Chapter 4.5.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.5. Labor Relations Law

In 4.1. of this chapter, we pointed out that labor laws are included in the communist economic law system. This is because labor and management are combined in a communist business organization. In this respect, capitalist labor laws, which are premised on the separation of labor and management, are often divided into individual labor laws that protect the rights of individual workers and collective labor laws that stipulate the organization and rights of labor unions.

The fact that workers' rights cannot be fully protected unless they form unions and unite outside the company is a result of the capitalist separation of management and labor, but as we explained last time, in communist business organizations, whether they are co-determination type or self-management type, workers' organizations are permanently established within the business organization, so there is basically no need for external organizations such as unions.

As a result, there is no particular concept of what is called the right of workers to organize. However, this does not mean that unity is prohibited. Rather, it can be said that the right to organize is included in the right to co-determination and the right to self-management.

Furthermore, there will be no need for the right to strike, which is the most radical of the three labor rights. As long as co-determination or voluntary determination is functioning, labor-management disputes that develop into industrial action should not occur in the first place. Even if a serious labor dispute does occur, it will be sufficient for a third-party arbitration committee established within the company to make a ruling.

Thus, communist labor relations laws will be dominated by so-called individual labor laws, but at the same time, they will not be limited to the Labor Standards Act in the narrow sense, but will be integrated laws that also include labor environment legislation such as the Industrial Safety and Health Act and the Employment Discrimination Prohibition Act.

In the first place, in a communist society where the monetary economy has been abolished, there is no wage labor, and everything is unpaid labor. Therefore, labor standards are fundamentally different from capitalist labor standards, which are almost entirely about wage issues, and communist labor standards will have working hour regulations at their core, but will also be accompanied by workplace environment regulations such as safety and health and the prevention of harassment.

As a result, the nature of labor standards inspection will change significantly, and the police-style labor standards inspection system with compulsory investigation powers that existed under capitalism will no longer be necessary. Instead, a more judicial labor dispute resolution system with a human rights relief approach, such as the Tribune for Labor, will develop.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 4.4.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.4. Corporate Organization Law

The second pillar of communist economic law is the corporate organization law, which defines the nature of communist corporate organizations. Corporate organization law is roughly equivalent to the company law in capitalist legal systems, but in a communist society, there are of course no profit-making companies such as joint-stock companies.

Therefore, the legal nature of a communist corporate organization is an incorporated association, but it is not a profit-making corporation, but a non-profit production corporation. A production corporation is granted legal personality, and certain rights are guaranteed within the scope of the law.

A major feature of the communist corporate organization law is that it includes the labor organization law. In other words, since the basic principle of the operation of a communist corporate organization is worker self-management or labor-management joint decision-making, an internal labor organization corresponding to this is permanently established.

The specific types of communist corporate organizations have already been discussed in my On Communism (see my article), so here I will only summarize them from a legal perspective.

Communist corporate organizations can be roughly divided into socially owned enterprise and self-managed enterprise, the former being production business organization and the latter production cooperative. In terms of operation, large-scale production business organization is equivalent to co-determined enterprise. Planned economy is limited to the former socially owned enterprise-production business organization.

The latter, self-managed enterprise-production cooperative, engages in off-plan free production activities and also engage in barter, so in that sense it is similar to a commercial enterprise, but as mentioned above, it is not profit-making in the legal sense of distributing profits to shareholders as the owners of the company, as is the case with a joint stock company.

An intermediate form between these two is the production business corporation. This is similar to a production cooperative in that it engages in off-plan production, but because its large scale makes self-management technically difficult, it is a large enterprise with a co-determined internal structure similar to a production business organization.

There is also the cooperative labor group, which is a small business organization smaller than a production cooperative, but this is not a corporation but a group of workers. However, as long as it is officially registered, when conducting business, the entity is conveniently given status as a single legal group similar to a corporation.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.