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

You just mention the community in the post

@politicalmemes

What would be a more appropriate community?

@politicalmemes

Private property rests on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor. In other words, private property appropriation has a labor-basis that capitalism denies. Capitalism violates the very principle behind private property by giving workers 0% joint claim on the positive and negative fruits of their labor

“Property is theft!” – Proudhon

The employment contract is what really enables capitalist appropriation.

I agree with your critique of capitalist liberal democracy

@socialism

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

Rhetorically, it doesn’t matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.

The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production

@leftymemes

Most people think

Socialism = state central planning

@leftymemes

A worker coop is an example of joint self-employment. The workers are not employees, and the employer-employee relationship is abolished in worker coops

@leftymemes

I’m not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.

Some postcapitalist policies include

- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI

@leftymemes

Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact

@196

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln

This quote captures the differing understandings and notions of liberty between these different political groups

@linux

A moneyless society that scales up to billions of people is unlikely to be possible

Postcapitalist alternatives that use currency to facilitate trade between actors without social ties seem much more plausible
@asklemmy

This would be joint self-employment as in a worker coop

@asklemmy

I would argue that all employment contracts are terrible due to their violation of the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. De facto responsibility is de facto non-transferable, so there is no way for legal and de facto responsibility to match in an employment contract. Instead, workers should always be individually or jointly self-employed as in a worker coop

@asklemmy

I made a post in this community of a moral argument for mandating employee-owned companies. It isn’t based on a gut feeling. It is based on the theory of inalienable rights. Here is a link to that post:

https://lemmy.world/post/17963706

@general

Can you give an example in the case where investors hold non-voting preferred shares?

I’m not sure how cross posting works from Mastodon to Lemmy. I thought I had to do that to get boosted by the group

The employer-employee contract

It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.

Inalienable means something that can’t be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor

@asklemmy