Albert’s Participatory Workplaces, Transitionary Politics, Market Socialism & Full-Blown Socialism

Sharing the empowering and disempowering labour in the workplace through job rotations is the most exhaustive way to eliminate coordinator or managerial specialisation class divisions. Michael Albert has detailed the intricate workings of such post-capitalist workplaces.

I think the most seamless and successful route to participatory workplaces could be a transition to market socialism through first implementing humble profit-sharing for employees.

Market socialism implies, for me, sharing profits of a business with its workers who become ‘co-owners’.

Full blown socialism would only be feasible with the separation of powers at the federal and state levels in the country implementing socialist measures. Remuneration in some ways would have to be authenticated by the state which would reflect more decentralized representative and direct democratic designs. Workplaces would be given a budget determined by directly democratic voting, and workers’ councils could determine fair rates of pay and ensure the workplaces were truly participatory and rotational in terms of the cognitive and menial labour performed.

So market socialism could be skipped, but this would entail radical union and workers’ committees organisations embodying the correct principles of workers’ participation in democratic workplaces, including voting on decisions to the degree to which a worker is affected, and the sharing of empowering cognitive labour.

At times I lean towards market socialism as a transition to for more full blown socialism as this may be more a seamless transition to a social post-capitalist society. However, creating the organs of a new participatory economy in the form of strengthening and streamlining workers’ organisations is just as pressing as implementing profit sharing and market socialist reforms at the level of the state within the currently existing liberal capitalist institutional framework is absolutely imperative too. I support both measures, as both are genuinely progressive.

Once market socialism is achieved, a different social relationship to the productive means may seem all the more achievable from that vantage point.

Socialists and progressives, what do you think?