jlou

Classical laborists and mutualists were anti-capitalists. Some of whom predated Marx.
As I said, a mutualist economy or economic democracy has never existed. The modern arguments for economic democracy were first published in a book released in the 1990s. However, we have plenty of examples of worker coops and employee-owned corporations working well under capitalism. An economic democracy or mutualism differs from capitalism in that all firms are mandated to be worker coops

@whitepeopletwitter

I know what capitalism is. My analysis of capitalism comes from a mutualist perspective and is inspired by the classical laborists rather than Marx

@whitepeopletwitter

There has never been a worker-cooperative-dominated market economy, but actually existing worker coops and employee-owned corporations don't seem to create billionaires, and have more equitable distribution of wages.

Why does mandating all firms to be worker coops not abolish capitalism in your view?

@whitepeopletwitter

The problem with capitalism is the non-cooperative firms that exist. A democratic economy is an economy where all firms are mandated to be worker cooperatives

@economy

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

@whitepeopletwitter

It seems to me that they're hinting at abolishing capitalism.

One way to do that would be to

1. Mandate worker coop structure on all businesses

2. Institute a 100% land value tax

Taxing the rich doesn't really solve the root of the problem. Abolishing capitalism pre-distributes wealth so that people don't become billionaires in the first place. 100% land value tax encourages efficient use of land.

@whitepeopletwitter

Democracy is the idea that positive control rights over an organization should be assigned to the party governed in or by that organization. This concept is applicable in an economic context. For example, the workers in a firm are governed by management, so democracy implies that the managers be ultimately accountable to the entire body of workers in that firm making the firm a worker co-op.

Capitalism has workers do 100% of the work, but employers receive 100% of the whole product

@economy

Instead of a single currency, we should have many with each currency belonging to a democratic venture commune, an association of worker coops that manages a pool of commonly-owned capital. This currency would get its value by being used to purchase access to the commune's commonly-owned means of production. It would also have built in transfer and exit fees for extracting value outside of the commune. The value of these fees could be spent by the commune on public goods
@asksolarpunk

There are other alternatives like economic democracy. Capitalism vs socialism is a false dichotomy

@economy

That sentence has a presupposition. The sentence I used can be fully formalized in a logic with predicates for knowledge of an entity and truth

@science_memes

Being logical doesn't imply knowing every true sentence.

Also, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knower_paradox

@science_memes

I am a mutualist as well. I just use the term, economic democracy as David Ellerman calls it, instead because mutualism doesn't seem as clear. Also, mutualism has anarchist connotations, which I am sympathetic to, but I believe the movement to abolish capitalism should be broader than anarchism.

In other words,

anarchist economic democracy = mutualism

@196