Socialism

2843 readers

9 users here now

Beehaw's community for socialists, communists, anarchists, and non-authoritarian leftists (this means anti-capitalists) of all stripes. A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you're nice about it.

Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it's hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a "left vs right" debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

OneRedFox@beehaw.org

How does the concept of legal liability (for firms) work within Marxism? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by patchymoose@lemmy.ml to c/socialism@beehaw.org

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi everyone, although I am not personally socialist, I come in peace with a question that I am seeking to learn.

Within capitalism, the concept of "limited liability" is common. Essentially, the owners of a firm cannot be held personally liable for the wrongs of the firm. If Toyota makes dangerous airbags, the personal home of the executives cannot be seized to pay victims. Only company assets can be liquidated.

How does this work within a Marxist framework where the workers are the owners of the "firms" (or of the manufacturing plant). For example, imagine that a worker-owned plant makes faulty airbags through negligence. Would the workers be personally liable? Or would the concept of limited liability remain, and the worst that could happen would be the liquidation of the plant to repay victims' families?

Thank you for hearing my question!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] theluddite@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Happy to help! Sorry to hear about the former bad experiences. I'd like to think that's as much an artifact of being on Reddit than it is of socialists, at least as much as I know both of those things pretty well. Most of my friends are socialists, and we're very nice people!

I recommend books more than internet forums. There is such a wealth of leftist literature written by such wide-ranging and imaginative people. I mentioned David Graeber's "Debt" in my comment, for example. Debt is a cinder block of a book, but if you want to start smaller, he wrote "Bullshit Jobs" and "The Utopia of Rules," both of which are delightful. I'm partial to the latter.

I agree with you about the absolute madness of that submarine company, and about how unsafe our current economic system is (see also: climate change). I'd argue that goes far beyond the concept of limited liability. We have organized our entire economy on the assumption that everything that is made must be made by a for-profit company, but we also all recognize that without some adversarial force, be it from competition or government regulators, for-profit companies will start racking up body counts. This is a crazy way to make a society function. Why would you pick as your starting place a dangerous and shitty world, and from there hope that competition and regulation can make it better? Why not just set out to make things good in the first place?

I've actually written about why digital technology is particularly affected by this, if you're curious.