It should be the laborers that decide what to with the profit. Not those who sit on their assess looking at Fibonacci traces.
There are very, very few counter-examples in narrow low-growth specialised markets, but the general rule has been shown to occur countless times across economies as small as communes to as big as a superpower.
The reason capitalism works is that capital generally flows to people with a track record of making efficient, effective, growth (and therefore jobs) generating investments. Which is what you want. There is some wastage of course, but far less than in planned economies (at least all of them so far) and capitalism tends to be very efficient at recycling that wasted capital back into productive enterprises.
"Amongst other things, these work councils were now free to decide on the distribution of income between wages and investment. In one sense, this policy change was a success: income per worker increased and wages became a bigger share of the economic pie. However, labour-managed firms seem to have reaped such rewards by hurting other members of the labour force, restricting the employment of new workers so as to limit the worker-based labour market competition that could scupper the wage demands of the 'insiders'."
https://capx.co/do-workers-need-capitalists-new-lessons-from...
AFAIK, there is no evidence that labor coops fail at a greater rate than conventionally structured businesses. If you have such evidence, I’d love to see it.
Capitalism fundamentally doesn't distinguish between "growth" from zero-sum rent-seeking, which simply benefits one class by impoverishing another, and growth from innovation and invention, which - at best - creates entirely new markets.
Too many shareholders consider blue sky R&D with no specific return schedule an outrageously risky gamble and a misuse of money that should have been paid to them.
I'm still waiting to see any on point.
> Read any decent economic history of the Soviet Union, or Maoist China.
Which would be relevant if I was asking for evidence that Leninist vanguardism and it's derivatives were adequate systems to overcome the disadvantages poorly developed economies engaging in large scale geopolitical conflicts with advanced industrial powers face. Or if I was asking about evidence about the utility of top-down state central planning.
But labor cooperatives don't require a state featuring Leninist vanguardism or top-down central planning, and in fact are a well-known practice in modern Western mixed economies like those in North America and Western Europe, and there are a lot of well-established observed differences between labor coops and classical capital-rents-labor firms within such systems, but I can't see any evidence that a higher failure rate for coops is one of them.
Put it the way. What are the conditions in western democracies that are hostile to the success of workers cooperatives? We enjoy pretty egalitarian, fair legal and regulatory environments that aren't obviously hostile to them. Even if they were, many European countries have frequently had explicitly socialist governments and have had plenty of time to establish legal frameworks compatible with voluntary collectivism. Why hasn’t it worked?
[0] https://capx.co/do-workers-need-capitalists-new-lessons-from...
Regular boom-and-bust that keep people poorer and lessen social spending. It's very good at allowing the 1% exploit us and feed you lies.
> There are very, very few counter-examples in narrow low-growth specialised markets, but the general rule has been shown to occur countless times across economies as small as communes to as big as a superpower.
Yet we have Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain.
> but far less than in planned economies (at least all of them so far)
What I am specifically talking about is Worker-owned-and-directed-enterprises [1]. Planned economies is just state capitalism (but even that, you see China? the fastest growth in the history of mankind?).
> and capitalism tends to be very efficient at recycling that wasted capital back into productive enterprises.
Are you serious? Very efficient?
Historical nonsense. Fascism is a direct descendent of Marxist socialism with class consciousness replaced by nationalism.
And the Soviet Union and Communist China were state socialist societies. Neither of which were known for their humanity and environmental consciousness.
You can't just define capitalism as "all the bad stuff". Well you can but it's disingenuous and wrong.
Pure capitalism has never existed and wouldn't work anyway. Same goes for pure socialism.
Organisations like Mondragon and John Lewis have shown that models that mix the two can be successful. That message is not helped by a wilful disregard of facts.
Pure Nonsense. Fascism is simply extreme nationalism. It is believing that one's race is superior which makes you hate immigrants. Makes you build up walls to keep them out. This is born out of the constant exploitation of the capitalists.
When the people stop believing the Capitalist lies, you start getting demagogues like Trump.
This has nothing to do with Marx and Socialism.
Just to repeat, Soviet Union and Communist China Vangaurdism has nothing to do with Worker-owned-and-directed enterprises.
Soviet Union and Communist China is very different from Mondragon and John Lewis. Power is decentralized as much as possible. Managers and Executives (if needed) are only in power for a few months and is subject to call any time. Unlike today where C-level persons act like Feudal Lords.
There were pathologies but not necessarily what you might expect. Notably, employees objected to expanding the employee pool. This led to a system where old employees were shareholders and new ones were not. This eventually led to the collapse of the system, as much for ideological (classism) reasons as practical ones.
The dynamics are poorly understood, imo. One possibility is that this type of company will tend to maximize earnings-per employee. Without the ideological baggage, I wonder if a dual classes if employees isactually a good idea.
As this article demonstrates, the lines between ownership, governance on paper & governance in practice are not straight.
^"labor" was, att, the dominant institution of the country with the ruling party, largest medical network, etc. It was a new country, post holocaust solidarity, war, socialism... exceptional circumstances and not a perfect example, certainly.