What does a socialist transition look like to you? Whether achieved through violent or nonviolent seizure of power – What are the key, qualitative changes which we must make, once in power, in order to definitively transmogrify our economy from one directed towards exploitative accumulation to one directed towards the basic needs of all?

For some, the discussion begins and ends with “worker democracy”. These socialists (some are more or less befitting of the name) say that once decision-making power in the economy is delegated to the workers either via market or state, then socialism has been achieved. Some would even go as far to say that a worker cooperative functioning in a largely capitalist market is socialism, claiming that “workplace democracy” is all socialism is and all that socialism has ever claimed to be. As per the title of this paper, I would like to problematize this potentially easy-to-succumb-to presumption. Ultimately, reducing socialism simply to “workplace or worker democracy” portrays a misunderstanding of the theoretical foundations of socialism and the problems in capitalism which socialism strives to correct.

Before I begin my critique, I would like to disclaim that I by no means believe worker/workplace democracy to be a bad thing – on the contrary, I think it is a vital part to creating a just society, as we must ensure that humanity’s path is determined by the many and not the few. Given our current economy, any amount of worker democracy is a vast improvement, and I would strongly encourage the formation of cooperatives. However, this is a matter of goalposts. We can – and must – go further in order to create a safe and just society for all within environmental limits.

I will begin with a small hypothetical.

Imagine a business. This business plays a socially useless, destructive, or nuanced role – imagine arms manufacturers, single-use plastic manufacturers, oil/petroleum companies, media companies. Now, if its workers were to unionize and (by some stroke of divine providence) take control of the company, the cooperative, within a market, could very easily still strive for growth for its sake over the rest of the market. Within a market, cooperatives are still pitted against each other, albeit with a lesser ferocity due to the lack of capital accumulation under a select few executives. What’s more is that in order to grow in a way that will benefit all of its workers, any given cooperative will have to maintain business-as-usual and continue selling arms, single use plastics, or oil. Media companies would continue peddling lies and sensationalism, as that is what has historically made the most money and has led to the most growth; advertising companies would continue preying on insecurities in order for yet more industries to grow and in turn pay the advertising companies more. Is this socialism? The workers own the means of production! Even if we were to take an industry-wide example (let’s say, steelworkers), this industry would still need to continue its extractive practices worldwide, which are deforestation intensive, fossil fuel intensive – and not to mention potentially imperialist – practices.

The main issue with this reductive view of socialism is that a shift in ownership in a capitalist, productivist, extractivist (and a plethora of other -ists) economy is not going to bring about the qualitative change needed in the 21st century. Kohei Saito argues that this comes from the fact that both formal and real subsumption of the forces of production have taken place. According to Saito, “transferring ownership” does not stand to solve the ecological issues of capitalism, as, according to Marx, the process of real subsumption (opposed to formal subsumption, in which productive forces are integrated as they are into capitalist relations of production) has transformed productive forces from their original form to a form which serves the valorization of capital above all else. Saito says that “the ‘productive forces of capital’ must be transformed into ‘productive forces of social labor’”, or else the transfer of ownership will still have us “driving SUVs, changing smartphones every two years and eating cultured meat hamburgers” (Saito, 2022). Commodities and consumer-culture will not disappear. Planned obsolescence will not disappear. Global-scale environmental degradation will continue as usual. Growth will remain.

Ultimately, a transfer in ownership does not solve the key problem of growth-oriented markets. Within a market, cooperatives will still be pitted against each other, vying for growth all they can, preying on human weakness, cutting corners for profit, and degrading the environment and other people by way of externalizing costs. The class dynamic will have been flattened, not for the sake of cooperation but so that the workers may cut out the middleman, the capitalist, and fight each other on their own terms on the desecrated earth that will become their battlefield.

When nothing is done regarding the real subsumption of productive forces, when the material processes and goals of production remain the same, capital maintains its grip on both us and the environment, regardless of who owns the means of production.

How can we fix this? How must we go further than a transfer of ownership, beyond workplace democracy? The solution is a change in mindset – The solution lies in degrowth. Defined by Jason Hickel as “a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being,” degrowth entails emphasizing socially useful industries and getting rid of socially and environmentally harmful ones (Hickel 2021), constituting a dimension of the goal for a socialist transition from exchange- to use-value. By getting rid of harmful industries and giving workers the authority over the surplus produced by the degrowth economy, we can create an economy that is democratic, humane, and sustainable – one that asks nothing but “from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs”. Unlike a market-oriented degrowth process, workers can decide which industries should be cut while not spelling a death sentence for the workers of those industries. By shifting the working population towards socially useful ends, social production increases and required work hours decrease. Hickel details:

“As [environmentally] dirty and socially unnecessary industries close down and aggregate economic activity contracts, unemployment can be prevented by shortening the working week and redistributing necessary labour (into cleaner, more socially useful sectors) with a job guarantee” (Hickel 2019).

Only through comprehensive worker control of the economy in combination with a degrowth-oriented philosophy can we create a sustainable, just, socialist economy. Worker ownership and degrowth are designed to work hand-in-hand. But as long as markets are maintained and the forces of production maintain their growth-oriented attributes, the ghost of capitalism’s more hidden and pernicious attributes will continue to haunt us – simply transferring ownership is not enough.

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Works Cited

Hickel, Jason. “What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification.” Globalizations. (2021): 1105-1111. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222

Hickel, Jason. “Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance.” Real-World Economics Review 87.19 (2019): 54-68.

Saito, Kohei. Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. Cambridge, University Printing House. (2022). 160.