Ideas of economic democracy within the confines of capitalism have gained wide currency in recent years. This paper compares initiatives from employers on the profit-sharing front and on capital-sharing from labour movements. It examines the theoretical and empirical case for seeing such initiatives as having the potential to transform the worker's position into one of less or zero-exploitation by sharing in the distribution of surplus value. It is concluded that such claims to this effect are non-starters for profit-sharing and misconceived for capital-sharing. The latter view is sustained by a critique of the conceptions of capitalism and of prefigurative socialism embedded in the models of capital-sharing.
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