Public ownership, worker control, and the labour epistocracy problem

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9256697
AutoresNicholas Vrousalis (0000-0002-9819-3423, Erasmus University Rotterdam, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen79
Número3
Páginas439-453
Fecha de publicación2021-07-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaReview of Social Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6764 • E-ISSN: 1470-1162
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00346764.2020.1840615
OpenAlexW3098487616
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas34

This paper argues that influential contemporary models of market socialism fail to do justice to traditional socialist concerns about exploitation and, by implication, about workplace oppression. More precisely, neither pure public ownership models (such as Roemer's), nor hybrid models of public ownership plus worker control (such as Schweickart's) suffice individually to attenuate exploitation and workplace hierarchy. Quite independently of alienable capital, these theories fail to account for the labour epistocracy, a class of workers who, by dint of higher marketable epistemic credentials and talents, can subjugate the labour of those with lower epistemic credentials. An improved model of market socialism would, I argue, account for the labour epistocracy by combining universal worker control with a strongly predistributive form of public ownership

Alienation · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Control (management) · Economic Justice · Economics · Hierarchy · Labour economics · Management · Market economy · Market socialism · Meritocracy · Neoclassical economics · Oppression · Political economy · Political science · Public ownership · Socialism · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics