Richard D. Wolff

I believe that your interpretation of worker cooperatives as the starting point towards a transition towards socialism draws heavily from Capital. Particularly, there is a chapter in Volume III where Marx states that worker ownership is a starting point. "The co-operative factories of the laborers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organization all the shortcomings of the prevailing system"(Marx, Capital Volume 3, Chapter 27) If the aforementioned interpretation is correct, wouldn't cooperatives still suffer from the same cycles that plague a capitalist economic system? Wouldn't the law of value still dominate in the sphere of circulation? Even if co-ops completely resolved the contradictory nature of capital in the production function, one could still be a landlord/usurer/capitalist if private property still exists. I could buy up land or property and rent it out to exploit workers. If you do not agree with this interpretation, do you think Marx was wrong?