Suppose I have studied for years to become a pastry chef. I set up my own bakery, investing my time, energy, and labour into procuring equipment and building up a reputation as a delicious place to eat. I run the entire operation myself as the sole worker. Eventually, after years of turmoil, word of my exceptional pastries spreads and my bakery becomes the number one spot in town. Soon there’s a line up around the block, long enough that I have to turn away customers on the regular.
Not wanting to have to send people home hungry, I decide that having someone to wash my dishes and somebody to tend to the counter would buy me enough time to focus on the main reason people come to my shop: my delicious pastries.
I do, however, have an issue. I worked really hard to build my bakery up to where it is today, and don’t want to have to give up ownership to the two people I want to bring onboard. They didn’t put in any effort into building up my bakery, so why should they have an equal democratic say over how it’s run?
Is there a way I can bring on help without having to give away control of my buisness?
Furthermore, what’s to stop the two new workers from democratically voting me out of the operation, keeping the store, name, brand, and equipment for themselves?
What is to prevent them from entering into an exploitative partnership?
You kind of have to presuppose that in an equal partnership that one of the partners is not being exploited. Anything else is just kind of a partnership in name only.
I don’t think the contributions of the dishwasher and the Baker are equal, unless perhaps the dishwasher is deeply dedicated to the bakery - to the point where they’re dedicating their life to it.
I think the type of situation where you start a business under your own labor, and then hire others to exploit their labor is possible in a well portioned socialist economy.
You wouldn’t be able to hire “just a dishwasher.” You’d enter into a mutually and equally benefitial partnership with somebody who you would share labor and extract the revenue from that labor equally.
The exact type of that relationship and the responsibility details are largely immaterial to whether it’s exploitative at that point.
Fireman’s ball.