The Case Against Worker Ownership BY MIKE SLOTT The potential for worker ownership is severely limited by the structure of capitalist economies. All of the vital sectors of the economy are already owned and controlled by the capitalist class; in the absence of a mass political movement, they can block any attempt by workers to make significant economic inroads on their power. Workers simply lack the financial resources to challenge employer domination of the "commanding heights" of the economy.
Given this lack of resources, worker ownership will be limited to the "crumbs" of the economy: either to certain labor-intensive industries (the traditional co-op sector) or to financially-troubled companies. In either context, worker-owned companies face serious problems. Many are bound to fail economically due to a lack of capital and/or poor market conditions. The ones that survive may be taken over by investors looking for a profitable place to put their money. A final scenario is one in which worker ownership survives, but as a non-threatening, marginal part of the economy. --- Worker Ownership: A Tactic For Labor BY DAN SWINNEY A profound change has taken place in the economy, a change which requires an equally profound change in labor. In the mid-1970s, the American economy began to reflect dramatic symptoms of a period of sustained decline. The United States entered a period of sharp international competition with a real loss of American market share in most areas of production; a sharper and more intense scramble for profits; and a general lowering of the real and social wages of the American people. As a result, there is increasing unemployment and attacks on union strength and organization, increasing the divisions between workers. Most important, there is a corporate willingness to discard whole industries, communities, people and productive capacity not because they aren't profitable but because they aren't profitable enough. full: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1985/1130/debate.html ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
