Sunday, September 17, 2017

Daniel Little — Worker-owned enterprises as a social solution


There are several forms of socialism, just there there are of capitalism. One form of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, and another is worker-owned ("cooperatively owned") means of production.
Consider some of the most intractable problems we face in contemporary society: rising inequalities between rich and poor, rapid degradation of the environment, loss of control of their lives by the majority of citizens. It might be observed that these problems are the result of a classic conundrum that Marx identified 150 years ago: the separation of society into owners of the means of production and owners of labor power that capitalism depends upon has a logic that leads to bad outcomes. Marx referred to these bad outcomes as "immiseration". The label isn't completely accurate because it implies that workers are materially worse off from decade to decade. But what it gets right is the fact of "relative immiseration" -- the fact that in almost all dimensions of quality of life the bottom 50% of the population in contemporary capitalism lags further and further from the quality of life enjoyed by the top 10%. And this kind of immiseration is getting worse....
The central insight of Marx's diagnosis of capitalism is couched in terms of property and power. There is a logic to private ownership of the means of production that predictably leads to certain kinds of outcomes, dynamics that Marx outlined in Capital in fine detail: impersonalization of work relations, squeezing of wages and benefits, replacement of labor with machines, and -- Marx's ultimate accusation -- the creation of periodic crises. Marx anticipated crises of over-production and under-consumption; financial crises; and, if we layer in subsequent thinkers like Lenin, crises of war and imperialism.

At various times in the past century or two social reformers have looked to cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises as a solution for the problems of immiseration created by capitalism....
Understanding Society
Worker-owned enterprises as a social solution
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

17 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

There's no doubt that WITHOUT government privileges for private credit creation, we would have a lot more worker-owned enterprises. Instead, what is and has been, in essence, the PUBLIC'S CREDIT but for private gain has been used to dispossess and disemploy the PUBLIC.

Matt Franko said...

They are in effect already partnered with them thru their benefit plans for health and retirement....

Noah Way said...

As opposed to 401k plans raided by corporate overlords and for-profit insurance where $16k (premium + deductible) buys you access to the system?

Matt, the best thing that could happen to you is for for your ivory tower to collapse and dump you in you the gutter with the 99%.

Matt Franko said...

Thanks for the well wishes but no I think we should rather set the rates at permanent zero so the Erisa accounts all go bankrupt... :p

Matt Franko said...

The rate I quoted the other day for small employer group , female age 65, $6500 deductible , $ 905/mo were from CareFirst the Maryland NON profit insurer...

So I don't know where you get the "for profit" from...

Matt Franko said...

This is why you lefties (Bernie included...) shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the healthcare reform issue...

Noah Way said...

Female age 65 is eligible for Medicare.

NeilW said...

It's always interested me how the Regressive Left squares the idea of a worker co-operative with the 'basic income' since it inevitably means that those in the workers co-operative will have to work longer than they otherwise would have to in order to create output for people who are providing nothing of value in return.

Munnie is not enough.


How are those in the workers co-operative going to feel about that. Creating to help the disabled is one thing. Being forced to create and hand it over to the bone-idle is entirely another.

Matt Franko said...

Sorry 64, one year from finish line...,

Matt Franko said...

"Creating to help the disabled"

There are more of these disabled people than is generally realized... many cannot continue work once in their 50s ... due to their physical condition/health... somewhat depends on the occupation...

This is why healthcare insurance gets so expensive the older you get in the US...

Andrew Anderson said...

they otherwise would have to in order to create output for people who are providing nothing of value in return. Neil Wilson

1) A banker should keep his mouth shut about providing nothing in return; you thieves create negative value when it's all said and done.
2) Ordinary people LIKE to work if it's meaninful and they are not forced to work for theives like you; see mothers and grandparents for example.

NeilW said...

"This is why healthcare insurance gets so expensive the older you get in the US"

Yup. As Randy says, healthcare is not insurable. It simply doesn't fit the profile of risk mitigation that insurance was invented to deal with.

Particularly in an economy that is service based and therefore by definition full of jobs that are largely optional.

Matt Franko said...

Trumps healthcare tax credit gets larger with age....

Matt Franko said...

In my state the industry has done the work to know that if you are a female age 64 and working, you pay them 905/mo and the first $6500 then they can treat you for whatever ails you... I just got a quote last week...

So how can Wray say "is not insurable"?

It's certainly insurable... you just have to pay the premiums...

"It's not insurable!" : Meanwhile all these people have insurance.... ????

NeilW said...

"So how can Wray say "is not insurable"?"

It's not insurable because of the exclusions, the limitations, the red-lining, etc.

Healthcare is simply not an insurance product - because 'no deal' isn't really an option.


He's got a whole paper on it.

The private sector isn't omnipotent and is very bad at handling anything that requires 100% engagement. Unless 'no deal' is a genuine long-term option, then the private sector will fail in that market.



Tom Hickey said...

I was in a conversation involving a hospital resident a couple of weeks ago and one of the participants said, "This is a shit system."

The resident replied, "Yes, it is a shit system."

This is the basis of the kerfuffle over health care in the US.

It's a shit system for most people, that is, those that are not really wealthy. BTW, the parties to the conversation above are well-off by US standard but not "rich," in the sense that they are in the system that everyone else is in excepting the rich, who have their own luxury system.

NeilW said...

Funnily enough Tom, it's the same here in the UK.

Most people are in the system that everyone else is in - excepting the rich who have their own luxury system.

Nobody will force the rich to stand in line, which shows you that the representative system is bought and paid for.