Apologia
APOLOGIA Commons Capitalism and the Return of the Commons I did not begin Commons Capitalism by trying to design a new economic theory. I began with workers. A society cannot be well if the people who do its ordinary work are not well. After years of research and reflection, I came to see societal well-being […]
A Labor Union’s Assessment of the Organizational Structure and Overall Benefits of a CCE
Reference code: C25-04 Commons Capitalism Entities, or CCEs, present a deliberate redesign of firm incentives and ownership structure. Rather than permitting outside investors or executives to extract surplus, these entities hold surplus in an internal commons structure and allocate it primarily to three purposes: premium wages for workers, broad employer-funded benefits modeled on Nordic systems, […]
How Does Commons Capitalism Relate to Capitalism
Reference code: C25-03 To understand Commons Capitalism it helps to begin with a compact analytic sketch of capitalism and then compare that overview directly to the concrete institutional choices of Commons Capitalism (CC). Doing so shows what CC preserves, how it reconfigures key relationships, and how its institutional design reshapes who benefits from economic activity. […]
A Concise Summary of Commons Capitalism
Reference code: C25-02 Commons Capitalism reframes how businesses capture and distribute economic surplus. It’s neither a return to laissez-faire shareholder capitalism nor a revival of worker cooperatives; instead, it proposes a third institutional form designed to anchor corporate surplus within a collectively governed “commons” while preserving managerial structures and expansion capabilities. Core idea At its […]
Commons Capitalism Entities and Workers’ Cooperatives: Working Together for a Better Society
Reference code: C25-01 Economist Richard Wolff has proposed replacing traditional corporations with workers’ cooperatives (“coops” for short). More specifically, he advocates for Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). These organizations aim to distribute wealth, particularly net profits, across a broader economic class of worker-owners, thereby reducing the concentration of capital among a small group of individuals. These […]
Origin
ORIGIN Origin of Commons Capitalism I first developed the idea of a business organization (later called a commons capitalism entity or CCE), while trying to envision a “better mousetrap” than capitalism. The foundation question was, “How could a company hold the means of production and distribute net profits to workers as higher wages and social […]