Why capitalism is theft even if it is voluntary and consensual, and a case for universal worker democracy
“Neo-Abolitionism: Towards Abolishing the Institution of Renting Persons”
The talk argues that capitalism is invalid on the basis of the theory of inalienable rights. Inalienable means can’t be given up or transferred even with consent. Capitalist apologists often appeal to contractual consent to defend the system, so this changes the debate
This is a pretty good (if brief) critique of Marx and other anti-capitalist thinkers but he says almost nothing about how a Neoabolitionist society would work in practice. He holds up Mondragon as an example but he does not say anything about other industries besides manufacturing.
For example, say I hire a plumber to fix a leaking faucet in my kitchen. That’s an ordinary thing to do in today’s capitalist society. Does that contract still exist under Neoabolition? If not then what? Does the plumber continue owning my faucet and charge me rent for it? Does the plumber now own a share of my house?
What about surgeons? If I hire a surgeon to fix a damaged tendon in my elbow, does the surgeon own part of my body? No obviously not, since my body is inalienable from me.
You might say that plumbers and doctors are independent contractors and so we should carve out an exemption for them so they can continue to operate, under Neoabolition, as independent contractors who freely sell the product of their labour and derive one hundred percent of the profit from it. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, movers, repairpersons, and other specialists would all be independent contractors available for hire.
So then the capitalist, under the new system, hires a bunch of independent contractors to build, maintain, and repair his factory which has no permanent employees but is otherwise fully automated.
Am I missing something?
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
@latestagecapitalism
So then how does this address my scenario of the capitalist who does not hire any employees but relies entirely on independent contractors to do the work of setting up and maintaining the factory? This is in principle no different from me hiring the plumber to install my new kitchen faucet.
You might say the factory is different because it’s on land which is separate from my family home but that’s not a fundamental issue for the capitalist to overcome. Plenty of farmers, for example, build manufacturing facilities (say, for processing crops into livestock feed) on their farms where they live.
The issue of independent contractors is at the heart of the fight over Uber and Uber Eats drivers. Some jurisdictions have sought to try to force drivers to be employees rather than independent contractors in order to give provide them with an hourly wage and benefits such as health insurance, dental care, and pensions. Of course drivers themselves frequently oppose this designation because formal employment necessarily entails the loss of control over working hours and schedules.
Neoabolitionist society would seem to enshrine the independent contractor status of Uber drivers into law. Essentially all employees as we know them today would be converted into gig workers!
Or is there some other mechanism to deal with this? Is there another video by Ellerman that addresses all these questions?
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
@latestagecapitalism
Right, and that’s the Uber distinction. Drivers for Uber set their own hours and can log off any time they want and stop working. Uber does not have the ability to dictate what hours they work, nor even which deliveries/fares they accept and which ones they reject. Uber’s power in the relationship comes from their ability to set how much money is offered for a given delivery/fare, and which ones are offered to which drivers.
The hypothetical no employee factory I’m thinking about would not have regular employees who are needed to operate machines for entire work shifts. The factory would be mostly automated and the work which is performed by humans would mostly consist of contracted, scheduled maintenance and upgrades to the tooling and other machinery. The day to day operation would supervised by the owner from a single, computerized command centre.
While this may seem like science fiction, you can already see this sort of large scale operation in agriculture. A single farmer operating a large, modern combine harvester can harvest thousands of acres all by himself and deliver it to silos on his farm. He can then operate the other equipment to process it or unload it into trucks to be delivered to market later.
The number of farm workers in the US was around 14 million in the early 1900s. Today that number is about 3 million. In the same time, the US total population when from 92 million to 335 million. This is a change from just over 15% of the population employed in agriculture to less than 1%, a 15-fold decrease.
All of this is to say that I don’t know that Neoabolition would represent as radical of a change as expected. Maybe that’s the point though, because the total abolition of private property seems way too far-fetched these days.
The link argues that uber drivers are employees.
The no employee factory as described sounds fine. Ellerman’s philosophy doesn’t just imply a worker coop mandate. Since natural resources aren’t the fruits of anyone’s labor and the equal claim to them of future generations, we should apply common ownership arrangements to land and natural resources and artificial monopolies.
Neo-abolition doesn’t solve every problem.
Social ownership of capital is orthogonal policy issue
@latestagecapitalism
So for the Uber case we’d expect a worker coop app owned by the drivers? That makes sense to me.
My dad drives for Uber Eats and one of the issues for him is that there are too many drivers with not enough demand a lot of the time. He ends up spending a lot of time sitting around waiting for orders to come in.
I think in a worker coop model you’d probably see a restriction in the number of drivers in an area. But then you could also see competing apps show up.
I’m really not sure what would happen!
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