I mean collective employee ownership can’t really be considered capitalism. Who are the capitalists in this economy? Everyone? It works very differently.
Generally most proponents of worker-coops are considered market socialists or anarchists, depending on their attitudes toward the state.
That said it can exist within capitalism, though it’s not clear whether capitalism will allow this ownership structure to expand significantly.
I agree that it is not capitalism as it abolishes the employer-employee contract, but it isn’t quite socialism either because it is technically compatible with private property.
In terms of expanding the worker coop sector, I actually have some ideas for getting startup funding for worker coops, and creating economic entities that would buy up capitalist firms and convert them into worker coops
The capitalists are the workers. They collectively want to increase their profits and grow their company and invest in the markets. This isn’t socialism, anarchy or anything else. It’s capitalist. Socialism, communism are not good systems. Cooperatives sit in a neat place that bridges ideas between both major political groups.
Socialism means the workers control the means of production which is an antiquated term but can definitely mean direct ownership of businesses. So worker coops are certainly socialist. It doesn’t really make sense to speak of socialism as a single system since it’s more of a collection of ideas, most of which having never been tried. I assume you are talking about the USSR and those who followed its economic system. While I agree that that system was bad, they also didn’t grant workers real control over the economy and weren’t really socialist by the original definition. Even Lenin referred to their system as state capitalism, which they advocated for because marxists believe that capitalism has to advance to a certain stage before socialism can take root. The stated plan was to eventually move towards socialism but of course they never did because when do dictators ever want to give up power?
Most people think socialism is about free markets vs state planning but this is just Soviet and US propaganda. While some socialists did advocate for state planned economies, you can also have state planned capitalist economies such as the nazi war economy.
Anyway, that’s all esoteric political theory and not super relevant to worker coops which almost everyone agrees are pretty cool.
Problem I have here is that the government doesn’t need to change. Markets would exist how they do. Hell even businesses would run as they do with private owners and capitalist investing freely. What I would suggest changing is any company who wants to go public to become something larger they should have to restructure as a cooperative or something similar where the employees have a majority stake in the shares while the rest can be sold publicly. so for me I feel like it’s a bit of a mix but ultimately it’s still all exists in a capitalist market with all the intention of being acting and behaving like capitalist.
I mean collective employee ownership can’t really be considered capitalism. Who are the capitalists in this economy? Everyone? It works very differently.
Generally most proponents of worker-coops are considered market socialists or anarchists, depending on their attitudes toward the state.
That said it can exist within capitalism, though it’s not clear whether capitalism will allow this ownership structure to expand significantly.
I agree that it is not capitalism as it abolishes the employer-employee contract, but it isn’t quite socialism either because it is technically compatible with private property.
In terms of expanding the worker coop sector, I actually have some ideas for getting startup funding for worker coops, and creating economic entities that would buy up capitalist firms and convert them into worker coops
@general
The capitalists are the workers. They collectively want to increase their profits and grow their company and invest in the markets. This isn’t socialism, anarchy or anything else. It’s capitalist. Socialism, communism are not good systems. Cooperatives sit in a neat place that bridges ideas between both major political groups.
Socialism means the workers control the means of production which is an antiquated term but can definitely mean direct ownership of businesses. So worker coops are certainly socialist. It doesn’t really make sense to speak of socialism as a single system since it’s more of a collection of ideas, most of which having never been tried. I assume you are talking about the USSR and those who followed its economic system. While I agree that that system was bad, they also didn’t grant workers real control over the economy and weren’t really socialist by the original definition. Even Lenin referred to their system as state capitalism, which they advocated for because marxists believe that capitalism has to advance to a certain stage before socialism can take root. The stated plan was to eventually move towards socialism but of course they never did because when do dictators ever want to give up power?
Most people think socialism is about free markets vs state planning but this is just Soviet and US propaganda. While some socialists did advocate for state planned economies, you can also have state planned capitalist economies such as the nazi war economy.
Anyway, that’s all esoteric political theory and not super relevant to worker coops which almost everyone agrees are pretty cool.
Problem I have here is that the government doesn’t need to change. Markets would exist how they do. Hell even businesses would run as they do with private owners and capitalist investing freely. What I would suggest changing is any company who wants to go public to become something larger they should have to restructure as a cooperative or something similar where the employees have a majority stake in the shares while the rest can be sold publicly. so for me I feel like it’s a bit of a mix but ultimately it’s still all exists in a capitalist market with all the intention of being acting and behaving like capitalist.