Cooperatives and their role in the radical left

[the Leftâ„¢]

From my understanding cooperative are basically socialism in practice...

Why do they exist in such a small number if they are so successful like Mondragon in Spain?

Am i missing something? If this is an efficient departure from traditional capitalist problems, why isnt everyone starting one? :confused:

[PC LOAD LETTER]

The working class in general does not possess the capital to start businesses, much less form a cooperative with like-minded people.

Most of the people I interact with on a daily basis worry about affording food, not about pooling much-needed money to start a business.

And besides, it's still buying into capitalism ... it's not a solution, although it may improve the conditions of those involved ... however, selling someone on a cooperative ownership model can function as baby-steps to introducing them to socialism.

[Tim Cornelis]

Worker cooperatives do not have a "growing dynamic" like capitalist firms because of profit-sharing.

For example, a capitalist starts a successful business, and makes 10,000 profits a month so he expands his business anticipating 15,000 more profits.

But a worker cooperative works different, if workers start a worker cooperative they will share the profits made and have no incentive to expand their business because the profits will be shared among the new workers. So why expand?

[craigd89]

Worker cooperatives do not have a "growing dynamic" like capitalist firms because of profit-sharing.

For example, a capitalist starts a successful business, and makes 10,000 profits a month so he expands his business anticipating 15,000 more profits.

But a worker cooperative works different, if workers start a worker cooperative they will share the profits made and have no incentive to expand their business because the profits will be shared among the new workers. So why expand?
Well workers in a cooperative could agree to put a certain percentage of profit towards expanding?

[The Jay]

Worker cooperatives do not have a "growing dynamic" like capitalist firms because of profit-sharing.

For example, a capitalist starts a successful business, and makes 10,000 profits a month so he expands his business anticipating 15,000 more profits.

But a worker cooperative works different, if workers start a worker cooperative they will share the profits made and have no incentive to expand their business because the profits will be shared among the new workers. So why expand?

Here I think that investing in constant capital would be the best way to expand and increase profit, without increasing the effort of the workers. There are ways co-operatives can expand while increasing profit, without necessarily working harder.

[Искра]

Cooperatives have nothing to do with socialism as they are capitalist enterprises. They still exist on market and act as such.

The only positive thing with cooperatives is "better workplace within capitalist system".

Interesting article on Croatian: http://masa-hr.org/content/mondrag%C3%B3n-mit-o-kooperativama

[Tim Cornelis]

Well workers in a cooperative could agree to put a certain percentage of profit towards expanding?


Here I think that investing in constant capital would be the best way to expand and increase profit, without increasing the effort of the workers. There are ways co-operatives can expand while increasing profit, without necessarily working harder.

I think you both missed the point. A capitalist is motivated to expand his business because the profits he accruses may be grow. But a worker cooperative, by expending, may also generate a larger amount of profits but the profits are equally shared.

for example, if there is a worker cooperative of ten workers and they generate 10,000 dollars of profit each worker will receive 1,000 dollars. But if they want to expand their worker cooperative to thirty workers and anticipate 30,000 dollars earned in profits each worker will still receive 1,000 dollars. In other words, if ten workers of a cooperative will make 1,000 dollars regardless of whether they expand, then what purpose does expanding serve?It is an unnecessary costly risk. It will not increase your income! Therefore, worker cooperatives lack the expanding dynamics of a traditional capitalist firm.

EDIT: Additionally, if a capitalist employs ten workers who generate 10,000$ profits, and the capitalist expands his business to 30 workers who generate 27,000$ the profits of the capitalist increase. But if a worker cooperative did the same, their income would fall.

[Lyev]

I think this passage from Maurice Brinton's article, "The malaise on the left", seems to cover some of these issues:
The recuperation of the demand for working class power at the point of production and for a society based on Workers' Councils has, for instance, taken on a particularly sinister form. Confronted with the bureaucratic monstrosity of Stalinist and post-Stalinist Russia, yet wishing to retain some credibility among their working class supporters, various strands of Bolshevism have sought posthumously to rehabilitate the concept of "workers' control"�. Although "workers' control"� was only referred to once in the documents of the first four congresses of the Communist International it has recently become one of the Top Ten Slogans. Between 1917 and1921 all attempts by the working class to assert real power over production - or to transcend the narrow role allocated to it by the Party - were smashed by the Bolsheviks, after first having been denounced as anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist deviations. Today workers' control is presented as a sort of sugar coating to the pill of nationalisation of every Trotskyist or Leninist micro-bureaucrat on the make. Those who strangled the viable infant are now hawking the corpse around. The Institute for Workers' Control even runs annual conferences, addressed and dominated by trade union officials appointed for life. Those who are not prepared to allow workers to control their own organisations here and now serenade sundry simple-tons with fanciful tunes as to their fate in the future. Recuperation here is taking place amid incredible confusion.

For a long time the advocacy of genuine workers control (or, as we prefer to call it, workers' self management) remained confined to small groups of revolutionaries swimming against the great bureaucratic tide. Following the French events of May 1968 the demand took on a new reality and a new coherence. People began to see self-management as the dominant theme (and Workers' Councils as the institutional form) of a new society in which bureaucracy would be eliminated, and in which ordinary people would at last achieve genuine power over many aspects of their everyday life. But this again was to ignore the system's capacity for integrating dissent and harnessing it to its own advantage.

Can the demand for self-management be geared to the requirements of class society itself? An honest answer would be "yes, in some respects"�. Yes, providing those operating the self-management still accepted the values of the system. Yes, if it remained strictly localised. Yes, provided it was eviscerated of all political content Car assembly plants seeking to obtain the participation of the workers have been operating for some time in the Volvo and Saab factories in Sweden. Under the "with it"� guise of enriching the workers' job, employers have continued to enrich themselves. Groups of workers are allowed to manage their own alienation. The powers- that-be seek to resuscitate the anemic institutions of existing society (increasingly abandoned by those expected to make them function) with transfusions of "participation"�. No wonder the slogan has been taken up by everyone from Gaullist deputies to our own Liberals.

Revolutionaries are in some measures to blame for this confusion of form and content. They have insufficiently warned against the dangers inherent in any attempts at self-management with capitalism. And, in relation to the future, they have insufficiently stressed the limitations of the demand. Self-management and Workers' Councils are means to liberation. They are not liberation itself. Many revolutionaries have, moreover, tended to underestimate the complex problems of society as a whole. These have to be considered in addition to the problems of particular groups of workers. Our vision has never been "the railways to the railway men, the dust to the dustmen"�. We are not for self-managed insurance empires, for self-managed advertising companies, for the self-managed production of nuclear weapons.

This is not to say that self-management will not be the dominant theme, and the council probably the institutional form of any kind of socialist society. But they are no more than that. Into those particular bottles many wines can be poured. In contemporary society self-management could very well develop on a reformist, racist, nationalistic or militaristic basis. The historical precedents are here. Many Workers' Councils in Germany - in December 1918, and again later on - voted to surrender power to parliamentary institutions. Between 1930 and 1945 the vast majority of the British and German people identified with their respective rulers and mobilised themselves (or allowed themselves to be mobilised) in the defence of interests that were not their own. Israeli self-managed kibbutzim are vehicles for the dissemination of Zionist ideology and for implementing (anti-Arab) discrimination, i.e. anti- socialist policies. In Northern Ireland, amid an "unparalleled explosion of self-management"�, the self-activity of a civilian population recently brought down a government. . . in the name of sectarian and mystified objectives. The lessons are clear. Self- management, divorced from socialist politics, is meaningless.The whole article is here: http://libcom.org/library/malaise-on-the-left-brinton-solidarity

[promethean]

From my understanding cooperative are basically socialism in practice...

Why do they exist in such a small number if they are so successful like Mondragon in Spain?

Am i missing something? If this is an efficient departure from traditional capitalist problems, why isnt everyone starting one? :confused:
Co-operatives are formed by certain people who believe they can overcome the contradictions of the capitalist market within the confines of a single enterprise. Needless to say, this is an impossible venture. It is impossible to avoid the pitfalls of the market even if an enterprise is the most egalitarian. This is not to say that discriminatory businesses are alone the most successful in capitalism. The point is that irrespective of how well or cruelly workers are treated by enterprises, none can escape the laws of the market. Such ideas of forming businesses where everyone is treated well were put forth and implemented by utopian socialists like Robert Owen and others.

Forming co-operatives or buying only from "ethical" stores or boycotting businesses who support Israel etc are just useless actions undertaken by people who are ignorant of an understanding of capitalism. The same can be said of those who support such absurdities as Socialism in one Country. In other words, co-operatives who attempt socialism in a single enterprise, leaders who attempt socialism in a single country etc are all mistaken in their thinking that the laws of capitalism and the world market can be overcome within confined regions.


Worker cooperatives do not have a "growing dynamic" like capitalist firms because of profit-sharing.

For example, a capitalist starts a successful business, and makes 10,000 profits a month so he expands his business anticipating 15,000 more profits.

But a worker cooperative works different, if workers start a worker cooperative they will share the profits made and have no incentive to expand their business because the profits will be shared among the new workers. So why expand?What if a non-coop enterprise makes better goods at a cheaper price?

[aty]

We are actually starting a cooperative socialist healt care center in Sweden, Stockholm by the organization "Socialist Doctors".

I think that if the economy is formed by enough cooperatives with a political agenda they can eventually come togheter and take over the economy and therefore the society. But the cooperatives have to be socialist motivated and move towards more socialism.
If you look at the countries that have had revolutions, in every country there have been either a large part of the economy either already collectivized(russias farmers) or in cooperatives(Spain).

[promethean]

We are actually starting a cooperative socialist healt care center in Sweden, Stockholm by the organization "Socialist Doctors".

I think that if the economy is formed by enough cooperatives with a political agenda they can eventually come togheter and take over the economy and therefore the society. But the cooperatives have to be socialist motivated and move towards more socialism.
If you look at the countries that have had revolutions, in every country there have been either a large part of the economy either already collectivized(russias farmers) or in cooperatives(Spain).
Cooperatives transfer the ownership of an enterprise from an individual capitalist to a collective ownership by workers. This only recreates capitalism in a different form. It has little to do with socialism, which is the free association of producers in a planned economy.

To put your Russian and Spanish references in context, the Obshchina (peasant communes) were not part of a collectivized agriculture in Russia. Much of Russian agriculture was very backward and pre-capitalist for most of the time before Stalin's attempt at forcefully enforcing collective agriculture and it can be argued that agriculture never attained a capitalist form in the former Soviet Union. This is seen as one of the main reasons for the failure of the Russian revolution.

It is not correct to argue that there was even a Spanish revolution. The Civil War was fought between two factions of capitalists. Also, Spanish cooperatives were failures.

[aty]

To put your Russian and Spanish references in context, the Obshchina (peasant communes) were not part of a collectivized agriculture in Russia. Much of Russian agriculture was very backward and pre-capitalist for most of the time before Stalin's attempt at forcefully enforcing collective agriculture and it can be argued that agriculture never attained a capitalist form in the former Soviet Union. This is seen as one of the main reasons for the failure of the Russian revolution.
I have heard that 90% of the farmers belonged to a peasant commune before the revolution. That is the main reason why Marx thought that Russia could go directly to communism and were an exception from the historicalmaterialism. The "collectivization" was just state control and state-capitalism. It is a fact that revolutionaries were born in these peasant communes, that would not conform to a capitalist system.


It is not correct to argue that there was even a Spanish revolution. The Civil War was fought between two factions of capitalists. Also, Spanish cooperatives were failures.
Of course it was a spanish revolution that reached far in large parts of Spain. Two factions of capitalists? Haha, why did then 500 anarchosyndicalists from Sweden die in Spain? It failed because of stalinists and fascists.
And I would like too see some proof that the spanish anarchist cooperatives were failures?

[promethean]

I have heard that 90% of the farmers belonged to a peasant commune before the revolution. That is the main reason why Marx thought that Russia could go directly to communism and were an exception from the historicalmaterialism. The "collectivization" was just state control and state-capitalism. It is a fact that revolutionaries were born in these peasant communes, that would not conform to a capitalist system. Marx was wrong about that completely. Probably the one main thing a country would need before transitioning from capitalism to socialism is a capitalist agriculture. The peasant communes represented a primitive form of collective agriculture. Most of the peasants were against the state taking away their land and were met with resistance whenever this was tried, which led to the brief period from 1921-28, called the NEP, where private landholdings were allowed. So in essence, Marx was wrong about the possibility of Russia being able to transition to communism. In any case, coming back to the topic, the peasants of those peasant communes were some of the most conservative elements, who opposed the revolution in every way possible. Needless to say, the revolution was actually carried mainly out by the urban proletariat through the establishment of workers councils.


Of course it was a spanish revolution that reached far in large parts of Spain. Two factions of capitalists? Haha, why did then 500 anarchosyndicalists from Sweden die in Spain? It failed because of stalinists and fascists.
And I would like too see some proof that the spanish anarchist cooperatives were failures?
Well, the two factions involved in the civil war were the Republicans and the Nationalists. Both of these factions had international aid from other bourgeois governments, for example, fascists in Italy and Germany for Franco and the Soviet Union for the Republicans. Several misguided anarchists died fighting for a capitalist war. This does not make the civil war any less capitalist. As for the anarchist co-operatives, this basically involved the occupation of factories and industries within a small region of the the country. As such, these attempts failed since they did not last beyond a few months. This is the proof that they failed.

[Thirsty Crow]

From my understanding cooperative are basically socialism in practice...

No, they're not basically socialism in practice simply because they are capitalist enterprises.
Workers' direct control over aspects of their day to day labour process might or might not be a neccesary condition for (global) socialism (I would strongly argue for the necessity of organs or proletarian control such as factory/workplace committees), but the production of value - production for exchange on the market whereas the means of production appear as capital is most definitely a conditon under which socialism is non-existent, though some socialists fall to the siren song of such radical reformism (transformation of all economic units into worker co-ops).

[Thirsty Crow]

Worker cooperatives do not have a "growing dynamic" like capitalist firms because of profit-sharing.

For example, a capitalist starts a successful business, and makes 10,000 profits a month so he expands his business anticipating 15,000 more profits.

But a worker cooperative works different, if workers start a worker cooperative they will share the profits made and have no incentive to expand their business because the profits will be shared among the new workers. So why expand?
Have you ever looked into how a concrete workers' co-op functions? You might check out the lauded Mondragon:


It sounds conflict-free, but that is misleading. One of Mondragón’s many paradoxes is that worker-owners are also the bosses of other workers. People have been hired in far-flung places, from America to China, as the group has expanded. It now has more subsidiary companies than co-operatives. Mondragón has two employees for every co-op member

http://libcom.org/library/co-operatives-all-together

So tell me exactly, how did Mondragon not have a growth dynamic like "regular" capitalist enterprise? Or if you concede that it does, would you argue that it is, in fact, not a workers' co-op at all?
And the question of why expand is very easy to answer - because of more profits.

[Revolution starts with U]

To be fair, Mondragoran is currently trying to incorporate those workers into the ownership model. And that's the problem, they ARE still capitalism. They have certain obligations to be met, based on market demands.

Nevertheless, I think they are a viable program for our support. It may not be in their interests, per se, to support socialism proper. But what IS in their interest is to take customers away from traditional businesses thereby proving the superiority of autonomy, and the failure of the private dictatorship.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I've asked this question dozens of times over the years and never got a straight answer:

What's the difference between 3 anarchists staring a "co-op" cafe and 3 petty-bourgeois brothers starting a "regular" cafe?

[Mr. Natural]

It is my understanding that Marx initially liked the idea of cooperatives, but came to see that they were inevitably coopted/degraded by their participation within capitalist institutions and relations.

It is also my understanding (could be wrong) that Mondragon has declined significantly.

However, I would still like to get together with other radicals to design a cooperative that generates and promotes socialist values within capitalism. It can be done. For an outstanding example, see Joel Kovel's discussion of the Bruderhof in The Enemy of Nature (2003).

Has anyone at RevLeft read Kovel's Enemy (2003)? It's a very valuable and up-to-date work by a red-green Marxist.

[farleft]

I think you both missed the point. A capitalist is motivated to expand his business because the profits he accruses may be grow. But a worker cooperative, by expending, may also generate a larger amount of profits but the profits are equally shared.

A worker co-op may have other reasons to expand differing from the capitalist reasons. A worker co-op may decide to become expansionist in order to create jobs for people so that they can help people better their standard of living.
Of course the profit is shared equally between the workers and more workers equals less profit per worker but as these workers are not profit driven this could work. The worker co-op would need to be a communist worker co-op and a constitution drawn up that states its goals.

What's the difference between 3 anarchists staring a "co-op" cafe and 3 petty-bourgeois brothers starting a "regular" cafe?

The 3 brothers would eventually employ someone and screw that worker by making profit from their labour.
A worker co-op would not employ anyone, people joining the co-op would become co-owners and share the profits and work-load equally.

[Tim Finnegan]

Cooperatives have nothing to do with socialism as they are capitalist enterprises. They still exist on market and act as such.
I'm not sure if it's as simple as that. Cooperatives represent a paradoxical relationship between labour and capital, in which labour formally dominates capital, but has to meet the demands of capital by voluntarily perpetuating its own subjugation. Cooperative members are not simply petty bourgeoisie, but what you might call "self-exploiting workers", although I'd be entirely open to a less counter-intuitive description. That's neither the usual straightforward domination of labour by capital, nor the transcendence of capitalist relations by labour, but a sort of limbo between the two; socialism-in-waiting, you might say, rather than ICHCW's "socialism-in-practice". Only when labour as a whole moves to transcend capitalism can labour in this instance do the same.

(Edit: Of course, I'm talking about what you might call an "ideal cooperative" here. Mutual ownership itself doesn't guarantee that, and may simply exist as a more egalitarian profit-sharing program, such as in the John Lewis Partnership in the UK.)


The only positive thing with cooperatives is "better workplace within capitalist system".This much is certainly true, although there's still a question of how valuable this small thing is.


What's the difference between 3 anarchists staring a "co-op" cafe and 3 petty-bourgeois brothers starting a "regular" cafe?
The co-op does vegan lattes, duh. ;)

[promethean]

I'm not sure if it's as simple as that. Cooperatives represent a paradoxical relationship between labour and capital, in which labour formally dominates capital, but has to meet the demands of capital by voluntarily perpetuating its own subjugation. Not sure if I understand what you are saying here. For labour to formally dominate capital, there needs to be a rule of labour in the society as a whole (as in dictatorship of the proletariat). A cooperative exists within the capitalist market of a nation and is subject to the laws of that market. Its members formally 'own' the business but they still receive wages and are alienated from their labour. The cooperative may not have a single owner as in a capitalist, but one can justifiably consider the workers who own the business as members of the board of directors. This can be justified based on the fact that these workers have to carry out the process of capital investment and reinvestment based on the returns from the sale of commodities. Therefore, the whole operation would just be actually a worker-run capitalism.

To put it simply, workers are alienated from their labour at the point of production and they participate in the process of accumulation and reproduction. So, it might not be right to say that labour dominates capital in a cooperative.


Cooperative members are not simply petty bourgeoisie, but what you might call "self-exploiting workers", although I'd be entirely open to a less counter-intuitive description. That's neither the usual straightforward domination of labour by capital, nor the transcendence of capitalist relations by labour, but a sort of limbo between the two; socialism-in-waiting, you might say, rather than ICHCW's "socialism-in-practice". Only when labour as a whole moves to transcend capitalism can labour in this instance do the same.Not sure what ICHCW means. This is also not quite accurate IMO since the law of value still exists. There have been several theories of why the USSR was not quite capitalist, based on the fact that the law of value in that economy had been eliminated through the use of central planning, which ensured the non-existence of a capitalist market, but this certainly is not applicable to an individual institution like a cooperative.

[Jose Gracchus]

I've asked this question dozens of times over the years and never got a straight answer:

What's the difference between 3 anarchists staring a "co-op" cafe and 3 petty-bourgeois brothers starting a "regular" cafe?

When are the three petty bourgeois ever going to let me have a toke with my coffee?

The USSR and "cooperatives" are not exactly mutually exclusive. The long-time mainstay of Soviet agriculture was the kolkhoz, which juridically was constituted as a cooperative (at a lower level than most cooperative shops; the kolkhoz actually was a organizational compromise from a cooperative and individual production, you split time and work between your little plot and 'cooperative' land), and conducted business with the Soviet state and agricultural surplus markets as a cooperative business (which was not meaningless--all production in excess of state orders could be sold freely to consumers, IIRC).

BTW, Promethean, do you think the law of value operated at all in the USSR?

[promethean]

When are the three petty bourgeois ever going to let me have a toke with my coffee?

The USSR and "cooperatives" are not exactly mutually exclusive. The long-time mainstay of Soviet agriculture was the kolkhoz, which juridically was constituted as a cooperative (at a lower level than most cooperative shops; the kolkhoz actually was a organizational compromise from a cooperative and individual production, you split time and work between your little plot and 'cooperative' land), and conducted business with the Soviet state and agricultural surplus markets as a cooperative business (which was not meaningless--all production in excess of state orders could be sold freely to consumers, IIRC).

BTW, Promethean, do you think the law of value operated at all in the USSR?This is a good question. My honest answer at this point is that I do not know.:D I can only recall the different theories on this subject. I am half way through reading Van Linden's Western Marxism and so far, it has been interesting to learn about the staggering number of theories on this subject. It is interesting to know that despite several new insights and challenges to the Trotskyist theory of degenerated workers state, Trotskyists have never really changed this theory a lot, which is perhaps indicative of the weakness of this theory. As far as I am aware, the non-existence of a market and the fact that the economy was planned was put forth by them as to the reason why the law of value did not operate in the USSR. On the other hand, the number of ways the state capitalist theory has been put forth have been just too many. On a side note, it was interesting to note the connection Van Linden draws between Bordiga and Bettelheim, in their seeing a number of capitals operating within the USSR. This was undoubtedly later made use of by Chattopadhay, who was inspired by both of them, in his book.

[farleft]

Comparing a board of directors to a worker cooperative seems a little harsh, I get what you are saying and I do see the correlation only for one thing...

A board of directors don't actually do any work, like Manny Fontenla-Novoa formally of Thomas Cook they do nothing (except possibly run the company into the ground and screwing workers out of their jobs) yet take massive sums of money.

[Buttress]

Co-operatives are clearly less oppressive ways of running a business and in that context they should be praised. Sure they're still part of the capitalistic way of things, but so is everything else until a revolution comes around. If one is expected to remain oppressed under capitalism in order to be a "good" socialist, what on Earth are we really fighting for?

[farleft]

Indeed Buttress.

It is also worth mentioning that not all cooperatives are the same and very much depends on the details of how the workers organise themselves and what they do with the profit.

I expect that each cooperative has their own constitution which sets things out clearly.

One option might be that all profit (that is after a liveable wage has been given to each worker) is put aside in a seperate pot to pay for the development and expansion of the business (as well as emergency funds). Assuming the co-ops aims were to provide as many jobs as possible for their fellow worker.

If these worker co-ops expanded into different sectors in a localised area they could share resources (offer facilities to each other either directly for free or on an exchange basis). As the co-ops work within the capitalist framework of course money is need from the customers in order to pay for the building, rents, rates, food etc.

The only way this could be circumvented is if the co-ops expanded into food and energy (solar panels and veg patch/farm).

It would be extremely difficult and either way it's certainly not a means to an end but co-ops can provide better and fairer jobs while putting the 'product' first and not profits.

As someone who works for a private language school as a teacher and has worked at other language schools previously the product is rarely (never) put first and profit is often (always) put first.

Organising a worker cooperative language school could be very productive and successful.

[Red Noob]

From my understanding cooperative are basically socialism in practice...

I would agree, just like open source software is, except cooperatives generally produce a tangible commodity.


Why do they exist in such a small number if they are so successful like Mondragon in Spain?
Am i missing something? If this is an efficient departure from traditional capitalist problems, why isnt everyone starting one? :confused:

It's simply a matter of a group of workers organizing and planning. I've read and researched a bit on communes/collectives and generally during the building stage of the worker's community, the workers go through financial hardships and accumulate a lot of debt, but the more successful communes overcome it. Worker communities generally fail, at least from my understanding and from what I've read, because of poor economic and financial management. A perfect example of this is one of the last Maoist villages in China has millions of dollars of debt due to their overspending and poor management.

[Tim Finnegan]

Not sure if I understand what you are saying here. For labour to formally dominate capital, there needs to be a rule of labour in the society as a whole (as in dictatorship of the proletariat). A cooperative exists within the capitalist market of a nation and is subject to the laws of that market. Its members formally 'own' the business but they still receive wages and are alienated from their labour. The cooperative may not have a single owner as in a capitalist, but one can justifiably consider the workers who own the business as members of the board of directors. This can be justified based on the fact that these workers have to carry out the process of capital investment and reinvestment based on the returns from the sale of commodities. Therefore, the whole operation would just be actually a worker-run capitalism.
To put it simply, workers are alienated from their labour at the point of production and they participate in the process of accumulation and reproduction. So, it might not be right to say that labour dominates capital in a cooperative.
I don't think I was clear before, so allow me to re-iterate. What I was suggesting is that while capital and labour exist in a cooperative, the fact that the workers own and run the place both as capitalists and as workers means that the relationship between the two cannot simply be conflated with that of any other firm. (While Nothing Human Is Alien To Me is right that a very small cooperative is indistinct from any other small business, I don't think that holds true for cooperatives of a size in which the worker-owners are actually waged, rather than merely portioning out the gross profits between them- as you note, in such circumstances the alienation of the worker will occur in this setting.) Labour is dominant over capital because the workers own and run the place, and can make any demand as workers upon themselves as bosses that they wish; capital has been entirely neutered as an autonomous force. However, the fact that the enterprise still exists within a capitalistic system means that it must follow capitalistic methods of production, and so labour must voluntarily subjugate itself to capital, limiting the demands of labour and maintaining the transfer of surplus labour to capital just as if it was still in a position to command and appropriate it in the usual fashion. This means that cooperatives are in the unusual position of being on the threshold of communistic relations, but are completely paralysed by their social context and so unable to advance past this point by so much as an inch. As you say, communism is something that must exist across an entire society, and not in a single factory (or country, for that matter), and so it is not possible for any one productive unit to become communist until are moving in that direction; for the rule of labour to fulfil its historic mission of giving birth to a communist society, it cannot rule in any one instance but must obtain a full social hegemony.

I think that, my miscommunication aside, we are overwhelmingly in agreement about this, although I'd be interested to know if you have any further opinions on the topic.


Not sure what ICHCW means.I Can Has Class War, the OP.


This is also not quite accurate IMO since the law of value still exists. There have been several theories of why the USSR was not quite capitalist, based on the fact that the law of value in that economy had been eliminated through the use of central planning, which ensured the non-existence of a capitalist market, but this certainly is not applicable to an individual institution like a cooperative.I wasn't suggesting that the law of value did not exist- quite the opposite in fact. My description rests on the idea that capital and labour still exist in co-operatives as they do in any other market enterprise; the suggestion was only that the relationship between the two is unusual.

[MaerF0x0]

It seems to me that people keep saying "market forces" being synonymous with "Price competition" . Consumer "Value" is also a market force in that I may never buy from Monsanto at any (positive) price because I believe their products have a below zero value. That is I believe that Monsanto products do harm and thus they should pay me/society for the usage of their product. The same could be true about any industry/market in which the buyers value the fact that the means of production is owned by the workers of the equipment.
This is what I keep thinking should happen as worker co-ops boot strap their way to eventual (near, there will always be haters) total communal ownership of the means of production. Is it really any different if we as a communist nation product 100 muffins (market value $100), 3 cars (MV $75,000) and 2 couches (MV $1000) and then share the products amongst ourselves or if we produce said products and sell them for their market value and then share the $76,100 amongst our selves? It seems to me that either should be equivalent.

And as workers see the benefits of not being exploited (ie, receiving the full value of the collective labour pool) they will desire less and less to work for capitally exploitive operations.

Worker Co-ops could expand as a "constitutional" mandate and because they believe in a dream more than their own personal profit. I value a communal nature to our society more than I value a ferarri, therefore I will forgo personal dollars profit in order to attain personal ethical profit in the form of expanding said communal forms of production.

Lets hear the rebuttal.

[farleft]

Yes I largely agree Maer.

I think that the constitution of the worker co-op would be the major factor when considering the question of their role among the radical left.

[Jose Gracchus]

Have you attempted to deal at all with historical questions surrounding cooperatives? What of the exploitative nature of Yugoslav cooperatives, or the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation?

[farleft]

Have you attempted to deal at all with historical questions surrounding cooperatives? What of the exploitative nature of Yugoslav cooperatives, or the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation?

I think this thread is more about the concept of cooperatives rather than any specific examples around the world.

For example the Co-op in the UK which may or may not be the largest cooperative in the world is just as exploitive as any other business but there is no need for a cooperative to operate in this manner, the organisational structure of cooperatives (worker or otherwise) are not all the same nor are their goals the same.

There is potential (in my opinion) for (worker) cooperatives to play an important role among the radical left provided that their organisational structure negated exploitation among those running it and that it's constitution was focused on providing a liveable wage for those involved while pooling surplus profit into the expansion of the operation in order to provide as many sustainable jobs as possible and the highest quality product/service as possible.

This is admittedly far from perfect as money would still be needed and could only reasonably be expected to be gained by charging the customer for the product/service though I would expect that this could be done at a lower fee than traditional businesses while also providing a higher quality product/service.

[Tim Finnegan]

For example the Co-op in the UK which may or may not be the largest cooperative in the world is just as exploitive as any other business...
It's also a consumer cooperative, rather than a workers' cooperative, so it's not really indicative of anything. It's just a relatively egalitarian form of join-stock company. You're better off looking at things like, to take Jose Gracchus's example, the Mondragon Corporation if you want to develop a solid perspective on "actually-existing-cooperativism".

Edit: @my last posts- In the last week I've been reading some stuff about the subsumption of labour under capital, criticism of class-as-positive-category, blah blah blah, and now I'm not entirely sure that my previous posts make any sense unless you're actually talking about 18th century handloom weavers. (Funny how quickly your mind can change...) So I guess they shouldn't be taken too seriously?