Hannes Kuch

This paper defends the model of Plural Cooperativism against criticism. Plural Cooperativism is a society-wide economic system of cooperative ownership that allows for limited private shareholding, counterbalanced by public shareholding and a more democratic reallocation of control rights, while universal inheritances enable broad-based investment in cooperatives. In response to Rutger Claassen’s critique, the paper clarifies the normative foundations of social ownership and argues that cooperatives can serve a wide range of values beyond workplace democracy, especially when a public shareholder complements them. It further defends the focus on cooperatives against Claassen’s proposal to rely more strongly on trust-owned firms, since the latter exhibit a structural deficit in workplace democracy and impose overly demanding altruistic requirements. Finally, it justifies the opportunity for private shareholding by addressing issues of entry costs, financing, and portfolio diversification, and it argues for a strong role of the public shareholder by showing that disinvestment threats from private shareholders persist under Plural Cooperativism.

This paper argues that democratizing corporations requires more than simply allocating control rights to employees while leaving ownership structures intact, because such an arrangement leaves democratic decision-making vulnerable to the persistent threat of disinvestment. True democratic control requires a deeper transformation – specifically, a foundation in social ownership. To this end, various models of social ownership are critically examined. While none offers a satisfying solution on its own, their strengths can be combined. From this emerges the concept of Plural Cooperativism: a hybrid, society-wide model of cooperative ownership that systematically integrates other forms of social ownership, allowing for limited private stock ownership, counterbalanced by public stock ownership and a more democratic reallocation of control rights over private ownership.

In the new debate about economic planning, the question of whether new forms of comprehensive planning might inadvertently encourage a relapse into authoritarianism must be central. The article analyzes the proposal of a “Participatory Economy” because it is the most sophisticated model for comprehensive planning without the need for centralized institutions. Planning is carried out in a participatory manner, enabling worker and consumer councils to coordinate their interrelated economic activities themselves. The danger of a relapse into authoritarianism appears to be averted. However, the paper argues that the Participatory Economy doesn’t live up to the goal it set for itself to a satisfying degree, because it requires more centralized institutions than it initially suggests. Centralization tendencies arise for strong normative reasons and are therefore difficult to avoid. Even worse, council-democratic remedies to centralization tendencies don’t offer an easy answer, as these remedies come with their own set of problems.

The relation between Hegel and Marx is among the most interpreted in the history of philosophy. Given the contemporary renaissance of Marx and Marxist theories, how should we re-read the Hegel-Marx connection today? What place does Hegel have in contemporary critical thinking? Most schools of Marxism regard Marx's inversion of Hegel's dialectics as a progressive development, leaving behind Hegel's idealism by transforming it into a materialist critique of political economy. Other Marxist approaches argue that the mature Marx completely broke with Hegel. By contrast, this book offers a wide-ranging and innovative understanding of Hegel as an empirically informed theorist of the social, political, and economic world. It proposes a movement 'from Marx to Hegel and back', by exploring the intersections where the two thinkers can be read as mutually complementing or even reinforcing one another. With a particular focus on essential concepts like recognition, love, revolution, freedom, and the idea of critique, this new intervention into Hegelian and Marxian philosophy unifies the ethical content of Hegel's philosophy with the power of Marx's social and economic critique of the contemporary world.

The paper analyzes Rawls's moral psychology and the claim that a just society must foster a sufficiently strong sense of justice. When Rawls investigates the development of the sense of justice under a just basic structure, he tacitly narrows down the focus: he only demonstrates the development of a sense of justice on the premise that all members of society are already in possession of a full-fledged sense of justice, save the one individual under investigation. This begs the question, largely presupposing what needs to be explained, namely, how citizens at large develop a sense of justice. Rawls's narrowing of perspective leads to distortions in the analysis of stability, particularly with regard to a property-owning democracy. However, in lesser known parts of his work, Rawls offers clues for a more plausible account. Here, the idea is that institutions must be structured such that they enable all of us to nurture the sense of justice of each of us. With this idea of collective self-transformation in place, it becomes clear that economic institutions must be broadly democratized because of their profound educational role. Thus, the choice between a property-owning democracy and liberal socialism falls more strongly upon the latter.

TABLE OF CONTENTS * Inhalt * Verletzende Worte. Eine Einleitung * Sprache als Gewalt oder: Warum verletzen Worte? * Bedingungen für den Erfolg von Degradierungszeremonien * Gesichtsbedrohende Akte * Die Dialektik von Herausforderung und Erwiderung der Herausforderung * Sprechakte und unsprechbare Akte * Diskriminierende Sprechakte. Ein funktionaler Ansatz * Symbolische Verletzbarkeit und sprachliche Gewalt * Über die Körperkraft von Sprache * Die geraubte Stimme * Nach dem angeblichen Ende der ›Sprachvergessenheit‹: Vorläufige Fragen zur Unvermeidlichkeit der * Verletzung Anderer in und mit Worten * Verletzende Anerkennung. Über das Verhältnis von Anerkennung, Subjektkonstitution und ›sozialer Gewalt‹ * Zur Praxis verbaler Gewalt unter Schülerinnen und Schülern * Sprachliche Strategien verbaler Ablehnung in öffentlichen Diskussionsforen im Internet * Zur Sprache der Sprachlosen. Ebenen der Gewalt in der diskursiven Produktion von Behinderung * Words like violence. Konstellationen des Unvernehmens * Die Autorinnen und Autoren * Nachweise

The article explores the early Marx’s vision of communal relationships, which is centered on the idea that in producing for others individuals can be concerned with satisfying the needs of others, and may reciprocally value their interdependence in producing for one another. It is argued that if the ideal of communal reciprocity is to be realized in a viable and desirable form, it must be compatible with some forms of self-interest, social indifference and instrumental action, typically realized through the institution of the market. The article shows that communal reciprocity may go together with market reciprocity as long as market relations are structured such that exploitative motives are not systematically promoted. The article examines various economic institutions that could meet the non-exploitation requirement, either by transforming the constitutive rules of the market, in contrast to its regulative rules, or by regulating the market internally, in contrast to its external regulation.