Tories like co-operatives, too!

[ZeroNowhere]

Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8515949.stm)



David Cameron has renewed a pledge to give public sector workers the chance to form co-operatives to run services as part of a push to woo Labour voters.

Staff of taxpayer-funded services, such as primary school teachers and nurses, would decide how they were run - within certain national standards.

Mr Cameron said it would "unleash a new culture of public sector enterprise".

Labour said it had already set up public service co-ops and Mr Cameron was just "catching up" with its ideas.

Mr Cameron re-launched the initiative, which he first announced in 2007, at a pre-election event at Battersea Power Station in London.

In his speech, he sought to reach out to disillusioned Labour and Lib Dem voters who had never voted Tory before, telling them: "We are not the same old Conservative Party. We are the party of the mainstream majority in our country."

Under Tory plans, employee-owned co-operatives would be able to decide on management structures, "innovate" to cut costs and improve the standard of service, and share any financial surpluses among the staff.

Feature: Caring and sharing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7086973.stm)
Mr Cameron said: "I know that there are millions of public sector workers, that work in our public services. and who frankly today feel demoralised, feel disrespected, feel a lack of recognition.
"We will not only get rid of those targets and that bureaucracy that drives you so mad, we will give you the power in a way that is as radical as the right to buy your council home."

He refused to be drawn on how many public sector workers he expected to set up co-operatives, which would be allowed to keep any surplus cash.
But he assured workers that wage rates, pensions and other benefits would be carried across from the public sector and members would be able to remain in trade unions - and he urged the unions to overcome their "scepticism" about the plan.

He said workers co-operatives had been shown to boost productivity and staff morale and reduce absenteeism.

The Tory leader also used the event to launch new election posters aimed at disaffected Labour and Lib Dem voters, saying: "I've never voted Tory before, but we've got to mend our broken society" and other slogans on a similar theme.

Mr Cameron launched the Conservative Co-operative Movement in 2007, insisting that such groups embodied core Conservative values, and it was time to reclaim them from the political Left.

'No free-for-all'

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne denied the cooperative plan would result in a "complete free-for-all".

"The check on quality here is that they would be contracting services to the local authority or the National Health Service and they would be providing a contract, for community nursing or for primary education.

"And we would be making sure, as taxpayers, that we were getting value for money and it was appropriately run and the standards the kids were being taught to were at the right level and the like."

Standards such as the national curriculum would remain, he said.
But the essential principle that people in the public sector, whether they are community nursing teams, primary schools, job centres, would be able to take ownership of their own enterprise and run it as a non-for-profit social enterprise or co-operative providing state services is exactly what we are talking about."

It would mean teachers could effectively force out a head, he agreed.

'Socialism'

Cabinet Office Minister Tessa Jowell said that since last year primary care staff in the NHS had been able to take over the running of the services they deliver.

The government also aimed to create 200 Co-operative Trust schools by the end of the year - but unlike the Conservatives they preferred to involve the local community and users of services in the management of services, rather than just the staff, she added.

"This announcement would have a little more credibility if the Tories gave any indication at all that they understood what co-operative values mean," she said. "But clearly they don't.

"The Conservative Co-operative Movement, which they launched more than two years ago, remains a movement without members, which has never held an AGM.

"If they can't get the small things right, it doesn't fill one with hope that the Tories would have any idea how to bring the principles of co-operation and mutualism - the idea that organisations should be owned and run by their members - into our public services."

Ms Jowell is to have meetings with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Health Secretary Andy Burnham next week to plan the next stage of its co-operative programme, which was expected to feature in Labour's election manifesto, her spokesman said.

The Tory plan also received a hostile reception from the biggest public sector trade union Unite.

Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary for the public sector, said: "David Cameron is using the language of socialism to mask a break-up of public services. He is mangling the English language to advance his anti-state ideology."

Michael Stephenson, general secretary of the Co-operative Party, which counts 30 Labour MPs including schools secretary Ed Balls among its members, said: "George Osborne's comments show the Tories are completely clueless on co-operatives."

The John Lewis Partnership, the UK's largest employee-owned company, welcomed moves towards employee ownership in public service.
Chairman Charlie Mayfield said: "We believe that co-ownership can empower front line workers to achieve a high level of customer service."Not good or bad, I'm fairly indifferent to this, whether or not they would actually go through with it, but nonetheless it's vaguely interesting, and probably worth posting. What is interesting is, firstly, that this kind of thing has been going on since Marx's day, and secondly the intent, that is, while wooing voters is more or less a blatant reason, if they actually implement it to some extent, it could well be a strategy to deal with the current recession and stem class struggle within it, as was observed by Kasmir in 'The Myth of Mondragon'. Indeed, a recent article in The Economist (yes, The Economist, but they used to have Bagehot, and he was cool, so that's alright then) here (http://libcom.org/library/co-operatives-all-together) would seem to have a similar drift. Of course, a major cause of the crisis is a low rate of profit, and greater productivity as comes from co-ops may well be a workable strategy for increasing that somewhat, though I doubt it would be nearly enough, and probably not significant enough, especially on a fairly small scale, for that to be much of a motivation.

[RadioRaheem84]

I had a post on the topic of liberals usurping the cooperative movement and workers self management. It seems like conservatives are also jumping on the bandwagon. They still see these ventures as capitalist as they are free from state control. I've met many libertarians who swear up and down that workers self management, autogestion is capitalist and not socialism not matter how much we say it's workers in control of the factories we've advocated all along. But they think they're clever for figuring out what syndicalists in Spain found out during the early twentieth century.


I was also asking if we should let progressive, liberal, and I guess now even conservatives have this movement in order for it to benefit the workers? Should we let it turn into another liberal project in their quest to find the happy "medium" between socialism and free market capitalism? I am just upset that they think of this movement as something just discovered by their great analytical skills and their rejection of socialism. :rolleyes:

[ZeroNowhere]

Liberals and such advocating it is hardly a new phenomena.


Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, “impossible” communism! Why, those members of the ruling classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system [ie. capitalism based on individual property as opposed to joint stock companies and co-ops, referring to his theme of capitalism evolving into "private production without the control of private property."] – and they are many – have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles of co-operative production. If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism?
At the same time the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864 has proved beyond doubt that, however, excellent in principle and however useful in practice, co-operative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. It is perhaps for this very reason that plausible noblemen, philanthropic middle-class spouters, and even keep political economists have all at once turned nauseously complimentary to the very co-operative labor system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the utopia of the dreamer, or stigmatizing it as the sacrilege of the socialist.

Indeed, Bordiga also spent some time arguing against various faux-socialists who based their views of 'socialism' on co-ops as they are now:

The replacement of the boss and the bourgeois management by some 'factory council' elected as democratically as you want, in other words the replacement of the capitalist enterprise by an enterprise of a cooperative type, would not advance the necessary transformation of the economy by a single step. It is known that the attempts of workers' producer cooperatives in the last century, even if they did have the merit of showing that one could do without the social person of the capitalist, were a resounding failure because they were not able to stand up to the bourgeois competition. It would be no different if the competition took place no longer between bosses' enterprises and workers' cooperatives but between as many workers' cooperatives as there were enterprises. One of two things would happen: either the workers' cooperatives would try to operate other than as capitalist enterprises and as all the other conditions would remain bourgeois (links by the intermediary of the market) they would be swept aside; or, if they intended to survive, they would only be able to operate as capitalist enterprises with a money capital, wages, profits, a depreciation fund and capital investments, credit and interest etc. The competition between them would not be abolished, so neither would the system of commercial contracts, nor civil law and the state institution needed to uphold it.

A system of commercial exchange between free and autonomous enterprises such as might be supported by cooperators, syndicalists, libertarians, has no historical possibility nor any socialist character. It is even a step backward compared with numerous sectors already organised on a general scale in the bourgeois epoch, as required by technology and the complexity of social life. Socialism, or communism, means that the whole of society is a single association of producers and consumers.

So yeah, it's been a fairly common theme over the years.

[Lenny Nista]

Sounds like Thatcher's "right to buy".

Also sounds similair to the way Chavez uses "co-operatives" to subcontract, undercut unionized labour, implant a petit-bourgeois mentality into the working class and gain himself a base of support at the same time.

[RadioRaheem84]

Wow. It also goes to show how, minus technology, capitalism has kept us going in circles rather than actually progressing us into the future.

Amazing stuff, zero! Why is it that liberals and capitalists have been generally supportive of co-ops in the past and grudgingly admit it's a workable idea?

One question remains; how does our conception of workers owning the means of production differ from theirs and their support for co-ops? Do we not also advocate for co-ops in a sense?

[RadioRaheem84]

Sounds like Thatcher's "right to buy".

Also sounds similair to the way Chavez uses "co-operatives" to subcontract, undercut unionized labour, implant a petit-bourgeois mentality into the working class and gain himself a base of support at the same time.

Interesting. What do you mean by subcontract? By undercutting unionized labor do you mean eliminating labor unions for the competing capitalist interests by giving them co-ops? By implanting a petit-bourgeois mentality do you mean having them own their own factories rather than be slaves to wage labor? Where are you going with this?

[Lenny Nista]

[QUOTE]Interesting. What do you mean by subcontract? By undercutting unionized labor do you mean eliminating labor unions for the competing capitalist interests by giving them co-ops?

No I mean the workers work cheaper than the average in the "co-operatives".


By implanting a petit-bourgeois mentality do you mean having them own their own factories rather than be slaves to wage labor?

No I mean that co-operatives are integrated into and subordinate to the market, and the workers have to self-exploit in order to sell to the imperialist multinationals and the state.

[RadioRaheem84]

No I mean the workers work cheaper than the average in the "co-operatives".

They do so because they're paying the state back for the debt incurred in buying the enterprise.



No I mean that co-operatives are integrated into and subordinate to the market, and the workers have to self-exploit in order to sell to the imperialist multinationals and the state.

This is one the major downsides to Chavez's co-op movement. It is in direct competition with the capitalist market. The co-op and nationalized alternatives are side by side the capitalist market as if Chavez is trying to prove their superiority and not trying to upset the establishment he never really took on head first (but that attacked him).

All in all, while this is a detriment to the movement, the Ministry and State is set up to help these ventures grow and stay competitive. While good, relying on the State to stay competitive in capitalist market is not worthwhile in the long run.


...gain himself a base of support at the same time.

OK, this isn't a nefarious plot by Chavez to gain a base and maintain power. It's his "socialist for the 21st Century" initiative. Not the brightest idea but it has certainly given the poor a competitive edge.

[ZeroNowhere]

Wow. It also goes to show how, minus technology, capitalism has kept us going in circles rather than actually progressing us into the future.And even as regards technology, increasing constant capital relative to variable capital causes a negative tendency in the rate of profit, and Andrew Kliman has done some pretty great research regarding the relationship between this and the current crisis as well as the Great Depression (where the Great Depression and World War were necessary to destroy enough of capital value to start a boom), as can be seen here (http://akliman.squarespace.com/persistent-fall/). So, cyclical crises.


One question remains; how does our conception of workers owning the means of production differ from theirs and their support for co-ops? Do we not also advocate for co-ops in a sense?I think that this is best shown in the Marx quote above, and also echoed in the Bordiga quote. I'll quote the most relevant parts below:

If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism?
Socialism, or communism, means that the whole of society is a single association of producers and consumers.More or less, it gets back to what I regard as a very important point to get across when it comes to socialism, namely that it is human control over production and the 'economy', and indeed our lives, that is, a human society, rather than the rule of things (or, if you will, our social relations taking form independent of ourselves and embodied in things, Colletti's introduction (http://libcom.org/library/intro-Marx-early-writings-Colletti) to Marx's Early Writings was great on this, as well as on Marx's analysis of the state) that forms capitalism. This was important to Marx as well, and indeed his project of displaying the laws of motion of the capitalist economy (some have accused him of being overly deterministic here: he's not, it's just that the economy is not controlled by humans, and, one could say, inhumane. This kind of thing is one of the more valuable things to come out of the 'company as sociopathic' theme in The Corporation, though a few liberals seem to have completely missed this, and indeed the film didn't actually seem to view it itself) can be seen as in large part a refutation of reformist doctrines, including those involving co-operatives. Indeed, the modern co-ops "naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system." So they don't at all escape from these laws of motion, the falling rate of profit, the profit motive, and so on (as was mentioned by Bordiga in the quote in my last post). I also went into this theme recently here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../showpost.php?p=1670784&postcount=15) when contrasting decision-making in a socialist system with the current crisis and the blatant 'rule of things' it portrays, which may be helpful, though Marx and Colletti go into much more detail, whereas mine wasn't really a detailed analysis so much as an introduction.

[Red Commissar]

This isn't really uncommon. Like the article says the Tories are doing this to woo dissatisfied Labour supporters. If you look at some of their other stances they have intentionally take stances for this purpose, to the point that Margaret Thatcher would probably go into a rage over what her Tories are standing on.

[ZeroNowhere]

implant a petit-bourgeois mentality into the working class and gain himself a base of support at the same time. These are probably the main reasons behind the Tory promises (well, certainly the latter, the former depends on whether they go through with it, though they probably will to some extent). At least, inasmuch as by 'petit-bourgeois mentality' you're referring to how workers in co-ops tend to be more attached to their organisation, and as such more willing to take cuts and such, and less likely to strike, as they are, at least notionally, their own bosses. That probably comes into the 'pacifying class struggle' thing discussed, and is actually a fairly accurate formulation, especially given that it includes the word 'petit-bourgeois' and is on Revleft (most people who use it here seem to think it's more or less equivalent to 'bastard').


This is one the major downsides to Chavez's co-op movement. It is in direct competition with the capitalist market.I'm not sure this formulation makes much sense, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it was a part of the capitalist market, and, as such, competing.

[RadioRaheem84]

These are probably the main reasons behind the Tory promises (well, certainly the latter, the former depends on whether they go through with it, though they probably will to some extent). At least, inasmuch as by 'petit-bourgeois mentality' you're referring to how workers in co-ops tend to be more attached to their organisation, and as such more willing to take cuts and such, and less likely to strike, as they are, at least notionally, their own bosses. That probably comes into the 'pacifying class struggle' thing discussed, and is actually a fairly accurate formulation, especially given that it includes the word 'petit-bourgeois' and is on Revleft (most people who use it here seem to think it's more or less equivalent to 'bastard').

I'm not sure this formulation makes much sense, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it was a part of the capitalist market, and, as such, competing.


Well, the cooperative movement is largely a state initiative as the state is the one buying up old industries and giving them to the worker who then pays off the debt. The Ministry that's been set up is largely helping them stay competitive against the competing capitalist enterprise. I guess you could say that they're a part of the market but analysts see them as bascially a new economy brewing right next to the old one.

[Lenny Nista]

I guess you could say that they're a part of the market but analysts see them as bascially a new economy brewing right next to the old one.

Well private capital has increased as a percentage of GDP under Chávez while the co-operatives remained very marginal, so this view seems quite optimistic.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well private capital has increased as a percentage of GDP under Chávez while the co-operatives remained very marginal, so this view seems quite optimistic.

Yes it is actually. They are marginal in comparison to the larger private industry as most of the states resources are dealing with the larger nationalized sector. Analysts count both nationalized industries and co-ops as the new economy brewing up next to the old one.

[ls]

Workers' self-exploitation is nothing new or interesting, the tories can go to hell and their plan will most likely evolve into some form of attacking workers' standards of pay and so forth.

[Die Neue Zeit]

"The genuine end of 'free markets' – including in unemployment resulting from workplace closures, mass sackings, and mass layoffs – by first means of non-selective encouragement of, usage of eminent domain for, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for, pre-cooperative worker buyouts of existing enterprises and enterprise operations" (Me)



ZeroNowhere, why didn't you quote Bakunin's criticism of state aid as a possible solution to the market problem?



Eminent Domain for Pre-Cooperative Worker Buyouts

“Our ideal suggests a reform agenda, aimed at moving us in the direction of Economic Democracy. Among these reforms would be demands for [...] Technical and financial support for worker buyouts of existing enterprises.” (David Schweickart)

The term “reform agenda” sounds shocking at first, especially coming from an advocate of “market socialism” (the retention of a “free” consumer goods and services market while eliminating the capitalism-specific markets of labour and capital) like David Schweickart. However, the same dynamic oppositionist test that was applied to the aforementioned, proven-to-be-dynamic oppositionist demands is to be applied to this demand.

Does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? It does indeed meet the Hahnel criterion, since more general demands may eventually have to be made regarding unconditional economic assistance – from the more technical aspects of drafting startup plans and operations management issues to the legal mechanism of eminent domain or compulsory purchase (due monetary compensation but without prior owner consent) to the more financial aspects such as monetary and physical assets provided for cooperative startups of sufficient mass (as opposed to business partnerships without employees), and since demands will eventually have to be made regarding necessary restrictions on subcontracting (especially amongst workers’ cooperatives) and regarding the necessary restriction of competition amongst workers’ cooperatives. Even in a more limited application – such as countering a workplace closure, mass sacking, or mass layoff – this revival of one of the truly and radically social-democratic measures enacted by the Paris Commune suggests the need for more creative and pro-active approaches towards countering unemployment. More important, however, is the fate of “free markets” in general – their genuine elimination, and not mere regulation, arising from means other than dirigisme, or selective mercantilism. Even the anarchist Michael Bakunin had this to say about the historic Eisenach Program’s call for “state support of the cooperative system and state loans for free producers’ cooperatives subject to democratic guarantees”:

There are [...] planks in this program which free-enterprise capitalists will dislike [...] Clause 10, Article 3 – is even more important and socialistic. It demands state help, protection, and credit for workers’ cooperatives, particularly producers’ cooperatives, with all necessary guarantees, i.e., freedom to expand. Free enterprise is not afraid of successful competition from workers’ cooperatives because the capitalists know that workers, with their meager incomes, will never by themselves be able to accumulate enough capital to match the immense resources of the employing class... but the tables will be turned when the workers’ cooperatives, backed by the power and well-nigh unlimited credit of the State, begin to fight and gradually absorb both private and corporate capital (industrial and commercial). For the capitalist will in fact be competing with the State, and the State is, of course, the most powerful of all capitalists.

Does this reform enable the basic principles to be “kept consciously in view”? Well, this demand is historically loaded and can be extremely tricky. Consider a very similar demand raised in the Gotha Program, which was criticized heavily by Marx:

“The German Workers' party, in order to pave the way to the solution of the social question, demands the establishment of producers' co-operative societies with state aid under the democratic control of the toiling people. The producers' co-operative societies are to be called into being for industry and agriculture in such dimensions that the socialist organization of the total labor will arise from them.”

Instead of arising from the revolutionary process of transformation of society, the “socialist organization of the total labor” “arises” from the “state aid” that the state gives to the producers' co-operative societies and which the state, not the workers, “calls into being”. It is worthy of Lassalle's imagination that with state loans one can build a new society just as well as a new railway!

[...]

That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois.

Notwithstanding the scathing criticism, this call for the formation of producer cooperatives with state aid had a class-strugglist advantage: while forcing the hand of the state, this call forced the feeble, sectional struggles for such cooperatives to become part of the political struggle of the worker-class movement (in short, open class struggle).

The demand for the encouragement of, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for, pre-cooperative worker buyouts of existing enterprises and enterprise operations – particularly in light of the recent “occupied factory” movements – improves upon this history with regards to class independence. The very premise of pre-cooperative worker buyouts is that the workers themselves “call into being” these cooperatives like they did in the Paris Commune, especially if they are about to lose their jobs in the ensuing workplace closure, mass sacking, or mass layoff. Yes, there is encouragement but not actual establishment by the bourgeois-capitalist state, and there is also “state aid” to both the workers and the capitalist deserters, but given the necessity to get past the Erfurt Program’s precedent for both the excessive “orthodox Marxist” phobia of cooperativism and over-reliance on the state structure (i.e., continued over-emphasis on state-based social welfare schemes, topped with “Marxist”-based “socializations” all over the place, which in fact perpetuate wage labour and capitalism itself as a money-commodities-money process, or the famed M-C-M abbreviation), these are limited specifically to the pre-cooperative worker buyouts – thereby preserving the politico-ideological independence of the working class – and these are qualitatively superior to the “privatize the gains, socialize the losses” effects of perpetual corporate welfare (further examples of which have arisen recently in the financial services industry).

The aforementioned limitation needs to be contrasted with an example of perpetual “state aid,” the Inveval cooperative story, as reported by Kiraz Janicke of Venezuelanalysis.com and quoted in my earlier work:

Francisco Pinero, Inveval’s treasurer, explained that although Inveval is legally constituted as a cooperative with 51% owned by the state and 49% owned by the workers, “real power lies with the workers assembly.” Rather than supervisors, the workers at Inveval elect, through a workers assembly, recallable ‘coordinators of production,’ for a period of one year.

“Everyone here gets paid exactly the same, whether they work in administration, political formation, security or keeping the grounds clean,” another worker, Marino Mora added.

“We want the state to own 100%, but for the factory to be under workers control, for workers to control all production and administration. This is how we see the new productive model; we don't want to create new capitalists here,” Pinero made clear.

All in all, this reform does indeed meet that all-important Kautsky criterion, by providing workers the opportunity to exercise cooperative ownership and control as a preliminary to social ownership and control, as noted by Marx himself on the Paris Commune:

If united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production – what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism?



REFERENCES:

In What May We Hope? by David Schweickart [http://www.chicagodsa.org/ngarchive/ng89.html#anchor650664]

The Civil War in France: First Draft by Karl Marx [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/drafts/ch01.htm#D1s2]


Programme of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (Eisenach Programme) by August Bebel [http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=688]

A Critique of the German Social-Democratic Program by Michael Bakunin [http://libcom.org/library/a-critique-of-the-german-social-democratic-program-bakunin]

Critique of the Gotha Programme by Karl Marx [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch03.htm]

Venezuela’s Co-Managed Inveval: Surviving in a Sea of Capitalism by Kiraz Janicke, Venezuelanalysis.com [http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2520]

The Civil War in France by Karl Marx [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm]