Ken H.:
1) Obviously it is possible to have a worker-owned
firm where not all the workers are owners, e.g. the flight
attendants at UAL. Also, it is possible for a rip-off
management to get control of things and pull off surplus
for itself. But, these are clearly deviations from what is
meant by full workers' ownership/management.
2) Many of your points have to do with externality
problems of one sort or another, and I think it has already
been stated by most of us advocating such systems that
there should still be some sorts of planning and government
regulation/control to deal with such problems.
3) Yes, there was a severe regional disparity problem
in Yugoslavia. As a matter of fact the richer republics
were substantially subsidizing the poorer ones in the later
stages. As Louis Proyect has pointed out, this one was one
of the motiviations for the "white flight" secession of
Slovenia. BTW, there is a large literature that says that
the regional disparities were not due to the nature of the
system itself, e.g. Wei Ding, "Yugoslavia: Costs and
Benefits of Union and Interdependence of Regional
Economies," _Comparative Economic Studies_, 1991, vol. 33,
pp. 1-26 and Evan Kraft, "Evaluating Regional Policy in
Yugoslavia," _Comparative Economic Studies_, 1992, vol. 34,
pp. 11-33.
4) In a truly worker managed firm, the level of
profit will be determined by the workers. They will be
"exploiting themselves." Do not be fooled that centrally
planned command socialism does without profit. Even under
Stalin, as early as the 1940s capital investments were
being ranked according to their relative payback periods,
that is rates of return. There was a very high extraction
of surplus value by the state, see the very low levels of
consumption, and the workers had no say whatsoever in the
determination of this level. This was one of the reasons
why these undemocratic systems were so unstable and so
readily collapsed. Surely, next time (if there is one) we
can do better.
Barkley Rosser
On Fri, 28 Mar 1997 16:20:25 -0800 (PST) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> B. Rosser asks if worker owned industries exploit their workers.
> My point was that in a market capitalist economy worker-owned
> industries would produce to maximise or at the very least satisfice return
> on investment and there is no guarantee that this would correspond with
> social needs. I don't see that the workers as a group are not in the same
> situation as the individual owner proprietor but on a larger scale.
> Wouldn't the worker-owner be motivated to promote pro-business
> policies such as lower corporate taxes, less costly regulation. Wouldn't
> the group as a whole impose downsizing etc in order to compete effectively.
> Minority ownership by those bought out or let go would not stop this.
> Wouldn't they be tempted to hire temporary non-owners at lower wages and
> appropriate the surplus collectively etc. etc.
> By the way, are most industries privatized to the workers or
> to the public in general or what? This wasn't clear to me.
> In theory a worker-owned industry would return surplus value
> to the worker's themselves--but one would have to know the actual details of
> ownership and also how the industry was in actuality controlled to know
> how the surplus is actually distributed. Even capitalist owner's have been
> known to complain of a separation of ownership and control!
> While I have no detailed knowledge of the situation in Yugoslavia
> there was an economist who studied the Yugoslav economy (I can't recall his
> name) who visited here a couple of years ago who maintained
> that there was considerable regional disparity and the better off regions
> showed little desire or understanding of the problems of workers in poorer
> areas. Rather they tended to see the situation as poor management, work habits,
> etc. and felt they should fail rather than be subsidized by the central state.
> He also thought that in many cases worker control was on paper rather than
> actual, that many workers were passive not active and that actual control
> was exerted by a few in most cases.
> My main point remains though that I always have understood
> socialism as involving production for social need rather than profit.
> Having the profit go to worker-owned industries doesn't seem to change
> the fact that one would still have production for profit.
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
>
--
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
