If the profits belong to the workers, so do the losses, no ?

The refrain is familiar: “When the firm makes 200,000 euros in profit, it’s the workers’ labour that created that wealth.” Fine, let’s grant it. But when the same firm loses 50,000 euros because the market turned or the Chinese competitor is cheaper… far fewer voices call for symmetry. So communism would be the casino: you pocket the winnings as a group, and let the croupier pay the debts?

You’ll tell me: “The employee takes a risk too, they risk their job.” True. And that’s precisely where the debate becomes honest. A redundancy is no small thing: it’s the job, the back wages sometimes never paid, the pension cut short. The employee takes a risk. So does the shareholder. But they don’t risk the same thing, nor in the same proportions, nor at the same point in the cycle. Let’s discuss it, really, figures in hand, rather than with slogans.

Because the slogan “the profits belong to the workers” never discusses that. It takes the cherry and leaves the burnt cake to the other side. It’s ideological cherry-picking.

And yet a coherent answer does exist: the cooperative. Everyone an owner, everyone a decision-maker, everyone exposed. It exists, it works; statistically, worker cooperatives even survive a little better than ordinary limited companies. But when it breaks, and I know something about that having followed the Duralex case for months, it’s the worker-shareholders who lose their savings. Owning up to the symmetry has a price, and it’s paid in cash.

What I hold against social-media communism, then, isn’t the egalitarian ideal. It’s the asymmetry hidden behind the word “justice”: profits socialised, bills left to the boss. We’re no longer talking about equality, we’re talking about “I want the upsides of capitalism without the downsides”.

So, the real question, without hatred and without caricature: do you own up to the symmetry or not?

Because otherwise, even Marx would have found that a bit much.