Sooo... the working class should own the means of production?
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
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Yes, but let's try to achieve that without state ownership of the means.
How can the working class own something if the state owns it?
It's very simple.
Nationalists nationalize.
Socialists socialize.
If one is doing the other it means somebody is lying to you.
That's just nonsense there's plenty of reasons certain resources should be nationalized. Why do I care if the company that owns all the clean water is owned by one asshole or a group of them? Certain things in a nation belong to the people of the nation as a whole. Namely the national resources. No one company deserves to own that.
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Simple if you understand the theory and history. The main difference between Communists and anarchists is the involvement of the state.
Main difference between anarchism and everything else is a state
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Yes, but letβs try to achieve that without state ~~ownership of the means~~
As a programmer, I think itβll be pretty tough to achieve this entirely with pure functions, at some point weβre going to have to store state.
Seize the means of production, but first, seize the means of test and staging
Bro just invented Anarcho syndicalism
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I work in an esop. It's pretty cool in that we own the company in shares based on tenure, it's not like a union though.
We don't vote on the CEO or the board, we have third party trustees that manage the esop account.
We aren't beholden to external shareholders, which is the absolute best part. Line doesn't go up, it really just affects our retirement accounts, but even then our valuation takes into account stuff like cash on hand and contract stability. So... We have pretty fiscally conservative management, which is a great thing for us.
I work at an ESOP as well. Honestly I'm glad I fell into this. I have a feeling that I may actually be able to retire. If not early. Probably one of my best moves in my career.
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This sounds like a worker cooperative which is a classic socialist concept that could be applied to modern social democrat capitalism.
Since I straddle the line in my political views between Marxism and social democracy I'd like to share an approach.
Mandatory profit sharing and workers always have a certain proportion of the board elected democratically. Simple as that. CEO bonuses should be made illegal and all of those profits should be funneled to the workers. People will be a lot more involved in the corporate governance and it will align the will of the workers with that of the shareholders.
Economists say that in the long run productivity is everything and worker's having a for-profit voice that will make arguments like "we're losing our best workers because of low pay" to increase salaries is important. This will make each person higher paid and more productive.
You guys know about Walmart, that one rose to success by profit sharing but capitalism got the better of it and now so many workers both time and money poor because they work there.
While many socialists supported worker coops in the interim, an economy of exclusively worker coops comes more so from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.
I work in consultancy and have a dream of forming a small elite company of consultants, employee owned, just 10 or so people who are shit hot at their jobs.
I would plan for it to always be 10 people, deliberately no growth. Do the job well, take a good wage, have some parties.
It's when companies look for massive growth and shareholder value that everything starts to go to shit.
In 2024, a crack team of management consultants was assembled to solve the toughest business challenges. These consultants promptly escaped from traditional firms to form their own elite unit. Today, still wanted by companies worldwide, they survive as consultants of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The C-Team.
[Cue dramatic music]
That's brilliant
Also, my colleagues always tell me I'm c-team standard, this must be what they mean!
I'm up for the C++ team!
just 10 or so people who are shit hot at their jobs.
Why would you want ten competent people when Deloite and McKinsey prove you can make way more money with a thousand incompetent people?
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I guess but it doesn't really solve many problems. Much more importantly, every company should be held to strict standards by a democratic institution of laws.
For examples:
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Both workers rights and pay rates need to be regulated to a bare minimum, because there will always be cases of some people (or groups of people) who try to abuse others and work around the rules. Example: Uber skirts employee benefits by not having "employees", large companies have "subsidiary companies", etc.
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Even if a company of 500 people always look out for themselves and each other, they might still become a detriment to the larger society or hostile towards similar companies.
Having both tight regulatory bodies and strong union/cooperatives are fine, but regulation comes first imo.
If the original owner can do it better on their own they should go into business for themselves rather than create an LLC, once LLC it should be mutually beneficial, not just there to protect the owners private assets
I mean, I'm a single-member LLC (electrician). I'm not sure what you mean.
In the UK we have the designation of Sole Trader for that. Is there not something similar where you are?
Sole Prop(rietor), but it's still just a pass-through LLC for one person. More of a legal separation for liability than anything else in the US.
Individual Proprietor / Single Member LLC
This was my opinion. Any company that wants to go public should be required to restructure as a cooperative. Stay private means you get to be the man running the show. But the benefits the market gives business also means those business usually impact people at a scale that no individual or handful of individuals should be making decisions especially when those decisions are " increase profits at all costs". Cooperatives bring locals to the decision making and helps regulate some choices that are made at the executive level
How does an Employee Stock Ownership Plan work? How do partners/employees make money with it? When you hold stock, don't you need to sell it/liquidate it in order to make money?
And how do you hire somebody? Do you sell your shares to the person at no cost or something?
I'm confused.
Every year I get shares from my company. The vesting period is typically longer. For me it took 7 years to be fully vested. But I was accumulating every year. When I leave the company, the company will pay out my shares and I can tell them where to put the funds. But the higher base salary I have, the more shares I get. Also the people retiring or leaving the company, the shares get bought back by the company and redistribute to the employees. At least that's how it works at the ESOP I work at. Kinda a simplistic view of it.
When someone is hired, they don't get shares. They are enrolled into the ESOP program. Then after some time, they will eventually start accruing shares on a regular basis.
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So I get the idea that companies shouldn't be slaves to shareholders or the whims of a few people, but would the employees owning the company mean they are shouldering financial risk? Like if my company goes bankrupt I just lose my job, I am not responsible for covering their losses.
I think the liability would still be limited. If a company goes bankrupt itβs not like theyβre going after shareholdersβ personal assets to pay creditors.
Are you under the impression that private business owners have to cover losses..? Like thatβs what a LLC is, a limited liability company. If it goes bankrupt the private owners are only liable for a part of it.
If a private business owners goes bankrupt, he just has to, gasp, find a job.
If a worker loses their job they might go fucking homeless.
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There would still be limited liability. Furthermore, they can share risks with investors, and self-insure against risk as well @general
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this is the least someone should get for devoting their whole life to a company
Combine an ESOP with a Public Benefit or B-corp and you get a pretty spicy variation on how a business can be organized.
Or... What if we just stopped working? https://youtu.be/2i0RrGx_GrE
Haven't watched the video yet, will do somlatwr, but if no one worked, we would over amshort time literally return to the stone age.
Who would make for for all? Would we have to scour for our own food again, each on their own? There is a reason we do farming, it is MUCH more efficient. A hand full people can make grain, beef, flour, and bread for hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It liberates all those other people to work on other things and make society grow.
If we all do our own food then in no time growth will stagnate, loads of people will fail to make their own food and decide to get it from others, and since there is no police anymore either (they're busy making and finding their own food) there is no protection either.
We would to have time to keep up infrastructure. More fertilizer would mean that there wouldn't be enough food produced for everyone, the world would go back to about 2-3billion humans. In on itself not a bad thing, there are too many humans, but 5-6 billion humans starving to death sucks.
No more modern medicine, no ody is working anymore, remember? Sucks to be a diabetic, bye bye. If you're trans, you're outta luck, you got bigger fish to fry.
We CAN'T stop working, we'd die out. If that video means something else, then the title is wrong.
What we can do is redistribute wealth. Nobody should need to work two jobs and still not be able to meet rent, that is absurd.
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This is the Centerpoint strategy for maintaining the Houston electric grid
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