Capitalism Cannot Exist Without Unequal Opportunity For Wealth Attainment

I'm very interested in something my opponent mentioned- that "the profit motive drives business". I do not dispute this, and I realize that while it's highly unlikely that a business-owner will distribute his profits among all workers who work for him, according to how much they have produced, such a thing could, in fact, still happen. Do not interpret this as a concession, however. Though it seems as though my argument would be defeated by the technicality that "capitalism does not dictate what is done with a profit", a business- owner effectively giving back the product produced by the labor he has hired amounts to the workers receiving the full value of the good or service that they produce. Keep in mind that such an attempt to "pay" workers in this fashion would not be an act of random philanthropy designed to benefit some workers; this would amount to, through the end result, the workers working for themselves rather than for a business-owner, through the "earning back" of their lost product or service. For the workers (or employees) to actually be employed, by the definition of "employed" I gave above, they have to be earning wages. What if their wages were to be effectively augmented, through gifts- to the point where the workers were earning back the exact value of what they produced? In a purely technical sense, this would be considered philanthropy. However, the end result is the same and the intentions are the same, and the execution of these intentions is deliberate- that the workers will end up with the final worth of their product. At the end of the day,the full worth of the good or service produced by each worker is going back to each worker in the form of money. Thus, in the end, wages are of no consequence, profit to a business owner is of no consequence, and the private ownership of businesses is of no consequence, and thus, in the end, the system is not capitalism. Each part of capitalism, each purpose of that part, has been negated. If one worker is not, in the end, receiving the whole value of their product, then their labor has been purchased as a commodity. This is not the case in my opponent's proposed system. In the beginning of this debate, both I and my opponent agreed that the capitalism being debated over would attribute to each company at least one employer and one employee. If these employees are, in the end, receiving the full worth of the resources they provide, then their wages mean nothing, the "employer" effectively acts only as a means to regain the product or service provided, and the worker(s), rather than the employer, becomes the owner of the business. The cessation of the existence of an employer in a company would go against the resolution made in the beginning of this debate; that is what happens, in practice, in the system my opponent has proposed. My opponent cited the use of employee stock ownership plans in which employees are allowed to own a portion of the company. The key words here are "employee" and "company". No matter how many employees own stocks in companies, they are still employees, and are still earning wages. This implies that they are merely being paid for their labor rather than good or service, as owners as still purchasing their labor, this is an incentive to work rather than a mechanism for ensuring equal wealth-attainment opportunity. The workers' co-ops that my opponent has cited are completely owned by workers, rather than by majority or in part. Thus, they are not companies, and in fact more like if not effectively identical to the type of organizations whose practices were described in my opponent's previous argument. My opponent does not dispute that workers' collectives are not companies. In conclusion, the end result of the "philanthropic" system that my opponent proposed that was supposed to defeat my supposed my logical fallacy- would defeat the purpose of capitalism (to make profit for the owner from the selling of the good), as the profits would be gained but would be given back to the workers, in a very deliberate way, in full, to ensure the workers are being paid for the goods they produce rather than their labor. This would be more akin to a form of socialism than anything else, as such a system would not only act as a way to distribute the value of the workers' products back to them, which is most important, but would also negate the "driving force of business" that my opponent mentioned- the profit motive. To say nothing of the fact that, if all business- owners used this practice, they would be forced to labor for themselves, rather than exploiting anyone, in order to survive. This, of course, would be a direct result of their giving back any money made from the business to their "employees". If one "business-owner" (quotation marks are on purpose) were to not give back all product-value back to the workers, then equal opportunity for wealth attainment would not exist. This system would be communism stripped to its barest essence, rather than capitalism. .. in its final effects. Namely, the workers would effectively own the means of production, and everyone working would sell their product rather than their labor. Consider the "business-owner" in this system as just the worker who acts as the intermediary between the consumers (also workers) and the workers who produced the product sold. The "business-owner" would also be forced to work for himself, attaining, in the workforce, the same position as those he "employs" (but not really those he employs, as he is paying the workers for their goods or services rather than their labor, or just "relaying" the money from the consumers to his fellow workers). It's certainly an interesting model, but not a capitalist one. I remind my opponent of the definition of "employment": "The condition of having paid work. "I thank my opponent and turn the debate over to them. Sources: . http://en.wikipedia.org...Oxford Pocket Dictionary of English