Capitalism is antithetical to democracy. Capitalism left unchecked will eventually lead to fascism.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Because you are not paying enough attention:
- a Joint-stock-company is by definition democratic. The shareholders are meeting reguarly and voting who get's to sit on the board, can fire the CEO and so. That doesn't apply to the workers, yes, but between the owners it kind of is democratic.
- Yes, I know that many tech companies have this strange divide between "voting stock" and "non-voting stock" and founders, who still are in control without owning the majority of the stock, but that is an american thing and not legal in many parts of the world
- there are also many ways to ensure democratic collaboration within a company. Look up the german "Betriebsräte" f.e.
- there are also many cooperatives around there who are owned by their workers
- and there are many state-owned companies around in democratic nations
"kind of democratic between the owners" is just oligarchy. still not democratic.
That's like saying the foreigners not having a vote is being not democratic though. Because 100% of the owners have voting rights not only a few.
I think what you intend to criticize is the fact that owners and "employees" can be separated, right? If yes then I'm with you.
Well, yeah, I'm criticizing the fact that owners under the current capitalistic system are only a handful of people who usually aren't workers. If "employees" had a say in how a company is run, then it would be democratic.
Because you are not paying enough attention:
I appreciate the examples provided but disagree with your opening, and would suggest the same of you. I specifically said "many businesses" and "largely undemocratic" as I was aware of most of the examples you gave beforehand.
In particular I don't view the joint-stock model as sufficiently democratic due to what you already acknowledge, i.e. limited to owners/shareholders.
Regardless, appreciate you bringing to light "Betriebsräte", as I'll have to look into that.
Democracy is "owned" by stakeholders, and those stakeholders are the people. So it makes sense for them to have a say in how government works.
A company is owned by shareholders, and they take all of the risk for the company. An employee shows up and gets paid, with none of the downside risk (their paycheck won't go negative), so the employee isn't a stakeholder. Therefore, shareholders make the decisions, not employees.
In some structures, employees are the share holders and thus help make the decisions.
An employee shows up and gets paid, with none of the downside risk (their paycheck won't go negative), so the employee isn't a stakeholder. Therefore, shareholders make the decisions, not employees.
This depends on where the employee works, both in terms of business and nation. If they work in a nation that doesn't provide some services, they may be dependent on their employer to some degree for some of those services. In that circumstance they're no longer "just" showing up and getting paid, nor are they as mobile in their ability to switch businesses/employers.
Should those employees in that circumstance still have essentially no say?
Could you be a little more specific? Because that sounds extremely hypothetical.
Let's say you're working on a crab ship or something where your life is literally at risk. You should absolutely have a say because:
- your income depends on your catch (could be zero, could be huge)
- you can't leave
- you are wholly dependent on the ship for food and lodging
- will be at sea for weeks and maybe months at a time
- work ends at the end of the season
So yeah, in that case, something like a coop would make a lot of sense, with the captain (i.e. owner of the ship) having a larger say because they have more at risk. If the crab company goes under, they won't get paid and they'll be really hard pressed to find another job between crab seasons.
But something like a cruise ship isn't a great fit because employees can be offered a fixed salary/wage, the risk is a lot lower, and trip times are a lot shorter. The expense of starting a cruise line is immense, so the owners have a lot more risk than the average employee. If the cruise line goes under, they can just join a competitor or even another business entirely, and they'll likely still get their paycheck.
Whether you should have a say depends a lot on what you're risking, the more you risk, the more say you should have.
Could you be a little more specific? Because that sounds extremely hypothetical.
Sorry, I had an idea in the back of my head that made what I wrote seem more grounded. The idea in mind was of a pretty standard non-union American corporate employee. An employee in a nation that doesn't consistently provide services like healthcare, so many workers find themselves dependent on their employer for health insurance to afford healthcare.
In any event, isn't this whole line of discussion awkwardly suggesting at some point a fiscal risk may be more relevant than risk to one's life/well-being? Shouldn't monetary concerns always take a backseat to the well-being of people?
Shouldn’t monetary concerns always take a backseat to the well-being of people?
That depends on your definition of "well-being," as well as the severity of the financial risk. There's a wide range between "literally risking your life" and "a little discomfort/inconvenience," just as there is between someone mortgaging their house (risking financial ruin) and some VC tech bro risking other rich people's money.
Any policy we come up with needs to be sensitive to those extremes. But in general, an individual's ability to make decisions should be roughly proportional to the risk they're taking.
many workers find themselves dependent on their employer for health insurance to afford healthcare
Yeah, that's ridiculous, but it has nothing to do with employees having a vote. Ideally, benefits like health care should be completely separate from employment. Switching jobs shouldn't change your coverage... Likewise, you shouldn't be screwed on retirement savings just because your employer picked a bad plan.
Why would you expect them to be?
If my family starts a restaurant and hires additional workers to, for example, help clean, bus tables, wait tables, and so on, I think it would be kinda weird to share the decision making between all employees. It makes more sense for employee owned corpos, but most small businesses have an owner or owners whose main job is steering the business.
It would only seem weird because you are used to it. Not because it is right.
The person "steering the business" should be in that position at the behest of the workers. If you can't run a business literally by yourself, you should share power with the people hired to help as if you would a partner.
Yeah I just don't agree with you.
There is certainly a broad set of circumstances where businesses can share ownership between employees, but that does not mean there are not other circumstances where work is done purely in exchange for money, benefits, or both.
If you and 4 friends want to start a pizza shop, cool do it democratically. If I do a business selling a product all myself and every other Sunday I pay someone to come lick my stamps for an hour so I can spend time with my kids, that person is not an equal partner.
Edit: to be extra clear, democracy is based on the concept that people are all functionally equals in capability, information, and perspective. Basically that countrymen are homogenous. Inside a specialized enterprise of any kind (especially small ones) this need not be true.
Edit 2: or if that's insufficient and all businesses must be democratic, then I necessarily must be allowed to hire based on whatever criteria I so choose. Work ethic, want to keep the company aligned with my interests, religion, ability, height, anything. That's the only way to guarantee a homogeneous pool and may also be the democratic will of the group of people who begin the business.
Here's the problem with your analogy. I am talking about full time 40 hour workers that everyone does. Your example is a one hour gig worker.
You had to devalue the concept of "worker" so hard to literally an hour long stamp licker to make your concept seem valid.
Reducto ad absurdum for making the clearer version of a point.
Regardless, a full coterie of 40 hour workers STILL may not be full of votes of equal quality for every topic. Representative democracy? Sure why not. Welcome to the concept of a board of directors. Picking general leadership for businesses at scale? Sure why not. General decision making and steering by direct democracy? No thanks.
It makes no sense to equally weight the opinion of your IT team and your marketing department on the next product to launch or who the target audience should be. And I can make as many of that style example as you like without devaluing in any way what it means to be a worker.
Ah got it. You see no difference in a 1 hour gig job and a 40 hour worker. You believe them to be equally invested in the job, and equally unsuited for having any decision making power.
Just really showing the kinda corpo ass brain washing you have deep in your soul brother.
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Because I would expect people in democratic nations to value democracy and see it as worth exercising in business. This is in part as I see democracy as a formal way of referring to being open to discussion of opinions and ideas in organizing any group.
Why would you want to be part of any group that may reject open discussion of its organization?
Because you can easily swap companies, but you can't easily swap countries.
I'm proud of you for asking a difficult question that you won't get a satisfying answer to.
Its almost like asking "why doesnt everyone share cars?" You probably aren't using one all the time, they're expensive to maintain, why not distribute the load to society and just have fleets of cars you borrow whenever you need one? Like a vehicle library.
Some people will love this idea, it would work very well for them. Some people will hate this idea and rail about how its the death of freedom and personal choice. And some will very rightly wonder "why are we talking about cars? Trains solve this problem 1000x better!"
Privately owned business is a problem, and a major component of the problem is that petite bourgeoisie small business owners believe they're part of the broader "business class" which doesn't exist. They're exploited smallholders who serve the interests of the truly rich and powerful by ideologically aligning with them against workers, whom they universally believe are too stupid, selfish, and myopic to properly make decisions for themselves or anyone else.
why not distribute the load to society and just have fleets of cars you borrow whenever you need one? Like a vehicle library.
There are companies that do this. Zipcar is one I’ve used for short-term car rentals to go get groceries while I was in college.
This answer sounds like it was written by ChatGPT.
Thanks! Really appreciate you digging up this 4 month old post to slander me out of the blue.
Never mind, ChatGPT wouldn't be complaining about being slandered.
What business is run democratically? You might mean an anarcho-syndicalist commune or an autonomous collective.