Richard Wolff: Critics of Capitalism Must Include Its Definition

[rogerashton]

9. Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Coops, including the REA and consumers' coops, take a little power away from the plutocrats -- sometimes more than a little, as Bernstein pointed out. But plutocratic power is more than proportional to the proportion of capital wealth that they control, and coops can only nibble at that -- however valuable they are in creating some liberated space. No socialism without redistribution of wealth and public ownership. Notice -- in a modern economy ownership and management are separated, for good or ill, so we could have public ownership with decentralized management and control by the workers at the "point of production" -- just to the extent that the workers want and demand it. That is what I support, and I don't think Wolff and I are very far apart on that -- to what extent he would distinguish between what I call public ownership and he calls worker ownership. In practice, all systems are mixed, and a strong mixture of direct worker ownership with public ownership could be a very good mix.