this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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I know this is a meme community and probably not the right place to ask. But the meme prompted my question and I promise this is a good faith question.
If labor is entitled to all it creates (i agree! In principle), who determines what that is? For example - someone operating an injection molding machine might "create" a million doodads in a year. But the machine and the material and the electricity and the QA of those doodads are all created/done by someone else. How is that divvied up?
Personally I am leaning toward UBI funded by a capital tax, along with a functional labor market, as kind of a solution here. But I'd appreciate any easy-to-digest references.
Labor is entitled to all it creates, but that doesn't necessarily mean each laborer should receive the full value of what that individual laborer creates. It means that the laboring class should receive the full value of what the laboring class creates. Following that logic all the way through, it necessitates that labor be the only class, and thus a classless system. There are... A few different ideas on what that system should look like, with various and myriad different levels of complexity (and authoritarianism), but the basic idea is that ownership of the tools by which we ensure our survival (ie, the means of production, the productive materials) should not be held by an elite few who profit wildly off the labor of the vast majority of us. They should instead be held in common (again, different models ranging from a worker co-op to a fully planned economy with the state standing in as a sort of proxy for the worker), and thus the value created by the laborers who are working those productive machines is more equitably distributed.
Basically, if Tim Apple wasn't around and Apple could be run as a worker co-op, each employee could be making a ridiculous amount of money. Or, more realistically, each employee could make a living wage, and the excess could be funnelled back into the business for innovation, expansion, whatever. If you extend that out and apply the model to an entire national economy, you could use those excess funds for healthcare, infrastructure, UBI, food assistance, bombing brown kids. All the stuff that nation states like to do.
The problem with the laborer making all that they make, is that it isn't always equal. Self regulation is a more difficult mark than most realize. Customers have different demands and laborers all think they have the highest skill set. But that simply isn't factual. There are many gades in between and managing it takes a third party when the employee threshold is over 5.
That leaves out all the hours they get paid. Their benefits. The customer contracts. And so many other factors. Mid management is a necessity in many businesses. They are paid for mitigating all the paperwork involved as well as all the problems that the laborers don't ever see.
And depending on the situation, those are also laborers. Management has a role to play in any decently sized firm, regardless of it's structure or ideology. The argument here has little to nothing to do with management, it has to do with ownership. Should the employees collectively own their workplace, or should a single entity or group of shareholders own the workplace?
Hell, even the IWW let me sign up as a manager, though they technically have a "no bosses" rule.
I think self ownership would be awesome. However not everyone saves or invests. And so we are here. Someone had a great idea and traded it for equity and many have done it since.
Not everyone would need to save or invest. Each individual employee would not be collecting the full value of what they produce. They would all be collectively collecting the full value of what they produce via the business. Management still exists, money still goes back into business. This isn't some fantasy scenario, it actually exists successfully in the real world. Mondragon is the most cited example. Just because the enterprise is collectively owned by the workers doesn't mean that each worker is in full control. It means the firm is run democratically, collectively.