Cooperatives and Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises

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A Cure for Capitalism - Palo Alto - YouTube

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2013. 3. 15. - 업로더: RichardDWolff

This evening was the launch Wolff's latest book, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism released ...

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2012. 9. 14. - 업로더: RichardDWolff

Democracy at Work is a social movement building project that took shape in ... Democracy at Work: A Cure ...

Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

 

A new historical vista is opening before us in this time of change, Wolff writes in this compelling new manifesto for a democratic alternative based on workers directing their own workplaces.

Publisher: Haymarket Books

ISBN-10

ISBN-13 9781608462476

Publication Date May 2012

List Price $17.00

Available for pre-order through democracyatwork.info

Reviews of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

 

"Richard Wolff is the leading socialist economist in the country. This book is required reading for anyone concerned about a fundamental transformation of the ailing capitalist economy!"

 

- Cornel West

 

"Ideas of economic democracy are very much in the air, as they should be, with increasing urgency in the midst of today's serious crises. Richard Wolff's constructive and innovative ideas suggest new and promising foundations for much more authentic democracy and sustainable and equitable development, ideas that can be implemented directly and carried forward. A very valuable contribution in troubled times."

 

–– Noam Chomsky

 

"Bold, thoughtful, transformative-a powerful and challenging vision of that takes us beyond both corporate capitalism and state socialism. RIchard Wolff at his best!"

 

–– Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism

 

"Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity, and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses aren't socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down. Richard Wolff not only imagines it, but in his compelling, captivating and stunningly reasoned new book, Democracy at Work, he details how we get there from here - and why we absolutely must."

 

- Nomi Prins, Author of  It Takes a Pillage and Black Tuesday

 

 

This article originally appeared on truth-out.org

 

"Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses aren't socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down. Richard Wolff not only imagines it, but in his compelling, captivating and stunningly reasoned new book, Democracy at Work, he details how we get there from here - and why we absolutely must."

-- Nomi Prins, Author of It Takes a Pillage and Black Tuesday

Few are better equipped than economist Richard Wolff, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, to address the massive failings and inequalities of capitalism as he does in his latest book, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism.

 

He also describes Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs) as an alternative to the capitalism that broke the US economy and has resulted in massive economic redistribution to the ruling elites. Receive a copy from Truthout with a minimum contribution. Just click here.

 

Mark Karlin: In your book, what is the distinction between capitalism and welfare state capitalism?

 

Richard Wolff: Capitalism, like all other economic systems, displays a variety of forms. There are, for example, largely private, laissez-faire kinds of capitalism that differ in many ways from forms of capitalism in which the state plays more significant roles, such as market regulator or social welfare guarantor (as in "state welfare capitalism"), or as a close partner of capitalists as in fascism. What remains the same across all such forms - why they all deserve the label "capitalist" - is the exclusion of the mass of workers that produces the output and generates the profits from receiving and distributing that profit, and from generally participating democratically in enterprise decisions. Capitalism excludes workers from deciding what is produced, how it is produced, where it is produced and how profits are to be used and distributed. Democracy at Work is a critique and alternative aimed at changing that exclusion shared by all these forms of capitalism.

 

Mark Karlin: In that regard, what do you think about the contention that FDR was not at all an opponent of capitalism, but simply saw that some government intervention was necessary in the US economy in order to save capitalism during the depression of the '30s?

 

Richard Wolff: What FDR saw was the political might of the coalition of unionists (galvanized by the CIO in the middle 1930's), socialist and communist parties demanding that government not only bail out the banks and corporations, but also directly help the mass of people suffering the Great Depression. Elements within that coalition threatened that Washington's failure to respond to do so would turn many millions of US citizens against capitalism. FDR got the message and crafted a deal in response. The government would both tax and borrow from corporations and the rich to fund the new Social Security system, national unemployment insurance, and a vast program of federal hiring. In return, the coalition would downplay its anti-capitalism and celebrate instead the achievement of a welfare state type of capitalism. The coalition mostly accepted this New Deal. FDR went on to win four consecutive presidential elections making him the most popular president in US history. The New Deal saved the capitalist system by changing its form from a relatively more laissez-faire [form]to a welfare-type state.

 

Mark Karlin: Before the recent crash, what was the capitalist crisis from above and below that you describe in the book?

 

Richard Wolff: The crisis from above refers to the speculative mania indulged by the small minority of people (major holders of corporate securities, boards of directors, their professional staffs, etc.) who gathered increasing profits into their hands as wages stagnated after the mid-1970s. Financial enterprises competed for the funds accumulating in this minority's hands by taking ever-greater risks with old and new (e.g. asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, etc.) financial instruments. Another in the long history of capitalist speculative manias built a bubble on the back of the rising debt of the US working class. When the latter's debt burden could no longer be serviced, the bubble burst, adding the crisis from above to that built from below by the lethal mixture of stagnant wages and rising debts.

 

Mark Karlin: How does the distribution of surpluses in revenue (profits) in business enterprises affect the economic structure of a society?

 

Richard Wolff: The surplus generated by enterprises - the excess of revenue from commodity sales over the direct costs of producing those commodities - is what capitalists receive and control in capitalist economies. They then distribute those surpluses as they see fit to reproduce the system in which they occupy such exalted positions. Thus, for example, they distribute some of the surplus to top corporate officials (shaping the distribution of income and wealth in capitalist societies), some to moving production abroad if, when and where that might generate larger surpluses (producing unemployment at home and growth abroad), some to donations to politicians and parties to shape and control political decisions to serve their needs, and so on. The distribution of the surplus is thus a major shaper of how our society works, how we all live.

 

Mark Karlin: During the last few years, particularly during and after the Occupy movement, many of the masters of the universe on Wall Street trumpeted their alleged intellectual capital, as if capitalism was equal to being the smartest guys on the block. In this bragging rights boasting, it can be inferred that workers are interchangeable parts of a machine and should be grateful to those with "intellectual capital." How do you respond to that claim?

 

Richard Wolff: Intellectual capital is just the latest name for an old idea that has long been recognized as a crucial part of production. In the past, other names included "know how" and "technology" and "expertise." The basic idea was that in addition to the tools, equipment, machines and raw materials that go into production, and in addition to the muscles and energy people contribute to production, there is the mental capacity to think, to adjust behavior, to invent new things and new ways of working - that is also crucial to production. To build that "intellectual capital" is one purpose of schooling. Of course, everyone in the production process can bring his or her intellectual capital into the production process if that process is organized to welcome, recognize, reward and stimulate that. When people suggest that only executives or financiers have or apply "intellectual capital," that is one sure way to discourage and reduce the application of workers' intellectual capital to production.

 

Mark Karlin: Refreshingly, you offer a key alternative to capitalism in decline. You promote Workers' Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDE) in Part III of your book. What would be a succinct description of a WSDE?

 

Richard Wolff: Quite simply, a WSDE entails the workers who make whatever a corporation sells also functioning - collectively and democratically - as their own board of directors. WSDEs thereby abolish the capitalist differentiation and opposition of surplus producers versus surplus appropriators. Instead, the workers themselves cooperatively run their own enterprise, thereby bringing democracy inside the enterprise where capitalism had long excluded it.

 

Mark Karlin: In your sixth chapter, you contrast WSDEs with worker-owned enterprises, worker-managed enterprises and cooperatives. What are the primary differences?

 

Richard Wolff: Workers have a long history of multiple kinds of cooperatives. That is, workers can cooperatively own (e.g. their pension fund holds shares in the company that employs them), buy (e.g. the many food coops around the country), sell (e.g. grape growers who combine to market their outputs), and manage (e.g. workers take turns supervising themselves). All such cooperatives can and often do co-exist with a capitalist organization of production in the precise sense of workers being excluded from the decisions of what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits. What makes WSDEs unique is precisely that they are about cooperative production, about ending the capitalist division of producers from appropriators of the surplus, and replacing it with democratic cooperative decisions governing production and the social use of its fruits.

 

Mark Karlin: Where does the much-celebrated (and world's largest) M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon cooperative model fit in with your vision of WSDEs?

 

Richard Wolff: M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon is the world's largest and perhaps most successful example of WSDEs' successful growth in competition with conventional capitalist enterprises. Begun in 1956 with six workers organized into a cooperative enterprise by a Spanish priest, the M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC) now employs over 100,000 workers, is the largest corporation in the Basque part of Spain and the tenth largest corporation in all of Spain. It has extensive research and development labs generating new ways to produce new products and maintains its own university to train its workers and interested others in all the ways of running and building democratically cooperative enterprises. MCC is thus a remarkable testimony to the contemporary viability and strength of non-capitalist production systems.

 

Mark Karlin: I recently asked this question in another interview on labor and economics and received an answer that amounted to a sigh. Although there is definitely a growing cooperative movement in the United States, it is still struggling. What will be the tipping point that will persuade US workers that WSDEs are preferable to the current managerial capitalist system? So many workers in the US have been brainwashed that any alternative to capitalism is satanic and communist. How does an idea like WSDEs change from an intellectual concept to a grassroots labor movement?

 

Richard Wolff: As has happened often in human history, what provokes change is less any clear vision of where we go next and more the intolerability of where we are. Capitalism is no longer "delivering the goods" for most people.The circle of its beneficiaries grows smaller and richer and more out of touch with the mass of people than ever. In the US, this is particularly problematic because the rationale of US capitalism has long been its creating and sustenance of a vast "middle class." As capitalism's evolution destroys that middle class, it opens the space in minds and hearts to inquire after alternatives to an increasingly unacceptable system. WSDEs offer precisely that. Nothing better illustrates that growing interest than the fact that Democracy at Work is going into a second printing three months after it was first published.

 

Mark Karlin: Republicans and Democrats both tout the alleged benefits of free trade agreements, despite their lack of adequate support for labor rights and worker remuneration. One thing that free trade advocates claim is that by moving to lower-cost labor, products will be cheaper in the US. While this may be true in some cases, this hardly appears to be the case in name brand products (particularly clothes) and trendy hi-tech products such as Apple. For instance, I went to a retail store and looked at items made by Calvin Klein, Nautica, and IZOD. Not one of the items, not one, was made in the United States. Most were made in China and Southeast Asia. Supposing we assume a worker who gets a few dollars a day produces a Nautica polo shirt for $1. Add the costs of material and equipment and maybe we get to $3. Add management and shipping and maybe we get to $5 per shirt, maybe. But the retail price on upper end brand name polo shirts could be as much as $70. So the shirt is not less expensive; the company is just making a greater profit off of exploited labor overseas. Is that correct?

 

Richard Wolff: When US corporations producing for the US market move existing (or open new) production facilities overseas, their usual goal is more profits. They relocate to exploit cheaper labor, lax environmental rules, lower taxes, etc. If they lowered their prices, then the cheaper labor, lax rules, and lower taxes would raise their profits less or not at all. So they rarely drop prices much when they move and then only temporarily to gain market share (thereby pressuring competitors to similarly relocate). Of course, relocating corporations could choose to lower their prices, but profit considerations usually render that a last resort. Finally, corporations in lower-cost overseas locations can usually more easily manage competition among themselves than they do in the US (because local rules against monopoly are less effective and relatively low-cost bribes are more effective).

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The Worker Self-Directed Enterprise: A "Cure" for Capitalism, or a Slippery Slope to Socialism?

Related Terms :

• Scholarly

• Economic Democracy

• English

by Jerry Ashton.

Published on January 2, 2013

originally appeared in Huffington Post

Dr. Richard Wolff, currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University here in New York City is no shy flower when it comes to provoking thought; more "Thorny Rose" than "Sweet William."

The New York Times Magazine has named him "America's most prominent Marxist Economist" and he continues to embellish this vitae by pointing out egregious examples of U.S.-style capitalism going horribly wrong and then making the case for returning labor to its former and power.

The professor's latest campaign is to educate us all as to the value of "Worker's Self-Directed Enterprises" (WSDE) and why this business model is not just simply an alternative to traditional top-down authoritarian capitalist enterprises, but its replacement.

Convincing Americans who have been instructed early on that socialism is a nasty word and -- worse -- even un-American, this could be a tall order even for someone who is a Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, a recipient of a BA magna cum laude in history from Harvard and an MA in economics at Stanford.

But, I listen intently and skeptically to his take on this trainwreck of an economy and came away with a sober realization that U.S.-style capitalism does not intend to deliver us the house with the picket fence or an upward mobility path. Based on our experience of these last few years, the 1 percent is more likely to set up the game so that you and I of the 99 percent will lose the house and the job.

So, if it doesn't pay to work for "The Man," what hope do we have? As described by Professor Wolff, the subject and promise of WSDE is beyond compelling. With any luck, it may one day soon be taught in business school.

The working premise of the WSDE is that it can, and should, be owned by the workers and can. and should, be run democratically. Everyone -- the workers on the line, sales agents, those who clean the bathrooms or work on the loading dock -- collectively run the operation. They determine what to do, what to build, how to follow, how to lead, each other's responsibility, and what to do with profits generated.

If it is that good, what's the "stopper?" It's too democratic. For a country that prides itself on exporting this grand ideal, it can scarcely be found in the workplace. True to the model of "Makers and Takers" into which we have been born and raised, we are told what to do, when to show up, how we are to paid, and what is done with the profits. (Don't count on trickle-down.)

"Fundamentally, anti-democratic," Wolff points out.

Perhaps undemocratic and essentially one-sided, but it's hard to imagine either GE or Citibank being run by its employees. Is it even possible for a WSDE to compete with cash-rich and savvy MBAs?

Decidedly so, Wolff responds, providing two financially successful examples of the workplace being a social activity governed by the norms of community, one in Spain and one in California.

Wolff offers as his first example, the M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon Cooperative in the North of Spain.

This co-op took its name from the M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon University founded by a local Catholic priest by the name of "Father Arizmendi" as a mechanism to enable the poor in that community to learn how to cooperatively run their own business.

Beginning with six workers producing agrarian goods, some 55 years later it now employs 120,000 people employed in some 100 worker-owned enterprises and affiliated organizations. It is the 10th largest cooperative in Spain and a bulwark against that country's steep (elsewhere) unemployment rate of 22 percent.

"This is a 'a family of cooperatives' in which the first commitment is to preserve jobs -- not satisfy stockholders." Wolff points out.

That same philosophy infuses the Arizmendi Bakery comprising five "sister cooperatives" in the San Francisco Bay Area. Proudly assuming the name of the famous Basque Priest, this group gets rave reviews for its pastries and thin-crust pizza and handily outperforms its more traditional bakery competitors in both revenue and employee satisfaction.

As their website proudly states, "We are a cooperative -- a worker-owned and operated business. We make decisions democratically, sharing all of the tasks, responsibilities, benefits and risks."

Why haven't we heard more about these enterprises, this model? Hmm, methinks that mainstream media has once again allowed something very, very important to go unreported.

That will not continue to be the case, if Professor Wolff has his say. And, if you learn to shed preconceptions and conditioning.

A good start will be to learn more about Dr. Wolff and worker co-ops by visiting his website www.rdwolff.com and about the new workplace at www.democracyatwork.info. (Oh yes, and listening to this "15 minutes of Fact" interview at WGRNradio.com).

http://rdwolff.com/content/worker-self-directed-enterprise-cure-capitalism-or-slippery-slope-socialism

April 16, 2013

Cooperatives and Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises

An Interview with Richard Wolff

by ED RAMPELL

Richard Wolff got his B.A. from Harvard, a Master’s in economics from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. Wolff is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a Visiting Professor in the graduate program for international affairs at the New School University in Manhattan, where Wolff lives. However, Wolff — who describes himself as “a critic of capitalism” — is not one of those apologist economists for the elite. Born in 1942 at Youngstown, Ohio, he’s the son of working class parents who were refugees from the Nazis. After his family moved around the Midwest they relocated to New York.

Today, Wolff has emerged as one of — if not the number one — most prominent leftist economist in America. In addition to teaching the Big Bad Wolff appears on Free Speech TV, Link TV, Pacifica Radio, does public speaking at the Brecht Forum and other venues, writes books such as Capitalism Hits the Fan, Occupy the Economy and Democracy at Work and has a substantial online presence, arguing there’s a better way to run the economy that’s in the interests of the 99%, instead of the 1%. In this interview, Wolff discusses his vision for changing the capitalist system. Fundamentally, he poses the question that if America has repeatedly gone to war abroad “to make the world safe for democracy,” isn’t it time that we brought the war home to make the American workplace safe for democracy, too? 

Ed Rampell: What is the definition of a cooperative and of a collective?

Richard Wolff: The word “cooperative,” to define a business, is very old. Cooperatives have existed for many centuries, all around the world, as well as throughout the history of the U.S. It means a variety of things. Sometimes cooperative means a group of producers who make something will get together and share, cooperatively own one of their inputs. For example: A group of farmers, none of whom individually has enough money to buy the land they need to work, can sometimes form a cooperative so that they pool their money and then they can collectively afford to buy land… Then they agree to farm different portions of the land but to own the land cooperatively.

Another example is in winemaking. Around the world, particularly in Europe, it’s very common for wines to be produced and sold by a cooperative. The actual growing of the grapes and making of the wine is done by individual farmers, with or without employees. The word “co-op” doesn’t apply here to the actual work being done [but] the farmers get together and literally pool their wine. They pour the wine each of them has produced in their vats into one central vat and then cooperate to sell it. They can do better selling wine in larger quantities to larger buyers then they could doing it by themselves. This is sometimes called a marketing or sales co-op.

The word “collective” is not so often used because it has been basically used by socialists and communists and has a different history. The word cooperative, as I’m interested in it, and as people now in the U.S. and other parts of the world are becoming literally more interested by the day — the U.N. declared 2012 “the Year of the Cooperative” — what co-op means in this sense is when work is done cooperatively, the actual labor. The workplace itself is organized cooperatively, rather than in the conventional capitalistic, hierarchical form.

In most capitalist enterprises, and certainly most major corporations that dominate capitalist economies, the organization of work is highly stratified. At the top are the major shareholders, typically 10 to 20 people who own major blocks of shares in the company. Because of that they have the voting power of all those shares and that gives them the authority under the law to select the board of directors… between 15 and 20 people. Together, the major shareholders and the board, 30 to 40 people, make all of the decisive decisions in a corporation: What the company will produce; how; where; and finally what to do with the profit the enterprise generates. The vast majority of workers in a capitalist enterprise are required to live with the results of all of the decisions from which they are excluded… The vast mass of workers must accept, have no legal recourse to reject, most of the decisions made by a tiny minority.

A cooperative enterprise is the key, decisive alternative to a traditional capitalist enterprise… All the workers, whatever they do inside an enterprise, have to be able to participate in collectively arriving at the decisions what, how, where to produce, and what to do with the profits in a democratic way… One person, one vote in deciding how these things are done…

The reason why we’re interested in making a transition from the top down capitalist organization of enterprises to a radically different cooperative or democratic organization is simple: We believe the capitalist organization of production has now finished its period of usefulness in human history. It is now no longer able to deliver the goods. It’s bringing profits and prosperity to a tiny portion of the population, and delivering not the goods but the” bads” to most people. Jobs are steadily more insecure, unemployment is high and lastingly high, benefits are increasingly being reduced, the prospects for our children is even worse, as more of them go deeper and deeper in debt to get the degrees that do not provide them with the jobs and incomes to get out of that debt… as the world enters the sixth year of a severe crisis. It’s longer overdue that we face honestly that the crisis we endure is the product of an economic system whose organization is something we should question, debate and change.

ER: The hierarchical model may be true for privately held businesses but can’t employees and the public at large buy shares in publicly listed companies on the stock exchange and corporations and as shareholders vote for the board of directors and so on?

RW: You’re correct, but what you’re referring to is a “formal right,” but not a “substantive right.” Yes, you can buy a share of stock but that doesn’t have any real meaning for a corporation because: 1% of U.S. shareholders own 75% of all the shares… Participating in shareholding in any significant way is not something the mass of people in capitalist societies have ever, in fact, been able to do.

ER: What are examples of U.S. cooperatives?

RW: We’ve produced a website where a whole host of examples are given at: www.democracyatwork.info/ . The Arizmendi Bakeries — there are five of them all linked together in one parent corporation, located in the Bay Area… They’re completely run by the workers — those who bake the bread and pastries, make the coffee, do the buying, maintain the premises, etc… On many days they do the specific tasks in the division of labor they’ve created for themselves. But then periodically all of the workers get together and they don’t do their particular task — they collectively discuss and debate what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, whether to expand and so on. Those decisions are decided in a democratic way. They’re very conscious that they are choosing a different way of working and are very proud of it, very positive. If you ever visit you can arrange for them to show you around. They’re very conscious that they’re part of a movement to develop this kind of enterprise.

ER: What’s an overseas example of a cooperative?

RW: Yugoslavia is a very interesting example where cooperative enterprises were tried, experimented with. Other examples were the kibbutzim in Israel in the early years of Israel. Many lived and worked in a kibbutz; many were in effect worker or producer co-operatives.

…The most successful example… is M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon, located in northern Spain in the Basque region. In the 1950s, because of the Spanish Civil War, this was a rural, backward area with huge unemployment and deep poverty. A local priest, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, decided not to wait until some employer came in to provide work, but instead gathered six parishioners to form a cooperative enterprise. Basically, the idea was: We don’t need an employer. We can be our own employer, we can set up a collective or cooperative enterprise.

Let’s fast forward to 2013: What was once one co-op has mushroomed. It’s now an association of several hundred co-ops that are all subsidiaries of the M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon Cooperative Corporation. In 60 years its total employment is in excess of over 100,000 workers. M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon Cooperative Corporation is the largest single corporation in northern Spain and the tenth

largest corporation in all of Spain.

…In M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon, it’s the workers who hire the managers, the exact opposite of a capitalist corporation… The rule the workers adopted is the gap between the highest and lowest paid worker is not allowed not to be more than six and a half times. Compare that to the CEO of a major corporation who makes 340 times more than the average — not even the lowest paid — worker in America. What a radical difference you have with a place like M[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone. If all the workers in any office, store or factory, got together and had the power — which in a co-op they would — to decide what the wages and salaries of everybody are, do you think they’d give a handful of people at the top tens of millions of dollars, while everybody else is scrambling and unable to pay for their kids’ college education, etc.? That’s not going to happen. Even if you decide to pay some people more you’re not going to live in the world of extreme inequality the way that’s normal and typical for capitalism…

ER: Are you actually saying that under Generalissimo Franco workers were allowed to own their own enterprise, under fascism?

RW: Yup. The Basque region is very mountainous. The Basque people have a long history of independence, their own culture and language. I visited last May to see it myself… Basically, the Basques have fought, often militarily, for their independence and preservation of their culture, and because it was established by a Catholic priest and they would have encountered armed resistance by the Basques, the regime decided that it wasn’t a serious enough threat and the cost of repressing it was too high, so they let it be.

ER: So if workers could establish cooperatives under fascism, could they do so under a so-called representative form of government, like in the U.S.?

RW: Absolutely. It should be much easier. In fact, it is much easier. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of these worker co-ops or producer co-ops… Many companies, including famous names like Apple computers, if you go back and look at the early days you may be surprised to find out that they were co-ops. The original founders were often workers dissatisfied by being mere employees in somebody’s company, so they got together with others, often at young ages, and pooled their enthusiasm and energy and setup a different kind of enterprise. Very common in Silicon Valley. Every year, hundreds, in some years thousands, of engineers quit their jobs in big companies like IBM, Oracle or Cisco, and get together with friends and say, “okay, we want to start a different kind of business. We’re all going to take our laptops and gather at Harry’s garage, and here’s what we want: We don’t want to come to work every day in a suit and tie or for some executive who doesn’t understand anything about computers telling us what to do. We don’t want any of the rigmarole; it’s stifling, it kills our creativity. We’d like to go to a place where there are no bosses, where we’re all equal. Where we can wear Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts and bring our toddlers.”

And that’s what they’ve done. And in many cases they’ve been very strict: All decisions have to be made by consensus. Everybody is equal. No chiefs, no Indians, we’re all equal here… Nothing would more quickly and definitively reduce U.S. income inequality than allowing every worker in all businesses to participate in deciding the range of incomes from one worker to another. They would never — except in the most bizarre circumstances I can’t even imagine — do what is now a matter of normality, give one person millions, in some cases billions, while others have barely enough to make a living. Moving to a cooperatively organized enterprise is one of the best ways to really do something about unequal distribution of wealth.

In America we debate everything: Education, sexuality, etc. — except for asking critical questions about capitalism… If there’s an institution in your society that’s above criticism you’re giving it a free pass to indulge all of its weaknesses and darker tendencies. In part the crisis we’re in now has to do with the inability of our society to face up to the fact that capitalism has its strength, but it also has its weaknesses. It has its time of growth and its time of shriveling and dying. And an honest, healthy society would never shrink away from debating where we’re at with capitalism — can we do better? How might that work?

For more info:

http://rdwolff.com/

http://brechtforum.org/

www.m[안내]태그제한으로등록되지않습니다-ondragon-corporation.com/ENG.aspx

http://social.un.org/coopsyear/

www.arizmendibakery.org/

Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian, critic and author who wrote Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States. Rampell’s new book, about Hawaii’s movies and TV shows since 1995, will be published in September 2013 by Honolulu’s Mutual Publishing.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/16/cooperatives-and-workers-self-directed-enterprises/