The U.S. has, for a very long time, held the facade of the freest society in the world. We seemingly value citizen-run production over government-owned businesses, and we prefer our free speech over the Gulags.
Unfortunately, these assertions are not true. Our corporate system is hierarchical by nature, and whoever exercises their First Amendment right, to speak truth to power and then power to the people, is targeted by secret police, such as the CIA, in operations similar to COINTELPRO.
One mustn’t look further than the anti-union violence which led to the attempted assassination and incarceration of union leaders Victor Reuther and Eugene V. Debs. Such evidence is ignored in American history because it is antithetical to the American belief in capitalism.
Our school systems have served as a state garbage truck, dumping the trash ideas which equate capitalism with free markets inside of future consumer minds like they’re receptacles.
If you want to open your eyes and see what is truthfully going on in society, you must acknowledge the U.S. is a state-run capitalist system. No matter if Republicans or Democrats have controlled government, high ranking big business officials have been prioritized disproportionately over their workers and, more broadly, the average American citizen.
This can be seen after the 2008 housing market crash, when former President Barack Obama and the majority Democratic Congress bailed out large banks at the expense of the American taxpayer. A significant portion of Americans would experience foreclosure as a result.
While Obama was eating well off of corporate checks and often vacationing with corporate lobbyists, millions of Americans had their lives ruined because of his policies.
Not much has changed with the emergence of President Donald Trump, who used demagogic and populist phrases such as “drain the swamp” only to then fill the cesspool of private interest politicians with their direct lobbyist peers. He then cut taxes on the wealthiest in the U.S., worsening the epidemic of income inequality.
These problems occur because no matter how much liberals insist we are a democracy and no matter how much their conservative counterparts attempt to correct them, with the sophisticated phrase “constitutional republic,” we are none of these things. The U.S. is what is known as a plutocracy, a tyrannical rule by the opulent minority.
The sociologist and Emeritus Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Thomas Ferguson, published studies tracking congressional elections from 1980 to 2014 and the 2016 presidential election. Both cases have shown that political success has a high correlation with campaign expenses, including large contributions to the Trump campaign in the 11th hour of the 2016 presidential election.
The problem may seem complicated, but the solution is simple. In his book “A Cure for Capitalism,” economist Richard Wolff prescribes worker cooperatives as the antidote for the U.S’ biggest ills.
Our current corporate system is a state-backed dictatorship where employers can choose their employees and employee conditions, while employees have minimal collective bargaining. As a result, employees are exploited. Employers make their profit strictly by paying employees less than what they are producing. The net loss is the employers to keep.
If we love democracy in our politics, why not bring it into economics? You cannot have one without the other. Worker cooperatives are horizontal power structures where workers collectively own their means of production and can choose their management and working conditions. With worker representation, income equality within the workplace is more achievable, helping break the plutocracy in which we live in.
The U.S. is currently an atomized society, where citizens attend their nine-to-five jobs routinely for minimal salary. The result is lethargic production. Worker ownership over production would put their skin in the game and incentivize better performance. Our atomized society would turn into an organic interacting body.
An imperative characteristic democratic workplaces have in achieving these goals is their ability to combat racism . Many immigrants and people of color are stripped away from opportunities because of oppressive forces, and thus pushed to the bottom of the American hierarchy. A horizontal power structure would lift them to have equal opportunity with their peers. A living wage could help them raise their children to generational heights.
It is not so that the pursuit of economic justice guarantees racial justice or vice versa, it is the fact neither can be accomplished without the other. Racial animus has historically been provoked to dismantle universal policy. True universal policy, inclusive by definition, would benefit people of color the most.
Democrats and Republicans are as polarized as ever, but there is one issue that is bipartisan. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has for a long time sponsored bills promoting employee stock ownership plans. For a long time, income inequality has been controlled by taxes, a tool conservatives refer to as expropriation.
A worker cooperative wouldn’t require high tax rates because money would not be concentrated in the top to begin with, putting an end to the tug of war policy issue.
Similarly, Democrats such as Senator Bernie Sanders and others have advocated for employee ownership nationwide. If there is one thing both sides can agree on, it is that employee ownership is better for the majority of Americans rather than the wealthy few.
But we cannot rely on our politicians. Currently, Baton Rouge has a minimal amount of worker cooperatives. The key feature of these work structures is that they don’t require hierarchical permission but rather bottom-up organization.
If we start with our community, in our workplaces, we can set an ebb of economic and racial justice in others. We will also be less reliant on state politicians who have let us down all too long.
Soheil Saneei is a 20 year old biological engineering sophomore from Metairie Louisiana.
