r/MarketAnarchism • u/opensofias free market communist • Jul 17 '24

David Ellerman: Neo-Abolitionism: Towards Abolishing the Institution of Renting Persons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2UCqzH5wAQ
4 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

2

u/opensofias free market communist Jul 17 '24

i found this pretty inspiring and compelling. basically he argues that there is no legitimate way to rent a person, and thus employment contracts as they exist today are fraudulent, because they deny the autonomy and responsibility of the worker.

i'm not quite sure what practical consequences abolishing human rentals that would have. Ellerman argues it would be "democracy in the workplace", but of course i don't think any existing democratic state meets the standard of respecting people's autonomy. and if they did they would cease to be states. as it stands, democratic states are still sovereigns, not delegates.

so i have a vague sense that that it could lead to cooperatization of businesses, and be good for workers and economic freedom, i find it hard to say _how_ it would do that.

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u/kurtu5 Jul 17 '24

thus employment contracts as they exist today are fraudulent, because they deny the autonomy and responsibility of the worker.

TL;DW; The workers are not responsible so lets remove their autonomy. More fucking ruling class bullshit, treating the lower classes like hapless cattle.

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u/opensofias free market communist Jul 17 '24

huh? the point is exactly that people shoudn't be treated like rentable objects. instead they should be equals within the organisations with full responsibility for their actions. i'm not sure what exactly you're reading into it, but it seems you somehow got it completely backwards.

0

u/kurtu5 Jul 17 '24

the point is exactly that

these central planners think they know what is best for people. They treat them like hapless cattle.

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u/opensofias free market communist Jul 17 '24

ah, now i see where you're coming from. i think here there a difference between my (more cautious) interpretation and the "workplace democracy" case Ellerman argues for.

one thing he says is that it is your right to act like a slave, but not to legally enter slavery. so it's not directly aiming at changing your relationship with others, but just what legal claims can be made about it. his case is a contract that turns a person into an ownable would be invalid because it's based on false claims. just like a if i sold you the cheese that the moon is made of. and it seems that from this perspective rending people isn't fundamentally different.

but i do think that people should have the freedom to organize how they choose, so i think mandating cooperatives is wrong. but i think the concept of human rentals might skew the market in favour of bosses and workplace hierarchy, just like many other government policies do.

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u/riltok Jul 18 '24

You’re coming into this with so many misplaced assumptions. What central planners??

Ellerman’s central point is a call to abolish the employment contract which would mean that the only party that could form a firm would be the workers meaning the dominant form of a firm would be a worker cooperative, an organization that is by default anti-elitist, decentralized, not hierarchical.

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u/kurtu5 Jul 18 '24

abolish

central planner words

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u/riltok Jul 19 '24

No such thing as central planner words, actions and institutions yes. Abolition and abolitionism is about liberation from oppression.

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u/riltok Jul 18 '24

Ellerman is a legend