The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.

It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.

So my main questions are:

  1. Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?
  2. If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?
  • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Ah see, there’s the problem. I don’t think it’s like Newton’s Theory of Gravitation. The rate of profit to fall isn’t some ironclad law that’s applicable in all cases 100% of the time. Cowbee already conceded various ways it could not be true (lack of competition such as through monopoly, exploitation of workers, globalization and imperialism, cartels, trusts, etc).

    It seems to describe the natural tendency of a system-wide phenomenon (assuming increasing automation and existing competition in capitalism but nothing really else), so you’d have to consider a macro view of the entire system over a long period of time for it to work. It’s like how you can’t say one section of the world has been getting colder or staying the same for a couple years and thus climate change has been debunked, as you not only need to look at the whole planet but then the next couple decades as well.

    So the next company has a brief increase in rate of profit, but then taking a more extended look at the system, everyone will probably switch suppliers to the cheaper wood and someone is going to lower their prices, forcing everyone else to (barring one of the scenarios above).