Here is a short introduction to the core argument against capitalism based on liberal principles: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
The root of the loss of community that everyone feels is capitalism's total emphasis on institutional logics of exit that make everything extremely transactional while completely ignoring the dual institutional logic of commitment, cooperation and voice. Community emphasizes the latter. We need communities based around shared property, mutual aid and collective action. Incidentally, having such communities could help solve some public goods problems in a non-state manner and be more egalitarian
What are your thoughts on liberal anti-capitalism and reclaiming liberalism for the radical left?
Liberal anti-capitalists typically show that capitalism is illiberal through demonstrating how it violates liberal principles. An example would be David Ellerman in:
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf
He argues that capitalist employment violates liberal principles of justice such as the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match implying a theory of inalienable rights
I'll write one. The talk argues that employment contract is invalid due to inalienable rights. Inalienable means can't be given up even with consent. Workers' inalienable rights are rooted in their joint de facto responsibility in the firm for using up inputs to produce outputs. By the norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, workers should get the corresponding legal responsibility, but in employment, workers as employees get 0% while employer gets 100% of results of production
Why the employer-employee relationship is based on theft and all companies should be worker-controlled - “Neo-Abolitionism: Towards Abolishing the Institution of Renting Persons”
David Ellerman's modernization of the classical laborists' argument against capitalism is significantly more powerful than modern Marxism.
Marx's claim that private property is the root of capitalist appropriation has been disproven in modern theories of capitalism's property rights structure. Private property plays a role in giving bargain power to get favorable terms, but the ultimate legal basis of capitalist appropriation is the employer-employee contract
Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair
Economic Socialism is Teaching Me What a Free Market Actually Looks Like
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
You just mention the community in the post
What would be a more appropriate community?
The diagram capitalist liberals don't want you to see
Capitalists frame the debate about capitalism as one of consent versus coercion and argue that capitalism is acceptable because workers consent in the legal sense to the employment contract. Democratic theory recognized a further distinction among voluntary contracts i.e. consent to alienate vs. consent to delegate. Capitalists can't appeal to this distinction because capitalism and political democracy are on opposite sides
Private property rests on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor. In other words, private property appropriation has a labor-basis that capitalism denies. Capitalism violates the very principle behind private property by giving workers 0% joint claim on the positive and negative fruits of their labor
"Property is theft!" -- Proudhon
The employment contract is what really enables capitalist appropriation.
I agree with your critique of capitalist liberal democracy
Because most liberals don't consistently apply their own principles. A principle that liberals are inconsistent with is the juridical principle of imputation, the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching. They ignore this norm's routine violation in the capitalist firm. Here, despite the workers joint de facto responsibility for production, the employer is solely legally responsible for 100% of the positive and negative results of production while workers as employees get 0%
Private property isn't as supportive of capitalism as it initially seems. Classical laborists (e.g. Proudhon) and their modern intellectual descendants (e.g. David Ellerman) argue that the positive and negative results of production are the private property of the workers in the firm. This argument immediately implies a worker coop structure mandate on all firms and rules out capitalism. Capitalism is so indefensible that even private property requires the abolition of capitalism
The academic definition would be the systems of the historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
Rhetorically, it doesn't matter how I define the term. It matters how people use it.
The way I would define it is either the systems of historical Eastern Bloc countries or a hypothetical society that has somehow completely abolished commodity production
Does economic education spoil students’ morality? Economists and the Trolley problem
A worker coop is an example of joint self-employment. The workers are not employees, and the employer-employee relationship is abolished in worker coops
I'm not a socialist, but what I advocate for is explicitly postcapitalist.
Some postcapitalist policies include
- All firms are mandated to be worker coops similar to how local governments are mandated to be democratic
- Land and natural resources are collectivized with a 100% land value tax and various sorts of emission taxes etc
- Voluntary democratic collectives that manage collectivized means of production and provide start up funds to worker coops
- UBI
Market economies aren't exclusive to capitalism. A postcapitalist society could use markets in some places.
It is capitalism's defenders, who are unscientific. Basic facts are unmentionable to capitalism's supporters. The fact that only persons can be responsible and things no matter how causally efficacious can't be responsible for anything is unmentionable in an economic context. The employer's appropriation of 100% of the positive and negative fruits of labor is obfuscated
Did you read the article? It argues that democracy is necessary to meet the requirements of liberal procedural justice, so it isn't just a matter of outcomes
The Problem of Collective Harm: A Threshold Solution
https://ejpe.org/journal/article/view/798
"Many harms are collective: they are due to several individual actions that are as such harmless. At least in some cases, it seems impermissible to contribute to such harms, even if individual agents do not make a difference. The Problem of Collective Harm is the challenge of explaining why. I argue that, if the action is to be [moral], the probability of making a difference to harm must be small enough."
Econ 101 is designed to obfuscate the real issues. Even talking about specific wealth distribution ratios is falling for the misframing of the issues that Econ 101 wants to lead people into with the pie metaphor. In the capitalist firm, the employer holds 100% of the property rights for the produced outputs and liabilities for the used-up inputs while workers qua employees get 0% of that. The entire division of the pie metaphor in Econ 101 is based around hiding this fact
Who defines permitted contracts in a free market? Some right libertarians suggest that "free" markets include the "freedom" to sell labor by the lifetime or sell voting rights in the state.
"The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would." -- Robert Nozick
The theory that invalidates such contracts is the theory of inalienable rights. It has recently been shown to apply to capitalist employment
Sure, as a historical tradition, classical liberalism has its share of anti-democratic figures. The point of the paper is to show that classical liberalism, as a body of coherent philosophy, actually implies democracy. Most classical liberals, historically, have been defenders of capitalism. Showing the ideology that usually capitalism apologists adhere to actually implies anti-capitalism is a powerful critique
Why capitalists are coming out against democracy - "Does classical liberalism imply democracy?"
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reprint-EGP-Classical-Liberalism-Democracy.pdf
"There is a fault line running through ... liberalism as to whether or not democratic self- governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today. Many ... libertarians ... represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states."
A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law
Utility, social utility, democracy, and altruistic and moral behavior from unexploitability, Darwinian evolution, and tribes
https://www.rangevoting.org/OmoUtil.html
"S.M.Omohundro in 2007, by building on and/or simplifying ideas by a large number of economists, demonstrated that the philosophy of utilitarianism is forced upon an organism if that organism wishes to be "unexploitable." Exploitable organisms presumably tend to get exploited, suffer a competitive disadvantage."
Pro-market anti-capitalism
Many on the left conflate markets with capitalism and oppose both. This is a mistake. Markets freed from capitalism where every workers' inalienable right to worker democracy may be useful, and help avoid the calculation problem. That being said, I'm highly sympathetic to those that seek to explore what might be possible without markets as that area is under-explored. Ultimately, we should emphasize worker coops
Here is an non-nuanced meme
A moral argument for why all firms should be employee-owned - "Inalienable Right: Part 1 The Basic Argument"
https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
Partial Common Ownership: A New Model for Ownership - A new alternative to capitalist private property that addresses scarcity in the small
Partial Common Ownership (PCO) is a flexible template for reconfiguring property relations, which has inspired many of us at RadicalxChange because it opens the door to a different kind of conversation about capitalism.
https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/pco-a-new-model-of-ownership/
Partial Common Ownership: A New Model for Ownership - A new alternative to capitalist private property
https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/pco-a-new-model-of-ownership/
The main disagreement I have with the article is that voting rights over management of firms should lie exclusively with workers. Besides that, the alternative described should be interesting to anti-capitalists.
The revenue from partial common ownership could be allocated using non-market mechanisms in democratic communities
"Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument" - All responsibility lies with workers
https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
AI, Guaranteed Income, and the “Which Way Is Up?” Problem Afflicting Our Elites
https://cepr.net/ai-guaranteed-income-and-the-which-way-is-up-problem-afflicting-our-elites/
Rethinking free and open source and its role in the movement against capitalism - "Copyfarleft and Copyjustright"
https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/copyfarleft-and-copyjustright
This is an interesting paper and something like this should be explored. Although, I would shift the anti-capitalist analysis to the labor theory of property and shift some of the critique of property to employment contracts.
Capital Has No Borders—Why Should We?
Precarious immigration status creates an exploitable labor force, allowing bosses to drive down wages for everyone. Inside the labor case for open borders:
The Philosophy of Liberty – On Liberalism
https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/
The Problems with Money and Without Money, and Communal Currencies and Vouchers - "Plural Money, Socially-Provided Goods, and the Principal-Agent Problem"
An #EconomicDemocracy is a market economy where most firms are structured as #WorkerCoops.