There are anti-capitalist liberals though
jlou
joined 2 years ago
At its core, liberalism is fairly anti-capitalist. There are many arguments against capitalism from liberal principles such as the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but receive 0% claim on the positive and negative production while the employer solely appropriates 100% of the positive and negative result of production
It gets even more confusing when you consider anti-capitalist classical liberals
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Classical-Liberal-JurisprudenceJune2018.pdf
Worker cooperatives don't have to have a flat structure. Smaller cooperatives might use a flat structure, but larger companies will delegate business decisions to management. The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic
There are legal tests to test whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee such as the control test. You shouldn't be able to declare a de facto employee as a de jure independent contractor. The factory with only independent contractors wouldn't be able to exercise the same managerial authority over the workers as if they were employees. If these contractors cooperate directly, they are almost certainly in a de facto worker coop.
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/UsingESOPsInPlatformCompanies.pdf
This talk focuses on putting forward the argument against the current system. Ellerman describes economic democracy in detail in other work.
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All firms would be mandated to worker coops. All worker would automatically gain voting rights over the firm by working in the firm. All the firm's workers are voting members
The plumber sells the faucet to you as part of the contract they make with you.
Independent contractors are legally and theoretically distinct from employees
The coin flip is inherently part of policy, and it is bad policy to decide on policies with a coin flip
Inalienable rights are moral rights that can't be given up or transferred. It doesn't mean that the legal system can't fail to enforce the right such as by legally treating it as alienable like capitalism does in the employment contract. If the legal system doesn't grant it, that's a bad legal system.
Moral concepts have an objective sense that is unknowable.
You can't get good policy without democracy because democracy is part of all good policy. Non-democracy violates inalienable rights, which makes it inherently bad policy
I hate elasticity of demand
Liberalism refers to both a coherent political philosophy and a historical political tendency. The former liberalism is anti-capitalist. Yes many historical liberals were pro-capitalism, but this position makes their liberalism incoherent.
Private property rests on the principle that workers have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism violates this norm. Locke was wrong
A market economy of worker coops isn't socialism
@politicalmemes