There isn’t an inherent value to making all businesses democratic because very often most workers have no idea how the larger company works as a whole.
I work for an import company. My union warehouse steward is constantly judging the financial health of the company based on the volume of boxes he is shipping. The problem is he has no idea the relative value of those boxes so while he’s bemoaning we sent out 1/4 of the number of boxes on Tuesday that we sent out on Monday he’s missing that the total value of Monday’s sales were 3x Tuesdays. In 5 years of working with the guy he has never wrapped his brain around this. Our company would be much worse off if he had a say in how it works because he simply cannot see the larger picture as those skills were never developed. This is not uncommon and I myself have been the guy who cant see that larger picture in other roles.
Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated? Do we recognize that not everyone has the same skill set and level of skill as others?
You can use all of these same arguments to argue against democracy in nations, too. The average person has no idea how the nation works, all of the ins and outs of government, to say nothing of the larger global stage. Clearly what we need is a monarchy!
Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated?
Given their propensity for allocating the funds to themselves, probably.
Because as of yet the means of production aren't public property. So the people who own them get to decide the structure of production and they decided we don't get a say in how they are used.
Do they need to be public property or do they need to be in the hands of those working there? I’d be more inclined towards the latter as in most cases the public as a whole is not going to have an informed or educated perspective on how specific jobs/roles/companies should behave.
Capitalism is antithetical to democracy. Capitalism left unchecked will eventually lead to fascism.
The first sentence is not true. The second sentence is absolutely true. It is funny how that works.
Because you are not paying enough attention:
- a Joint-stock-company is by definition democratic. The shareholders are meeting reguarly and voting who get's to sit on the board, can fire the CEO and so. That doesn't apply to the workers, yes, but between the owners it kind of is democratic.
- Yes, I know that many tech companies have this strange divide between "voting stock" and "non-voting stock" and founders, who still are in control without owning the majority of the stock, but that is an american thing and not legal in many parts of the world
- there are also many ways to ensure democratic collaboration within a company. Look up the german "Betriebsräte" f.e.
- there are also many cooperatives around there who are owned by their workers
- and there are many state-owned companies around in democratic nations
Because you are not paying enough attention:
I appreciate the examples provided but disagree with your opening, and would suggest the same of you. I specifically said "many businesses" and "largely undemocratic" as I was aware of most of the examples you gave beforehand.
In particular I don't view the joint-stock model as sufficiently democratic due to what you already acknowledge, i.e. limited to owners/shareholders.
Regardless, appreciate you bringing to light "Betriebsräte", as I'll have to look into that.
Democracy is "owned" by stakeholders, and those stakeholders are the people. So it makes sense for them to have a say in how government works.
A company is owned by shareholders, and they take all of the risk for the company. An employee shows up and gets paid, with none of the downside risk (their paycheck won't go negative), so the employee isn't a stakeholder. Therefore, shareholders make the decisions, not employees.
In some structures, employees are the share holders and thus help make the decisions.
"kind of democratic between the owners" is just oligarchy. still not democratic.
Well, there's nothing inherent about democracy. Nothing about reality inherently forces society towards a democracy.
Our democracies are just as socially constructed as our workplace structures. One of them (society) we've managed to make democratic. The other (businesses) are much smaller, and larger in number, and thus harder to influence overall as a system, thus it's taking us much longer to push them towards democratic structures as well.
You get where I was going with this! It's exactly that constructed form, and the supposed favoring of it, that led to my asking this.
If a society claims to embrace democracy, but doesn't extend this to the organization of its businesses, how much do they embrace democratic values?
how much do they embrace democratic values?
Not as much as we'd like, unfortunately. A lot of people are DINOs. (Democracy In Name Only)
