Worker Capitalists? Profit-Sharing, Capital-Sharing and Juridical Forms of Socialism

Abstract

Ideas of economic democracy within the confines of capitalism have gained wide currency in recent years. This paper compares initiatives from employers on the profit-sharing front and on capital-sharing from labour movements. It examines the theoretical and empirical case for seeing such initiatives as having the potential to transform the worker's position into one of less or zero-exploitation by sharing in the distribution of surplus value. It is concluded that such claims to this effect are non-starters for profit-sharing and misconceived for capital-sharing. The latter view is sustained by a critique of the conceptions of capitalism and of prefigurative socialism embedded in the models of capital-sharing.