How come worker co-ops serve a blueprint for a 21st socialist economy when we know that in the past many of them have degenerated (like Israeli agricultural coops 'Kibbutz' or firms in US plywood industry) as their members either sold their shares in the open market or hired workers that were non-members and hence they themselves turned into capitalists thereby making a coop revert back to a conventional firm?
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Au revoir! my friend :)
" some people are on the wrong side of history’ as if there is a natural progression of values
like those cute evolutionary drawings of human evolution. I could add another hominid to the right of that good looking, military postured fella with a complex tool: A figure again bent over from back breaking work with a dull look from toxic pollution and no education.
U.S. Corporations were once artificial constructs granted by and for the people. Once we kill that now capitalist erectus HUMAN falsehood a similar restraint needs to be emplaced for co opts.
Yes Stathi I know many of them didn’t, in fact some of them are big success stories in modern day labor economics, but I am asking from a political point of view. The whole point of our leftist struggle is to create a sustainable economy which cannot be reversed or degenerate back to earlier modes of production. For example, in the modern day capitalist economy it is absolutely impossible to revert back to slavery or feudalism.
In this regard worker cooperatives do indeed represent a QUANTITATIVE change over the traditional top-down capitalist firms but STILL they are operating within the larger market economy. So what I am asking is that how can we create a worker co-op sector/economy that represents BOTH a quantitative as well as qualitative change over the previous systems and that won’t just degenerate back into earlier forms?
Anyways thanks for the useful links that you shared.
Best Regards,
Hassan Mujtaba
But I agree that these are big issues. I believe they can be avoided perhaps by altering the founding constitution or ‘rules’ of a co-op. For an excellent write up on these issues and some possible solutions see here: https://development.abolishhumanrentals.org/