- McJobs and Workers -

SYSTEM!!!!!!

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on December 01, 1998 at 00:37:20:

In Reply to: profit is STILL theft posted by Flint Jones on November 30, 1998 at 13:22:58:

: Flint: Your clearly here confusing PROFIT with REVENUE. REVENUE is NET SALES. The surplus difference between NET SALES and NET COSTS instead of going into PROFIT, can be divided among the workers, or perhaps put into expansion on the store. The difference here is that workers could democratically decide what to do in a worker-owned co-operative, Basically, you could look at a Worker-owned co-operative as similar to any other business except that every employee is a shareholder (and holds an equal number of shares as their fellow workers). This is certainly a much more fair, just, and democratic way of handling it. Now the IWW, advocates abolition of the wage system. That is one in which PROFIT is extracted from the work of workers by owners. One solution is worker-owned co-operatives. Another would be a commune. Another would be growth in which people are truly self-employeed.

Problem with worker-co-ops, is precisely identified in teh slogan 'Abolition of the wages system.'...within Capitalism, workers in co-ops get to treet themselves like a capitalist would- why, well, they need to watch their investment in tech and new whatsists as much as any other capitalist, they must compete with otehr firms, watch their rate of profit fall, etc. Worker co-ops even have to compete with Worker co-ops.

Likewise, as long as money, or labour-time vouchers, or whatever it was DelEon was talking about, are in existence you effectively have a wage system, peoples access to the goods of society are regulated by daft bits of paper. In the end only the abolition of money, and the socialisation of the means of production will get rid of the wages system (I'll leave aside critiques of industrial unionism for now...).

Profit is theft, institutionalised theft, the only way to end it is to end the institutions. And co-operate!

For Socialism...


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