13

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

@socialism

153
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by jlou@mastodon.social to c/workreform@lemmy.world

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”

https://youtu.be/c2UCqzH5wAQ

@workreform

5

"Governing the Commons" - Economist Elinor Ostrom's approach to collective action problems

https://neilhacker.com/2021/03/25/governing-the-commons/

@neoliberal

15

A case for universal worker democracy and why capitalism is theft - "Neo-Abolitionism: Towards Abolishing the Institution of Renting Persons"

https://youtu.be/c2UCqzH5wAQ

David Ellerman makes a unique argument for workers' control that is significantly stronger than the usual arguments the left makes as it implies that capitalism is invalid even when it is fully voluntary

@breadtube

10
0

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

@progressivepolitics

-7

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

@politicalmemes

8
-1

What is your view on liberal anti-capitalism?

This perspective's representatives are David Ellerman, and E. Glen Weyl. They that capitalism is incompatible with liberalism for various reasons such as violating liberal principles of justice, being inefficient or over-emphasizing diversification/exit-oriented risk reduction strategies to the detriment of commitment-based ones.

David Ellerman's case for capitalism being illiberal is discussed in:

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Article-from-ReclaimingLiberalismEbook.pdf

@neoliberal

2

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."

@humanities

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 20 points 2 weeks ago

I'm a leftist as well. The paper argues that the non-democratic liberals are wrong about the implications of liberal principles. It even goes further and makes an argument that coherent liberalism must also oppose capitalism, and capitalism is inherently non-democratic. By the end, the paper argues that a democratic economy controlled by workers is the only kind of economic organization compatible with liberalism. Capitalist liberalism is poison because it is incoherent

@sneerclub

52

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."

@sneerclub

35

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

@socialism

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 37 points 2 weeks ago

Socialism vs capitalism is a false dichotomy. There are other alternatives like economic democracy or mutualism where all companies are democratic worker coops. There are other critics of capitalism besides Marx such as the classical laborists like Proudhon and their modern intellectual descendants like David Ellerman

@leftism

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 26 points 2 weeks ago

The employer-employee contract

It violates the theory of inalienable rights that implied the abolition of constitutional autocracy, coverture marriage, and voluntary self-sale contracts.

Inalienable means something that can't be transferred even with consent. In case of labor, the workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, so by the usual norm that legal and de facto responsibility should match, they should get the legal responsibility i.e. the fruits of their labor

@asklemmy

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 22 points 3 weeks ago

While many socialists supported worker coops in the interim, an economy of exclusively worker coops comes more so from the classical laborists such as Proudhon.

@general

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

After capitalism,

  1. All firms should be democratic worker coops. The legal system would recognize the inalienable right to workers' control.
  2. Land and natural resources should be collectively owned with revenue from private use of this collective property going out as a UBI. The atmosphere is included and any carbon fees are included.
  3. Pools of collectivized capital democratically controlled by workers in member worker coops. Each worker coop leases all its capital from the pool
[-] jlou@mastodon.social 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Land value tax would solve this when combined with a UBI from the revenue it generates

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 17 points 9 months ago

Yeah UBI would solve this. This might be a criticism of contemporary capitalism, but it isn't a critique of capitalism more broadly because in principle, capitalism can have a UBI.

More fruitful anti-capitalist critiques emphasize workplace authoritarianism, the employer's appropriation of the whole product of a firm, monopoly power associated with private ownership especially of land and natural resources, and inability to effectively allocate resources towards public goods

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This was more explicit when it was called a master-servant relationship before employer-employee terminology became more common

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not rightfully so

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Doing what you're told does not relieve you of responsibility for the results of your actions

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 13 points 1 year ago

What do you mean by valid input?

Both capital and labor are causally efficacious in production. Why would people use them otherwise? Capital is also the fruits of past labor, so denying capital remuneration denies remuneration to the workers that created that capital @asklemmy

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reasons for anticapitalism

  1. It violates inalienable rights to democracy and to get the positive and negative fruits of their labor, which flow from the principle that legal and de facto responsibility should match. In the firm, the employees are de facto responsible, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
  2. It violates the equal claim to natural resources everyone today and future generations have. It, instead, incentivizes ruining the environment
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jlou

joined 1 year ago