Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

by Richard D. Wolff, Shawn Compton (Narrator)

Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve.

One key cause for this intolerable state of affairs is the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. The solution requires the institution of genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy.

Here, Richard D. Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded economic inequality and politics as usual can no longer be tolerated and are looking for a concrete program of action.

Genres: Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Theory, Social Science

Audible Audio

First published October 2, 2012

About the author

Richard D. Wolff is an American economist, well-known for his work on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books).

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 4 out of 5]

A (Micro) Cure for Capitalism?

Preamble:
--Let me first say that I greatly respect academics who put in the time with public education and engagement. You can have your personal favorite über-Marxist with hefty tomes of undiluted dialectics, but I think it’s equally bad-ass to try and explain “socialism” and “Marxism” to the mainstream US public as Wolff does with his Democracy At Work media nonprofit and his many public appearances.

Highlights:
--Let’s first set out Wolff’s definitions and thesis, before we critique:
1) Mainstream capitalism vs. socialism debates share common assumptions:
a) Ownership of means of production: private vs. state, and
b) Distribution: market exchange vs. central planning
…Wolff’s focus is instead on the internal organization of production/distribution, i.e. how the surplus generated by workers (via wage labor contract) is appropriated within the workplace (thus, analysis starting at the micro level). He claims this is a return to Marx’s conception of socialism.

2) Wolff uses “State Capitalism” to describe real-world socialism, in the sense that the surplus generated by workers is appropriated by state officials rather than directly by the workers; meanwhile, real-world capitalism is “State-regulated Private Capitalism” (surplus appropriated by private capitalists).

3) Radical cure to capitalism requires addressing:
a) Ending capitalism’s crises
b) Equality
c) Democratic distribution of power in workplace and community

4) Wolff’s solution (as hinted in #1):
a) End (economic) exploitation using WSDEs (Worker Self-Directed Enterprises) where workers who directly create the surplus directly appropriate it.
b) Democratic codetermination between WSDEs and the wider communities, i.e. to plan for social needs.

--Overall, this book is targeting a wider Western audience, and I found the topics introduced and tone far superior to The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. For further engagement, however, there are some loose ends to explore (mostly around integrating micro with macro; see Varoufakis' Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present):

1) Connecting the WSDE solution to theories of capitalism’s crises:
--To “cure” something, it usually helps to have an accurate diagnosis of the issue. Wolff briefly introduces numerous issues with capitalism but does not have the time to elaborate and tie them together…
--My attempt to connect his points: capitalism’s structural uncertainties ("anarchy of production") forces individual capitalists (who hold decision-making power by appropriating the surplus) to prioritize growth, often at the expense of labor, environment, long-term stability/sustainability, etc.
--Uncertainties for capitalists include market competition, changing consumer demands/politics (taxes, regulations, subsidies)/interest rates on loans/prices of inputs, etc.
--Growth as a survival tactic includes increasing profits/company size/market share via automation/outsourcing/speculation/austerity. This results in boom/bust cycles, overproduction, underconsumption (Kalecki/Keynes on effective demand), structural unemployment, environmental destruction, etc.
--Those who do not own sufficient capital and thus rely on wage labor for survival are the most vulnerable to busts and even booms (i.e. structural unemployment from capitalist creative destruction). One of the first concepts Wolff introduces is the social reproduction of labor and the struggles of labor history; this in particular fits well with his WSDE solution.
--Wolff briefly mentions the increase of profits via speculation, which creates exponential volatility; there is so much more to explore here, from Marx's M-C-M' (money to make more money, instead of C-M-C commodity exchange), the history of debt/compound interest (Michael Hudson, David Graeber), and theories of Finance Capitalism.
--Wolff's WSDE solution is one key challenge to capitalist property rights, which has many areas to explore in terms of economic rent, "primitive accumulation"/"accumulation by dispossession", etc. In particular, I'd like to see more details on how the stock market and private banking can be abolished with the help of WSDEs (i.e. where only workers own shares in their enterprises).
--Wolff also introduces regulatory contradictions, i.e. the US Federal budget’s reliance on deficits (esp. after 1980s) in order to keep taxes low but still spend on all the necessities that capitalists refuse to pay for. Wolff does mention the alternative of public banking (The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity).
--Now, there is much heated debate among Left political economists (primarily Marxists and post-Keynesians) regarding root causes, i.e. “tendency of the rate of profit to fall” (TRPF), Minsky’s financial instability/debt accumulation, etc. It is clear this is beyond Wolff’s introduction here.
--As for “State Capitalism”, Wolff cites worker alienation and poor incentives for technological advances as core issues. I would say the latter was mostly around consumer goods for the USSR, and it would be curious to see how Wolff describes China today. Wolff claims WSDEs can have strong incentives for technological improvements (aided by a systematic retraining program). In theory this makes sense, as automation can bring workers more leisure time without the fear of capitalism’s structural unemployment.

2) Connecting the WSDE solution to strategy:
--Wolff recognizes that his micro-level solution needs to be integrated with a macro-level strategy, which includes state laws to promote WSDEs (citing Italy’s “Marcora Law”). Wolff also ties WSDEs with a push for full employment, drawing from the CIO/socialist/communist alliance that pushed FDR to enact a federal jobs program. Wolff brings this to today’s time by connecting it with demands for a Green New Deal, child/elder care, as well cultural and education programs.
--So, only a brief sketch (enough to distinguish this from anarcho-syndicalism?). Wolff is doing the hard work of raising class consciousness in the belly of empire; if a domestic mass movement reaches critical mass, can it prevent violent repression by winning over factions of the US army (hence the importance of fostering alliances with anti-war veterans)?
--As with many works geared at selling socialism to the US audience, the geopolitics of imperialism seems to be purposefully neglected as at best a distraction and at worst a divisive subject; I tend to see this as a disservice and rather infantilizing to people who are already willing to evaluate “socialism”.
--The description of "State Capitalism" can economize the full situation of real-world socialism in the Global South and Western imperialist terrorism they face (hence the term "Siege Socialism"):
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
--Wolff also does not mention the imperialist geopolitics of US switching to become the global deficit to fed on others’ surpluses; see:
-Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future

3) The WSDE solution:
--The introduction to WSDEs is the highlight, especially in distinguishing it from the various other forms of organization that sound similar but actually miss WSDE’s transformative role for workers to appropriate the surplus they create. These other forms include: “worker-owned enterprises”, “worker-managed enterprises”, and “co-operatives” (which includes “cooperative ownership”, “cooperative purchasing”, “cooperative selling”, and “cooperative labor”). Also a useful bit on the benefits of job rotation, where Wolff emphasizes that the specialization of function does not necessitate the specialization of functionaries.
--It is surprising that, although Spain's Mondragon Corporation is mentioned as the popular co-operative success story, a summary of how it is run or the "Rochdale Principles" is not provided. Needless to say, Global South examples are absent (for example: Building Alternatives: The Story of India's Oldest Construction Workers' Cooperative)
--Up to now, I’ve only read exerts and interpretations of Marx’s three volumes of Capital. After reading this micro-level solution by a self-professed Marxist, I’m finally reading the volumes of Capital to figure out how micro and macro were conceptualized by Marx. I look forward to reading Marx without omitting the Global South:
-Utsa Patnaik's intro to Marx's project: https://youtu.be/HhjWT5W5c0Y
-Marx's Capital: An Introductory Reader

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After studying philosophy and economics, I came to a very similar conclusion as Richard Wolff. I didn't have a name for it, but I knew I should be able to appropriate the profits of my labor. Then, I read this book, and he really explains why it's absolutely important that we're able to appropriate our profits. Also, this book helped me understand that communism in the Soviet Union was state capitalism rather than communism.

I think Karl Marx deserves credit for saying we need to own the means of production, but this book makes his theories accessible to the average person.

[Dan Sharber · Rating 3 out of 5]

i'm not sure i am the target audience for this book. i agree with most of it though i feel like there is something missing. i agree with the idea that the micro level of economic organization must be changed to build a truly equal macro level. and vice versa. it's dialectic. and i agree that workers control of production is key and necessary in a very real way (meaning the workers distribute the surplus not a socialist government of the workers for example). i think these ideas and the interplay between bottom up socialism and workers control are also elaborated on very well in The Self-Managing Environment - though that book looks at it from an environmental stand point. they both agree that workers control at the point of production (and all that entails) are key to a truly emancipatory society. likewise the arguments and historical examples provide in Ours to Master and to Own: Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present are very relevant here. what is lacking though in this book is a compelling way on how we get there. there seems to be a lot of contradictory ideas. wolff makes it clear that mainstream politics is run by capitalists who press their political advanatge by any means necessary (usually with buckets of cash) but he then indicates that wsde's (workers self directed enterprises) could come about via a jobs type program and beyond that would absolutely require government support and positive intervention. it is not clear though how that would ever happen given the state of politics in this country. he says that there should/could be a social movement in favor of wsde's that could utlilize radicals and unions and occupiers but that seems aspirational at best. he is clear that everything needs to change to make wsde's work and that wsde's could be integral to that change but doesn't really make a compelling case on the mechanics of any of that. further, there is an argument in the larger socialist left community that worker run industries can not last within a capitalist based system. this is most simply elaborated on in the section on co-ops of reform or revolution in luxemberg's The Essential Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution/The Mass Strike. i found her argument there very compelling but wolff says that it is not a proven fact and wsde's could function in a capitalist society. he cautions not to close down the opportunities for wsde's just because we haven't seen them thus far. i wish he had fleshed out that argument more but as it is, i am left believing that luxemberg was probably right. the first half of the book though does a great job laying out the problems with capitalism and how they are systemic. likewise he does a good job of showing the 'socialist' countries from this century were nothing more than state capitalist societies but while i think wsde's are necessary and a key part of a future socialist society, he leaves out any sort of practical advice on how we could make them a reality.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the basic thrust of this book - that any future socialism needs to focus a lot of attention on building resilient worker-centered institutions. As an introductory book on this topic for young Americans it is better than something like Parecon because it is avoids some of the more Utopian elements of that model. There are some things that date the book a decade later, like the focus on the Great Financial Crisis and Occupy Wall Street, but that could be updated. It's a short essay, so there isn't enough meat to be convincing to specialists, and some of the terminology is idiosyncratic, but I'm not sure that's a big problem. There are a lot of moments of papering over dilemmas with 'this will have to be worked out' and 'the institutions would come up with a plan for interactions' sort of stuff, but leaning too hard into specifics would get you too close to a specific business plan for a real organization. And I think the idea that it all hinges on a specific model of control over surplus puts far too much emphasis on his particular theory.

I guess my central problem though is that it feels like an interpretation of Marx that takes the concept of bourgeois right in the Gotha Program and elaborates it into an entire social system. This might well be necessary, but it's also fundamentally irrational. You can't design a system that perfects this model of worker control over surplus in some economic theory way because it's crazy. It's the result of trying to claw your way out of a system centered on money. The model presented here is open-ended enough that it can account for that, but that's the reason most communists have never tried to build these sorts of theories, not because they didn't think worker control was a good idea.

[Gustav Osberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book presents an idea with tremendous importance and potential (hence, 4 stars), the common issue of 'from theory to practice' remains somewhat vague. Wolff does provide a lot of proposals and suggestions on policies and alliances between movements which, in theory, would have the capacity to facilitate a transition towards Workers Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE). However, even though he introduces the book via acknowledging the failures of both right and left-wing ideas and promising WSDE to present something new and transcending, the rationale underpinning the concept of WSDE remains firmly embedded within a leftist common sense (which is not surprising since he mainly derives his conclusions based on Marxist and Keynesian analysis). I am not saying this is wrong, rather, that it will cause great issues in mobilising citizens on both sides of the spectrum. State intervention and market regulation is one thing, ideology and identity another.

One point Wolff made which I personally greatly appreciated was the idea that collective determination and participatory decision making is very much a capacity which under current (capitalist) regimes of production is greatly discouraged (not the least institutionally, via e.g., the educational system). Fostering a greater sense of responsibility towards one's immediate surroundings will, according to Wolff's reflections, also ripple out to nurture more engaged and concerned citizens. Being a strong proponent of more direct democracy myself (whereas only voting every 4 years represents a very thin account of democracy and citizenship), WSDE seems like a natural ally in this cause.

This book spends a lot of its pages on providing a historical background (i.e., the fabled crises of capitalism), much of which serves a central role in the coming analysis. However, I wish the author would have spent even more time on developing WSDE as a term and how it differs from e.g., co-ops. The book also remains abstract and draws on very few empirical cases which would have helped the reader understand exactly what makes a WSDE. I understand that there are currently not many (if any) WSDE's out there but drawing on some cases illustrating elements of WSDE's (and being clear where the similarities stop and why this is problematic) would have been helpful.

Furthermore, what I am missing is a more fundamental questioning of the work paradigm itself (going beyond and beneath the micro internal organisation of production). Both Marx and Keynes saw the ultimate goal of technology as to free us from work (there is a lively debate on the topic of work among degrowth scholars). Wolff does mention that WSDE will provide individuals with more freedom and autonomy over their work situation, so if they wish to work less, they can do so. But, in my reading (or listening) of the (audio)book, this is as far as he goes on that topic. This is not a book on the environmental crisis, but, arguably, any theoretically critical book should consider this issue strongly. More work equals more production, less time and more money, and hence more consumption and less time for ecological and social reproductive issues (e.g., growing food and care).

In relation to this, I like one of the concluding points Graeber makes in his book 'Bullshit Jobs' about how a Universal Basic Income can make people less dependent on work and thus providing more power to the worker selling his labour to not just take any jobs with any conditions. Guy Standing also has a pedagogical book on this topic. For me, this idea seems practically more feasible, as it could provide the necessary steppingstone towards WSDE and a more democratic and just political economy.

[Elan Garfias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wolff does not disappoint! Perfect intro for beginners on the perils of traditional capitalism as well as well Soviet-style command economies. Viewing the latter as a dead end for the Left, he instead proposes working-class empowerment via coops, providing a succinct analysis of the political economy underlying them and snapshots of their organizational structure. He might have elaborated more on how actually existing cooperatives play into local economies, but brevity is one of this book's strengths. Of note is his distinction between productive and non-productive workers, which is key in a PMC-dominated discursive landscape. Wolff eschews verbosity in favor of readability, and for that, this book is an asset for anyone seeking to make inroads with their apolitical colleagues.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judging a book by its cover does not fail in this case. The title is ambitious but the volume is relatively slim. The blurbs on the back are from famous people talking about how great Wolff's work in other places is but don't actually say much about this book.

Wolff has been analyzing the weaknesses and fault lines inherent in Capitalism for decades. It is understandable with all the words he's written on that topic he'd feel an impulse to answer the question "what's next?" He proposes that increasing worker participation at their work places is what's next.

To make a solid case for this he either has to assume his audience is familiar with his other work critiquing Capitalism or he has to hit the highlights. He chooses the later and that makes this book worth the cover price. However, he doesn't answer "what's next?" in this first half.

The transition to the 2nd half of the book is a bridging section which discusses why a variety of movements intended to reform or transform Capitalism have failed.

And then we get to his solution for the future: Worker Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE - an acronym used frequently throughout the book.) Sadly once he gets to this point he simply insists this *is* the answer -- not one of the answers. He insists that a country forming itself around WSDEs will by necessity reform everything else. He does not talk about the tools to run a WSDE. He does not grapple with the issues other types of very inclusive democracy face. (I think here specifically of churches with high participation, religious communities such as the Amana, and Horace Greeley's network of agrarian communities.) I believe that if he were to be asked specifically about these he would give a thought out explanation as to why they don't exactly fit his model and so they should be ignored, but I would rather see him discuss the issues.

At the end of the book I deeply wished he'd written a different kind of book. I wished he'd written a fun, exciting parable of how terrific it would be to work in a WSDE -- Like the business best-sellers "Fish!" and "Who Moved My Cheese?" Or perhaps a model for what an MBA would look like for one who wants to start co-op or WSDE businesses. I wish I'd walked away excited and with a couple practical tools instead of feeling like I have a ton more reading to do to even understand what I just read.

[Nate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I agree with Wolff's conclusions. This is not a one-star review because I saw that he's a Marxist and have an inherent problem with Marx (though I do think abandoning some of his ideas - including the labor theory of value which was shared by Smith and Ricardo but dumped by their followers - would benefit the economic left). That said, I don't find his defense of worker self-directed enterprises particularly compelling. I found his epistemology particularly troubling as he often selectively applied it such we could not be certain his ideas were wrong while we could be certain that his opponent's ideas were wrong. If we are uncertain, we are uncertain about both and evidence can be presented for either position. A much stronger case could have been made if he looked at Germany's example of corporations where board membership is split between stockholders and workers. If he thinks it should be all workers, that is fine, but he should make an empirical and not merely theoretical case for the position. In all, as someone who is dissatisfied with neoclassical economic theory, I was disappointed, as this offered no clear alternative, merely some good intentions wrapped up in rather vague and inconsistently applied philosophy.

[Lee Humphries · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half of the book looks (historically), at private capitalism and state capitalism (State socialism) and the problems these economic systems have caused and still do.
Second half looks at what I would call Worker's Cooperatives. The author defines it as Workers' Self Directed Enterprises which I seem pretty much as the same thing. My only disagreement with his idea is I don't think there needs to be a hierarchical pay structure whereby some people should be paid more due to expertise or positions of managerial/directors
He touches on Mondragon Coop in Spain and here in the UK we have lots of workers coops that are doing well such as Suma Foods, Essential Trading, Calverts printing press, AK Press, News from Nowhere bookshop, New Internationalist, etc. Surplus money that is created should not be sent higher up the pecking order to directors and senior managers pay or to shareholders it should be shared equally amongst the workforce or as some coops do give it to worthy causes. I see worker's Coops as the way forward and the more ownership workers have over their workplaces the better.

[Public Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a revelation. Wolff sees Worker Self-Directed Enterprises as the wave of the future and he went a long way towards convincing me too. The author has spent his entire career studying and critiquing capitalism. He thinks that giving workers the power typically held by a company's board of directors could change the world. Wolff argues that by making this change you would give workers control of the means of production and end exploitation in a way that historical moves towards socialism and communism never did - because those old attempts almost always ended up just becoming state capitalism. As Wolff expands his view it is possible to see how this change could possibly neutralize some of capitalism's biggest drawbacks, its short-term focus and boom-bust tendencies. I am fascinated by this idea. Wolff is very persuasive.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past several years Richard Wolff has gone from being a well published academic, to a minor celebrity. This is odd, considering he's a socialist/Marxist economist, and generally that area of academia is hardly celebrated in the media. Democracy at Work is a crystal clear articulation of the economic theories and proposals Wolff has been championing for decades.

If you do happen to listen Wolff, be it on youtube, democracynow, his blog, or his radio program, there isn't much 'new' material you can't already find elsewhere. However, what is here is a constant articulation of what exactly a WSDE (workers self directed enterprise) is, and some examples as to why they have, and can continue, to out perform corporate capitalist enterprises.

The first half of the book details origins of the economic crisis, dating back to the 1970s. There's nothing in this section that deviates from standard left wing accounts about the decline in real wages, and the rise of the finance industry. The only not-so-standard view is the Marxian one which states that capitalism is internally contradictory and always on the verge of crisis.

The real ingenuity, and uniqueness of the text comes in section II, which details what a WSDE is. Moreover, Wolff is painstakingly clear as to why a WSDE ought not scare people who are in general (justifiably) terrified of socialism; given the history of the USSR, China, etc. As Wolff points out, these state socialist regimes were also state capitalist, and state exploitative regimes. Under capitalism and state socialism, one group produces a surplus, and another group appropriates and divvies up the surplus. These two groups are different. Under state socialism it is a bureaucracy, under capitalism it is a board of directors. But under both institutions the primary motive is growth, and more surplus. Moreover, under both institutions the people that do the appropriating are not the same people creating the surplus. Occasionally left wing variations arise, like co-ops, and workers self managed enterprises. But even these usually have a firewall between the surplus producers and the surplus appropriators. Wolff claims that we ought to have the same people producing the surplus also appropriating and distributing it. Moreover, the way they need to go about doing this is through democratic decision making. After all, how can we call ourselves a democracy, when the place we spend most of our time (work), is undemocratic, hierarchical, and authoritarian? If the workplace is not a democracy, we are not a democratic nation.

Wolff has a lot to say about how WSDEs are preferable, how they will survive crises. Now before the reader goes off thinking: "HA, what a utopian pipe dream," there's actually WSDE's already in existence, and many of them weathered the financial crises with aplomb. Mondragon is the best example, but other companies exist. Of course, Wolff is not saying that if the world became a WSDE civilization over night we would not continue to have problems like gay rights, or conflict in the workplace. Every mode of production has its layers of tensions and contradictions, but nonetheless, a WSDE workplace would mark progress over the contradictions of capitalism, just as capitalism marked a progression over feudal society.

[Ari Apa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great critique of capitalism, but not enough self critique of author’s own alternative model of “workers self-directed enterprises”. Would have been good to explore at least some of the obvious pitfalls.

[Vilas Annavarapu · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is fine if you 1) don’t understand capitalism and 2) are incredibly receptive to crticisms of it. i found it to lack rigor in its argumentation. i want case studies and a lot more evidence rather than mostly high level analyses of capitalism’s ills and democracy’s benefits. i’m annoyed also by democracy as an obvious and easy solution to high quality governance. it’s really hard and tricky and messy! i found conceiving of soviet socialism as state capitalism to be useful as well as the language of worker self directed enterprises. this book leaves a lot to be desired.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am interested in WSDEs but this book does a poor job of explaining them. For a start, the first two-thirds of this book has nothing to do with WSDEs, in fact they aren't even mentioned. Instead we get a half-hearted Marxist summary of the New Deal and 2008 Financial Crash. If you've read any left wing discussion of the topic, you won't find anything new, instead there is just repetition of the usual Marxist talking points.

The section on WSDEs is incredibly short and vague. It is never properly discussed how they would function, there is no discussion of how they worked in practice or any studies of the topic. Any problems are dismissed with vague hand waving and a confident claim that in the utopian future, all problems will be solved. How will WSDEs deal with new technology or environment problems? Wolff doesn't answer, he just tells us the workers and community will decide how to solve it. He also takes it for granted that in the future, all workers will be socialists and fully support WSDEs and want them to function according to socialist theory, he never considers that workers may have other opinions.

[Michael Dubakov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good start, not so good finish.
The book contains an interesting point of view on capitalism.
I was curious to learn that there are two types of capitalism: private and state. And all socialistic and communistic countries were, in fact, state capitalistic.

The third part tries to offer a solution via WSDE (Workers Self-Directed Enterprise). I like the idea, but the author provides a very simplistic and almost naive overview about how it can work. It looks like he has this idea, but didn't have time to think it through. How exactly WSDE can function — totally unclear.

The part about WSDE effects and integration into the world is better, though. "Reinventing Organizations" puts much more essence into similar idea. Nevertheless, quite good book.

[Andrew]

Given that the man, is, despite his radical credentials, an academic economist, this seems to be his general-audience book. And in a moment where the contradictions of capitalism are becoming more and more glaring and obvious by the day, and more and more people are refusing to accept that we live in the best of all possible worlds, Richard Wolff has suddenly found himself appearing on talk shows.

Of course being the weirdo I am, I'd like some more empirical basis (which means I should probably read his more academic work), but on the whole I agree. Workers' cooperatives are good. Labor should have control over the surplus it produces. You get the idea, small-m Marxism, and food for thought.

[sander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides several online lectures and some of Orwell’s books, Richard Wolff’s “Democracy at Work” introduced me to criticism of the contemporary system. Although I realise that much of this criticism isn’t novel in itself and most of it is based on (elaboration of) Marxist theory, this book provided me with profound new insights on our current political, economic and social structure and the system behind it all.

The book starts with dissecting capitalism, both private capitalism as we know it in the western world and state capitalism as we have seen in the Soviet Union, Cuba and today’s China. Wolff explicates his critique on both of these systems and their inherent tendencies of exploiting workers and the appropriation of the surplus that they create. Especially in a private capitalist system, Wolff argues, the appropriated surplus is extensively utilised to create an even more exploitative system that benefits the appropriators and further weakens the appropriated. It is exactly this tendency that will always cause any attempt at regulation and democratisation to be perpetually unstable. As long as capitalists appropriate the surplus created by workers and actively use it against them, there can never be an honest and progressive change to combat this exploitation.

Wolff’s solution to these issues is the democratisation of the workplace. Creating enterprises that are owned and directed by, and only by, the people that work to create surplus and the people that enable the successful production. Essentially it comes down to creating a socialist structure in enterprises. He argues that this will not only create a fair distribution of the produced capital, but it will also emancipate the worker socially to be a more engaging participant in the democratic system locally, regionally and nationally.

Personally, I see a lot of virtue in transferring political and economic power to the people that actually work to create that wealth and to the people that actually reside in those local communities, as opposed to an external power deciding what happens where, when and with which capital.

I respect Wolff tremendously for his boldness to not shy away from idealism. I think that idealism is, and always has been, the basis of improvement and innovation. The notion that we should abide by the status quo, that we should subject ourselves to it rather than to challenge it and try to change it, is a dangerous and defeatist one. The future is manifested today and we should all strive for a continuous betterment. However idealistic and unrealistic some things may sound, we should never look away in the face of injustice and possible improvement. This book provides you with the information and tools to do just that.

[Shrivatsan Ragavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a personal front, I believe in a lot of the leftist, Marxian principles and theories. However, when envisioning a future based on these ideals, I often struggle to visualize how these ideas and principles could be leveraged to dismantle the existing (and very flawed) capitalist system, and how they can be scaled to a level where it becomes the dominant economic system. I picked up this book, hoping to get some ideas around these problems, considering the fact that the subtitle of the book claims it to be a cure for capitalism.

I was somewhat familiar with Richard Wolff, having stumbled upong his debates and lectures on the internet before and as an avowed Marxist, he always seemed to make valid points. When it comes to this book, he manages to address the first struggle that I had. He takes a significant amount of time to go over the problems of surplus distribution in a capitalist system, where in the labour is exploited for the benefit of the minority capitalists. And I found this examination to be warranted, since one has to understand the problem before offering ideas to solve it. The author also dedicates time to go over why the existing systems of communism and socialism in some countries have failed to address these issues.

When it comes to the solution offered by the author, I can definitely appreciate the ideas of workers self directed enterprise. His model does attack the core issue of surplus distribution and there is a lot of merit in his arguments about how such systems will democratize the work place. There is also validity in the claims of how such an economic system would have ramifications in larger social structures and institutions.

However, the problem that I continue to wrestle with, is the scalability. The ideas suggested by Wolff can definitely have an impact on a micro level. But it is unclear on if and how such a system can be scaled to a degree that such models become ubiquitous. In that regards, I felt the book to be a bit lacking. Perhaps a bit of tempered expectation from my end would have helped in me rating this book more than I have.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Democracy at Work lays out author Richard Wolff’s case for revolutionizing our economic and political system by bringing democracy into the workplace through wide scale adoption of Workers Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). WSDEs are companies in which the workers, rather than shareholders, collectively decide on the production and distribution of outputs and surpluses. The local communities in which the companies have production facilities would also have a role in decision making at the companies.

This, of course, would be socialism. But it is a vision of socialism that has never historically been attempted at a national level.

Perhaps one of the most interesting ideas in this book is how Wolff defines capitalism and then makes a distinction between private, regulated private and state capitalism. Capitalism is not, he argues, defined by private property or markets or “freedom” – those features exist in other economic systems – but instead by workers entering into agreements with employers in which the employers own the surplus generated by the labor of the workers.

Under private capitalism, which dominates the U.S. economy, employers are private individuals or entities facing fewer government regulations. Many European countries have a more regulated private capitalism in which the government plays a larger role in curbing capitalism’s excesses. Wolff argues that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and other “communist” countries were in fact state capitalism economies in which the state simply supplanted the role of the private employer but still exploited the workers by controlling the surplus they generated rather than workers controlling the surpluses themselves as would be the case under a true socialistic system.

Wolff sketches the instability of capitalistic economies beginning with the Great Depression and makes clear that this is a natural feature of capitalism. Capitalism tends toward an extreme concentration of wealth at the top which provides the rich with ever more resources to influence government policy so that it further increases their wealth. This extreme wealth concentration results in distortions in the economy (wage stagnation, consumer debt, bubbles) which result in economic crashes. Any effort to curb these distortions through more government regulation is bound to fail because capitalism’s effect of concentrating wealth at the top gives the rich the resources necessary to influence public policy and eventually repeal or weaken the regulations.

WSDEs would be an effective and sustainable way to curb the concentration of wealth for a few at the top. The wealth instead would be spread out among the many workers of the wealth producing companies. Moreover, environmental issues caused by industry would be taken more seriously because company decisions would be made by the workers living in the affected communities. WSDEs would also give workers the time, training and knowledge to participate more fully and effectively in our political democracy, thus strengthening our political system. Education for many would also change as workers would need more critical analysis, managerial and cooperative decision making skills to be productive at a WSDE rather than just learning how to follow orders and be a good employee.

All that said, the book is often vague about exactly how WSDEs would be structured, how they’d operate, how we could transition to them on a large scale and how exactly they would solve the problem of economic instability (while wealth concentration increases economic instability, I do not believe it is the only potential cause of instability). I also had three concerns that I felt weren’t adequately addressed.

First, I would think WSDEs would discourage entrepreneurship. Why start a new business if the first employees you hire could quickly vote to diverge from your vision? Though this could be resolved by only applying the WSDE model to organizations larger than, say, 50 employees, at which point a company would be sufficiently mature to transition to worker control.

Second, we know that companies must keep up with emerging technology to stay competitive. It is hard to imagine a worker controlled company voting to replace large numbers of themselves with labor saving technology, but then failing to do so may mean losing their market share to a non-WSDE competitor. By the time they realize adopting the new technology is their only option for survival, it may be too late.

Third, how would the WSDE model work with a large enterprise spread out in many thousands of communities? Imagine Starbucks converting to a WSDE. There are over 27,000 Starbucks around the world. How would the tens of thousands of employees coordinate their decisions? What if the Starbucks workers in India have totally different interests needing to be addressed then the workers in the U.S.? Perhaps this is an argument for the decentralization of economic entities.

Perhaps, in a move toward the vision of WSDEs while these questions are being debated and discussed in society, we could have worker unions (and local communities with production facilities) represented with a significant voting share on corporate Board of Directors as occurs in Germany (ranging from a third to half the Board depending on the size of the company), thus ensuring increased worker and community power in decision making, even if it is not full control. We could also tie CEO maximum pay to a certain multiple (say 100x) of the lowest paid U.S. employee (and maybe 500x the lowest non-OECD country based employee), in an effort to reduce wealth inequality.

Despite my concerns, I’m open to the idea of large-scale adoption of WSDEs as I know the flaws of capitalism are extensive and devastating for many. I’ve long rejected what I thought to be true socialism because I do not believe in extensive state control of economic entities (except in many cases for natural monopolies, essential services & most natural resources), but understanding socialism more as democracy at work, rather than state control, is far more appealing. I would need, however, to learn more about how the concerns I’ve raised would be addressed before I could jump fully on board.

[Rob1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry at times but a must read for aspiring socialists.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became interested in this book after seeing Richard Wolff on "Moyers and Company" on PBS. Wolff begins by stating that capitalists have kept control of the US by asserting that there are two systems for organizing labor: capitalism and socialism. When laborers recognize unfair results of capitalism, such as the extreme inequality of wealth now extant in the US, capitalists maintain that since socialism clearly did not work in the Soviet Union, despite any perceived problems it may have, capitalism is the better alternative.

Wolff attacks the capitalist premis on two fronts. First, he says that the Soviet Union did not have a socialist form of labor organization. Although it was founded on socialist theory, the Communist leaders began with state-controlled capitalism and said that they would progress to socialism. The Soviet Union never progressed beyond state-controlled capitalism in which political leaders directed the distribution of the excess produced by the laborers rather than private capitalists distributing the surplus. The Soviet Union never achieved a socialist organization in which the laborers themselves determined how the surplus they produced should be distributed.

Wolff then presents an alternative, which he designates as "Worker Self-Directed Enterprises" or "WSDEs". In such a system there is not a distinction between the laborers and those who distribute the surplus produced by their labor. In small WSDEs the laborers themselves decide how their surplus is distributed. In larger WSDEs the laborers form a representative structure to make those decisions.

The weakest part of the book is its lack of concrete examples. Wolff mentions Mondragon in Spain and a cooperative of bakeries in Washington state, but he gives very little information about them. The reader is left with the impression that Wolff has a dream that may be too utopian to be applicable to "real" life. That said, I believe his ideas merit discussion if only to ferret out flaws in his argument. Certainly capitalism as currently practiced in the US is fair game for change.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a play on words encapsulating a central theme of Richard Wolff's writing, lectures, and interviews on his weekly radio program out of New York City: if we value democratic processes, why not extend them in the area of life where citizens spend the majority of their time: in the workplace?

In this book, Wolff makes an extended case for democratically-organized enterprise, or workers' self-directed enterprise.

The bulk of the book is a cogent critique of capitalism as an economic system and a social order. He also considers the problems of twentieth century socialism as an alternative, including the autocratic state capitalism of "really existing" socialism post-war. In Wolff's view, the Russian Revolution soon abandoned any meaningful socialism by simply replicating the structure that had already existed under capitalism; this led to socialism being associated with non-democratic state capitalism.

Wolff thus turns his attention to the workplace rather than state revolution as the location of meaningful social change and as a means to expand employment along with a meaningful and inspiring experience of work. Citing examples of a variety of worker-directed enterprises, Wolff attempts to address what may be the biggest area of doubt on the political left: the viability of WSDEs in a capitalist system. I think the biggest hurdle here is not the inherent viability of WSDEs -- there are lots of them operating within capitalism, some of them growing to large size as with the Mandragon Corporation in Spain -- but the powerful mythologizing about private capitalism and society that consistently trumps data and reason in our discourse.

[Thomas Ray]

Democracy at Work Institute resources:
institute.coop/all_resources

As of 2016, the institute counts just 7,000 co-op workers in the entire U.S., in 350 worker co-ops, working for an average of $25,000/year per worker.

The average worker co-op has fewer than 20 workers.

On the plus side, ratio of highest to lowest wage tends to be 2. As distinct from 300 in the corporate world.
institute.coop/resources/2016-worker-...

On the minus side, senior co-op workers do vote themselves twice the pay of their less numerous juniors, for equal work.

Interview with Richard Wolff: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/r...

[Thonilius Michelangelo Smagica · Rating 3 out of 5]

[audiobook] It's a good book, no doubt, with good concepts and I learned a bit about the different types of Capitalism and what Communism means, I just find it hard to listen to, I don't know what else I was expecting, but it's dry. I mean, it is about the economy. I liked the content, it's just hard to get through.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Wolff. His writing felt like a good balance of colloquial and academic. Thanks to his clear and concise description of state-capitalist nations, I was able to grasp and explain private versus state capitalism to my Fox News-listening relatives.

As I understood it, most of the "socialist/communist" nations of last century were actually state capitalists. In private capitalism, labor surplus filters up to the capitalists who redistribute it as they see fit: paying taxes, investing in business development, personal yachts, etc. But under state capitalism, the labor surplus trickles up to the state who then decides how to allocate it. Whereas in a truly "socialist/communist" nation the workers would own the means of production, control their own surplus, and decide its allocation.

In the case of the USSR, Wolff points out that Lenin himself referred to the Soviet system as "state capitalism." In the early 1920s, Russia was facing dire economic conditions (this was right on the heels of WWI and the Russian Revolution) not to mention the fact that being the lone socialist nation surrounded by hostile capitalist powers spelled almost certain doom. Thus, Lenin saw this "state capitalism" as a necessary intermediary on the road to full socialism/communism. However, we never did see such a transition. A similar story played out in many of the so-called socialist/communist nations of last century, which has very much muddied the modern usage of the words. Gulags, state atrocities, and famines are attributed to the evergreen "deaths under communism toll" when in reality, they'd be more aptly described as deaths under authoritarian state capitalism.

In fact, so many of the deaths that happened under these "communist" nations were due to capitalism's inability to respond to crises. This couldn't be more clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time the US has shown its complete inability to provide for those living here. In the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of people are potentially facing eviction, people have been charged $1000s for COVID-related hospital bills, and some families are ineligible for pandemic assistance due to immigration status. And in this time period when 23+ million found themselves unemployed, America's billionaires found themselves $434 billion richer.

The last half of the book focuses on Wolff's solution: Worker Self-Determined Enterprises (WSDEs). I think they're a very attractive solution and seem to challenge some of the real structural issues of capitalism. I do see them as sort of a stopgap rather than an end goal, but as Wolff himself points out, making conditions better along the way to radical change is certainly not a bad thing. And navigating those challenges from a more equitable society is far preferable. As far as what a WSDE is, they're businesses that are staffed/managed/organized by laborers. Such a system embodies direct democracy in which everyone has an equally valuable voice. Thus, everyone at a company has a say in how profits are distributed. Workers can decide if more money should be allocated to wages, health insurance, business growth, etc. And rather than having friction between C-suite executives implementing cost-saving measures (i.e. letting people go) workers can decide amongst themselves if it's worth implementing a labor-saving technology at the cost of losing some workers. But with those workers themselves being a part of the decision-making process, workers can be much more confident that their voices are heard and valued.

WSDEs would require a radical rethinking of our current education system as well. It would require a system that encourages collaboration and collective, direct-democratic ways of thinking. Wolff points out that in reimagining our economic system we would invariably transform our political system too. If a worker had so much control over their workplace, it reasonably follows that they would find themselves dissatisfied with having no say in their local community. We would expect to see similar direct-democratic processes evolve in our local communities.

One significant challenge to direct-democracy is that it requires its constituents to be well-informed on a great many issues. I wouldn't call this a downside, but it is certainly a challenge when looking at our current populace. Civic education in the US is abysmally low, and changing that would mean establishing more reliable media outlets, research institutions, etc. Again, I don't see this as a downside, but definitely a challenge to our currently entrenched systems (especially considering how much money is involved in those systems).

I think the foundations of WSDEs could definitely be laid out in a federal jobs program like the Green New Deal. Just as the New Deal patched many of capitalism's flaws, the Green New Deal can help us establish a better, more just economic system. And the scale of the climate crisis means the scale of our response must be massive and a fundamental altering of our current systems. WSDEs could be a really promising vision for the 21st century.

[Ilie Dobrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

După câte o criză socio-economică nebănuită, cu toții ajungem, măcar pentru o vreme, să căutăm alternative la hibele capitalismului. Una dintre ele ar fi această promovare a cooperativei (sau WSDE - Workers 'Self-Directed Enterprise, cum o numește Wolff) ca pe o formă ideală de organizare economică. Însă cu un firav unic exemplu de reușită în această direcție curajoasă (Mondragon Corporation din Spania), cartea nu ne oferă nicio dovadă reală sau indiciu de ce cooperativa ar putea funcționa ca un model demn de urmat pentru guvernele și comerțul viitorului. O democrație economică este o idee extraordinară, însă pentru ca această să devină realitate avem nevoie de mai mult decât o schimbare politică. Avem nevoie de o modificare radicală în mentalul colectiv al societății de consum.
Prima parte a cărții este rememorare a crizelor provocate de neajunsurile structurale ale capitalismului, mai ales despre felul în care America a ajuns să retrăiască, la o altă scală, dezastrul economic al marii recesiuni, și de ce alternative la capitalism, cum ar fi socialismul ori comunismul au eșuat.

Începând din 1945 până câtre începutul anilor 1970, salariile medii ale muncitorilor americani au crescut constant. Creșterea standardului de viață și a promisiunii de îmbogățire pentru orice individ care își depășește condiția, muncind pe un salariu care să-i asigure un grad nemaiîntalnit de bunăstare, a beneficiat de suportul psihologic al oamenilor politici și al intelectualilor care se lăudau cu avantajul climei în SUA, cu o cultură ce încurajează libera inițiativă ��i asumarea riscurilor și cu libertăți civile ca nicăieri altundeva și chiar cu titulatura de „națiune aleasă”. Excepționalismul american a fost un concept vehiculat asiduu după război de universitarii americani. Anii 1970 aduc cu ei schimbarea paradigmei pe piața muncii printr-o revoluție cu efecte nebănuite pe termen lung, foarte greu de anticipat înainte. Ca și astăzi, în contextul post-pandemie, nimeni nu era pregătit să-i facă față. În lipsa unor răspunsuri și a unor soluții ale specialiștilor, muncitorii americani au presupus că vina pentru brusca reducere a venitului / ora lucrată le aparține și au căutat soluții individuale la o problemnă globală: au muncit mai multe ore pe zi, și-au luat al doilea sau chiar al treilea job, au introdus în câmpul muncii tot mai mulți membri ai familiei, inclusiv femeile, o măsură cu efecte nefaste și după 30 de ani.
Astăzi știm că „fatala” combinație pentru salariul redus și accentuata ieftinire a muncii a fost provocată de 3 factori:
1) creșterea cumputerizării și a robotizării industriale ce au permis întreprinderilor să devină mai eficiente, eliminând cohorte de lucrători la bandă;
2) tot multe femei care intră pe piața muncii creând mai multă concurență pentru locuri de muncă.
3) globalizarea înseamnă că fabricile pot fi mutate în locații mai ieftine din străinătate ori angajarea imigranților dispuși să muncească mai multe ore pe mult mai puțini bani.
Oferta a depășit cererea pe piața muncii. Salariile de astăzi sunt la același nivel ca acum mai bine de treizeci de ani... Astfel a luat sfârșit Visul American.

Carte ne spune multe și despre cauzele ascunse ale crizei financiare din 2008-2009, dar merită citită pentru prima parte - o succintă istorie a dezastrului produs de-a lungul vremii de „virtuțile” capitaliste societăților care l-au impus ca unică soluție de bunăstare.

[Hazel Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wolff makes a number of innovative arguments about economic theory in this book, the most impressive being a redefinition of capitalism as an economic system where those who work and create surplus do not take home the profits. Profits go instead to the capitalists in charge. He says that some theoretically "socialist" governments are not actually socialist per se, but instead are forms of state capitalism, since the profits from labor are still kept from the people producing the surplus that results in profits. This is a much more sensible approach than all of the other alternative definitions of capitalism/socialism I have read. Another striking bit of information is that FDR was essentially forced by progressive people in groups like the CIO to adopt socialist policies in order to prevent what some suspected might erupt into outright socialist revolution.

All of this is to introduce his proposal of socialism on a micro-scale in the form of Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). He describes how this would prevent many societal problems that arise from flaws built into capitalism. And there are many, many flaws built right into capitalism. I agree wholeheartedly with that.

And yet there is a big problem here, big enough to drive a bus through. Wolff does a good job of explaining why every worker should take a turn driving the Self-Directed Enterprise bus - why it's fairer, maybe a little safer, and makes for a richer life for everyone.

Problem is that he assumes we have a bus. What if we don't? Someone has to get hold of a bus somehow. Say I go ask a bunch of people, hey, let's get a bus! We will all have to pay for it together so no one will get anywhere for a while, and it's risky, we may never get the bus, but if we do, we will get to share every mile we drive equally and go anywhere we all want to go!!! Nope. Nobody is going to go in on a bus with me. They will tell me, "You get the bus. I'll buy a ticket once you have the bus. Also, if that whack job Morris drives, we're all going to die. Have you even met Morris? He's insane." And then, if I understand Wolff correctly, if people get on board my bus and spend some time in it and come to rely on it, although I spent years of my life saving to buy this bus, they should not only also have a chance to drive it, they should also own part of it. Even Morris.

Given how many businesses fail, it's not at all surprising that people would generally rather take slave wages than get nothing at all working for someone else's dream. I hate this, but it's true. And given how many businesses fail, when someone does come up with something that works, it doesn't seem right for her to not be able to control, within reason, the fruits of her labor.

There must be a more egalitarian way of living in an economic society, and I give Wolff credit for trying to find it. Unfortunately, I think he missed the bus.

[Khalifa Said]

This is indeed a great book, a must-read for anyone interested to find out ending exploitation of workers and in building a totally different system of wealth production and distribution other than capitalism.

To me personally, this book was revolutionary for it injected in my mind a new knowledge which helped me to learn and unlearn at the same time, as is usually the case for all great books of course.

For the first time since I expressed my desire for socialism as an alternative to capitalism, I have never had a thorough, practical conception of the term until I bumped on this wonderful treatise on the need to build workers self-directed enterprises as an alternative.

Briefly, Prof Wolff argues that the differences between socialism and capitalism go beyond the issues of private/collective ownership of major means of production and market/planned economies to the way the production structure is being organised in a particular enterprise.

According to Prof Wolff, many countries that described themselves "socialists" and "communists," now and then, actually they were implementing something else far from socialism but rather a different form of capitalism: State capitalism. (He gives two forms of capitalism: Private capitalism, as implemented in the United States, and State capitalism, that was implemented in the USSR).

This is mainly due to the fact that while the so-called socialists or communists countries nationalised the major means of production and replaced market economy with its planned counterpart, they left the capitalist organisation of the structure of production intact, a fact that he attributes the fall of most of these countries.

Prof Wolff, perhaps one among the most critic of capitalism of our modern times, writes that an enterprise is differentiated from a capitalist enterprise if the workers engaging in the process of producing the surplus of that enterprise are the same group of people who expropriate and distribute that surplus.

This was not the case in many countries which claimed to be implementing "socialism" where Board of Directors which expropriated and distributed the surplus in a capitalist enterprise was replaced by Council of Ministers or other State officials which carried out the task. Workers, the actual producers of the surplus were never involved in its expropriation and distribution nor in the direction of those enterprises.

The book calls for the formation of Workers Self-directed Enterprises (WSDEs) as the true alternative to capitalism and the complete end of exploitation as the people who produce the surplus for that enterprise will be identical to those who expropriate and distribute its -- THE WORKERS!

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Socialists may or may not have magnum opus (if they are academics) but they will have a short digestible work (if they know what they are doing) that can be read on a lunch break. This is just such a work. In the pages is Wolff's pitch for a workable vision for practicable socialism. Capitalism's problems have been covered elsewhere and given short work here. Employers want to pay workers less because the less they pay for work and the more work they can get out of employees for their money the more profit an employer can make. The profit is a surplus namely the differences between wages (among other inputs but labor usually is one of the biggest) and revenue from sales of product or services. The difference is the employer's profit. So the more he can squeeze out of worker at the same time as paying the least possible wage the more profit for the employer. Simple when you think about it. This is not an opus on economics but that is a sketch. So this probably explains why most jobs have shitty working conditions and bad pay under capitalism. So if workers wanted to have a better arrangement (hint hint, Socialism, or at least social democracy) there are always leftists around with a plan. Wolff talks about plans that have been tried, have the government-run the workplace (nationalization or state capitalism hopefully regulations will curb abuses, of course, central planning has difficulties and you still have state bosses instead of private sector bosses which is not ideal), How about heavy progressive taxation and redistribution for some kind of social democratic arrangement with regulations (okay but you still have a boss at work who will still have a lot of power over you but some of the regs and state largess will help out, again not ideal and rich people tend to find ways to acquire more and chip away at state intervention or hijack it for their own ends). Wolff's proposal is workplace democracy of WSDEs (Worker Self-Directed Enterprises) the scheme goes like this. Workers run a business or enterprise like a small representative democracy. Workers own and control the enterprise and decide collectively things like output, working conditions, compensation, and hours. They have a council they rotate in and out that proposes ideas that are voted on. The enterprises may have to coordinate with each other to get the inputs and outputs right for a larger area. There could be bodies that might coordinate and arbitrate between them and there are schemes for having WSDEs be represented fairly by representatives or checks and balances American students are familiar with some of this from sixth-grade social studies. It has problems no doubt but it is similar to really existing WSDEs like the Mondragon system in Spain. It sounds better than what we got right now.

[Eric Bayani · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing contemporary introduction to socialism as a practical concept. Richard Wolff does a great job of making the reading accessible and the concept of WSDE’s easily understood. Other readings of socialism focus heavily on macro interconnections amongst politics, enterprise, and society at large. I’m often left with questions concerning the specific interactions amongst these groups. Wolff paints a clear picture of how his “cure” will operate and exist within society— he focuses on the micro level of socialist revolution.

Although there isn’t a clear “here’s what you must do next to make this a reality”, it encouraged me to imagine how my own workplace would function as a WSDE. What direction would we all collectively decide. Similarly, this reading gave me a further fascination of the interplay amongst political engagement on the local and regional level, building denser and more interwoven social communities and cities, and the inherent separation of work and life imposed by our current capitalist structure.

Highly recommend this reading to all those looking for strong contenders of political-economic revolution.