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First world social democracy has only been in decline since dissolution of USSR and rise of neoliberalism. The threat of socialist revolution kept capitalists from being too exploitative. It is unsustainable, capitalists will want their power back. Look at what happened to NHS in the U.K.
Also ‘freedoms’ for private enterprises and ‘rights’ for workers are straight up contradictory.
Exactly. Marx said “between equal rights, force decides.” We have a class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It doesn’t matter if your form of government is a so-called “multiparty liberal democracy” or a “parliamentary representative republic” when 95+% of the people who hold office are bourgeois and primarily make money through owning means of production or speculating on financial assets, rather than selling their labor power like everyone else. If the bourgeoisie guarantees rights for the worker, it is only because they have cynically calculated that it is in their long term interests to allow some crumbs to fall from their table. They will withdraw those “rights” as soon as they see fit. As soon as capitalism’s immune system detects a threat. You can only get so far with liberal democracy, trade unions, and worker-owned cooperatives, because, while those things are nice, and certainly better than feudalism, you still fundamentally have a bourgeois class-dictatorship where all the so called “rights” of the worker are granted by the bourgeoisie and enforced through their class’s monopoly on violence. They decide when rules can be bent, broken, changed, or ignored. The police and the military exist purely to enforce their ownership over the means and conditions of production.
What if the private enterprises are worker coops?
A worker coop taking care of its workers will always be less profitable than an exploitative capitalist company, and therefore out-competed. It’s what happens when you design all of society around profit.
First, there is no rule that a worker co-op taking care of its workers will be less profitable than an exploitative company. At first glance, it seems reasonable. But it’s not a truism. For example, a well-taken care of worker is likely to be more productive than one who feels exploited.
Second, profits are not how companies compete. Profits are by definition the extra money that goes into the owners’ pockets. Companies compete in many different ways; quality, marketing, price, etc. The fact that there are many successful worker co-ops in capitalist nations should provide some evidence here.
Third, one could imagine a nation that mandates that all companies are worker co-ops. They would still be profit-driven private companies, but would be controlled by the workers (who would also be the ones saying the profit).
You’re missing the point that those successful coops are only successful to the extent they are profitable within the larger capitalist framework, which means worker consideration will be secondary and most importantly they have to compete with capitalist enterprises that engage in heavy exploitation and wage suppression
As long as the capitalist profit motive survives it will in general win against those firms that don’t engage in exploitation and wage suppression and limit the growth of competing coops, it’s creates a ceiling for genuine worker friendly coops and ties them to the greater capitalist network in the form of regulating capitals
Profitability is the be all and end all of capitalist enterprise, the methods of competition are irrelevant (quality, marketing, price, etc) unless they produce sufficient profit, otherwise from the logic of capitalism there’s no point in initiating the enterprise in the first place, this is the direct consequence of capitalist ownership of the means of production
Your mistake is assuming capitalist markets are a universal phenomenon that can be controled by all classes, that’s not true, capitalist markets only exist as the result of a specific form of property relations, the logic that drives workers and the logic that drives capitalists are not the same, workers want their wages to raise, capitalists want profit, wages cut into profits, do you see the contradiction of the coop capitalism you’re imagining?
Coops can’t grow when regulating capitals limit their potential, and workers won’t self-raise their wages if it means the over-arching profitability of the company is at stake hence threatening unemployment, in the world you’re imagining the workers would still want to do away with this self-shackling profit system that limits their ability to grow and sustain themselves
You’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions, both about me, and about the nature of reality.
You’re also spouting a lot of nonsense. “The logic of capitalism” is a meaningless phrase. You’re attributing a lot of assumptions onto something that just means “the means of production can be privately owned”.
The fact of the matter is that there are existing, successful worker co-ops. That alone disproves most of your claims that you take as axioms.
Ok, there are actual implications and definitions behind the terms you’re throwing around haphazardly, fact of the matter is you don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s fine, you don’t have the relevant knowledge of economics or theory, technical or historical, so a lot of what I said probably went over your head
So let’s clear up some basics, there is a logic to capitalism; private ownership of the means of production is the framework, profitability is the fuel and commodity production is the output, those aren’t assumptions, that is the “nature of reality” under capitalism
And finally I didn’t say there are no successful coops, read more carefully, I said they’re only successful to the extent they are profitable and are limited by competing firms that act as regulating capitals, firms compete by cutting costs or increasing productivity, but productivity is tied to technical developments, so that can’t always be relied on, but cutting costs i.e. wages is always the first resort, hence the disadvantage for coops who theoretically value worker compensation over other more common capitalist concerns
That buddy is a form of systemic logic
I’d add also an inherent necessity in Capitalism’s stability is the marriage of concentrated riches with the state’s power and its monopoly on violence. Should worker co-ops ever seriously threaten the wrong bourgeois lot, restrictive laws that only apply to the co-op will appear, unlawful actions will go ignored, state officials will be pressed to harass, legal means will be levied, etc, all until the co-op is tanked. ‘Successful’ worker co-ops are only ever permitted to the point where they don’t meaningfully threaten any bourgeois power, profit is paid no heed in these situations.
i dont really understand this need people have to contort themselves into government vs not-government argumentation. If there is a dictatorship of the proletariat what difference does it make if worker co-ops are considered private enterprise or not?
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
would have been more graceful to admit that you don’t understand what a dotp is
a collection of worker coops but operating through the medium of the market?
Sorry, what are you getting at?
then its not a private enterprise, its a worker coop.
No? A private enterprise means it’s not run by the state. Worker coops absolutely are private enterprises.
I mean okay if you want to be a debate nerd about it. There are a variety of definitions for the term “private enterprise”
Half those definitions agree with me, and the other half say the definition is in some external material not linked to on that site.
I don’t want to be a “debate nerd”. You’re the one being argumentative.
What you’re thinking of is just one of numerous potential theoretical transitional states of socialism or a Frankenstein form of super military Keynesianism
But it’s not something that’s ever likely to happen, capitalists and the liberal states who serve them would outlaw workers coops before if ever got to a point they threaten capitalist property relations, that’s the whole point of controlling the state, to prevent a hypothetical like the one you just advanced
guaranteeing rights for Workers
and how is that going, hmmm?
guaranteeing Healthcare and Services
lol. lmao
You really have to ignore the entire history of capitalist theory and history to pretend this is remotely a coherent take, besides the ancaps, social liberals are the most utopian of all liberal sects, they are willfully blind to the contradictions of class, property ownership, and the functions of the state
They fundamentally don’t understand the social basis for the ideology they claim to uphold, it was only with the rise of socialism that liberals began to construct these social fantasies of class harmony and submission under capitalism, in the old days they were more sober about this shit as Adam Smith readily admitted
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all
But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days labour, civil government is not so necessary. (WN V.ii.2)
regarding the Adam Smith quote, I love the number of Adam Smith quotes that sound like Marx quotes. you can really break a person’s brain with those.
