Workers' self-management, workplace democracy and cooperatives; with Richard D. Wolff, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Gar Alperovitz, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis and ILO
I don't want production in private hands, because that means less democracy. I personally want MORE democracy - people controlling their own lives and workplace; and I think that will work just fine.
If people were ready for true democracy and fairness such enterprises would start to appear. (Founded by such democratic individuals) Dismantling someone's enterprise, someone's work, to prove something isn't fair! If you aren't fair with others why should they be fair with you? Want a different world - need to change yourself. That's the hardest thing and no quick fixes apply. (part 2)
you can have management too, that is the case in Mondragon Spain as we speak, The workers elect democraticly their boss which they can fire if not happy. there can be an hiarchy but all democraticly have to report to workers.
Exactly. For some reason, this person seems insistent on conflating worker self-management with some sort of utopian post-scarcity society. While self-management would surely be a part of a utopian vision, so long as we have scarcity of even a considerable number of goods, society will require some way to determine what to produce and who gets to consume what and how much. Self-management is indeed "private," in the sense that it isn't the same as nationalization, but it isn't (continued)
I think his comment was more to the calculation problems and inefficiencies that would arise from democratic worker management and who would be burdened by the risks in that type of economic system.
Which are more based on state ownership then "common" ownership. People are still persons. The only difference between a walmart owned by a few people and a WalMart owned by every single worker working for Walmart, is that the one owned in "common" will be utterly in-effective and will have no way of organising things in a manner that actually works. Its nice if you are like a couple of people in one workplace, but anything beyond that would be a disaster.
(There is no reason society could not achieve full employment, though. Just because you're not needed in a certain industry, doesn't mean your labor cannot be utilized somehow). Who says you cannot have prices, supply and demand, and some form of currency in a self-managed society? It would obviously require a more involved and informed culture, but I don't think people are inherently apathetic--people aren't more involved because they aren't able to be. It's easy to blame the world's problems
Don't listen to the status-quo apologist saying that we can never have self-management--they are obviously economically illiterate, and are making assumptions about a potential future society that were never even mentioned. Worker run firms are just as capable of determining what products are profitable/popular and those that are not. Who says you cannot delegate accountable authority to individuals within the workplace, and fire people (if necessary) based on performance, seniority, etc.
personal ownership? i thought the whole idea was no personal ownership of production but collective ownership. Like the revolutionary committees of Libya.
on people's ignorance, etc., but in reality it is the fault of our institutions, which produce an apathetic mentality. Democracy has been around since Ancient Greece. Admittedly, direct democracy is hard to achieve on a national scale, especially in a country the size of the U.S., but that's what confederation is for--democracy in the workplace and community federated up to the national (and perhaps international) level. Is it really that hard to imagine people running their own lives at the
agreed. I have a lot to learn about the whole subject but I'm all for localising and breaking up mega corps that are unnecessary and dangerous. Walmart for example, Woolworths is the big one here. And more transparency..it seems to me that capitalism is a very corrupting influence especially with a powerful state.
your typical capitalist privatization, either. It's difficult to even discuss, much less implement, in a world of government and capitalist control, but yes, private worker-ownership is probably the closest thing we have, or perhaps community/municipally owned/worker-run enterprises.
community level or in the workplace? There are a myriad of worker-run businesses that have proven to be more efficient than their capitalist counterparts, and many people already attend city council meetings, etc. If important decisions were actually made by citizens or worker's councils, instead of elected officials or top-down management, I think the average person would be much more aware and involved. It's not rocket science.
Democracy is the best and the worst choice. Democracy isn't really fair, some people put forth more for a cause more then other - yet because they are in minority they have their income divided between everyone thus making their hard effort really insignificant. Their ambition goes down the toilet and soon almost everyone is doing the least to go by with and production suffers. (part 1)
