• J Lou@mastodon.social
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    15 days ago

    I agree that giving alienable voting shares to workers isn’t anti-capitalist. It becomes anti-capitalist when the voting rights over management and corporate governance are inalienable meaning they are legally recognized as non-transferable even with consent.

    Here is a talk by people involved with Bernie Sanders politically about how all companies should be democratically controlled by the workers: https://youtu.be/E8mq9va5_ZE

    Sanders supports worker co-op conversions

    @noncredibledefense

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      Sure, and many capitalists support socialist ownership structures within an otherwise capitalist system.

      I’m pretty supportive of laissez faire capitalism (with caveats; I consider myself a left-leaning libertarian), and I also agree that worker co-ops are a great idea in many cases. The important thing, to me, with capitalism is that profit motive drive the decision making process in a competitive market. Sanders seems to largely agree, he just wants more of that profit to make its way to the workers.

      Socialism (generally speaking, I know socialism is a big tent), seeks to eliminate both the profit motive and competitive markets, seeing both as waste. From what I know of Bernie Sanders, he’s not on board with that view of socialism, he just wants the average person to be better off.

      • J Lou@mastodon.social
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        15 days ago

        Remember: anti-capitalism ≠ socialism

        Democratic worker co-ops are postcapitalist, but are also non-socialist because they are perfectly compatible with markets and private property. I’m suggesting that Sanders is authentically anti-capitalist, but he conflates his anti-capitalism with being socialist in a category error and thus buys into a false dichotomy.

        All firms must be legally mandated to be worker coops on classical liberal inalienable rights theory grounds

        @noncredibledefense

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          15 days ago

          Worker co-ops are socialist, because the workers literally own the means of production. In fact, I argue they’re about as pure as you can get with socialism, since there’s no government getting in the way so it could theoretically exist in a stateless society.

          Being compatible with capitalism does not preclude something from being socialist.