Eco-anarchists advocate workers' control of the economy as a necessary component of a steady-state economy. This means society-wide ownership of the means of production and all productive enterprises self-managed by their workers, as described further in section I.
Most ecologists, even if they are not anarchists, recognise the pernicious ecological effects of the capitalist "grow or die" principle; but unless they are also anarchists, they usually fail to make the connection between that principle and the hierarchical form of the typical capitalist corporation. In contrast, eco-anarchists emphasise that socially owned and worker self-managed firms, especially the type in which surpluses are shared equally among all full-time members, would be under far less pressure toward rapid expansion than the traditional capitalist firm.
The slower growth rate of co-operatives has been documented in a number of studies, which show that in the traditional capitalist firm, owners' and executives' percentage share of profits greatly increases as more employees are added to the payroll. This is because the corporate hierarchy is designed to facilitate exploitation by funnelling a disproportionate share of the surplus value produced by workers to those at the top of the pyramid (see C.2, "Where do profits come from?") Such a design gives ownership and management a very strong incentive to expand, since, other things being equal (e.g. no recession), their income rises with every new employee hired. Hence the hierarchical form of the capitalist corporation is one of the main causes of runaway growth. [See e.g. Henry Levin "Employment and Productivity of Producer Co-operatives," in Robert Jackall and Henry Levin (eds.), Worker Co-operatives in America, UC Press, 1984; cf. David Schweickart, Against Capitalism].
By contrast, in an equal-share worker co-operative, the addition of more members simply means more people with whom the available pie will have to be equally divided — a situation that immensely reduces the incentive to expand. Thus a libertarian-socialist economy will be able to function in a stationary state, requiring neither an expanding population nor technological innovation at a pace sufficient to guarantee increased production. Moreover, it will be able to switch from a growth state to a stationary state without excessive disruption. For if consumers start buying less, this will increase leisure time among producers, which will be shared by those firms affected first and then gradually spreading to other sectors. For these reasons, libertarian socialism based on producer co-operatives is essential for the type of steady-state economy necessary to solve the ecological crisis.