Democracy at Work, and what we get wrong about socialism

What if I told you many of those that call themselves "socialist" are in fact arguing for capitalism -- state capitalism, as opposed to privately-owned capitalism, but capitalism nonetheless?

Richard Wolff's book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism is a short but very interesting and informative read that essentially argues just that. Wolff starts with a history of modern capitalism in the US and tracks the development of capitalist and Marxist thought through the 20th century. As Wolff looks at economic crises from the Great Depression up to the Great Recession of 2008, and even to other countries such as the collapse of the "socialist" government of Russia in the 1980s, Wolff points out how the common thread of them has been a failure of capitalism.

Classic Marxist thought puts an emphasis on who owns the property (or the modes of production) directly, which sets up a clash between capitalism as the private property system versus socialism/communism as the public property system. Typically in history, socialism's call for the end of private property has translated into a call for state ownership of the property. Wolff's central idea is that state ownership of property actually doesn't fix the problem, and simply replicates the capitalist hierarchical structure within government instead of a corporation. Instead of a CEO and board of directors, we now have a governor and committees, but the hierarchical, oppressive structure is the same. Countries like Russia or Venezuela that the media often describes as "socialist" or even "communist" are far from it, and actually mirror a capitalist structure more than anything else. And that is the same capitalist structure that is now eating the US economy right now.

Wolff instead revisits Marx to find a new definition of the capitalism versus socialism battle. Instead of ownership of property, Wolff defines the struggle as deciding who has ownership of the surplus; roughly speaking, who owns the profits of labor? Under private capitalism, it is clear that the capitalist class owns the profits of the workers, and can manage those profits in any way they see fit including giving themselves high salaries and bonuses; however, even with state-owned property, the profits are simply now owned and managed by the state, and still not the workers themselves. In both scenarios, some small group of elite -- whether business managers or government bureaucrats -- own and therefore direct the usage of the surplus. Therefore in this sense, most modern "socialist" countries are better described as "state capitalism".

The cure is therefore to democratize the surplus, and allow the workers themselves to directly and democratically decide what to do with any profits. True socialism is democracy in the workplace as well as politics, not a "socialist" government that controls and directs the economy.

Wolff goes on to describe how such a democratic worker self-directed enterprise (WSDE for short) would function. He makes several strong arguments that WSDEs would be able to provide workers with better jobs, better benefits, and be more resilient to economic and technological change. WSDEs would treat workers as equals, and rotate leadership positions in order to simultaneously promote leadership training for all members while also ensuring no single person or small group becomes "the leader" that "leads" them back into capitalism (it's that old adage that power corrupts, so we have to spread out the power as much as possible). He points out that WSDEs would be in a far stronger place to put environmental rights and human rights above profits, as the whole worker community would have a say in decisions. He also points out that WSDEs would generally do best rotating workers to different jobs, not only gaining everyone a little experience in many things, but also letting younger workers gain experience and decide what job path to take on their own within the WSDE. I think that's actually a fantastic idea, to let new workers try a few different things and pick their own path, it results in much happier and more productive workers. Of course, as technology changes and automation increases profits without labor, unlike corporations that might lay off employees to save on wages, WSDEs would be able to simply cut the amount of working hours -- say from 40 hours per week down to 35, or even lower! -- of everyone. In short, WSDEs due to their democratic nature will do a much better job at putting people first over profits than our current capitalist system.

I really like Wolff's characterization of socialism as ownership over the surplus (profits), and democratic decision making on what to do with said surplus. I think this emphasis on democratic decision making by the workers meshes well with the decentralized economy envisioned by the Green Party, and in fact, Wolff at the very end of the book makes a short plea for an independent political party focused on labor and making democracy in the workplace a thing. While this could be an entirely new Labor Party, I also think the Green Party is well established and already contains decentralized, grassroots democracy in both government and economics as part of its platform.

I believe Greens should read Wolff's book and really internalize it. Let's work to ensure the Green platform lives up to these concepts, and that we start a strong education campaign to let voters and workers know that Greens support their efforts at democratizing the workplace.