@Radical_EgoCom @tursiops The title says "what's better for wealth, happiness and equality" not "which is better"

@tursiops Neither. Capitalism vs socialism is a false dichotomy. There are other choices such as economic democracy

@Radical_EgoCom Ok, fair enough. My original point was that that article hadn't taken into account anti-capitalist liberalism and was painting liberalism as entirely pro-capitalism. Many of the critiques were only targeted at pro-capitalist liberalism.

Even if these communes aren't the end goal for you, I would argue that they are superior for the purpose of revolutionary organization than traditional orgs like unions

@Radical_EgoCom There are still markets tho

There are anti-capitalist liberals that advocate a society exclusively consisting of worker coops. There are also postcapitalist liberals that advocate collective ownership in communes as I described as a more efficient, democratic and just alternative to private property in communities

@Radical_EgoCom Perhaps, I didn't explain clearly. By abolishing employer-employee contract, I mean that there are no capitalist corporations outside of these communes and co-ops. The economy entirely and exclusively consists of worker coops and these democratic communes of them.

I agree merely allowing worker coops and democratic communes to exist under capitalism is insufficient

@Radical_EgoCom The democratic communes, which contain the worker coops, address those problems. In these communes, there are collectivized means of production and purchasing access to these collectivized means of production requires the communal currency, which, as I mentioned, has exit fees and transfer fees on it. These fees, which prevent value extraction, go into the commune's collective fund, which is used to fund whatever the members of all the member worker coops democratically decide

@Radical_EgoCom Why not?

@Radical_EgoCom These can exist under capitalism as a sort of revolutionary organization, but the goal is to move towards a system based around worker coops and these democratic communes I describe with a complete abolition of the employer-employee contract

@EconSociology @Radical_EgoCom This ignores anti-capitalist liberalism.

Among other things, postcapitalist liberals have proposed voluntary democratic communes, which could be associations of worker coops, with their own internal currency.

1. This currency would have large exit fees on transfers to individuals socially distant from the community, and lower transfer fees for transfers within the community
2. The currency could be used to purchase usage of communal collectivized capital

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

@nixCraft Widespread use of permissive #OpenSource licenses. We should be using #copyleft as a bare minimum and probably use even stronger licenses like #copyfarleft. There is no point in releasing code under licenses that don't require some form of reciprocity from commercial capitalist users. There is no virtue in developing software for free for capitalists

@burnoutqueen Freedom shouldn't be something you own that you can sell, but something you intrinsically have due to your personhood. You shouldn't be able to give up your freedom even if you want to

The fact that you can buy freedom is where America failed to live up to the principles of inalienable rights that have become part of its political religion

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 classical 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 particularly in the United States. Many contemporary libertarians ... represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states."

@humanities

@sofia A necessary condition is consent yes.

As far as I can tell, Ellerman is not an anarchist, but his democratic theory is still useful to anarchists and I would recommend reading it. Ellerman's notion of democracy isn't something that just applies to the state. For anarchists, democracy is the only legitmate way to make collective decisions when people have to come together in organizations and communities.

It does makes more sense to consider anarchy the sovereignty of none.

@sofia No modern democratic state has a basis in consent obviously. It's good point that considering the power imbalance implicit threats it isn't clear how you could genuinely consent to the state.

Have you read the article I linked? You would find it interesting. Like philosophical anarchist critiques question legitimacy of state power, it demolishes the legitimacy of employer authority and invalidates the promises/contracts associated with wage labor/employer-employee relationships.

@sofia Here is a short video of David Ellerman presenting the argument for abolishing wage labor :)

https://youtu.be/c2UCqzH5wAQ

In a healthy work organization, temporary workers should be a minority, so there isn't any practical problem in giving them voting rights. The logic of collaborating in an organization is one of commitment, so the majority of workers should have some commitment to the success of the organization. Regardless, Ellerman's argument entirely rules out the wage labor contract