From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 09:29:50 MST
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>
>>In a message dated 10/29/2002 5:56:10 PM Central Standard Time,
>>charlie@antipope.org writes: "Worker control of the means of production"
>>means, basically, that when the enterprise makes a profit, the workers share
>>in it. Nothing more, nothing less. If you worked for a dot com and had stock
>>options, you were participating in a socialist scheme. (With me so far?)
>>
>>Yes Charlie,
>> I have read explanations so many times that were like yours either in
>>the papers or in books and it still comes down to a process that usually
>>starts as a con job to gain control and ends with a dictatorship. Germany,
>>Russia, Italy, ad infinitum ad nauseum [..]
>>
>>
>
>But you don't answer the question. It was something that I didn't thought
>of before: does a stock options scheme a la dot com make a business kind
>of socialist, or not? If yes, did it evolve in a dictatorship? (obvious
>jokes about Bush deleted.. :-))
>
Is it voting stock? Then yes. That's giving the workers some control
over the means of production. An interesting question would be what
percentage of the voting stock was controlled by the workers. And what
about retired workers? I have previously run into people who called
themselves socialists (I'm still working without a real definition) that
believed in just this approach. But they ran into problems when the
current workers owned a minority of the stock. They couldn't decide
whether or not that was legitimately socialist. My real problem comes
in when some people control large blocks of stock, but a consumer's coop
that I saw where everyone got one vote, no matter how many shares of
stock they bought, ran into trouble when some smooth-talking outsiders
each bought one share of stock, and then talked most of the members (who
weren't paying much attention) into some ill-advised business decisions.
(Over expansion, etc. The same things that later got the dot coms in
trouble.)
Perhaps it would be better to have some more direct relationship between
the amount of current participation, and the number of votes, but you
don't want to let any one block become too dominant, either. My
favorite variant gives people one vote per share of stock per year of
holding the stock. So if you hold your share of stock for two years, it
gives you two votes, but if you sell it to someone else, it reverts to
zero votes. That should keep out the speculators, anyway. Or at least
discourage them. It will mean that the stock it held for 1) long term
profit and 2) political advantage within the group. But you would need
to be dedicated to the group to reap the political advantage.
Another thought is to have the initial round of stock be issued to the
creators, in proportion to their contribution. Thereafter have the
stock be issued at one share per year (but not "or fraction thereof") to
the workers (including management). This would tend to make the stock
decrease in value. But it could be sold (though not otherwise
encumbered... got to be careful here. Can't allow votes to be
contracted for.) This idea is still quite half-baked, and probably
won't get any more well done, as I don't intend to implement it.
Ah... Socialism. Which, if any, of these schemes is socialist? I have
an idea of what fair means. It means that all parties to an agreement
believe that they are better off agreeing than not agreeing, and that
nobody is taking advantage of a dominant position to impose onerous
constraints on others. But I still don't know what socialism means...
Though we seem to be getting a lot closer, once governments were dropped
from the loop.
>...
>
>Ciao,
>Alfio
>
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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