Virgolia wrote:Liriena wrote:I'm not an economist, let alone an expert in Marxist economic theory, but IIRC it's assumed that, in principle, if you are turning a profit, you are not giving your employees a fair wage. And there's a libertarian/anarchist argument that could be made, that a business in which the owner has absolute power over the employees by virtue of owning the means of production, however small the business may be, is an inherently tyrannical and unjust hierarchy, and that it would be better for the functioning of the business to be more horizontal and democratic.
The owner has more power because he has more risks than the employees
This might be true in the case of very small businesses, but not in the case of the extremely large ones. The Waltons are at no more risk of starving if Walmart falls than their employees are.
Virgolia wrote:If employees deserve more money then they deserve less money when the profits go down.
I'm pretty sure that's very much the gist of it in workers' co-ops, yeah.
Virgolia wrote:The owner doesn't have absolute power over the employees.
Owners get to single-handedly make all major decisions, decide who gets hired or fired, and set the wages and the rules of conduct. That's a lot of power, and it's power possessed by someone who can't be voted out by the employees, therefor having very little accountability if any within the structure of the business.
Virgolia wrote:And no,it won't be better for the business to be more "democratic" because it's not a society nor a state.
How do you know? Have you compared the real conventional businesses with real co-ops?