Thank you, I can at least understand worker cooperatives, as well as family businesses, homesteads, communes like convents and the like, from a maintenance perspective.
It might be that I’m too poisoned by capitalist thinking, and presupposing capitalist solutions to capitalist problems, but I welcome perspectives, even of my own blindness.
But say we want to create a new electric car manufacturer. This requires a wide range of specialties, tools and coordination.
Would the worker co-op need to buy all the things needed to even get started? Or how does investment happen?
Or is it that risk capitalists should exit not by selling to the stock market, but the laborers?
Ah, duh, that’s how bank loans work, I see now.
I still don’t understand how this applies to intellectual property though, the person who designed the car, do they only get paid for the design as long as they co-own the company? How does it work for the pilot project engineer, are they not entitled to part of the profits from the subsequent production runs that are arguably the fruit of their labor?
And how do we compensate the scientists discovering the fundamental principles that require decades of work to implement, but then transform society?
I’m thinking Babbage/Lovelace creating the computer, whoever discovered concrete, quantum physicists, but also those who provide support for work like road layers, city planners, and teachers.
I still don’t understand how this applies to intellectual property though, the person who designed the car, do they only get paid for the design as long as they co-own the company? How does it work for the pilot project engineer, are they not entitled to part of the profits from the subsequent production runs that are arguably the fruit of their labor?
And how do we compensate the scientists discovering the fundamental principles that require decades of work to implement, but then transform society?
I’m thinking Babbage/Lovelace creating the computer, whoever discovered concrete, quantum physicists, but also those who provide support for work like road layers, city planners, and teachers.
Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.
Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.
The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry.
Every machine has had the same history – a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle – all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say – This is mine, not yours?
The idea with Anarchist theory, as I understand it, is that if society was structured in a way that all of your basic needs were already met by default because collectively we tried to help each other, for what reason would you need to accumulate more wealth (besides, perhaps, using currency purely for luxuries), and what would motivate you as an individual if monetary reward was no longer the main driving force?
History has shown that many scientists, engineers, artists, and architects become those things not because they want to make money, but for an intrinsic interest in the act itself. Unfortunately, due to the way society is structured with capitalism, people must ensure that whatever they do in their professions, it must first and foremost be profitable, otherwise they will starve, regardless if the non-profitable thing was a net-benefit to society as a whole. One example is how Penicillian was very nearly going to be left as an interesting footnote in history and unavailable to the public until some scientists, already interested in figuring out a way to mass produce it, were able to court some rich capitalists to grant them the money to actually do the work.
Or how the creator of Insulin released the patent for free just so it would be widely available to all (choosing altruism over profit), and yet capitalism resulted in the exploitation of the substance, with the original inventors and scientists receiving little in the way of monetary compensation for the advances of the chemical into what we have today.
If monetary gain was still a consideration for those inventors, a co-op would much more fairly compensate them for their contributions. A single inventor cannot also create a factory to produce his invention at scale, so everyone involved in getting that invention produced and profitable would be equally rewarded for their effort. A single individual would not be able to become significantly more wealthy than their co-workers, as their contributions would be distributed amongst all of them, but if the result of that is everyone being quite wealthy, instead of a few people just getting by with a few absurdly wealthy people at the top, surely that’s an improvement? I certainly wouldn’t be bothered if my efforts helped everyone who worked with me, especially seeing as vice-versa, their contributions help me.
This presupposes that either a) inventions only happen in non-scarcity environments and b) that all inventors/support workers need be motivated by the common good, neither of which are necessarily true.
The question is further not about how someone can get rich, a workers pay movement can be motivated from either more individual pay, less class division, more equality, or even other reasons.
Society needs pavers, teachers, scientists to function, regardless if they do it out of charity or not. In the principle of being entitled to the fruits of your labors, these yield a huge return over a generation, making societal progress and welfare possible by preparing communal resources, teaching cultural and practical skills, or discovering things that could fundamentally change the reality society operates in.
In a Star Trek/The Culture post-scarcity egalitarian utopia where all needs are met, regardless if anarchist or not, this is definitionally not a problem.
But currently, teachers and scientists’ basic needs are not consistently met, and pavers regularly can’t sustain their profession until retirement.
So I find that the question remains: how would a system giving them a fairer share of the fruits of their labor work?
This presupposes that either a) inventions only happen in non-scarcity environments
What led you to that conclusion?
that all inventors/support workers need be motivated by the common good
Ehh, people are motivated by a lot of things besides money. But they could still be motivated by money in an environment where basic needs are met, because they may still strive to have certain luxuries, or a life beyond just the ‘basic’ style that could be offered to everyone. I just want to remove the motivation of avoiding starvation and homelessness, those should not be considerations when entering into negotiations to sell your labor.
Society needs pavers, teachers, scientists to function, regardless if they do it out of charity or not.
Most people who do the more drudgery ridden jobs are generally underpaid and undervalued by society. But they are often in a situation where they live hand-to-mouth, and do not wish to take on the risk of forming a union to get better working conditions and pay.
In a Star Trek/The Culture post-scarcity egalitarian utopia where all needs are met, regardless if anarchist or not, this is definitionally not a problem.
Kropotkin argued back in 1892 that with the rise of industrialization, the most basic needs could be provided freely already, but that such a thing was prevented for the sake of the status quo, for the sake of capitalism.
Now with the computer revolution and the incredible gains of productivity that came with it, I believe there’s no excuse why realistically those basic needs cannot be provided.
So I find that the question remains: how would a system giving them a fairer share of the fruits of their labor work?
Co-ops are by default provide a fairer share. A significant tax incentive could encourage more co-ops to be created, like what was done with the IRA. And personally, to further encourage a proliferation of co-ops and make them more competitive (as they often struggle to get venture capital), I would advocate for increasing tax rates on traditional corporations to 1950’s levels or even beyond that, which would also help fund basic living condition programs.
Having universal access to basic living conditions would provide people the power to say no to underpaid work, which would in effect cause wages to increase to incentivize people to work those unpopular jobs.
An overhaul of the justice system to prevent consolidated corporations from suing smaller inventors into submission or bankruptcy, as well as an overhaul of patent and copyright law, would go a long way to making things fairer as well.
Thank you, I can at least understand worker cooperatives, as well as family businesses, homesteads, communes like convents and the like, from a maintenance perspective.
It might be that I’m too poisoned by capitalist thinking, and presupposing capitalist solutions to capitalist problems, but I welcome perspectives, even of my own blindness.
But say we want to create a new electric car manufacturer. This requires a wide range of specialties, tools and coordination.
Would the worker co-op need to buy all the things needed to even get started? Or how does investment happen? Or is it that risk capitalists should exit not by selling to the stock market, but the laborers?
Ah, duh, that’s how bank loans work, I see now.
I still don’t understand how this applies to intellectual property though, the person who designed the car, do they only get paid for the design as long as they co-own the company? How does it work for the pilot project engineer, are they not entitled to part of the profits from the subsequent production runs that are arguably the fruit of their labor?
And how do we compensate the scientists discovering the fundamental principles that require decades of work to implement, but then transform society?
I’m thinking Babbage/Lovelace creating the computer, whoever discovered concrete, quantum physicists, but also those who provide support for work like road layers, city planners, and teachers.
One of the classics of Anarchist thought, The Conquests of Bread by Peter Kropotkin, touches on this idea in his book, all the way from 1892:
The idea with Anarchist theory, as I understand it, is that if society was structured in a way that all of your basic needs were already met by default because collectively we tried to help each other, for what reason would you need to accumulate more wealth (besides, perhaps, using currency purely for luxuries), and what would motivate you as an individual if monetary reward was no longer the main driving force?
History has shown that many scientists, engineers, artists, and architects become those things not because they want to make money, but for an intrinsic interest in the act itself. Unfortunately, due to the way society is structured with capitalism, people must ensure that whatever they do in their professions, it must first and foremost be profitable, otherwise they will starve, regardless if the non-profitable thing was a net-benefit to society as a whole. One example is how Penicillian was very nearly going to be left as an interesting footnote in history and unavailable to the public until some scientists, already interested in figuring out a way to mass produce it, were able to court some rich capitalists to grant them the money to actually do the work.
Or how the creator of Insulin released the patent for free just so it would be widely available to all (choosing altruism over profit), and yet capitalism resulted in the exploitation of the substance, with the original inventors and scientists receiving little in the way of monetary compensation for the advances of the chemical into what we have today.
If monetary gain was still a consideration for those inventors, a co-op would much more fairly compensate them for their contributions. A single inventor cannot also create a factory to produce his invention at scale, so everyone involved in getting that invention produced and profitable would be equally rewarded for their effort. A single individual would not be able to become significantly more wealthy than their co-workers, as their contributions would be distributed amongst all of them, but if the result of that is everyone being quite wealthy, instead of a few people just getting by with a few absurdly wealthy people at the top, surely that’s an improvement? I certainly wouldn’t be bothered if my efforts helped everyone who worked with me, especially seeing as vice-versa, their contributions help me.
This presupposes that either a) inventions only happen in non-scarcity environments and b) that all inventors/support workers need be motivated by the common good, neither of which are necessarily true.
The question is further not about how someone can get rich, a workers pay movement can be motivated from either more individual pay, less class division, more equality, or even other reasons.
Society needs pavers, teachers, scientists to function, regardless if they do it out of charity or not. In the principle of being entitled to the fruits of your labors, these yield a huge return over a generation, making societal progress and welfare possible by preparing communal resources, teaching cultural and practical skills, or discovering things that could fundamentally change the reality society operates in.
In a Star Trek/The Culture post-scarcity egalitarian utopia where all needs are met, regardless if anarchist or not, this is definitionally not a problem.
But currently, teachers and scientists’ basic needs are not consistently met, and pavers regularly can’t sustain their profession until retirement.
So I find that the question remains: how would a system giving them a fairer share of the fruits of their labor work?
What led you to that conclusion?
Ehh, people are motivated by a lot of things besides money. But they could still be motivated by money in an environment where basic needs are met, because they may still strive to have certain luxuries, or a life beyond just the ‘basic’ style that could be offered to everyone. I just want to remove the motivation of avoiding starvation and homelessness, those should not be considerations when entering into negotiations to sell your labor.
Most people who do the more drudgery ridden jobs are generally underpaid and undervalued by society. But they are often in a situation where they live hand-to-mouth, and do not wish to take on the risk of forming a union to get better working conditions and pay.
Kropotkin argued back in 1892 that with the rise of industrialization, the most basic needs could be provided freely already, but that such a thing was prevented for the sake of the status quo, for the sake of capitalism.
Now with the computer revolution and the incredible gains of productivity that came with it, I believe there’s no excuse why realistically those basic needs cannot be provided.
Co-ops are by default provide a fairer share. A significant tax incentive could encourage more co-ops to be created, like what was done with the IRA. And personally, to further encourage a proliferation of co-ops and make them more competitive (as they often struggle to get venture capital), I would advocate for increasing tax rates on traditional corporations to 1950’s levels or even beyond that, which would also help fund basic living condition programs.
Having universal access to basic living conditions would provide people the power to say no to underpaid work, which would in effect cause wages to increase to incentivize people to work those unpopular jobs.
An overhaul of the justice system to prevent consolidated corporations from suing smaller inventors into submission or bankruptcy, as well as an overhaul of patent and copyright law, would go a long way to making things fairer as well.
But that’s just my two cents.