Ownership Democracy - A new left science to supplant hired labor with associated labor.

Democracy cannot sit in silos. Political democracy in a society becomes incompatible when the economic organization in the same society is laid upon undemocratic principles. Do the advances in computing provide us the tools to study different economic organizations that are more sustainable and democratic and non alienating.

When the means of production, and the means of distribution and exchange are owned and governed by the producers(workers) themselves, how does such an organization affect the material well being of the society and influence other structures of organization in political and social realms? If computing can be considered as a raw resource like water, air or any other mineral, how do we put it to use.

Serfs and slaves in feudal society were unfree but within our current economic and political organization, men and women became free. When labor has become a commodity, this freedom quickly morphed to unfreedom when one is constantly on a look out to sell one's labor and "the activity of labor is performed in the service of another" cite:marx_marxsnodate. Another contradiction, within the current economic model is the juxtaposition of abundance of goods and a mass despair and this fact is buttressed by the fact that even in the most advanced countries of the world, the economic inequality is at an all time high while the wages stagnated and debt accumulated for the majority of the population cite:lawrence_{mishelwagenodate}.

While we answer this question, it is also pertinent to show such alternatives are feasible by studying what characteristics such a model should imbue. An economic structure that is pervasive of worker cooperatives that own the means of production, distribution and information is one such alternative. These cooperatives are laid upon the scaffolding of planning. The computing power hitherto mainly used as a tool to maximize profit, is set up to aid the production and distribution within and among these cooperatives. Information technology may allow flow of information but what is paramount and is on a different scale is the ability to optimize with the use of computing.

Once we establish that such an economic organization is plausible, then we start to define the attributes of such an organization to deliver us a greater freedom and a sustainable world. The contours of the economic activity are to be redefined to not to be caught in the same quagmire as is now. Each cooperative is not organized to deliver the maximum profit for itself but to work towards a social "good". Also, reconciliation between the concentrated power that comes with centralized planning is to be made with democratic and participatory planning cite:sam_{gindinsocialismnodate}. What role will markets play and are the markets out of bounds to labor and capital? There will be plethora of such issues that need to be studied and also learned from the current model of economic organization.

We start by studying the history of cooperatives in the last 150 years. We glean from such a study what the success stories are and what the failures were. What are the factors that contributed to the successes and the failures? Even when a cooperative was a failure, did it have any profound impact(s) on the society in which it was embedded? What is the breadth of cooperatives? Did they penetrate every area of economic activity - both manufacturing and services? How did they differ in their workings from one country to another? Did they operate in a different way in a country with advanced industrialization and capitalism than from a country from the global south?

We also study the inherent contradictions of the current capitalist mode of production that has nevertheless unleashed the productive forces of man in an unprecedented way. In a workplace that is increasingly atomized and seen as alien, the important insights that the workers gain during producing are mostly lost. The knowledge behind any productivity gain, or a gain in the quality of the product is not shared in a model where the sole motto is profit maximization. Other inherent strengths and weaknesses also need to be gleaned and captured.

We also study what an optimization problem is and how they are modeled as neural networks driven by optimization techniques or algorithms at their core cite:noauthor_optimize2019.

From such a hindsight, we model the basic units with a set of attributes and the interactions between them in this alternative economic organization and study the outcomes while employing optimization techniques that computing power heralds. Mechanisms to capture the information when these units operate and relay the information to the planning hierarchy are to be built. Will a quantitative change in these units bring about a qualitative change in a society, while "scarcity" will not mean to produce more but to distribute more democratically and productive means are held subservient to the humans. Can a silent and bloodless revolution be affected?