this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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At the start of the Russian Revolution, the Soviets tried that. Even they quickly discovered that pure democracy didn't work well when choosing "the boss." They even went so far as to remove ranks from the military. Which failed even faster.
Turns out, "the boss" often can't afford to be popular or buddies with everyone when making decisions.
Che Guevara wrote about in his book Critical Notes on Political Economy about how workers who are given full autonomy in their enterprises actually can become antagonistic towards society because they benefit solely from their own enterprise succeeding at the expense of all others, and thus they acquire similar motivations to the capitalist class, i.e. they want deregulations, dismantling of the public sector, more power to their individual enterprise, etc.
The solution is not to abandon workplace democracy but to balance it out also with public democracy. You have enterprises with a board that is both a mixture of direct appointments from the workers at that company with their direct input, as well as appointments by the public sector / central government. The public appointments are necessary to make sure the company is keeping inline with the will of everybody and not merely the people at that specific enterprise, because the actions of that enterprise can and does affect the rest of society.
Workplaces need to be democratic, but also not autonomous from the democratic will of the rest of society.
"on a long enough timeline, the primary purpose of every organization becomes its own continued existence"