Is it all about theory? Practical applications....

[RadioRaheem84]

It seems like there are so many aspects to business and economics that practical businessmen have no matter how much philosophical and theoretical clout we have. Are there any successful leftist enterprises we can learn the business models of? I was thinking of the Mondragon Corporation or perhaps that trade union in Israel. Maybe state owned enterprises? I don't know. Any case studies that you guys know of?

It just seems like I am always trying to bridge the gap to not sound like such a theoretical nerd to some of my business minded friends and their business owning fathers. Granted they take their ideals based on the class they belong to but I would like to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

[Hit The North]

Asking for a socialist enterprise which succeeds in capitalistic terms is contradictory as socialism is the antithesis of capitalism.

But you're right, philosophy and theory will only get you so far. If you really want to "bridge the gap between theory and practice", you'll need to organise against their business interests.

[Dave B]

I seem to remember that there was an interesting discussion on co-operatives by Eduard Bernstein in Evolutionary Socialism


Chapter III The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/ch03-1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/ch03-1.htm)

Something Rosa responded to;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm)

Without re reading it I think Bernstein referred in it to a passage in Capital volume III without providing it, anyway I have a feeling that it was probably this one;





The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour.


They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production.

The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch27.htm)


There is something on recent events concerning Mondragon below

http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/newswire/display_any/39267/index.php?comment=true (http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/newswire/display_any/39267/index.php?comment=true)

[RadioRaheem84]

Why would Mondragon practice low wage union busting style capitalism in Poland but not in Spain?

What are some of the cons of Mondragon?

Also, what are your thoughts of the new union between MCC and the United Auto Workers?

[MarxSchmarx]

Your best bet is to study the worker-occupied factories/hotels in Argentina. This occurred in a modern economy and a developed society and provides greater insight than many other historical moments for how a transition from capitalism can work. It also has lessons for what we can organize for today, and many are still going strong. "Sin Patron" is an excellent introduction to this movement.

http://www.thetake.org/

Unlike the bolivarian cooperatives in Venezuela, which can also be studied, many of the occupations in argentina were not imposed from above, developed under a hostile state, and came after decades of intense class struggle among the working class.


Asking for a socialist enterprise which succeeds in capitalistic terms is contradictory as socialism is the antithesis of capitalism.


That is true. Yet even within the context of capitalism one can also look at examples of "socialistic" practice within capitalist firms. Consider for example employee owned firms, firms with quite a bit of self-management by the workers, or firms that make workers engage in both manual labor and desk work. These provide examples, however weak, of the practicalities of how to implement leftist values in a workplace.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What about sovereign wealth funds? They're an appropriate vehicle for so-called "market socialism."