An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.
Not yet.
Copyfarleft has not had a whole movement built up around it, and no one has standardized the licenses.
Such a license would allow commercial use by worker cooperatives. I understand that software freedom as it has been defined excludes such licenses, but I would argue that this position is wrong. There is nothing unfree about preventing firms based on workplace autocracy from exploiting the commons and the workers that work on the commons and the workers in their own firms @linux
@drwho The difference in my mind is that AGPL doesn’t come with a builtin business model to fund the legal fights when they become necessary. Such a copyfarleft license does by charging capitalist firms a licensing fee for using the software. These funds can then be used for paying project developers and funding license enforcement for those that choose to use the software without paying the licensing fee @linux
What I am suggesting is using a license that disallows capitalist firms completely from using the software not AGPL, which still allows them to use the software as long as they provide source code. In other words, copyfarleft that only extends use rights to non-capitalist commons-based economic entities-like worker coops. The project can then dual license to capitalist firms charging them for the right to use the software. This would give them a source of funding to fund any legal fights @linux
Why not use a license that prevents capitalist firms from even using the software?
What do you mean by work in the statement, “Capitalism can work?”
EDIT: Just to be clear, I am asking what normative criteria you are using to assess the system. There is no non-moral objective notion of a system working without some ethical goal in mind
The challenges you mention don’t really refute the main arguments for worker coops, inalienable rights theory, even if they were unsolvable problems that couldn’t be solved no matter what other changes were made. Economic democracy aims for workers to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor in property rights terms not value. This is based on the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match. Capitalist firms don’t satisfy this basic tenet. They are thus illegitimate @196
Capitalism v. communism is certainly a false dilemma. There are other alternatives such as Georgism as you noted. I would go further and advocate a Georgist economic democracy where all firms are structured as worker coops. Similar to the problem you identify with capitalism in that it fails to treat land and capital differently, the mainstream of Georgist thought fails to differentiate labor from capital in an important respect. Labor can’t factually be transferred unlike capital @196
Perhaps, but there isn’t a good reason to place such a restriction on worker co-ops. Worker co-ops shouldn’t be forced to buy the entire thing when a segment of its services would do.
Liberals as a group tend to support capitalism. Liberalism as a political philosophy can have implications that claimed adherents don’t endorse. After mapping out all the logical implications of liberal principles, it becomes clear that coherent liberalism is anti-capitalist @asklemmy
Worker co-ops don’t necessarily have full worker ownership of the means of production because a worker coop can lease means of production from a third party. It is not socialist. Nor do I mean to suggest it is capitalist. It can’t be capitalism as it has no capitalists as you correctly point out. Since you recognize that it is technically correct to say a worker co-op market economy has private property, you recognize
Capitalism ≠ private property @asklemmy
When I said capitalists there I meant liberal defenders of capitalism.
A market economy of worker coops has private property, so can’t be socialist. Market socialism is a misnomer and unnecessarily associates with a label people already have preconceived notions about @asklemmy
The normative basis of private property, which capitalists claim to adhere to, is people’s inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism routinely violates this principle in the employment contract. Satisfying the principles of private property would require that all firms be worker cooperatives. The principles of liberalism imply anti-capitalism. It is entirely compatible to be a liberal and an anti-capitalist @asklemmy
Many liberals are anti-worker, but the political philosophy of liberalism is not inherently anti-worker. Liberal anti-capitalists like David Ellerman illustrate this using liberal principles of justice to argue for a universal inalienable right to workers’ self-management and abolition of the employer-employee relationship @asklemmy
This is not true. Workers are de facto responsible for using up the inputs to produce the outputs in the firm. By the tenet that legal and de facto responsibility should match, the workers should jointly get the positive and negative product of the firm (i.e. the property rights to the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs). Yet, the employer is who gets 100% of this whole product and workers as employees receive 0% @workreform
Common ownership of the means of production would provide a lot of revenue that could be used for healthcare. Therefore, without capitalism, this would be easier @news
I would have 100% of voting shares be inalienably attached to all workers in the firm. Non-voting preferred stock can continue to be free floating property rights @canada
Ellerman’s approach actually clarifies how the system of property and contract works under capitalism and avoids some basic mistakes that are pervasive in Marxism and neoclassical economics. Furthermore, his argument is significantly stronger and more decisive than established leftist criticisms. It establishes that wage labor violates workers’ rights even if it is voluntary.
What specific point in the article did you disagree with?
I’ll write one. The talk argues that employment contract is invalid due to inalienable rights. Inalienable means can’t be given up even with consent. Workers’ inalienable rights are rooted in their joint de facto responsibility in the firm for using up inputs to produce outputs. By the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, workers should get the corresponding legal responsibility, but in employment, workers as employees get 0% while employer gets 100% of results of production