this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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The diagram centrists don't want you to see

Centrism frames the debate about capitalism as one of consent vs. coercion and argue that capitalism is fine because workers consent in the legal sense to the labor contract. Democratic theory recognizes a distinction among voluntary contracts i.e. consent to alienate vs. consent to delegate. A centrist can't appeal to this distinction because capitalism and political democracy are on opposite sides

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[–] marcos@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Way to make a strawmen!

Find some way to make workplace democracy to work and almost the entire population of the world will support you. Until then that's just like those people that keep claiming that physicists are censoring their pet theory.

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Not a strawman. There are tons of examples of framing the capitalism issue in terms of consent vs coercion. Nozick talks about capitalist acts between consenting adults etc.

Many worker coops and majority employee-owned ESOPs exist today. It works.

Democratic theory argues that contracts based on consent to alienate are inherently invalid. Since the employment system is on the "wrong" side, the original theory invalidating these contracts is ignored and forgotten

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[–] marcos@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The only thing "capitalistic" about a job contract is that you are able to abandon it at any time and get another one. Besides, the fact that capitalism only work between consenting adults doesn't mean it only happens this way. This is one of the largest reasons we got big governments on the 20th century, to make sure rich people don't break everything down.

Again, you'll only find people that disagree with that on those "economy cults" that insist on radicalizing people into nonsense.

Also, worker coops only woks for specific kinds of work, and employee-owned companies tend to not stay employee-owned on practice. It's really good that those 2 exist, but it's a delusion to think you can organize an economy this way. (I'd check for one of those "economy cults" around if you really believe on it.)

[–] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 3 months ago

You called centrists framing the debate about capitalism as one of consent vs. coercion a strawman then accepted the framing. Democratic theory requires consent. It just also requires consent to delegate ruling out consent to alienate management/governenance rights justified by inalienable rights.

Stable employee-owned firms:
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

A country that lets people sell voting rights wouldn't be democratic for long. Does democracy not work? Is it undesirable?

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