[p2p-research] In Defense of Worker Ownership

[Kevin Carson]

On 8/5/10, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michel Bauwens wrote:
>  >
>  > I'm in favour of governance and ownerhship models that combine stakeholders,

> I know you (and most everyone else) say the workers will otherwise be
>  'disenfranchised'.
>
>  But what is meant by that *specifically*?  What do the workers intend
>  to gain as compared to the case where the Means of Production are 100%
>  Consumer Owned?

Among other things, the sense of psychic reward that comes from
directing your own work and not feeling like a poor relation on
someone else's property.  Avoiding the feeling that causes me to
repart the mantra "God damn this place to hell.  God damn this place
to hell"  about ten thousand times every fucking day that I've ever
punched a time clock.  Avoiding the feeling of cutting loose your
independent judgment, values, and preferences along with an eight-hour
chunk of your time, and flushing them down the toilet.  The
satisfaction of knowing that you're in your own place, organizing your
own time, without a boss.

>  Will they prop-up their wages by disallowing other, non-owning Workers
>  from competing?
>
>  Is this a form of 'protectionism'?  Does this mean Worker Owned
>  enterprises do not qualify as "Free Trade"?  I wonder what Kevin
>  Carson would say.
>
>  Will they force the Consumers to pay Price above Cost so they can
>  collect that Profit as a reward?
>
>  If so, then will the Consumers be disallowed from gaining enough
>  ownership for themselves to 'escape' that punishment?

I would say that you keep framing this in terms of "allowing" and
"forcing," but you've never justified it logically.  Nobody can force
anybody to do anything, so long as market entry is free.

In all these dicussions, I think you've been missing a central point:
a lot of people would *like* to charge all sorts of rents, if they
could get away with it.  There's a big difference between wanting to
do something, though, and being able to do it.  And it's the existence
of unfettered competition and free market entry that makes the
difference in whether someone can do it.

I'd like to set up a lemonade stand and charge $1000 a glass.  And I'm
"allowed" to do so.  But if I can't prevent someone else from opening
a competing stand and selling the lemonade for the cost of ingredients
plus a reasonable compensation for their time, I'll have a hard time
"forcing" people to buy it at my price.

>  What if a Consumer wants to pick his own Olives from his % of the
>  co-owned orchard?  Will he be allowed to supply that labor for
>  himself?

Of course.

>  What if a Consumer discovers a way to automate that picking.  Will he
>  be allowed to fully own his portion of the orchard and use automation
>  without paying tribute to workers that labor in other parts of the
>  orchard?

Of course.  And if the low cost of machinery makes self-employment a
viable option, so that self-employment competes with wage labor, then
consumers will be "forced" to "allow" that--in other words, they won't
be allowed to prohibit market entry.

>  How will the workers protect themselves from consumers choosing automation?

The same way anyone, in a market without restraints on competition,
protects himself from anything:  by competing.  If workers can't
compete in value-added and price, then automation works.  If
automation can't compete in value-added and price, then it doesn't.

>  What is the reasoning behind forcing the consumers to pay the
>  worker-owner even when the work is fully automated?

How, exactly, do you see consumers as being "forced" to do this?  I
don't think Michel has suggested criminalizing the consumer co-op
organization, or preventing consumers from buying an orchard and
automating the picking of their own fruit.  You don't seem to be very
clear on how you think people are "forced" to pay an above-cost price,
or how consumers aren't being "allowed" to do this or that thing.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html