Conclusion

The word “cure” in this book’s subtitle deserves a qualifying comment. It does not mean some state of completion, some end to problems, contradictions, and further change. On the contrary, it means moving from one set of problems that have become increasingly unbearable to a new and different set that we prefer. WSDEs—and an economic system founded on them—will no doubt have contradictions and tensions. The people caught up in them will struggle over them, much as people have struggled in and over capitalism’s contradictions. However, the struggles over WSDEs will differ from those over capitalist (or other exploitative) organizations of production because they will no longer involve the tensions and conflicts between those people who produce and those who appropriate the surpluses. Similarly, because a system of WSDEs will likely have much less inequality of income among participants in the work of enterprises, that inequality too will figure far less prominently in its struggles.

To consider a historical parallel, the cure of emancipation for slavery did not mean that ex-slaves put economic or other problems behind them. They no longer struggled over the problems associated with being the property of other persons; instead they engaged with new problems. In the United States, that meant entering into a capitalist system and confronting new forms of racist violence and economic exploitation and exclusion. Struggles in and over capitalism replaced the old struggles in and over slavery. Yet a clear global consensus counts the transition from slave to capitalist systems as a major monument to progress, one that should be extended and made irreversible.

Recognizing the limits and contradictions of transitions from one economic or social system to another can usefully accompany passionate commitment to such transitions. Those who earlier saw the needs and reasons to move beyond private capitalism to various sorts of state capitalism included many who prematurely declared that the socialism of their dreams and the forms of state capitalism that actually emerged were the same. But there were always also those who saw the contradictions and limits of state capitalism and questioned their equation with socialism.

The histories of private and state capitalism over the last century and the accumulated dilemmas of both now offer us strong reasons and evidence to believe that we must and we can do better. Examining the limits of both kinds of capitalism returns us to their shared commitment to an internal organization of production based on exploitation, inequality, and hierarchy. That organization’s persistence played a major role in preventing state capitalism from evolving into the genuine alternative to capitalism so many hoped for—and paved the way for reversion to the less-regulated neoliberal capitalism that now provokes intense social conflicts across the globe.

The transition of enterprises from their capitalist internal organizations to the genuine alternative of WSDEs emerges as a new program out of the history of capitalisms over the last century. The elaboration and clarification of WSDEs in theory are one part of a way forward now. Another part is the concrete practical establishment and expansion of WSDEs. Together, the theory and practice of WSDEs compose a powerful and attractive program that belongs on serious agendas for social change today.