👉The table of contents so far is here.
Chapter 11: Planned Economy and Corporate Forms
11.2. Self-Managed enterprise
Sectors other than environmentally-burdened industries subject to sustainable planned economies shall be left to the free market. However, even though it is called a free economy, it does not presuppose a monetary economy; thus, it is “free” in the sense that it is not a monetary exchange economy and is not subject to the discipline of economic planning.
Production activities in the free economy, which are not subject to the planned economy, are carried out by private enterprises. In this respect, it should be noted that this differs from the Soviet-style socialist system, which did not tolerate the existence of private enterprises in their pure form.
A private enterprise means that it can be freely established, its activities are not bound by economic plans, and are free as long as it complies with relevant laws and regulations. However, when we say private enterprises, they are of course not joint-stock corporations, but private enterprises unique to communist societies.
First, "unique to communist societies" means that they are non-profit enterprises, rather than for-profit enterprises that aim to distribute profits like joint-stock corporations. Second, they are self-managed enterprises where labor and management are integrated, unlike joint-stock corporations where management and labor are separated and managers direct workers to engage in production activities. Instead, the workers themselves, who engage in production activities, autonomously manage the enterprises.
This type of enterprise form is more like a cooperative than a company, and the legal name for such communist private enterprises is a "production cooperative." While the name overlaps with the production cooperative envisioned by Marx, they differ in that while Marx's production cooperative was positioned as the operating entities of a planned economy, production cooperative here is free private enterprise that operates outside of the planned economy.
Thus, the core of production activity under the communist mode of production is two-pronged: a production business organization that serves as public enterprise and the subject of the planned economy (establishment must be approved), and a production cooperative that serves as private enterprise in the free economy (establishment must be registered). In terms of size, the former is large enterprise, and the latter is small and medium-sized enterprise.
However, there can be a intermediate private corporate form with internal structures similar to socially owned enterprise, because of its large scale which makes it difficult to literally implement self-management. Conversely, there can be a cooperative labor group specialized for micro-enterprise that are smaller than a production cooperative. The legal names and internal structures of these modified corporate forms will be discussed in detail later.
👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.
