Some thoughts on the organization of work
If you randomly select 100 people for any productive purpose, I predict that most (80?) will cooperate easily and democratically. A few (10?) will not want to cooperate and will prefer to remain separate. Another few (10?) will want to own and control every part of the enterprise, including all the other people, for their own pleasure and enrichment. They are the natural capitalists.
I detest all power relationships. Life is too short for one person to be another’s master. I dislike all inequality, but competition does seem to motivate many current humans to work harder and I am happy to tolerate limited inequalities if they contribute significantly to the general good. It is usually not hard to see how we could harness competition without permitting hurt and exploitation of one group by another, but there is always a greedy minority ready to sabotage such arrangements, to maintain dominance.
I particularly detest corporate hierarchies, where one set of people sits on top of another, with the purpose and power to control and exploit everyone below. The people at the bottom typically do almost all the useful work, and receive the lowest pay and poorest conditions that the owners can impose without sacrificing output. The people at the top typically do almost no useful work, while accumulating absurd wealth and corrosive power from those below. The people in the middle are mere agents of the owners, though they can also have administrative functions and perform some useful work. Without external supervision and accountability, corporations devolve into feudalism and slavery, because all internal power lies in a few greedy hands, and there are no internal restraining forces. Fortunately, businesses almost always have to deal with the will of their host communities, expressed through governments, which can do a lot to restrain the worst corporate practices - using labor laws, progressive taxation and other tools. However, even in healthy democracies, where checks are in place, corporations remain an unnecessarily unjust way to organize work. It is easy to see alternatives that can be more creative, productive, fair and pleasant for everyone (even the current plutocrats) as I will discuss a little below. We just have to overcome the resistance of a small but extremely powerful minority.
Corporations aren’t the only type of labor organization that has been tried. Anarchy, a model that rejects any role for government, where individuals negotiate the sale of their own work, has been tried many times. As we become wiser it may become a useful model for many situations. However, most historical experiments with anarchy have ended badly, either with poor outcomes for many participants, or destruction from outside (by governments or corporations). In contrast to anarchy, feudalism and communism don’t reject government but merge government and corporate power. That must always end badly, because then there are no checks of any kind on bad corporate behavior. The most successful common alternative to the selfish corporate model has been government itself, which frequently accomplishes tasks well beyond the capacity of any corporation and without huge disparities of power and wealth in the workforce. Here checks and balances are abundant, because governments are democratically accountable to the populations they represent.
What needs to be done? Revolutionary change is an option, but revolutions often spill blood and cause suffering. Evolution is usually a better choice. It is best to start from where you are. I don’t even mind keeping the old terminology. We can still say ‘corporations’ and even stay officially ‘capitalist’, but major reform is required if justice and decent behavior are important objectives. The two main problems – exploitation and abuse – need to be ameliorated.
The average CEO of a US company takes 300 times as much as his workers, and could often be replaced by a pair of dice with not merely great savings in treasure but significant functional improvement. Most of the worst decisions I have witnessed have been made by out of touch owners/bosses. The 10% management/overseer component of a typical company may take as much as the entire productive workforce. That distribution of rewards has to be corrected1,2.
(1) There should be no private companies, where a few people own everything and can do pretty much what they want with it.
(2) All companies should be public, though a very wide range of stock holding models is worth exploring. All workers should own a share of their business. The old definition of socialism, that workers should own their means of production, is virtuous – but I see no problem with ownership being shared with investors in some well-defined ratio.
(3) All salaries should be public, as they are already in most governments. This step alone would restrain plunder by those in charge of the cash box.
(4) Measures like those I propose above and below would reduce dangerous extremes of wealth but not eliminate them. Small democratic corporations might briefly corner some important market, making everyone involved absurdly rich. More generally, there are four ways to become extremely wealthy – inheritance, exploitation, providing some popular service to a large number of people (‘entertainment’) and providing some personal service to some other extremely wealthy person (‘art’). I think it is shameful to appropriate a highly disproportionate share of human resources by any of these means. If someone does it anyway they should be subject to extremely progressive taxes3. What constitutes highly disproportionate should be determined democratically and the values may evolve over time, based on experience. Personally I can’t see why anyone should earn more than a few times the average national salary or accumulate tens of million of dollars in treasure. Nor can most Americans.2
(5) If competition is retained in our reformed system, some businesses will do better than others and some will do much worse – and fail to survive the marketplace. There must be a good safety net for those who fail, so they - and those who depend upon them – don’t go hungry and get as many chances to try again as possible. To give everyone a fair chance, education needs to be available to anyone who can benefit, and the rich shouldn’t be able to buy advantages for their children. So state primary and secondary schools should be funded equitably across nations and private schools should be taxed sufficiently that they cannot provide a shortcut to power to those already wealthy through an accident of birth.
Under the current system, the owning class can treat their workers essentially however they want (as long as criminal laws aren’t broken) which often endangers health, usually involves bullying and humiliation, and always inflicts insecurity and worry on workers. Unions used to provide some protection, however corruptly and inefficiently, but the plutocracy has reversed the union movement by buying union-limiting legislation. Healthy unions should be re-established. Power has to be shared more fundamentally. Democracy can provide a good part of the answer. I can see no good reason why work groups shouldn’t elect their own administrators for some fixed term. If I am the leader this year but you might be the leader next year, I am not going to abuse you. I’m also going to vote only for a good administrator every time, to increase the likelihood that our group will thrive against its competitors. It would be nice to have the time to work out in detail how a democratic organization of labor might work.
The independent contractor model can also be extremely helpful. Here, instead of having a static hierarchy based on power, all arrangements are dynamic and based on convenience. Goods, whether material or labor, are exchanged according to a short-term contract negotiated between the two parties making the exchange. This mechanism has been used throughout the historical record in anarchic barter systems, where the barter has sometimes been direct and sometimes mediated through money. It has continued as an important component of current capitalism. When I need a plumber or electrician or any other service, I’m the boss and determine the scope of the work, but there’s no exploitation or abuse. I can’t force my contractors to provide services for less than their value, nor are they subservient to me. In a sufficiently technologically powerful society, most/all corporations will be replaceable by independent contractors coordinated through software and communication networks. Every job function can be competed, selected and executed on the fly. The computer operating system can perform most administrative functions and can constitute the company’s management structure. Wonderfully, even this component of the system can be selected and executed on the fly. Where human decisions are needed they can by made democratically; while prompted, recorded and executed automatically. The old framework of exploitation and domination will have completely evaporated!
What can I do to promote reform? I can advocate for justice and hope for a ‘butterfly effect’, where a small disturbance may be taken up by others and lead to significant change. I have to recognize that I may not see much change in my lifetime and abusive, exploitive corporations may remain the norm, though I would hope with some tendency to improve with attention and experience. All I can do in that case is refuse to collaborate. I will never knowingly aid any exploitive and oppressive hierarchy. Of course I suspect they will never ask me J
Before the system is reformed I consider all owners to be more or less despicable and the overseers through which they operate more or less shameful, with the degree of evil applied determined largely by how well each business is regulated by government.
Even if improvements come slowly I should also remain good humored, tolerant and humble. If not good humored, capitalism will not just have robbed and humiliated me. If not tolerant, I might not forgive collaborators who are good people in other circumstances. If not humble I cannot benefit from different ideas and opinions. Please tell me where you think I am wrong!
Notes:
1 Domhoff (2011) shows that in the US in 2007 the top 1% (‘the upper class’) held 34.6% of the net worth, the next 19% (‘the managerial, professional and small business stratum’) 50.5% and the bottom 60% a mere 15%. The number of households with nomarketable assets in 2009 was ~24% (Wolff, 2010).
2 Norton and Ariety (2010) demonstrate that the US population [a] thinks the bottom 80% of the populations owns over 40% of the wealth, and [b] would prefer it to own about 70%.
3 Domhoff (2011) shows that the current taxation scheme is barely progressive even across the poorest half of the population, then becomes flat and is actually regressive for the top few percent.
References
Wealth, Income, and Power
by G. W. Domhoff
2005 (updated 2011)
Building a better America – one wealth quintile at a time
by M. I. Norton and D. Ariely
2010
