Originally posted by
[email protected] 11, 2007 08:01 am
In assessing the potential for worker-owned firms/ communes we should consider the important factors.
First, in most post-industrial first-world countries very little manufacturing is left, these economies are focused primarily on service industries, management, finance, agriculture, medicine, energy, communications, transportation, education, and the creation and maintence of infrastructure.
Second, in most of these countries the populations are experiencing a steady growth in higher education rates, both secondary and post-secondary schooling.
Considering both, we have a country with an educated or highly-educated workforce trained to work in the post-industrial service economy, so unless you wish to rebuild factories from scratch, the focus of a worker-ran economy in such a country will have to be on the previously mentioned fields, though any remaining manufacturing should be proletarianized.
Your first step is to gain control of ownership, capital, and property- throw a revolution or get lots of money and start buying out all the firms.
Next introduce the concept of workplace equality and managerial democracy to the workers, building on the skills they already have while introducing them to the process of democratic control of the firm's direction.
This process should be organic and patient, introducing the necessary factors and letting it grow from there. It would be unwise to establish central planning and production quotas over any number of firms, that is for the workers to decide and discover on their own. Once they have control they should compete in capitalist fashion with like firms, turning a profit and splitting it evenly among the workers, until they gradually find areas where cooperation with other firms would be more beneficial than competition. Gradually cooperatives may merge and work together to tackle a shared task of providing a good or service. This is not glorious Bolshevism, it is evolutionary and will get the job done slower but better.
In terms of starting it all up, I've always been interested about the option outside of revoltion, though revolution is probably the most effective method. I lay no claim to this idea, many have thought it before, but it is the idea of setting up a socialistic franchize. A company with lots of money buys out 10 smaller companies and gains ownership over them. Once in control they introduce workplace democracy to the workers, giving them immediate control over operations. The parent company will collect a profit but give say 25-50% of to the workers to split amongst themselves evenly. The head company then reinvests the profits from the 10 smaller companies into the purchase of more companies, continuing the process until capitalism completely sells itself out. During the process the head company will gradually emancipate its owned companies, giving the workers of each firm 100% collective ownership and control.
Some may disagree with the idea of retaining such constructs like, ownership, profit, supply&demand and other capitalist institutions within a worker-owned context, but I think it is the only possible way to start the system and the only way to eventually get rid of them.
Without access to energy and self-sufficiency, a post-capitalist society cannot do anything. It is not about what people do, but about the production capacity.