Here is a short introduction to the core argument against capitalism based on liberal principles: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/

@socialism

The root of the loss of community that everyone feels is capitalism’s total emphasis on institutional logics of exit that make everything extremely transactional while completely ignoring the dual institutional logic of commitment, cooperation and voice. Community emphasizes the latter. We need communities based around shared property, mutual aid and collective action. Incidentally, having such communities could help solve some public goods problems in a non-state manner and be more egalitarian

I’ll write one. The talk argues that employment contract is invalid due to inalienable rights. Inalienable means can’t be given up even with consent. Workers’ inalienable rights are rooted in their joint de facto responsibility in the firm for using up inputs to produce outputs. By the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, workers should get the corresponding legal responsibility, but in employment, workers as employees get 0% while employer gets 100% of results of production

You called centrists framing the debate about capitalism as one of consent vs. coercion a strawman then accepted the framing. Democratic theory requires consent. It just also requires consent to delegate ruling out consent to alienate management/governenance rights justified by inalienable rights.

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

A country that lets people sell voting rights wouldn’t be democratic for long. Does democracy not work? Is it undesirable?

@progressivepolitics

David Ellerman’s modernization of the classical laborists’ argument against capitalism is significantly more powerful than modern Marxism.

Marx’s claim that private property is the root of capitalist appropriation has been disproven in modern theories of capitalism’s property rights structure. Private property plays a role in giving bargain power to get favorable terms, but the ultimate legal basis of capitalist appropriation is the employer-employee contract

@politicalmemes

Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair

@politicalmemes

Not a strawman. There are tons of examples of framing the capitalism issue in terms of consent vs coercion. Nozick talks about capitalist acts between consenting adults etc.

Many worker coops and majority employee-owned ESOPs exist today. It works.

Democratic theory argues that contracts based on consent to alienate are inherently invalid. Since the employment system is on the “wrong” side, the original theory invalidating these contracts is ignored and forgotten

@progressivepolitics

Alienist vs inalienist refers to whether voting/control rights are transferable (alienable).

Better to say institutions based on consent to alienate vs delegate

Voting rights’ transferability with alienist systems implies inequality, but the core point is consent to alienate vs. delegate.

The employment contract is inherently an alienation contract. The workers give up and transfer the management rights to the employer and the employer manages in their own name

@progressivepolitics

Alienist refers to alienation of rights.

Alienist = completely give up and transfer control rights with the recipient ruling in their own name and not in the name of the people governed

Inalienist = revocable delegation where the people retain control rights with the delegates governing in the name of the people governed

Democratic theory draws a distinction between these 2 types of contracts, and invalidates the former

The diagram should say alienation vs. delegation

@progressivepolitics

You just mention the community in the post

@politicalmemes

What would be a more appropriate community?

@politicalmemes

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