decision-making under capitalism. This way, workers can make informed decisions via direct democracy in periodic assemblies, or through the managers they choose to hire or fire as their representatives. Workers can also still have their unions to settle problems with management and to work on larger social issues.

Schweickart offers only a brief concluding chapter about the strategy and tactics of getting from the present order to economic democracy. Briefly it is quite flexible and open, but he mainly discusses two possibilities:

1. A political party of popular and economy democracy could win a majority of the electorate, and take a majority of seats and positions at all levels of government. The new administration would decree economic democracy by passing laws and executive orders that would nationalize stock and redefine corporate charters with varying degrees of compensation.

2. Economic democracy, including its firms and political groupings, could be grown over time as an expanding counter-hegemonic community within the existing order. Step-by-step, it would demonstrate its superiority to the old way of doing things, competing over a longer period within a mixed system, but as a growing force that ultimately would supplant capitalism.


There is also a third option. While Schweickart doesn’t directly mention it, there is nothing in his perspective that would prohibit it, and it’s worth pointing out:

3. A political party of popular and economy democracy could take power through revolutionary insurrection at a time of severe crisis brought on by war, fascism or ecological and economic disaster. Economic democracy would be organized as the way to resolve the crisis and put the country on its feet again.


Apart from these three projections, I have stressed only the economic aspects of Economic Democracy. What about the broader political and social reforms that would accompany Economic Democracy? First off, no particular set of political reforms are strictly required by Economic Democracy , even though winning a wide range of structural reforms under the existing order would be both helpful and desirable. But Economic Democracy can develop, to a certain extent, even under an authoritarian regime with little in the way of a social safety net.

Schweickart is very clear on the implications of the structures of class privilege on democracy. He defines democracy as existing where ‘suffrage is universal among adults’ and ‘the electorate is sovereign.’ A sovereign electorate, he adds, requires open information and public education, but especially that ‘there exists no stable minority class that is privileged,’ i.e., ‘it possesses political power at least equal to that of elected officials and unmatched by any other stable grouping.’
Systems with these elite privileged groupings Schweickart calls ‘polyarchies.’ Since that accurately describes our existing order, Schweickart bluntly states ‘we do not live in a democracy.’

Economic Democracy, however, has a built-in political bias towards radical political democracy. By dampening great inequalities in wealth and diminishing the role of corporate lobbyists and PACs, Economic Democracy enhances the prospect for public financing of political campaigns and reduces the role of private wealth in politics. It thus opens the door to reforms like preferential ballots, instant runoff, and proportional representation. The practice of participatory democracy in the workplace-which is usually punished in today’s world-would likely stir political participation and a multiparty system in the political realm of the broader society.

Economic Democracy thrives where social well-being and social capital are widely generated. It is especially enhanced by access to life-long learning for all who want to learn, and by access to universal single payer health care. Having these social costs born by general revenues is a spur to the successful launching of new enterprises and sustaining those that may have temporary difficulties.

Schweickart stumbles a bit, however, on the ‘safety net’ issues of guaranteed full employment and the guaranteed annual income-’Jobs or Income Now’ as the old slogan declared. One problem is that these reforms often receive substantial opposition within the working class itself. ‘Guaranteed Jobs’ is often seen as ‘make work’ that creates nothing of value and drains public resources. ‘Guaranteed Income’ is only supported for the physically disabled, but opposed as a subsidy for slackers and freeloaders.

One alternative solution to these reforms, as well as the minimum wage, is the concept of the ‘social wage.’ Here anyone who creates social value would be able to obtain a subsistence level of financial support-say $18,000 per year. The idea is that value for society can and is created in realms that reach beyond the job market. Students learning in schools, for instance, create value in the form of their skills; caretakers of young children create value in raising the next generation of producers and creators; teaching sports in the parks creates value in the form of public wellness and health, and so on. Third sector nonprofits can set the base standards for what constitutes social value, but the social wage package would be low enough and on a sliding scale to always reward regular part-time or full time employment. Since full employment is not naturally built into Economic Democracy, this would be an important supplement to regular employment.

Finally, how does Schweickart relate Economic Democracy to the broader problems and conflicts of globalization? Our country, after all, exists in a world of savage inequalities between North and South, and a reverse flow of wealth from South to North.

Schweickart points out, first of all, that since Economic Democracy has no ‘expand or die’ dynamic, it has better conditions for a more progressive and democratic foreign policy. If anything, it has a bias toward promoting Economic Democracy elsewhere. One fascinating passage in the book is a long list of alternative foreign policy decisions that could have been made if the organizing principle for U.S. policy was democracy rather than anti-communism over the last six or seven decades.

Schweickart goes on, moreover, to promote a number of measures to help reduce the North-South divide that have been around for a few years-the Green Tax to price commodities at their true social and environmental impact costs, Carbon Taxes to deal with pollution, stock transfer taxes on the global financial transfers, etc. Even if petroleum alone were priced at its true cost, it would change the price differentials between North and South due to the higher or true cost of transport. ‘Free Trade’ is often riddled with hidden subsidies.

Schweickart, however, offers a new and controversial solution that he calls ‘socialist protectionism.’ Here, our government would put a tariff on U.S. importers to raise the price of imported goods to be competitive with goods produced here. Nothing new here, but what Schweickart wants to do is to remit the tariff, not to the US treasury, but to the country of origin to improve conditions there--hence ‘socialist’ protectionism.

It’s an interesting idea, as it transfers some wealth from North to South. But the devil is in the details. Who would get the remission? The Third World governments? The local unions or NGOs? The workers themselves?

In any case, Schweickart has provided us with a fine piece of theoretical and political analysis, as well as ethical and visionary thinking. It’s a relatively easy read, and an excellent starting point and organizing principle for both socialists and radical democrats. It’s already having an impact in the academy; it’s a good time to bring it the wider audience of global justice activists.

It is a good book, though Against Capitalism is better in most respects.

Schweickart's position on how to achieve change is quite pessimistic in that he does not believe change will happen until Capitalism trips up (at which point we come in), but it is probably true.

As for market socialism, well that will be controversial, but when you actually read what he has to say in detail, it is not really what it sounds like. Certainly he is not advocating capitalist markets.

His flaw, I think, concerns money. He does not address it and seems to presume that it can simply exist as an abstract representation of work done and a means of exchange, which maybe it can, but it is not addressed in detail.

Nonetheless it is a good book even if I do not agree with everything in it.

Right, but once we have Economic Democracy there will still be battles between "productivity" parties that want to lower taxes on businesses and left-wing parties that want to progress to democracy, tax higher to provide more public goods, and even reconsider things like money. It all comes in stages. I dont think money can go anywhere until the higher stage of Communism is achieved (if that even happens)

http://www.amazon.com/After-Capitali.../dp/0742513009

Really important piece I believe. Clearly explains that the role of the revolutionary party is to get elected and implement revolutionary legislation combined with use of state power.

Comrade, you should read my opening Chapter 4 remarks. The parliamentary option is getting dimmer and dimmer with even bourgeois academics getting worried.

He's advocating the same kind of parliamentary reductionism that Kautsky and DeLeon advocated.

I would advise all revolutionary Marxists to read this book in its entirety (at many public libraries) and discuss the system outlined and the transformation plan outlined.

Despite what I said above... will do. The key problem I'll still having coming out of this work is his silence on the wage slavery question (labour-time vouchers and all).

Schweickart stumbles a bit, however, on the ‘safety net’ issues of guaranteed full employment and the guaranteed annual income-’Jobs or Income Now’ as the old slogan declared. One problem is that these reforms often receive substantial opposition within the working class itself. ‘Guaranteed Jobs’ is often seen as ‘make work’ that creates nothing of value and drains public resources. ‘Guaranteed Income’ is only supported for the physically disabled, but opposed as a subsidy for slackers and freeloaders.

Both you and he may wish to read this website:

http://www.centersds.com/

The proposal in the above link talks about "Universal Guaranteed Personal Income" as well as some form of "Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth," which goes beyond Marx's calls for progressive taxation.

Schweickart, however, offers a new and controversial solution that he calls ‘socialist protectionism.’ Here, our government would put a tariff on U.S. importers to raise the price of imported goods to be competitive with goods produced here. Nothing new here, but what Schweickart wants to do is to remit the tariff, not to the US treasury, but to the country of origin to improve conditions there--hence ‘socialist’ protectionism.

It reeks a bit too much of Vollmar's and Stalin's SIOC.

In any event, the Social-Labour Democracy organization should include those subscribing to Schweickart's ideas. Even if there are key areas of disagreement, I prefer working with such folks than with "social-democratic" sellouts.

I'll get into this later, but Socialism doesn't drop from the sky, it has to be CONSTRUCTED and wielding STATE power is the viable way of doing so. Have you read Engles, or even Marx when they spoke of using democratic means to bring workers into power and nationalize etc (Engles wrote in detail of the first 10 steps that a socialist govt would take)

Venezuela is an example of STATE power acquired democratically helping revolutionize the masses and at least START the construction of socialism

Puritanical "revolutionaries" that refuse to use any existing mechanisms to try to exert power are theorists, disconnected with the labor movement, the struggles of working people and blind to the fact that revolution construction is a long, multi-generational process...

not some sort of fanciful single-blow that culminates in a perfect state as a part of some grand narrative of history unfolding.

^^^ Ever heard of soviets and workplace committees - alternative organs of workers' power which even real reformists had a role in creating?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/parliament...977/index.html



My section "Problems with 'Social Democracy'" above criticizes your "Kautskyist" and/or "DeLeonist" thinking. Oh, and don't forget the difficult process of amending the US constitution.

You going to have a hard time arguing with me, because when it comes down to it in theory, I pretty much agree with your analysis of the state. I admit it is sort of a Kautskyist mode of thinking to admit the nature of the state, but continue to view the parliamentary mode as an avenue open to revolutionaries that want to mobilize the masses in order to gain state power, rewrite or heavily amend a constitution and use state power to complement popular power in order to create institutions like soviets where popular power can legally exercise governing power.

Do you think that a peasant red army is going to march down from rural America and smash the state?

Do you think that workers in America will smash the state violently and abolish Magna Carta?

Russia 1917, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe.... none of these socialist revolutions happened in advanced capitalist democracies. Workers in America after the depression didn't give us American Bolshevism, they gave us FDR and the New Deal... there is a reason why revolutions have not happened in western democracies, and perhaps Kautsky and Gramsci's analysis can give us more insights to work with than the Leninist one.

Now.. let's not get into a reform OR revolution dichotomy, that is a false one... something that characterized the "social democrat" reformist was the stupid idea that socialism could come piece by piece through legislation, the support for imperialist WW1 (something that no socialist should ever be able to understand), the idea that capitalism would soon destroy ITSELF... all these ideas are stupid, but so is the puritanical quest for a total, complete revolution as a part of a grand narrative of history.. petit-bourgeoisie kids playing revolutionaries thought and kept waiting in 1968 for workers to storm the Bastille again... is that revolutionary??

I will not comment on the meat of the book itself (I prefer not to speak out of ignorance), however I find this comment highly unnerving.

The idea of using bourgeois organs of class rule (parliament) to lay hold of the capitalist state machinery and wield it in the name of the proletariat and in "it's interests", is in the best, a misguided viewpoint and in the worst, a sickening notion which goes against the very fundamentals of a revolutionary Marxist outlook.

I see absolutely no reason to waste my time on such a book, aside from it's ideas for "post-revolutionary" economy (which I'm sure will likely be just as perverted as the authors ideas of "revolution" themselves ).

It's a book that explains defects in capitalism, why is it unjustifiable for a logaical standpoint, it dissects and gets into how the system really operates, then it counterposes it with a vision of a new economic system, than briefly touches upon how we can get from "here" to "there"

Comrade, you may wish to consider the "imperial presidency" phenomenon:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/united-soc...056/index.html

In regards to the class struggle itself, this class struggle must not be carried out within parliamentary organs. Material developments have closed the door to the parliamentary option, contrary to Kautsky’s parliamentary reductionism. This chapter section was written shortly after the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. In his time, the development of the media came to a point wherein minimum demands (to be revisited as a concept later) could be achieved by "demanding" from outside (most notably through publicized civil disobedience). Today, even more non-parliamentary channels have emerged (for the benefit of even genuine reformists), in the form of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and of course the Internet. Of course, the only form of “parliamentarianism” that would be acceptable is the kind that would exist in the emerging organs of workers' power themselves, akin to soviets, workplace committees, and non-bourgeois communal councils. Building these alternative organs – a common task for both revolutionaries and genuine reformists within the United Social Labour organization (the Mensheviks did indeed help to build the soviets in 1917) – is not just for the post-revolution environment, but also for reminding working-class people everywhere of the class struggle: that things are changing for the better.

As for the prospects of parliamentarianism, even bourgeois-oriented academics are increasingly worried about the state of bourgeois “democracy” sliding into authoritarian capitalism. Over the past several decades, more and more power has accumulated within factually non-accountable sectors of the executive branch. In the United States, this would be the “imperial presidency”: a shift in subordinate executive power from the Cabinet to the president’s “Executive Office” (headed by the Chief of Staff). In Westminster-model countries, the legislative power has become increasingly one of a rubber-stamping function of the executive policies (even under minority-government scenarios), and there has been a similar shift in subordinate executive power from the Cabinet to the “Prime Minister’s Office.” Nowadays, there is no difference between parties in opposition and parties outside parliament, save for the fact that non-Marxist opposition parties receive electoral funding from bourgeois elements.

Do you think that a peasant red army is going to march down from rural America and smash the state?

Do you think that workers in America will smash the state violently and abolish Magna Carta?

I have read the opening chapter of Kautsky's The Road to Power:

Friends and enemies of the Socialists agree upon one thing, and that is that they constitute a REVOLUTIONARY party. But unfortunately the idea of revolution is many-sided, and consequently the conceptions of the revolutionary character of our party differ very greatly. Not a few of our opponents insist upon understanding revolution to mean nothing else but anarchy, bloodshed, murder and arson. On the other hand there are some of our comrades to whom the coming social revolution appears to be nothing more than an extremely gradual, scarcely perceptible, even though ultimately a fundamental change to social relations, much of the same character as that produces by the steam engine.

So much is certain: that the Socialists, as the champions of the class interests of the proletariat, constitute a revolutionary party, because it is impossible to raise this class to a satisfactory existence within capitalist society; and because the liberation of the working class is only possible through the overthrow of private property in the means of production and rulership, and the substitution of social production for production for profit. The proletariat can attain to satisfaction of its wants only in a society whose institutions shall differ fundamentally from the present one.

In still another way the Socialists are revolutionary. They recognize that the power of the state is an instrument of class domination, and indeed the most powerful instrument, and that the social revolution for which the proletariat strives cannot be realized until it shall have captured political power.

Alas, he makes another boo-boo in the next paragraph (one word):

It is by means of these fundamental principles, laid down by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, that the Socialists of today are distinguished from the so-called Utopian Socialists of the first half of the last century, such as Owen and Fourier. It also distinguishes them from those who, like Proudhon, either treat the political struggle as unimportant, or else reject it entirely, and who believe it possible to bring about the economic transformation demanded by the interest of the proletariat through purely economic means without changing or capturing the power of the state.

I admit it is sort of a Kautskyist mode of thinking to admit the nature of the state, but continue to view the parliamentary mode as an avenue open to revolutionaries that want to mobilize the masses in order to gain state power, rewrite or heavily amend a constitution and use state power to complement popular power in order to create institutions like soviets where popular power can legally exercise governing power.

You also forget that the post-March Russian state was teetering on the brink of collapse.

If socialist revolution occurs in the developed world it will occur when a party arises from the working class committed to fighting for the things important to working people. Housing, education, better wages etc. By building a mass party socialists will arise from the sidelines and build an openly socialist presence in labor, in communities. They will engage in minimialist struggles for reforms, instead of remaining alienated in elitist lofts away from the struggles of working people.

The socialist party will however be committed to revealing capitalism and not simply poor stewardship as the root of the problem, and once they gain executive/legislative power, using violence only to keep power/defend against attacks, they will be able to use their mandate and popular support to promote the racial, socialist program

The role of the socialist party in power wont be to "legislate" the state, like a capitalist social democratic party, the role of it will be to ABOLISH the private-ownership system, but first there must be a democratic victory or at least a CONSENSUS built around the idea of socialism.

Bad ideas can only be defeated when they are counterpoised by good ideas... that is revolution from below, that is socialist revolution---- not conspiratorial coups from elitist "revolutionary" vanguardists.

Unless you are trying to attack these ideas with some sort of anarchist theory of a pure, spontaneous revolution?

There is no reason in principle why the mass social labor whatever could not run candidates in bourgeois elections, but reliance on the electoral road or some sort of "long march through the institutions" has repeatedly yielded results that did not advance our class any closer to real power. As for market socialism, I've agued this in person with Carl Davidson (he's changed a lot since he wrote Left in Form, Right in Essence, and not for the better IMHO) and it seems like a pretty good way of guaranteeing that we'll never get to the higher stage of communism.

More interesting stuff on David Schweickart, in light of my own "theoretical maturity":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economi...ernative_model

Capitalism is characterized by private ownership of productive resources, the market, and wage labor. The Soviet economic model abolished private ownership of productive resources (by collectivizing all farms and factories) and the market (by instituting central planning), but retained wage labor. Economic Democracy abolishes private ownership of productive resources, and wage labor, but retains the market.

It is important to note here that Schweickart, when referring to "the market," is referring to the consumer goods and services market only (which has existed since long before capitalism), but NOT the two other markets that distinguish capitalism and bourgeois capitalism specifically: the wage labour and capital markets.

I will indeed say that his "market socialism" is little more than a misnomer. Preceding market "socialists" wanted only to abolish private ownership.

My critique of Schweickart (notwithstanding his receptiveness to "capturing" state power, as noted by Comrade Zeitgeist), however, is two-fold:

1) The consumer goods market can now, more than ever, be planned beyond even the Soviet attempt.
2) His "economic democracy" revolves around the usage of MONEY and not a more restrictive form of exchange that eliminates capital (a distinct concept from both "capital markets" and the unavoidable surplus production "for the common funds") and wage labour. His solution for abolishing wage labour is on the "macro" scale only, and not on the "micro" scale.

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/517

In place of a fixed wage rate, profits would be distributed fairly among the workers, and each worker would be motivated to ensure the firm's success selling in the marketplace.

...

Business credit is essentially abolished, so there are no stocks and bonds. Private savings may exist and be channeled into consumer loans, but the social role of private finance will be small, because capital investment is socialized.

...

The “means of production” are still purchased on a market, however, and Schweickart admits it is possible -- even with a prohibition on private ownership -- for individuals to buy sufficient plant and equipment to start a business.

Conclusion:

"Economic democracy" will have some role in the transitional multi-economy, most likely under the "small-cooperative capitalist economy." Its role will be to demonstrate the feasibility of abolishing wage labour on the "macro" scale (absolute and not relative profit sharing amongst workers only).