I’m proud of you for asking a difficult question that you won’t get a satisfying answer to.
Its almost like asking “why doesnt everyone share cars?” You probably aren’t using one all the time, they’re expensive to maintain, why not distribute the load to society and just have fleets of cars you borrow whenever you need one? Like a vehicle library.
Some people will love this idea, it would work very well for them. Some people will hate this idea and rail about how its the death of freedom and personal choice. And some will very rightly wonder “why are we talking about cars? Trains solve this problem 1000x better!”
Privately owned business is a problem, and a major component of the problem is that petite bourgeoisie small business owners believe they’re part of the broader “business class” which doesn’t exist. They’re exploited smallholders who serve the interests of the truly rich and powerful by ideologically aligning with them against workers, whom they universally believe are too stupid, selfish, and myopic to properly make decisions for themselves or anyone else.
Why would you expect them to be?
If my family starts a restaurant and hires additional workers to, for example, help clean, bus tables, wait tables, and so on, I think it would be kinda weird to share the decision making between all employees. It makes more sense for employee owned corpos, but most small businesses have an owner or owners whose main job is steering the business.
It would only seem weird because you are used to it. Not because it is right.
The person “steering the business” should be in that position at the behest of the workers. If you can’t run a business literally by yourself, you should share power with the people hired to help as if you would a partner.
Yeah I just don’t agree with you.
There is certainly a broad set of circumstances where businesses can share ownership between employees, but that does not mean there are not other circumstances where work is done purely in exchange for money, benefits, or both.
If you and 4 friends want to start a pizza shop, cool do it democratically. If I do a business selling a product all myself and every other Sunday I pay someone to come lick my stamps for an hour so I can spend time with my kids, that person is not an equal partner.
Edit: to be extra clear, democracy is based on the concept that people are all functionally equals in capability, information, and perspective. Basically that countrymen are homogenous. Inside a specialized enterprise of any kind (especially small ones) this need not be true.
Edit 2: or if that’s insufficient and all businesses must be democratic, then I necessarily must be allowed to hire based on whatever criteria I so choose. Work ethic, want to keep the company aligned with my interests, religion, ability, height, anything. That’s the only way to guarantee a homogeneous pool and may also be the democratic will of the group of people who begin the business.
Because I would expect people in democratic nations to value democracy and see it as worth exercising in business. This is in part as I see democracy as a formal way of referring to being open to discussion of opinions and ideas in organizing any group.
Why would you want to be part of any group that may reject open discussion of its organization?
In a democracy you vote on what happens with a shared resource that belongs to all of you, like a country. If a business has several owners they might steer it democratically, like a family business deciding together what to do. But if that business hires employees, the employees don’t vote, because it’s not their shared resource, so why would they have power to decide on it?
Of course that doesn’t preclude open discussion. Many businesses decide together with their employees, it’s just based on discussion and exchange of ideas, not on voting. Why would you hire an expert and then vote among employees instead of letting the expert decide on their area of expertise?
The fact is not everyone has an informed perspective and in business there are very good reasons to not give the entire staff access to finances or company secrets.
As not all employees have the same information then not all employees are going to be able to see that larger picture and thus not giving the guy with 5% of access to the picture the same say as the guy with 95% doesn’t make sense.
Because you can easily swap companies, but you can’t easily swap countries.
There isn’t an inherent value to making all businesses democratic because very often most workers have no idea how the larger company works as a whole.
I work for an import company. My union warehouse steward is constantly judging the financial health of the company based on the volume of boxes he is shipping. The problem is he has no idea the relative value of those boxes so while he’s bemoaning we sent out 1/4 of the number of boxes on Tuesday that we sent out on Monday he’s missing that the total value of Monday’s sales were 3x Tuesdays. In 5 years of working with the guy he has never wrapped his brain around this. Our company would be much worse off if he had a say in how it works because he simply cannot see the larger picture as those skills were never developed. This is not uncommon and I myself have been the guy who cant see that larger picture in other roles.
Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated? Do we recognize that not everyone has the same skill set and level of skill as others?
You can use all of these same arguments to argue against democracy in nations, too. The average person has no idea how the nation works, all of the ins and outs of government, to say nothing of the larger global stage. Clearly what we need is a monarchy!
That’s a false equivalence though as private businesses and governments are not the same.
How so? As I said, the reasons you gave would apply to both. Most citizens are not educated in political science; they don’t understand foreign policy, etc.
Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated? Do we recognize that not everyone has the same skill set and level of skill as others?
We don’t vote for how the government allocates funds, though. We vote for representatives who do that for us. It could be much the same in corporations: you would get to vote for your bosses.
Because they have distinctly separate goals and purposes
Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated?
Given their propensity for allocating the funds to themselves, probably.
Yeah that’s not as common as people who have never run or managed a company or budget think.
The reality is your maintenance staff isn’t going to have the skill set to make rational judgements outside their expertise.
Lets be realistic here, the reality is that most of the managerial staff including the C suite people don’t have the skill set to make rational judgements on the working of the company either.
And then when it gets big enough, all decisions get filtered through C-level, their hangers on, and a roughly “democratic” board. In the sense that multiple people vote on the best course of action, not that they represent the workers.
Oh, look, all of a sudden a diverse array of inputs is providing value. Weird.
Because as of yet the means of production aren’t public property. So the people who own them get to decide the structure of production and they decided we don’t get a say in how they are used.
Do they need to be public property or do they need to be in the hands of those working there? I’d be more inclined towards the latter as in most cases the public as a whole is not going to have an informed or educated perspective on how specific jobs/roles/companies should behave.
Those are so similar to each other in comparison with capitalism that at this stage, we mostly use the same words to describe both.
No, they are not. The USSR and China (only in theory) had/has public ownership and it is quite different than the workers comtrooling their business.
When the public owns the means of production you open up the likelihood of the state directly oppressing the workers as happened in the USSR and China.
Well, in theory is pretty different from in practice
Yes and in practice public ownership isn’t any different than private ownership you just have a different boot on your neck. In the case of public ownership stopping work means going against the state so there’s even a greater incentive for oppression of the workers in some cases.
Nah. State ownership is only public ownership in a robust democracy. Oligarchical states aren’t public.
And thus far no state pursuing Marxist principles as been anything other than totalitarian. There is no democracy among those that seek that path only claims of it as a goal.
All states oppress people, thats the point of a state. The goal of a socialist state is to oppress the bourgeois. While the workers of USSR and China did and do not have full control over means of production they had significantky more than we do
No, they did not. They had less. It turns out the totalitarian police state isn’t a freeing experience. The only people who controlled the means of production were the bosses of the factories and the state that set the production schedules. The workers had no involvement. It was just the state lying to workers.
China has billionaires, an investor class and a stock market. There is no version of a modern Chinese state that hasn’t completely abandoned any attempt at socialism in anything other than name only. I have no idea why anyone who would claim to back any form of leftism would support China since they obviously abandoned leftist principles. You average Chinese worker has fewer rights than most.
You have read nothing on chinese socialism and it shows. No investigation, no right to speak. Dengism was a pragmatic solution that prevented the collapse of Chinese socialism after the USSR was dissolved. They are using capitalist forces to grow their productive capacity while maintaining a proletarian state. Unlike the US, China is actually willing to punish and reign in its bourgeois and this can be seen by how much western media flips its shit when they do. There is genuinely so much to unpack about your comment that I could not possible tackle every claim made without writing a dissertation. I encourage you to read about socialism with chinese characteristics from communists who have put in the time to understand it and I encourage you to question why such severe state power may have been necessary especially in the early years of the USSR. You will not get a pure communist society while capitalist control the world.
First don’t tell people what they have and have not read. You are not telepathic and in this case you are completely incorrect. What you are reacting to is that I fundamentally disagree with the Chinese state propaganda on this subject you have seemingly decided is correct.
“Socialism with Chinese Principles” is insanely hypocritical when applied to real life. They have people who make money off investments. They have a bourgeoisie. They have a stock market. The wealthy control their society just like any other capitalist society. They have the same abuses of the workers that you find in pre-WWII American factories. The pursuit of socialism is in name only. They are literally the capitalist state Marxists warn you about.
Black Cat/White Cat theory just lead China into becoming Mouseland.
Capitalism is antithetical to democracy. Capitalism left unchecked will eventually lead to fascism.
The first sentence is not true. The second sentence is absolutely true. It is funny how that works.
The first one is true.
In democracy, the people rule society
In capitalism, the rich rule the economy
The economy always rules society
In a capitalist democracy, society serves two masters. Both opposites. It’s inherently unstable because it’s self contradicting.
Economic systems are not viewed in terms of who “rules” unless we are taking a Marxist perspective.
The first sentence of the post is and will always be completely untrue.
Bro just watched tech billionaires coup the US government and he still doesn’t understand the problems with the concentration of wealth.
At no point have I said that the concentration of wealth isn’t a problem.
I have said that it is false to claim democracy and capitalism cannot co-exist. They absolutely can and do in many nations. France is currently both.
I’m looking forward to everybody getting red-pilled on Marx in the coming months.
Far too many people have actually studied Marx in academic situations for Marxist economics to ever become mainstream at the very least. The simple fact that the Labor Theory of Value is fundamentally incorrect would be the major problem. We aren’t adopting Marxist economics like we won’t be going back to a Lamarkian perspective on evolution, because we know it is wrong.
Marxist sociology is what I hope becomes more common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
Edit: Marx (and similar theorists before him) do a better job describing Capitalism compared to those whose paychecks depend on them not understanding / distorting it.
Because you are not paying enough attention:
- a Joint-stock-company is by definition democratic. The shareholders are meeting reguarly and voting who get’s to sit on the board, can fire the CEO and so. That doesn’t apply to the workers, yes, but between the owners it kind of is democratic.
- Yes, I know that many tech companies have this strange divide between “voting stock” and “non-voting stock” and founders, who still are in control without owning the majority of the stock, but that is an american thing and not legal in many parts of the world
- there are also many ways to ensure democratic collaboration within a company. Look up the german “Betriebsräte” f.e.
- there are also many cooperatives around there who are owned by their workers
- and there are many state-owned companies around in democratic nations
Because you are not paying enough attention:
I appreciate the examples provided but disagree with your opening, and would suggest the same of you. I specifically said “many businesses” and “largely undemocratic” as I was aware of most of the examples you gave beforehand.
In particular I don’t view the joint-stock model as sufficiently democratic due to what you already acknowledge, i.e. limited to owners/shareholders.
Regardless, appreciate you bringing to light “Betriebsräte”, as I’ll have to look into that.
Democracy is “owned” by stakeholders, and those stakeholders are the people. So it makes sense for them to have a say in how government works.
A company is owned by shareholders, and they take all of the risk for the company. An employee shows up and gets paid, with none of the downside risk (their paycheck won’t go negative), so the employee isn’t a stakeholder. Therefore, shareholders make the decisions, not employees.
In some structures, employees are the share holders and thus help make the decisions.
An employee shows up and gets paid, with none of the downside risk (their paycheck won’t go negative), so the employee isn’t a stakeholder. Therefore, shareholders make the decisions, not employees.
This depends on where the employee works, both in terms of business and nation. If they work in a nation that doesn’t provide some services, they may be dependent on their employer to some degree for some of those services. In that circumstance they’re no longer “just” showing up and getting paid, nor are they as mobile in their ability to switch businesses/employers.
Should those employees in that circumstance still have essentially no say?
Could you be a little more specific? Because that sounds extremely hypothetical.
Let’s say you’re working on a crab ship or something where your life is literally at risk. You should absolutely have a say because:
- your income depends on your catch (could be zero, could be huge)
- you can’t leave
- you are wholly dependent on the ship for food and lodging
- will be at sea for weeks and maybe months at a time
- work ends at the end of the season
So yeah, in that case, something like a coop would make a lot of sense, with the captain (i.e. owner of the ship) having a larger say because they have more at risk. If the crab company goes under, they won’t get paid and they’ll be really hard pressed to find another job between crab seasons.
But something like a cruise ship isn’t a great fit because employees can be offered a fixed salary/wage, the risk is a lot lower, and trip times are a lot shorter. The expense of starting a cruise line is immense, so the owners have a lot more risk than the average employee. If the cruise line goes under, they can just join a competitor or even another business entirely, and they’ll likely still get their paycheck.
Whether you should have a say depends a lot on what you’re risking, the more you risk, the more say you should have.
“kind of democratic between the owners” is just oligarchy. still not democratic.
That’s like saying the foreigners not having a vote is being not democratic though. Because 100% of the owners have voting rights not only a few.
I think what you intend to criticize is the fact that owners and “employees” can be separated, right? If yes then I’m with you.
Well, yeah, I’m criticizing the fact that owners under the current capitalistic system are only a handful of people who usually aren’t workers. If “employees” had a say in how a company is run, then it would be democratic.
Well, there’s nothing inherent about democracy. Nothing about reality inherently forces society towards a democracy.
Our democracies are just as socially constructed as our workplace structures. One of them (society) we’ve managed to make democratic. The other (businesses) are much smaller, and larger in number, and thus harder to influence overall as a system, thus it’s taking us much longer to push them towards democratic structures as well.
You get where I was going with this! It’s exactly that constructed form, and the supposed favoring of it, that led to my asking this.
If a society claims to embrace democracy, but doesn’t extend this to the organization of its businesses, how much do they embrace democratic values?
Why would a privately owned business need to be democratic? What is the advantage of giving all employees an equal say regardless if theor skills and understanding of the business from a business perspective rather than a moral one? I cannot see any reason to give the guy who is not permitted access to all the secrets and finances equal say with the folks that have this access.
Have you ever owned, managed, or run a business before?
how much do they embrace democratic values?
Not as much as we’d like, unfortunately. A lot of people are DINOs. (Democracy In Name Only)
Or many of use are practical minded adults who have run or managed businesses and thus are reflecting on real world experiences rather than viewing this theoretically.
My union warehouse steward is illiterate. He legitimately cannot read due to undiagnosed and unaddressed learning disabilities. He shouldn’t be having an equal say in what to do with finances as my boss who is an ex-CPA. I should also have no say in corporate finances because Im bad at math. The business would be much worse off if the warehouse steward or I had a say.
Violence tends to speed things along.
Just sayin.
Not in this case it does not.
