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I don’t understand the difference and I don’t think I ever will
I think the best way to put it is that a leftist is someone who believes that workers should own the wealth that they create, while a liberal is someone believes in "socially progressive causes" without examining the underlying systems that bring about the necessity of "socially progressive causes".
For example, a liberal would want more woman CEOs, while a leftist would want to get rid of CEOs.
Slight addendum: liberals fight against any real progress until it's inevitable and then take credit
Liberals want to throw money at problems forever, Leftist want to tackle the root causes so they end.
Liberals are licking the wounds, leftists are applying antibiotic and bandages
Liberalism stands for individual liberty, equality before the law, political freedom, government limited by a constitution and the sanctity of private property (and capitalism). The last point is the most important when making the distinction.
Who runs the company then?
Direct worker control ensures a formally flat management structure instead of a hierarchical one. This structure is influenced by activist collectives and civic organizations, with all members allowed and expected to play a managerial role.
Hey that sounds like a horrible process but good luck, it’d be great if that could work somehow.
Seriously, have you ever tried to get 30 or more people to work on a complicated project? Flat structures like that make it take 300x as long.
It’s great for, maybe metalsmiths? Or . . y’know, sanitation workers? Where the gear and scope is more or less always the same? But for software engineering it can’t work like that. Not at any real scale, anyway.
Hilarious that you would bring up software engineering considering one of the largest names in PC gaming, Valve, has a flat management structure. Seems like they're able to manage running the Steam store, game development, and hardware development just fine.
I think I just read that Gabe has a fleet of yachts.
Where's the contradiction in it?
You think there are no large worker co-ops in the US? Embarrassing. You’ve never heard of Bob’s Red Mill or Publix?
And because I’m sure you aren’t happy with two examples, here’s an incomplete list of notable worker co-ops in the US from Wikipedia:
It’s fucking big
- Acadian Ambulance
- Applied Research Associates
- Arizmendi Bakery
- Bi-Mart
- Black & Veatch
- Bob's Red Mill
- Brookshire Brothers
- Burns & McDonnell
- Carter's Foods
- Casino Queen
- CDM Smith
- Certain Affinity
- CH2M Hill
- Corgan
- The Cheese Board Collective
- Chicago and North Western Railway - sold to Union Pacific Railroad in 1995
- Columbia Forest Products
- Dahl's Foods
- Davey Tree Expert Company
- Dynetics
- Ebby Halliday Realtors
- Edgewood Management, LLC
- Eureka Casino Resort
- Evergreen Cooperatives[4]
- Ferrellgas Partners
- Food Giant
- Frontline Test Equipment
- Gardener's Supply Company
- Gensler
- Golden Artist Colors
- Graybar
- Great Lakes Brewing Company[5]
- Greatland Corporation
- Harps Food Stores
- HDR, Inc.
- Hensel Phelps Construction
- Herff Jones
- Herman Miller
- Houchens Industries
- Huck's Food & Fuel
- Hy-Vee
- John J. McMullen & Associates - now part of Alion Science and Technology
- Journal Communications
- Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.
- King Arthur Flour
- Lampin Corporation[6]
- Landmark Education
- Lifetouch
- Mast General Store
- Mathematica Policy Research
- Mushkin
- MWH Global
- New Belgium Brewing Company
- Neuberger Berman[7]
- Niemann Foods
- Oliver Winery
- Peter Kiewit Sons'
- Phelps County Bank
- Publix
- Raycom Media
- Recology
- Robert McNeel & Associates
- Rosendin Electric
- SAIC
- Scheels
- Schreiber Foods
- Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
- Springfield ReManufacturing
- Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
- Stewart's Shops
- Stiefel Labs
- STV Group|
- Taylor Guitars[8]
- Tidyman's
- Torch Technologies
- The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company
- W. L. Gore & Associates
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Westat
- Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo
- WinCo Foods
- Woodman's Food Market
But yeah, dawg, worker co-ops are fake news.
PS: is there some reason you omitted the two sentences before that which make it clear this is one method of organizing worker’s co-ops?
If exercised directly, all members meet regularly to make—and vote on—decisions on how the co-operative is run. Direct workers' cooperatives sometimes use consensus decision-making to make decisions
One thing I think is telling is how corporate law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, financial firms etc. will happily provide their services advising shareholder corporations on how to operate, but are themselves organized as partnerships.
It's always funny when people say this can't work, when it constantly works better than any current hierarchical structure. All the collectives I'm in work great, and there are tons of worker owned co-ops going strong, one of my activist groups will often go for meals at one after a day of protesting.
Just because you can't imagine something different doesn't mean it can't work. It's not just a mess of everyone trying to dominate each other, it's cooperative and there are simple processes to facilitate it. It's possible to run countries this way.
Hierarchies exist to exploit and abuse.
All the collectives I'm in work great,
Good to know. What do they do? What field are they in, I mean. How many people are in them?
The listing of worker collectives in one of the other comment showed mostly supermarkets and service industries.
Worker cooperatives don't have to have a flat structure. Smaller cooperatives might use a flat structure, but larger companies will delegate business decisions to management. The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic
The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic
So from the parent comment if "liberals would want a woman CEO, while leftists wouldn't have a CEO" (paraphrasing) does that mean worker collectives don't have a CEO or that the CEO is 'good' because the board represents the workers (and therefore isn't leftist)?
Just means the parent comment made a kerfuffle in their verbiage. Leftist aren't against the job role of "Chief Executive Officer", or some other such Managing Director. They are against the idea of surplus value being given unnecessarily to a shareholder or owner, as well as unreasonable compensation packages to management, especially at the expense of the general workforce.
There are many corporations structured this way or in a form closer to it the one with a board of directors and a ceo.
Anyone who can't see how it's possible is the same mind as those who couldn't imagine a country without king and lords.
CEO is the king and the board are the lords. For whatever reason leaders loves to implement this hierarchy and the plebs except it. Probably because the later enabled the former.
There are many corporations structured this way or in a form closer to it the one with a board of directors and a ceo.
I assume you mean “in a form closer to it than the one . . . “
What corporations? When you say many do you mean like 10 or like 20,000?
Interesting - Publix is 255k and it says it's 'employee owned'. In fact most of the big ones are all Supermarkets for some reason. But it's an outlier in many ways, the next biggest is 22k, and the vast majority, 88%, are under 10k.
The rest are services (ambulance, call centers, tree services, maintenance) or for some reason architecture and engineering.
There's no software companies on there that I saw, which I think speaks, at least in part, to the issues I mentioned above about speed of decisions.
Software companies usually form as worker coops directly rather than using an ESOP mechanim
Here is a list worker coops: https://www.usworker.coop/directory/
There are some software companies in there under technology
Worker coops can delegate decision-making to managers and executives. This can ensure speedy decision-making. Having workers control the firm doesn't mean that every decision must be made by referendum. There can be delegation and more representative democracy
I would say the software industry's long running undercurrent of libertarianism and anti-worker/anti-collective action is a bigger deterrent to co-ops not forming there.
For an example that does exist there, see Motion Twin.
I'm aware of the Peter Thiels of the world and (prior to that, Bill Gates) and so on, but it's also where FOSS lives and Open Source itself is a collectivist process, albeit a very slow one in most cases.
The lack of co-ops is (IMO) more likely due to timely processes related to decision making. New code can be deployed instantaneously, but direction and all the bells & whistles all take time and it's just about impossible in a traditional heirarchical organization. I'd expect if there was no single entity making decisions it'd take even longer to do basic things.
That's a fair question, but there are many different answers. Not all leftist schools of thought fully advocate for removing a management style hierarchy, though some do. Some ideas push for rotating management with either a round robin selection, a raffle system, or democratically elected managers. Not dissimilar to how many countries run their governments.
Alternatively, if it fits the workflow, a flat style structure where no one inherently has a defined role, so teams form naturally to work on what they want or deem necessary. Someone will still often fill the role of "project manager" mind you, but the who and how are determined based on what works best for the situation. Not unlike letting students form their own groups for projects.
If you are genuinely curious, there is no shortage of books, YouTube videos, and websites just waiting to opine about their preferred methodology that would give you a much more authentic and robust understanding. Or I bet if you thought about it, you could even come up with some variations yourself.
The important point to get across for leftists is that the structure of economic production should be such that its aim is to benefit the general populace as evenly or equitably as possible. This is opposed to an "owner class" who uses their power, usually in the form of wealth, to take control the economic means of production, who then sets out to have the workers create more value than they will be given in return, so that the "owner" can take the excess value generated by the workers to increase their own wealth and/or power.
tl;dr
The lynchpin question for leftists isn't "who runs the factory?", but "who reaps the rewards?".It sounds very theoretical. I don’t know of a large modern example.
The main problem with organizing work is that it’s very very difficult to do and the more people involved the more difficult it is. A hierarchical structure may not be ideal, but as with American democracy, it’s the worst thing we can think of besides everything else that has been tried.
tl;dr
The lynchpin question for leftists isn't "who runs the factory?", but "who reaps the rewards?".See, I would look at that as the linchpin question for capitalists.
I like how you scrolled past a comment with a huge list of worker co-ops just in the US (there are also multinational ones) to tell someone else that it sounded too theoretical and complicated to work, lmao.
What huge list?
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/11507669
The one in that comment under the spoiler tag.
Wild, I didn't see that at all - like it should have shown up in my replies, but I didn't see it.
Well, it looks to be very similar to the other list I replied to, so I'm guessing it's probably the same although I didn't do a 1-1.
Suffice to say - yeah there are a lot of worker-owned businesses in the sense that it's at least 100 and a few of them (Publix, HyVee) are pretty big. Again, not a lot of technology in them, but more stable industries where the same equipment and processes year after year can produce good results.
Which is good!
See, I would look at that as the linchpin question for capitalists.
I mean, it is the lynchpin question for capitalists as well, the origination of modern leftist thought was a critique of capitalism. They basically share all of the same questions.
And it is difficult to do, though no more difficult than our current systems. Large scale systems are always hard to manage. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. We don't need to completely undo society to start moving towards a more equitable future.
And it is highly theoretical, no doubt about that. That's how you start to improve anything, you theorize about solutions, impliment the best ones you can, and iterate overtime.
A hierarchical structure may not be ideal, but as with American democracy, it’s the worst thing we can think of besides everything else that has been tried.
That's not actually true, work has been organized in a multitude of ways throughout history to various levels of effectiveness. And the outcomes of these structures have been largely situational. Saying hierarchical structures are the "least worst" is a broad generalization. Also, as I already pointed out, not all schools of leftist thought do away with hierarchy in the management of work. The only thing leftist schools of thought universally push for is changing the distribution model of value generated from said work.
Though if hierarchical structures are kept, how the hierarchy is determined is obviously usually changed as well. Given that our current model ties these decisions to the "owner" of the business, who's status as owner would need to be removed or at least reimagined to work within the new value distribution model.
Also, I have to refute your "American Democracy is the worst thing we have tried except all the others". That is just a thought killing statement meant to prevent discussions of better options.
We know for a fact that capitalism creates an ultra wealthy class that is comprised of a very small percentage of the population while also leaving a significant portion of the population in abject poverty. Even when it has the resources to support it's entire population, at least at a "base necessities" level, as is the case in America.
You could argue that you don't agree with the various solutions presented by any and all leftist (though it sounds like you really haven't bothered to research it either), but understand that it is this inherent and unnecessary cruelty that pushes people to seek out a better system. And from a leftists point of view, every single person in poverty is a failure of the current system, every person who dies from inadequate health care coverage a reason to rework our systems, every extravagant dinner a billionaire eats while a child goes hungry proof that this system is in dire need of change.
Maybe you believe capitalism is somehow the best solution to these problems, and that we could do no better, that we truly have reached the "end of history", but I doubt it. But if you think we could do more to help people, then you too might be more of a leftist than you realize.
And while most of us on the "far left" would love to see a future where we do away with the capitalist class, most of us would settle for health care and school lunches in the near future for now.
The workers.
Neat. How do they do that? Big zoom meeting or something?
Democratically, generally.
It doesn't mean everybody has to decide and approve everything, but you could vote for who does. That's one method, at least. Some workplaces might find having no management at all better. But the important thing is it's up to the workers (who are also the owners)
Right but technically how does it happen? Does everyone have to gather in the same room? Mail-in votes? How long does it take? Are there 'campaigns' for leaders?
I don't mean to suggest it's bad, just that it seems really slow and potentially problematic from a lot of angles that current corporate structure doesn't have.
Both Classical Liberalism and Neoliberalism are at their core capitalist ideologies. While the Republican party is more conservative in both social and economic issues, both parties still operate within the framework of neoliberalism.
In America we only have the Democrat and Republican Parties which are usually labeled as Liberal and Conservative respectively. Since the Democratic party is relatively left of the Republican party, we see the conflation of the label Liberal and Left in American politics. But that's not really accurate when looking at the Ideologies of the parties.
There is Social Democracy, which is still a capitalist ideology where some of the profits are redirected towards social welfare. This is more common in Western Europe and will still rachet towards Fascism.
Leftist ideologies, such as Socialism and Anarchism are fundamentally anti-capitalist, unlike liberalism and neoliberalism. Richard Wolff explains socialism and capitalism very well.
On Liberalism:
What is neoliberalism? A political scientist explains the use and evolution of the term
How the Democrats Traded the New Deal for Neoliberalism
On Leftist ideologies:
Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions
Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism
Well if soc dems aren't left then i guess I'm not left.
I didn't know we were taking anything left of soc dem seriously yet, as we haven't proven any sort of successful means of governing people that far left.
Worker cooperatives already exist. I recommend reading or listening to Richard Wolff about what differentiates socialism and capitalism from each other.
Social Democracy is State-regulated Private Capitalism. The same contradictions between the Capital owners and workers still exist, leading to the same problems. This is why we also see a rise in Fascism in Western Europe.
Securing social democratic reforms of the sort won in the 1930s (such as taxation of corporations and the rich to support mass social services and jobs) requires much more than mere state regulation of private capitalism. The forces behind private capitalism mobilized to retake full control of the state in ways designed to preclude any repeat of New Deal or social democratic responses to crises.
Richard D. Wolff | Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees
Worker cooperatives can't run an entire country. They can barely run a single business, but only if the business is small.
That's not true. It's simply a democratic structure. All workers share in ownership instead of a private few. Profits are not horded, they are reinvested into either more compensation for the workers or into the business. If you think Democracy can't run a country I disagree.
I'm familiar with the concept, you don't need to explain it. I'm just saying it can't work in the real world yet
It does work though?
For example Duralex, a famous French glass tableware/kitchenware manufacturer, started transitioning to a worker cooperative in July of this year. This is a company that has like 25 million euros in revenue per year (2023), so I don't think we can consider it "small".
This was approved by the Commercial Court of Orléans fyi and I don't think they'd have done that if it "can't work in the real world".
As I said before, it can work for small businesses but not for countries. Country governance was the original topic of this thread.
At its core, liberalism is fairly anti-capitalist. There are many arguments against capitalism from liberal principles such as the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. The workers in the firm are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but receive 0% claim on the positive and negative production while the employer solely appropriates 100% of the positive and negative result of production
I Strongly disagree. The capitalist mode of production is axiomatic to Liberalism. Private ownership of the means of production is what is being referenced, not personal property. The alternative, a socialist mode of production, where companies are owned and governed in a democratic structure by all the workers, is completely viable. It's a democratization of the workplace and economy.
Locke saw individual liberty as defined through private property, contract, and market—in other words, by individual ownership of economic possessions that could not be arbitrarily usurped by the state. Freedom for Locke amounted to more than absence from external restraint; it also meant living in conformity with a nonarbitrary law (to his left critics, a protocapitalist law) to which the individual had consented.
Liberalism refers to both a coherent political philosophy and a historical political tendency. The former liberalism is anti-capitalist. Yes many historical liberals were pro-capitalism, but this position makes their liberalism incoherent.
Private property rests on the principle that workers have an inalienable right to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Capitalism violates this norm. Locke was wrong
A market economy of worker coops isn't socialism
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics:
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies.
...
In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism, including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism and syndicalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.
(Emphasis added)
Basically, liberals care more about equality of opportunity, while leftists care more about equality of outcome. (And, of course, conservatives actively oppose equality and promote hierarchy.)
On a "political compass," leftism is the left half (obviously). Liberalism is a fuzzy blob centered somewhere below and right of center, but big enough to extend at least a little ways into the other quadrants because of how many different kinds of "liberalism" there are.
Liberals view the status quo (the underlying mechanisms of the government, economy and society) as sacrosanct, legitimate, that it just needs to and will allow itself to be tweaked a bit, that the rules must be followed lest we collapse into chaos.
Leftists view the status quo as widely illegitimate, that a vast multitude of the rules which society operates by are contemptible and functionally evil, and are willing to break the rules to meaningfully change society, that often the entire point is that breaking rules is the only way to establish newer and more just ones.
...
Liberals view Leftists as an extreme part of their fold because they often have similar goals.
Leftists view Liberals as often sharing goals, but as ultimately delusional, magical-thinking self righteous fools, as their methods of achieving these often similar goals are laughably naive, impotent and ineffective, thus functionally making them into conservatives.
You can pretty much boil it down to Liberalism is capitalist, leftism isn’t (although where the line is depends who you ask and how left they are).
The confusion mostly comes from from conservative neoliberals lumping social liberals in with the left, even though they’re only separated by a philosophical debate on what “individual freedoms” are and if they’re more important than a completely unregulated economy or not.
There are anti-capitalist liberals though
It gets even more confusing when you consider anti-capitalist classical liberals
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Classical-Liberal-JurisprudenceJune2018.pdf
that's the biggest difference between the two groups: the leftists are at least vaguely aware that something in our system is not right and the liberals don't care to pay attention because they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
Conservatives want us to go backwards. Liberals want us to stay the same Leftists want us to go forward
Leftists are semi-radical progressives.
Progressives are liberals.
Liberals are conservatives.
Conservatives are authoritarians.Based on what? Do I need a matrix to keep track of this stuff? What’s a label and what’s an adjective here?
Based on the opinions of the far-left.
If you look at the American political spectrum of non-Authoritarians, progressives are the ones pushing for change to fix everything, liberals want to make smaller more conservative changes. Both work together to help America debating on more drastic or more mild tweaks.
Republicans have policies to dominate the population and maximize profits for the rich. They don't exist on the liberal-conservative spectrum as a party, except incidentally.
Just one simple rule i think. After plotting all political ideologies on a line left to right:
Person A claims they’re at X point on line of political spectrum. You can probably safely assume where they actually are is at X+1 (to the right) subconsciously.
So liberals are actually probably more right than they think, is what the meme is saying at least
About 8 months before the election a bunch of people claiming to be . . Uh . . not . . liberal . . . started posting everywhere about how genocide Joe was going to destroy us all and how liberals were evil scum and apparently they hate trans people too or something.
The whole operation was textbook russian disinfo, but it was also really-young-people-pissed-at-the-lack-of-immediate-change-towards-luxury-gay-space-communism, which, I’m pretty sure most of us went through at some point.
TL;DR: yeah, I dunno.