#82 in Business & money books
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Reddit mentions of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
Sentiment score: 12
Reddit mentions: 19
We found 19 Reddit mentions of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Here are the top ones.
or
- Be Made From G3.3 Borosilicate Glass
- Annealing Point ------560℃
- Linear Coefficient of Expansion------ 32×10-7/℃
- Softening Point------820℃
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Specs:
| Height | 7.4 Inches |
| Length | 5.2 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Release date | October 2012 |
| Weight | 0.5401325419 Pounds |
| Width | 0.7 Inches |
there's so much out there if you like this stuff.
gar alperovitz writes and lectures about democratic economics in the form of coops and democratic communities in what he calls democratization of wealth. his most recent book is called america beyond capitalism (pdf).
richard wolff also talks a lot about workplace democracy in what he calls democracy at work in the form of "worker self-directed enterprises" (WSDEs). his recent book on the matter is called democracy at work: a cure for capitalism.
both of these guys have regular podcasts, public lectures, countless videos and they write prolifically. gar alperovitz actually gave a speech at the green party convention.
Suggested Reading: Democracy at Work
I have experience with multi-unit co-op style rentals and imagine this would be a more popular model if CMHC or some other body provided loan guarantees to make the financing viable; the rent was well below market, all decisions about the complex were made democratically, and there was a real sense of community.
The Soviet Union and China were/are state capitalist countries. Capitalism is defined as an economic system where the capitalists (read non-producing workers) own all the value created by the laborers (read people who produce the physical product). In socialism and communism the labor force is more democratic in that the laborers directly own and distribute their profits.
Source:
Richard Wolff - Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1608462471/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_HBHRBbGEVP6FD
Richard Wolff - Google Talk https://youtu.be/ynbgMKclWWc
Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism?wprov=sfla1
I would argue that market socialism is not outside the spectrum of what you are arguing for. You can have a complete free market where each and every company is a worker cooperative and pay and worker benefits are determined democratically within the workplace, but the consumption of goods and services are still determined in a free market system.
Here's Richard Wolff's book on the idea
Check out Dr. Richard Wolff and Democracy at work
Mondragon Corporation
Pretty good book, too.
Fiction:
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is a great start (good critique of anarchist philosophy).
The Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson actually cites Mondragon and discusses cooperative economics in detail.
After The Deluge (of Critical Mass fame) by Chris Carlsson is a novel about a post-capitalist San Francisco.
Non-fiction:
After Capitalism by Seymor Melman.
America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz.
Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism by Richard Wolff.
Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown by Richard Wolff.
After Capitalism by David Schweickart.
Against Capitalism by David Schweickart.
Capitalism or Worker Control by David Schweickart
Putting Democracy to Work by Frank T Adams.
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard.
Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital by John Restakis.
Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly.
For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America by John Curl.
Jeffrey if you're reading this thread - PLEASE CONSIDER setting this all up as a Worker's Cooperative or Workers Self Directed Enterprise. Ethereum is the prefect vehicle for experimenting with new biz structures. Please don't be lame and repeat capitalism over & over!
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Highly recommend this book if the concept is at all new to you-->https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
​
&This is how you can prove to everyone you're not in this to get rich!!!!! We need someone like you to turn this idea into reality!
Socialism/Communism
A People's History of the World
Main Currents of Marxism
The Socialist System
The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)
Marx for our Times
Essential Works of Socialism
Soviet Century
Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)
The Meaning of Marxism
The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)
Of the People, by the People
Why Not Socialism
Socialism Betrayed
Democracy at Work
Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)
The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)
The American Socialist Movement
Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)
It Didn't Happen Here
Eugene V. Debs
The Enigma of Capital
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)
After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action
Capitalism
The Conservative Nanny State
The United States Since 1980
The End of Loser Liberalism
Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)
Economics: A New Introduction (must read)
U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)
Kicking Away the Ladder
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
Traders, Guns and Money
Corporation Nation
Debunking Economics
How Rich Countries Got Rich
Super Imperialism
The Bubble and Beyond
Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents
Trade, Development and Foreign Debt
America's Protectionist Takeoff
How the Economy was Lost
Labor and Monopoly Capital
We Are Better Than This
Ancap/Libertarian
Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)
Man, State and Economy
The Machinery of Freedom
Currently Reading
This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)
> Didn't listen to the whole thing
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>I also thought his proposed solution was interesting;
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it was…
>
It was…
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Oh, he didn't have one.
Wolff has written multiple books about a solution, and his lectures all delve into a bit of the ideas of democratic workplaces etc
This video pretty much says everything in Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism by Richard Wolff. It's a really good book.
Thanks so much!
As for what to read, it really depends on what you're interested in but I always recommend the classics when it comes to anything to do with the left first.
However, if you'd like something more modern and lighter here are some of my recent favorites:
Again, depends on the economist. But here's an example: Richard Wolff, an economist at UMass Amherst if I remember correctly, thinks we should replace capitalist institutions (firms, companies, corporations, etc.) with what he calls "workers' self-directed enterprises." The idea is basically that workers don't need bosses--or if they do need bosses, those bosses should be democratically elected. Here's his book in which he details these proposals.
Robin Hahnel, an economist at Portland State University, argues for what is called "Participatory Economics." Parecon is a quite complicated theory, but it basically boils down to this: everyone can state what products they wish to consume at the beginning of the year, and we can use this information to develop an economic plan which satisfies each participants consumption preferences (most likely with the aid of supercomputers).
So there's two off the top of my head. More certainly exist.
All of these, even the heavy reading one, are appropriate for a beginner. Pick how big your first bite will be!
Casual:
Moderate difficulty:
Heavy reading:
Hey! Would you be willing to review Richard Wolff's Democracy at Work - A Cure for Capitalism?
Any particular books on co-ops you are willing to recommend?
I remember listening to Richard D. Wolff a few years back when I was a leftist. He definitely cares about the working class and has compassion for the workers. I appreciate how he explains socialism and doesn't want it to be such a dirty word and how it must evolve. I remember his interview on Fox Business trying to explain this to the host and the host wasn't having it. I still remember thinking what an ass the host was.
I've listened to hours and hours of Richard (I think I'm still subscribed to Economic Update). However, I noticed a lot of what he was saying was less of promoting Marxism economics, but more so criticizing capitalism as a less efficient system and how it's "killing" us. I listened for years and years to the same thing. When I finally graduated college and got a job, I realized something important about the free market and capitalism itself. It's constantly evolving as well. The job that I had didn't exist five years ago and if I wanted to remain relevant and move up in my career, I had to work on my skills as a worker and grow as a worker. This all hit me pretty quickly, but I loved that I had the freedom to pursue and do it.
This was my coming out of the leftist/marxist ideology and I realized that Richard D. Wolff had been saying the same thing for the last decade to a certain group of people. Those who don't understand how economies evolve and change. The more you Google and read the more you realize that our current system has its drawbacks, but that doesn't mean the system needs to change and be flipped on its head. Not everything Richard thinks and says can be laid at the feet of capitalism as much as he wants it to be, and the more you listen to him the more his philosophy on economics depends on doing that.
Edit: If you want to know more about Richard's economic philosophy and ideas, I suggest you read his book, "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism"
Man, you should you get into his stuff, I reckon you'd enjoy it.
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
https://economicupdate.podbean.com/
He's one of the most prominent advocates for Democratic Socialism. He's really good.
There's multiple ways that already exist in other countries to show how to transition/start a coop. Richard Wolff explains this in his book . Basically workers can buy it from an employer who is sympathetic or retiring and wants to sell. Or as Wolff likes to bring up, it can model Italy's Marcora Law which allows for unemployed workers to get in groups of 10 people to start a coop. If they do, the government will pay each worker their 2 years worth of unemployment in one lump sum to help with investment capital in their self directed business. This law has existed since the 80s. Also there are banks that currently will loan to coops although not as reliably as normally structured businesses.
>These are not false dichotomies I bring up, but genuine concerns about tradeoffs for implementing democratic processes at so many levels of a society
This is not the false dichotomy I mentioned; the problem was that the two options originally presented were the existing power relationships or a dystopian state controlling everything we do. But once you start to criticize specific details of one possible implementation of socialism, you are merely doing precisely what good socialist thinkers should do. Given some ideal, how should it be implemented? What are the inherent problems? How can we make this work? And you certainly have not given enough credit to socialist intellectuals who do consider these problems when you imply that there is one implementation of socialism and it is necessarily "a fairy tale". That is simply willful ignorance of an entire body of work stretching back centuries to the early days of capitalism.
You want to have a conversation about how socialism should work as a democratic alternative to authoritarian capitalism and find out more about what proposals have been made? Wonderful! My work is done.
>the greater the task or function of some institution, the larger the centralized body must be to orchestrate whatever task it must carry out; the greater the that this democratic, centralized body must be, the more people we need; the more people, the more statistics bear out the chance of differing opinions, differing levels of expertise, and susceptibility to corruption; then we have a slower, more inefficient operation.
You make a whole range of statements that imply things must necessarily be a certain way. Given how rare these truths are when discussing human societies, I would have to ask you to justify these claims with at least some good argument. "The greater the task or function of some institution, the larger the centralized body must be to orchestrate whatever task it must carry out"? What does "greater" even mean to begin with? Why should the importance of a task necessitate more centralized control? If greater tasks require more centralized control, why should these same tasks require more centralization when we switch to socialism? And so on and so on. None of these concerns seem valid to me; they seem to be disguised forms of fear of the unknown.
>These problems will arise; to pretend that this system is immune to problems of corruption and conflict, that it's some rosy paradise of a solution to governing a society is naive.
Nobody ever said socialism would have no problems that we'd need to solve. Again, you're misrepresenting the alternative to the current power structure instead of directly engaging with it. People who believe in revolutionary change to socialism must be "naive" because we're to scared to think about the implications of such fundamental social changes.
>But suppose we go throw with it. How deeply do you embed this democratic structure into company. Large companies admit nested hierarchical command structures. Do we elect someone at every level of management? That only magnifies the problems of democratic processes listed above, likely in some geometric fashion.
Worker cooperatives already exist and have a wealth of answers to these questions. The Mondragon corporation is an often-cited example of a pseudo-democratic institution operating within the prevailing capitalist system. Also, Richard Wolff has written and spoken about these issues extensively; to these concerns I would simply say "go and find out - engage with that conversation!"
>I'm not saying that we should ignore socialism entirely, but to swallow it wholesale is not practical.
Now these are the statements that imply a false dichotomy. What is it to "swallow socialism wholesale"? Socialism is not a single monolithic set of precepts about how society should work. Socialism is simply saying that the biggest problem you currently face is that private control of capital has created and raised a powerful monster that has simply purchased your "democratic" government and will now proceed to solidify its global power until regular people are left with lives that are barely worth living. And all of this was entirely predictable for people who are just willing to question the underlying social hierarchies instead of blindly accepting them! Socialism is a universe of possibilities that begin with one idea - nobody should rule. Surely that one single idea cannot present such an insurmountable difficulty for our digestive tracts.
I don't understand. This is a well thought of economics professor...
http://www.rdwolff.com/content/capitalism-crisis-democracy-now-urging-end-austerity-new-jobs-program-democratizing-work
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377196079&sr=1-1
He wrote this book about worker-owned coops. I've seen some video of interviews he did at the Mondragon hQ in Spain.
http://www.democracyatwork.info/about/
He's trying to lead a push for more of these style worker owned co-ops. Mondragon isn't the only worker owned co-op. So is Costco and REI.
"How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart
"...But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."
Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."
He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Mr. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costco.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Worker owner co-op are a great idea. The concept is a winner. I don't know what's going on specifically with Orbea in China. Looks like I may have been wrong on some specifics on Orbea bikes. Does not disprove the concept of worker-owned co-ops because Costco has been just as successful with the model.