So, just what is the correct relationship between capital and labor? And how can it be achieved?

I would enable unions where the workers wanted, then step back and let the free market take over.

If you are for free markets, than you would be for a free “labor market” as well.

I would prevent monopolies, allow for unions, but limit unions to one union per company where the workers elect how they want to run. Also, nobody should be forced to join a union if they don’t want to. I would also try to facilitate laborers being able to freely change jobs, as this allows the market for labor to flow more easily. I would put in a mechanism for salaried employees to receive overtime pay.

I might also cap executive compensation as a percentage of the median employee, as well as ensure that all employees are entitled to the same benefits packages. I would also ban golden parachutes (if you drive your company into the ground, you’re not going to get a $10 million bonus on your way out the door on the backs of your shareholders, while your employees all get screwed).

I might also try to put into place economic mechanisms or laws that favor long-term corporate growth, as opposed to short term profit-taking at the expense of future profitability. Lastly I would try to figure out laws that would prevent things like leveraged buyouts and corporate raiding of the kind that Bain capital was famous for.

The Wagner Act under Roosevelt effectively neutered and de-radicalised trade unions. Although unions have helped raise wages, work conditions, productivity and living standards, they also became complicit in maintaining the capitalist status quo, with union leaders often becoming a new sort of capitalist class with their interest being closer to that of the bosses they once opposed, rather than the workers they’re meant to represent.

As trade unions become controllable and no longer a threat to bosses, there was also a long-term strategy to undermine their modest influence and membership. We’ve seen decades of wage stagnation, increasing job insecurity, growing income inequality, and a huge decline in union membership and influence. And they still say: “Oh, unions aren’t needed these days, this is the 21st Century, things are different now.”

The original point of unions wasn’t to merely negotiate better wages with the capitalist class, but to be an institution that could take over the production without the need of bosses at all.

@josie Completely backwards. The countries that implement “laissez-faire” are the poorest places on Earth. The US became the mighty economic powerhouse it was through massive state interventions and protectionism, and saw the growth of the most prosperous working-class in the world through huge progressive taxation, and high wages when unions still had some clout.