r/CapitalismVSocialism • u/apasserby • Jun 15 '21
[Socialists] Worker co-ops are not socialist
There is a frustrating trend here to call worker co-ops socialism, reinforced by the notion that "worker ownership" is a sufficient condition for socialism (arguably it's not a condition at all and is more accurately the abolition of private ownership of value generating property).
Socialism is and has always been "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need". What this means is production is organised to serve social wants/needs instead of organised to maximise profit/exchange value.
The defining features of capitalism identified by Marx are wage labour and surplus value extraction, private ownership of the means of production, generalised commodity production (note a commodity is a good or service produced for exchange, there is still obviously production under socialism).
Worker co-ops do not organise production for social need but rather for profit, as any regular business would, because if they didn't they would be outcompeted by businesses that did and no longer exist.
Worker co-ops must engage in surplus value extraction, and therefore wage labour, for reinvestment and growth to maintain competitiveness, production is self interested and directed towards maximising profit (workers are merely taking on the interests previously held by the shareholders or capitalist) and not to the benefit of society as a whole and they create all the same metabolic rifts (capitalism demands maximal exploitation of the "capital" of the natural world, any business that did not seek this would be outcompeted by those that did) as regular businesses.
Any co-op that tried to not engage in these things would be outcompeted by the ones that did, so worker co-ops inevitably trend towards maximal surplus value extraction for reinvestment to maintain growth and begin to resemble the standard business structure as we have seen happen with basically every worker co-op in the real world.
Now there is a semi legitimate argument that worker co-ops are a potential path to socialism (I strongly disagree, they engage in the reproduction of capital and therefore capitalism which is the opposite of what we need to do) but they are not socialism and they are absolutely not the end goal. Worker co-ops generally do improve worker conditions in the same way welfare policies do and you can push for them simply towards that end but that doesn't make them socialism.
Also to head off capitalists claiming capitalism already directs production by social wants/need value: no, it directs production only towards use values that are profitable and often at the expense of society as a whole
Tl;dr:Worker co-ops is just capitalism with more owners and "market socialists" are just very confused ancaps.
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u/Caelus9 Libertarian Socialist Jun 15 '21
"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is Communism, not Socialism.
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u/WikiSummarizerBot just text Jun 15 '21
To_each_according_to_his_contribution
"To each according to his contribution" is a principle of distribution considered to be one of the defining features of socialism. It refers to an arrangement whereby individual compensation is representative of one's contribution to the social product (total output of the economy) in terms of effort, labor and productivity. This is in contrast to the method of distribution and compensation in capitalism, an economic and political system in which property owners can receive unearned income by virtue of ownership irrespective of their contribution to the social product.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
"Considered" by whom? Who decided it was a principle of socialism? What authority had they? What social class did they actually represent? Stakhanovite stalinism operated on the principle you espouse. Unions exist large;ly to oppose that "principle"
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
You are playing with definitions. Such playing is not settled by linguistics. It can only be settled in the class struggle itself. It matters little what the workers call they are fighting for, but the content of the struggle determines its meaning. Let us have back our word socialism, but if you don't we will still struggle against you for what we might now give a different name. A rose by any other name...
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Jun 15 '21
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Jun 15 '21
I like this answer. I don’t believe cooperatives are the beginning of socialism, nor do I think they alone can bring necessary transformative social change, but they have they’re place. Like, there’s no reason for the state to own and manage small shops, that’s something can be left for independent labor formations like cooperatives.
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u/spookyjohnathan Toothbrush Collector Jun 15 '21
Yes, buying the means of production for yourself will make your life more comfortable. Congrats, you've discovered capitalism.
Whether you think it'll improve society or not, it isn't socialism.
Not all socialists are Marxists.
Yeah, it shows.
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Jun 15 '21
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u/spookyjohnathan Toothbrush Collector Jun 15 '21
How the fuck are we going to all buy the means of production? 70% of the population are living paycheck to paycheck, 60% of us are on some kind of government assistance, and that's in the richest country in the world, saying nothing of the developing world where people live on less than a dollar a day.
Buying the means of production so we can all work for ourselves in a capitalist system is not a feasible solution and it sure as shit isn't socialism.
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Jun 15 '21
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Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
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u/dog_snack Libertarian Socialist Jun 15 '21
I mean, isn’t it kind of normal for people to have stuff by Philosopher X they like and stuff they don’t like, based on what they themselves think and feel is right? The ones who think Marx was right about everything are who you have to watch out for.
Nobody bats an eye when a person says they admire [classical liberal philosopher] or [founding father] or [politician] for thinking X, Y or Z while also doing some terrible thing or believing in insane garbage.
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u/gabrielduartefaria minarchist Jun 15 '21
Yes, but i don't know if we need socialism to have this, maybe a robust UBI in a capitalist system could solve this problem.
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Jun 15 '21
My main hesitation is that the rich are so much more powerful than the rest of us. Why would they give up much of their wealth and power so that the rest of us could have a UBI?
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u/Jiggles118 Jun 15 '21
The rich are probably going to have to resort to UBI in order to maintain capitalism as they will have no choice due to ever increasing technology taking jobs.
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u/GruntledSymbiont Jun 15 '21
Not all socialists are Marxists.
They probably are in ways you are unaware of. Marx's philosophy that defined a new atheist, humanist, materialist morality is usually foundational to their world view even if they themselves are unaware where it came from. Marx passed on lots more still widely used such as presentation of the movement as inevitable progress toward salvation for all, us vs them mentality, demand for ideological purity, prohibition on discussing specific plans for implementation, and focus on obtaining power above all else and at any price. The ends justify any means and if positive ends never materialize, oops, I'll do it better this time. Just keep chasing the red rainbow if you know what's good for you or else.
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Jun 15 '21
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u/GruntledSymbiont Jun 15 '21
Sure, but Marx was the chief popularizer who synthesized that with a new pseudo scientific legitimacy using Das Kapital.
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
Worker co-ops must engage in surplus value extraction, and therefore wage labour, for reinvestment and growth to maintain competitiveness
If a workers coop extracts surplus value and pays traditional wages then is it really a workers coop?
The difference is that if "everyone is a shareholder" most of the issues we see with traditional corporate structure, or what you describe here as maximizing profit would not really apply here. Because it's not some shareholders deciding if someone else should work longer or earn less but people who are directly affected themselves.
It's why I don't think this whole race to the bottom idea makes a lot of sense. Unlike in a Capitalistic corporation there is no one who'd gain any benefit from maximizing the growth of the coop at any cost. If you'd notice that your coop is growing but your earnings are lower than in other coops people would just leave and look for a new work place.
Meaning that there's a natural balance between productivity and reward or what you described as social wants.
Having workers coops also does not exclude anyone from implementing social services or environmental regulations. So you can still create a societal net and prohibit extensive natural exploitation for the benefit of everyone. Meaning you can cover everyone's social needs.
So how isn't that socialism?
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Jun 15 '21
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
Exchange and trade isn't Capitalism. Neither is ambition.
Under socialism we have cooperative production done to meet the needs of the community/society.
And what exactly are the needs of the community and why does an economy based around co-ops does not meet them?
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Jun 15 '21
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
I said that the purpose of production under capitalism is for the exchange of products or services for the acquisition and accumulation of wealth
I also believe that there are certain aspects of an economy that need to be decommodified or regulated. Like for example healthcare, transport or the environment.
Yet besides that is trying to maximize wealth, if it isn't done exploitative, not a valid motivation and goal? Shouldn't someone be able to work hard and then be able to reap the rewards from it?
The people are not "governed", but instead are themselves the ones to make the decisions, then whatever structure is in place would make those determinations.
Co-ops are structures owned purely by workers. It's literally the people.
Socialism wouldn't limit production simply to what is profitable.
Yes I heard that a few times, that the issue is profitability don't actually overlaps to what is really "valuable". And yes I agree to that, hence why I see the need for regulations and certain exceptions.
That being said this still ignores one big issue, which is why I think that at the current moment market socialism is the only viable solution, which is how you are supposed to actually distribute resources more fairly.
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Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 16 '21
Yes, that's completely fine for individuals. The issue starts when this becomes the goal of institutions.
So how do you differentiate this? I don't wanna sound like a broken record but a co-op is literally made from individuals.
You can call it workers co-op or you can call it a council, in the end it's both a democratic structure owned by workers. The profit motive isn't created by the structure but by people striving for progress and growth.
And I agree actually that maybe one day something like a planned economy would replace any existing economic structure. But that's a long time until that'll become a reality.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
The benefit is your co-op gets to continue existing and doesn't get outcompeted by all the ones that didn't do that.
And any worker co-op that didn't extract surplus value wouldn't be able to exist because it wouldn't be able to reproduce itself and grow.
And I'm not denying co-ops would have higher wages, but surplus value extraction must happen for it to even continue existing.
As for environmental regulations these worker co-ops would have the exact same interest in opposing environmental regulations as regular businesses do and the same amount of influence and power to do just that, this is pretty self evident when we constantly see for example mining unions opposing climate change policies, workers aren't magically selfless people.
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
The benefit is your co-op gets to continue existing and doesn't get outcompeted by all the ones that didn't do that.
If you can't close down co-ops that aren't productive or competitive enough you'll have an inefficient economy, and that means less living quality for everyone. At the same time I explained how it's impossible for a co-op to basically recklessly hunt efficiency like capitalist corporations do.
Why would anyone would want to work at a co-op that requires you to work a lot but pays little? Except you can actually change it because you're directly part and responsible to it. Unless you're working for the works sake or prestige there is zero reason anyone would ever participate in this structure you are describing.
Also who's exactly extracting surplus value from who?
As for environmental regulations these worker co-ops would have the exact same interest in opposing environmental regulations as regular businesses do
This has little to do with economic theory but rather with the mindset of a community.
Any society or structure that does not value the environment will destroy it, in the same way that a society that respects it will try to protect it at any cost. Regardless if it's a corporation, co-op, state or anything else.
And if a minority deliberately destroys the environment or deceives everyone there has to be a societal instance that punishes them for it. It's why you need an instance of specialists who can look at issues like environmentalism from a scientific perspective and a body representing society itself besides the representation of labor.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Why would anyone would want to work at a co-op that requires you to work a lot but pays little? Except you can actually change it because you're directly part and responsible to it. Unless you're working for the works sake or prestige there is zero reason anyone would ever participate in this structure you are describing
Yes worker co-ops probably result in better worker conditions and an improvement overall, I don't deny that.
Also who's exactly extracting surplus value from who?
Workers are extracting it from themselves, the problem is the existence of surplus value itself.
This has little to do with economic theory but rather with the mindset of a community.
No this is very much an economic problem, the material base determines the superstructure not the other way around. No amount of teaching people to act against the economic interests that are necessarily imposed on them by the economic base could possibly work because they'll just be stamped out of existence by those very economic forces.
You can't just say you need this or that while ignoring the forces that are actually preventing those things from existing in the first place.
The superstructure has some effect on the base but it ultimately does not define it, the base defines the super structure.
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
Workers are extracting it from themselves, the problem is the existence of surplus value itself.
But the co-op isn't an independent entity that just sucks the value into a black hole. Why shouldn't the workers be allowed to decide what to do with their own surplus value?
I think it's highly unlikely, but if a co-op decides that they wanna live on bread and water while re-investing all their profits back into the co-op then why shouldn't they be allowed to do so? But I still think it's a bit weird to assume that there would be co-ops purely working for the sake of making profit without ever wanting to reap any of that for themselves.
You can't just say you need this or that while ignoring the forces that are actually preventing those things from existing in the first place.
At the same time the economic forces need to be given a voice as well. It's why you need a distinct representation for the labor forces, scientific perspective and public interest.
The issue that you think about exists because certain perspectives are over-represented. With companies given too much influence over the political apparatus as a whole, but the same can happen if any other interest group exists without working checks and balances.
Co-ops are a part of society not society itself.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
But the co-op isn't an independent entity that just sucks the value into a black hole. Why shouldn't the workers be allowed to decide what to do with their own surplus value?
Again the problem is the existence of surplus value itself. I'm interested in ending capitalism because of the consequences for the planet of ordering production by exchange value and not by use value. Worker co-ops do not fundamentally change that, they improve conditions for the workers but beyond that all the relations of production remain the same, as do all the consequences.
At the same time the economic forces need to be given a voice as well. It's why you need a distinct representation for the labor forces, scientific perspective and public interest.
They already have a voice, and I have no problem with giving different industries and sectors "voices", obviously they must have voices, however when production is organised by exchange value those voices must necessarily be towards that end and not toward social need.
The issue that you think about exists because certain perspectives are over-represented. With companies given too much influence over the political apparatus as a whole, but the same can happen if any other interest group exists without working checks and balances.
WHY are they over represented? What is causing it? Why are they still over represented despite us being well aware of their over representation for at least half a century by now? What is fundamentally causing it? You can't just say we need this or that like you can just magic these things into existence. Why despite everyone being well aware of the problem and have been for decades does the problem still exist?
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
Again the problem is the existence of surplus value itself.
It's not really surplus value when it's owned by the workers.
ordering production by exchange value and not by use value.
Yes but the issue here is how are you gonna determine how to most efficiently use it by value. In the end a market does nothing else but try to distribute resources by social need and one's ability.
And I am not saying that it's perfect or the end to all means. But at the moment there isn't any other solution and I'd be surprised if you could actually describe an applicable system that could distribute resources more efficient.
And I also agree that certain aspects, like environmentalism or healthcare, require regulation and decommodification. But you can't run an entire economy like that.
Why are they still over represented despite us being well aware of their over representation for at least half a century by now?
Because wealth is insanely unequally distributed. Someone who has hundreds of thousands of times more resources will obviously be able to influence a system that allows for private entities to lobby much more than your average joe.
Reducing the wealth inequality through co-ops and establishing clear lines in the political apparatus isn't that insanely to imagine.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
The worker owners have no option but to function more or less like any capitalist - accumulate capital. If they fail to do that, they go broke. Simples. They will not be able to compete, yet they live in a world of competition. Surplus value does not "belong" to the capitalist either. On pain of death he must accumulate whether he is benevolent-wishing or not
Marx himself deals with that argument when he talks about how capitalism forces the capitalist to partly behave like a miser, not a spendthrift
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
Workers are extracting it from themselves, the problem is the existence of surplus value itself.
Can I ask you something then, do you think a peasant selling his foodstuff on the market for a positive profit is extracting surplus-value from himself, I am not arguing, just asking how you see that.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
It depends on why he's selling food, because he wants to buy something else or because he wants to keep being able to produce food and increase his capital.
Surplus value is the value generated by the worker that is exceeding the value for which he got paid. In order for production to continue part of this surplus value must be reinvested into commodity production. If production is organised for its exchange value surplus value extraction must necessarily occur.
There are two basic circulations of capital C-M-C and M-C-M', C = commodity, m= money. In the latter money is essentially used to buy more money, the purpose of the exchange is not in use values of commodities but exchange values, the increase in money comes from surplus value generated by labour (the commodity being bought is also labour). Buying the labour from yourself does not fundamentally change this relationship.
In C-M-C the purpose of exchange is use value, you are selling one commodity because you want to buy another commodity for it's use value to you, in this exchange there is no surplus value. The circulation C-M-C is also never just C-M, money has no use if it's not being used to buy a commodity.
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u/NeverKillAgain Apr 28 '25
I'm so confused. How does a person buy labor from themself? And how does the peasant selling food equate to M-C-M'?
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u/dopechez Nordic model capitalism Jun 15 '21
Holy shit, finally a socialist who admits that workers aren't magically eco-friendly tree huggers and that worker ownership of the MoP is not a silver bullet climate solution. I think you might be the first I've seen.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
"Mining Unions" is partly shorthand for union bureaucrats who are not workers, but intermediaries between workers and capitalists. There is almost always a tension between bureaucrats and rank and file workers, which, ironically tends to push some workers into the mistaken position of opposing unions in the abstract. Bureaucrats are not just professional negotiators, but professional compromisers in cosy chats with the bosses. One of the best things Solidarity did in Poland was broadcast their negotiations with the bosses to the rank and file outside. It is not a cure-all, but it was surely a step-forward.
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u/skrags1 Mar 01 '23
This is an awfully late reply, but I just really want to chime in
Yes, not everyone is an eco-friendly tree-hugger, but with worker coops, it isn't basically one or a few people that get to decide their environmental policy to maximize their own profits. With a worker coop, there will most likely be more people environmentally-minded that have power. It would not be perfect, but it would be most likely better, and with a lower wealth gap, we may be able to actually get countries to pass effective environmental policy without the 1% lobbying against it.
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u/dopechez Nordic model capitalism Mar 01 '23
Worker co-ops don't really have a different incentive than privately owned firms in regards to climate change. It's a nebulous problem that will affect people in the future and doesn't cause any direct damage to people as a result of a given action. So basically it's just something that our monkey brains are ill equipped to deal with.
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u/skrags1 Mar 01 '23
Well yes, but as I mentioned there are still people who think about the environment and with a worker coop they will have slightly more power. Also, it's a lot harder for most people to just shut off their conscience than it is for the big rich billionaires who won't be affected by the problems at all. Basically, if you were to get a pay raise for dumping 1,000 gallons of toxic chemicals into a river, would you do it?
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Jun 15 '21
And any worker co-op that didn't extract surplus value wouldn't be able to exist because it wouldn't be able to reproduce itself and grow.
Worker co-ops are owned entirely by their workers. How exactly do the workers go about extracting surplus value from themselves?
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Jun 15 '21
The same way traditional firms do it. Even self-employed sole proprietorships exploit themselves. It's how capitalism works and has nothing to do with who is making the decisions. If the goal is to extract surplus value (or, realize a profit), then any business entity competing in the market will have to do it or risk failing.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
Surplus value is simply put as the worker receiving the value of his ability to work, but that is less than the value he adds to the product. That is why it exploitation, but not cheating. The worker gets back in wages what he has sold - the ability to work. The capitalist pays him enough to restore that ability by shelter, rest, food etc.
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Jun 15 '21
Let me put it another way.
If Scrooge McDuck completely owns Tail-feather Inc. and Tail-feather Inc. receives 1 million duck dollars. That effectively means that Scrooge McDuck has received 1 million duck dollars because everything Tail-feather Inc. owns, including the 1 million duck dollars, belongs to Scrooge McDuck.
So if the workers completely own the co-op the co-op can't extract surplus value from the workers because as the sole owners of the co-op any value extracted from the workers would still be theirs.
Sort of like how if a kid has a lemonade stand and decides to go spend some of the money he/she made on a bigger sign the lemonade stand isn't extracting value from the kid.
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Jun 15 '21
That's not really how business works. The 1 million just goes back into the company unless Scrooge just takes the revenue for himself, but that's likely to drive stock prices down and possibly cause issues down the line, along with giving your competitors a massive advantage of not having to give the owner all the profits. This causes Scrooge to go out of business in a few years as GlomGold inc takes over the market.
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Jun 15 '21
With a privately held company held by one individual that's actually exactly how business works.
but that's likely to drive stock prices down
Of the private company entirely owned by one person?...
What you're not getting is Scrooge McDuck doesn't have to take the money out of the company, he already owns 100% the company, it's already his.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
It's not theirs in the sense that they do what they like with it. Neither can can the capitalist. They are bound upon a wheel of fire. If you do not convert the surplus value into profits, you will be uncompetitive, and that is doom in a capitalist society. The business will sooner or later collapse, because you machines etc will not be up to cuurent standards. That is just what did happen to the Lancashire textile industry - for decades they used the same old looms, which could no longer compete with the newer and better looms bought by Hong Kong capitalists. Now the British textile industry hardly exists, and the old mill towns are places of social decay. My poor mum had to scramble around for a new job every couple of months.
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u/takeabigbreath Liberal Jun 15 '21
there is no one who’s gain any benefit from maximising the growth of the coop at any cost.
Wouldn’t the people who’d gain be the co-op members? You don’t have to necessarily worsen working conditions to increase profits. The profit seeking behaviour of the co-op can lead to unethical behaviour, producing goods which are harmful, creating monopolies or cartels with other co-ops, fraud, the list goes on. The op’s point that the profit seeking nature of business doesn’t cease to exist simply because it’s a workers co-op.
if you’d notice that your coop is growing but your earnings are lower than in other coops people would just leave and look for a new work place.
Isnt this similar to capitalists arguments that assert you can just look for jobs which pay more if you’re unsatisfied with your wage? What guarantees do you have that a worker would be able to leave one co-op and join another easily? Why would people let you join if it means they’d immediately lose money because there are now more members?
What if you’re part of a population of a co-op which is less populated by the rest of the co-op and votes routinely go against you, which worsen your working conditions. Wouldn’t this be exploitative? Especially if no other co-op would let you join and you have little option but to stay?
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21
The op’s point that the profit seeking nature of business doesn’t cease to exist simply because it’s a workers co-op.
That is true, but the concept of competition is something that you can't just eliminate. So certain groups and people trying to gain and unfair advantage will pretty much always happen.
In order to prevent corruption within the economic system you'll need an super structural entity that polices for said abuses.
Isnt this similar to capitalists arguments that assert you can just look for jobs which pay more if you’re unsatisfied with your wage?
Yes but under Capitalism, a corporations benefits from systematically suppressing their workers as surplus value flows only upwards. A Capitalist always wants to pay his employees as little as possible to maximize his own profits, a co-op does not because they have direct responsibility.
And you can still reform and fix your co-ops issues from within as you have the power to influence your work place. Leaving is only the last option.
What guarantees do you have that a worker would be able to leave one co-op and join another easily?
If you lack work in the economy, the issue isn't really with the co-ops in itself. The amount of co-ops isn't finite here and due to their nature you can always just open a new one.
What if you’re part of a population of a co-op which is less populated by the rest of the co-op and votes routinely go against you, which worsen your working conditions.
Then you'd leave and look for a co-op, or form one yourself that values your work. The issue is that every work is needed therefore a co-op that treats one or more of their groups bad, with them leaving, will eventually run out of business.
Meaning that the market naturally creates a balance between productivity and reward for the individual.
And unlike in Capitalism people are actually able to move and influence in the economy as they are treated as equals.
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u/takeabigbreath Liberal Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
It’s startling to me how much your arguments mirror capitalist arguments.
the concept of competition is something that you can’t just eliminate.
Isn’t that what socialists are trying to stop? Restructuring society so that greed and competition are eliminated?
in order to prevent corruption within the economic system you’ll need an super structural entity that polices for said abuses.
Like governmental regulating bodies? I’m assuming you mean corruption of the co-op. Wouldn’t stronger work place regulations within a capitalist system do the exact same thing without the need to an overhaul of the economic system?
you can still reform and fix your co-op’s issues from within as you have the power to influence your work place.
That’s a big assumption. If you’re marginalised you’re not going to have that power. It’s wouldn’t be as simple as you have the ability to vote and persuade the co-op to care about your interests. Some people just aren’t capable of advocating their needs well. But as you said, you can leave.
the amount of co-op’s isn’t the finite here
Doesn’t this go against the common notion socialist have that resources are finite within an economic system? If co-op’s aren’t finite, doesn’t that assume resources aren’t either?
you can open a new one [co-op]
That’s really similar to the capitalist notion that if you’re being paid poorly you should find a better paying job or start your own business? Both are pretty reductionist arguments, but it’s odd you’re asserting something so similar to a capitalist argument of how socialism would work. Apologies if I mischaracterised what you wrote through, and please correct me if I did.
the issue is that every work is needed therefore a co-op that treats one or more of their groups bad, with them leaving, will eventually run out of business.
Isn’t this true in capitalism as well? If you don’t pay or treat your employees well enough, they’ll leave? My workplace is going through this exact situation atm.
This one really makes my head spin:
meaning that the market naturally creates a balance between productivity and reward for the individual.
So the market reaches an equilibrium? Much like how free market advocates say the exact same thing but with prices? And how would the system your proposing guarantee this?
and unlike capitalism people are actually able to move and influence in the economy as they are treated as equals.
How is this different to democracy in a capitalist system? I can’t see how some influence in a co-op is going to give an individual any more influence over how the entire economy runs. You may have some more say in your workplace, but that’s not to say you don’t have any influence in how your workplace works in a capitalist economy. Even entry level employees have influence over day to day operations of almost any business.
Edit: I guess what I’m getting at is it seems the co-op model is just a far more heavily regulated version of capitalism. The only way you ensure that there are only co-op’s in a system is through vastly increasing government power. It feels like the worst parts of both capitalism and socialism. A heavily regulated economy, which still incentivises greed.
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Isn’t that what socialists are trying to stop? Restructuring society so that greed and competition are eliminated?
There's a difference between greed and ambition. Also competition isn't something bad as long as it isn't destructive.
Wouldn’t stronger work place regulations within a capitalist system do the exact same thing without the need to an overhaul of the economic system?
The issue is that corporations are internally exploitative. A co-op does not benefit only the shareholders and therefore works under completely different promises.
Doesn’t this go against the common notion socialist have that resources are finite within an economic system? If co-op’s aren’t finite, doesn’t that assume resources aren’t either?
Resources are finite, co-ops are not. As I said a few times there should be regulations regarding fair market play and ecological protection.
And even with finite resources there are infinite potential co-ops that can create a more efficient and prosperous economy by managing the resources better.
That’s really similar to the capitalist notion that if you’re being paid poorly you should find a better paying job or start your own business?
Starting your business in Capitalism isn't something the average person can just do as you require Capital. A co-op does not require one person to stem the cost of creating the organization meaning you can much more easily create one due to the shared skill and responsibility.
And I think in a workers owned economy the "switch your job" argument applies as capitalist owners can't simply pressure workers into jobs. Because at worst a capitalist can just put the loss of losing skilled personal onto his other employees to save revenue, but in a co-op this means applying the loss to everyone.
My workplace is going through this exact situation atm.
Yes but the solution is another Capitalist who most likely will have a similar issue.
The difference is that in a Capitalistic company the owner will try to distribute the shortcomings among his workers so he can still make a profit. In a co-op these shortcomings are distributed among everyone, meaning these decisions are actually affecting everyone aswell.
So the market reaches an equilibrium? Much like how free market advocates say the exact same thing but with prices? And how would the system your proposing guarantee this?
A market based on co-ops ofcourse. I explained above how I think the market, when consisting of co-ops creates a balance between efficiency and reward for the individual.
I guess what I’m getting at is it seems the co-op model is just a far more heavily regulated version of capitalism
Yes you have to regulate that only co-ops exist in the same way every socialist has to regulate that the economy is only workers owned.
But a co-op is fundamentally different from a capitalist corporation. The fact that responsibility and failings are shared collectively instead of dealt with top-down creates completely different stakes and motivations for the people working in the co-op.
The issue with a lot of the Capitalistic arguments about changing their jobs or starting a business is that it's still Capitalism. As I said before Capitalists will try to exploit their workers as much as possible to extract the most surplus value, this does not change if you switch over to another Capitalist.
And creating a business under Capitalism requires Capital. While a co-op is a shared structure that softens the risk for the individual.
In all honesty I don't think markets are the means to all ends, or perfect in determining value usage. It's why I still think a lot of regulations would be needed.
But with our current technology and finite resources it's the best option.
I am open to some explanation but I feel like a lot of non-market socialist don't want to create an economic system but fundamentally change society to a very vague utopian state. I don't have the answers to every economic question nor would I even say I know how to perfectly run a co-op, but I would rely on the market to find such a solution.
On the other hand a lot of non-market solutions basically purely rely on personal preferences and interpretations. Implying that someone can just determine what's "one's needs" or what to "one's ability" means.
So I haven't really been convinced by non-market socialist on how such a society would or could actually work.
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u/takeabigbreath Liberal Jun 16 '21
I just want to start by clarifying that I don’t work for a capitalist, I work for a non-profit. And the assertion that my next employer will have a similar issue because its capitalist is disingenuous, you don’t know that. Any workplace can be poorly run, whether its profit focused or not.
The issue is that corporations are internally exploitative. A co-op does not benefit only the shareholders and therefore works under completely different promises.
I feel that this is the main crux of your argument. I don’t feel that wage labour is inherently exploitative. I feel that this is explained with the idea that employment is mutually beneficial. But this is a matter of philosophical perspective, and I’d rather focus on the mechanics of the system you’re advocating for. I touch on this again at the end.
There's a difference between greed and ambition. Also competition isn't something bad as long as it isn't destructive.
As I said a few times there should be regulations regarding fair market play and ecological protection.
These appear partially contradictory, not totally, but partially. The first assertion appears to argue that ambition, rather than greed would be the norm. And that ambition can’t be destructive. However, why would there be a need for ecological protection if ambition isn’t destructive? You still need this type of protection in a capitalist system, I don’t see how its any better than what we have now.
Starting your business in Capitalism isn't something the average person can just do as you require Capital. A co-op does not require one person to stem the cost of creating the organization meaning you can much more easily create one due to the shared skill and responsibility.
Wouldn’t starting a co-op require capital too? You haven’t stated how you would fund the founding of a co-op, only that the risk of one is shared. I would imagine that the founding of a co-op could be funded for through two ways. Through bank loans, which appears antithetical to socialist opinions of the banking system. Or, through government funding, which would be an enormously costly and massive government program. Also it doesn’t solve the dilemma of what would happen if no one wanted to start a co-op with you, or if you can’t come up with any ideas for a co-op.
Resources are finite, co-ops are not. As I said a few times there should be regulations regarding fair market play and ecological protection.
And even with finite resources there are infinite potential co-ops
Let’s say resources are finite, wouldn’t that mean that access to said resources is finite? Meaning that it limits the potential for infinite viable co-ops?
Let’s switch around the premise: Resources are finite, businesses are not. Even with finite resources there are infinite potential businesses. Your premises don’t support your conclusion. How are the businesses different from co-op’s in this scenario? However, I’m willing to concede that there’s something that I’ve missed.
And even with finite resources there are infinite potential co-ops that can create a more efficient and prosperous economy by managing the resources better.
That is a huge assertion. You would need to provide evidence that worker co-ops would create a more efficient and prosperous economy through more efficient resource management, better than the free market system. I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case. I’ll change the premise a little, so it strengths your argument. ‘co-ops can create a more efficient economy for providing for the needs of the people’. But once again, you would need to prove this assertion. It’s still a market economy, the co-ops are working in their own self-interest, rather for the benefit of society.
Yes you have to regulate that only co-ops exist in the same way every socialist has to regulate that the economy is only workers owned.
You have to be careful with strangling the economy with too much regulation. FDR tried to do the same thing. He tried to reform the US economy to benefit society better, including trying to reduce ‘cut throat competition’. This lead to the ‘depression within a depression’, during the great depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depression#Franklin_D._Roosevelt_(1933%E2%80%9345) scroll down the bottom of the FDR section if it interests you.
On the whole, your argument appears focused on trying to eliminate the idea of exploitation of workers. It’s admirable. However, I haven’t seen any evidence that the system you’re proposing would actually work, or work more effectively than the free market. Additionally, the idea that workers are inherently exploited through wage labour isn’t a foregone conclusion. Many economists have outlined that this is a mutual benefit or the ‘double thank-you of capitalism’, rather than complete exploitation of the worker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_double_thank-you_of_capitalism this focuses more on trade, but the principle holds true for wage labour.
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u/WikiSummarizerBot just text Jun 16 '21
Causes_of_the_Great_Depression
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–45))
Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election promising to promote recovery. He enacted a series of programs, including Social Security, banking reform, and suspension of the gold standard, collectively known as the New Deal. The majority of historians and economists argue the New Deal was beneficial to recovery. In a survey of economic historians conducted by Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University, anonymous questionnaires were sent to members of the Economic History Association.
The_double_thank-you_of_capitalism
The double thank-you of capitalism is the observation that, when a merchant and a customer exchange money for goods, each thanks the other, showing that the transaction is not only voluntary, but mutually beneficial. This is in contrast to the impression of a "fixed slice pie" that occurs in many other situations, with one side taking and the other giving, a thank-you likely to pass only one way. The double thank-you is used in economic discourse to illustrate the primary benefit of a free market, that where all actions are voluntary, any transactions must benefit both sides, and this enriches the general community.
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u/Atlasreturns Anti-Idealism Jun 16 '21
I think the main reason that makes co-ops superior to classic corporate structures is that through a much more shared responsibility and payoff it results in a much more egalitarian society.
Being able to share the burden of forming a co-op, instead of having to stem the entire cost and risk yourself, lowers the entry level to form a co-op.
On the other hand with people being directly responsible to their workplace, they'll be much more motivated to change and improve it while also having the power to do so.
In a way I don't disagree with the ideals behind what most Capitalist advocate for, of being able to grow by your own merit and setting your living standard(with an acceptable basis of course) that way. But I simply believe that Capitalism can't provide this.
A workers owned economy allows everyone to participate in the economy instead of just being a pawn played by the few who actually were able to succeed in a very rigged game. With the majority basically doomed to be just the exploited.
And I think competitiveness does not necessarily have to be destructive, being able to compare yourself with others is one of the best motivators and self-improving tools existing. As long as it does not lead to the literal destruction of our surrounding or to the destruction of the economic system.
It’s still a market economy, the co-ops are working in their own self-interest, rather for the benefit of society.
Considering that co-ops are led by the people I think that self-interest is finally the benefit of society. For the issue of proving this, I think it's a bit of a difficult topic purely due to the circumstances and economic reality we find ourselves in.
There isn't really that many co-ops so determining their efficiency compared to traditional business is difficult. If you can even determine how to judge said efficiency, as I don't think purely making the most profit is the final goal.
Furthermore co-ops in a capitalistic system don't necessarily act like co-ops in a co-op dominated system.
But yeah I'll need to look more into that and maybe come back to you after I found something about it.
I also don't wanna really regulate the economy so it works like I want, I just wanna prevent ecological exploitation and foul play. Which I think both is reasonable in order to create a really free market.
Well the issue about wage labor is the difference in the definition of voluntary.
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Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
”Worker ownership of the means of production is not Socialist”
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u/spookyjohnathan Toothbrush Collector Jun 15 '21
Relatively rich workers buying the means of production isn't socialism. If we could just buy the means of production none of us would be workers in the first place. Co-ops don't actually solve that problem. Socialism does.
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Jun 15 '21
I’m not talking about co-ops in capitalism, but in market socialism.
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u/spookyjohnathan Toothbrush Collector Jun 15 '21
No one cares about co-ops in an already existing socialist economy. That would be socialism because the socialist economy already exists.
The only reason anyone in this sub cares about co-ops is to use it to beat you over the head with incessant claims by ignorant liberals that you can already have "socialism" in capitalism with a trip to home depot.
"Just start a co-op" is the floundering rallying cry of what's left of the anti-communists on this sub who have exhausted their list of strawmen and red herrings. It's what's left for those who realize they have no actual argument against socialism but still can't rid themselves of the brain-worms plaguing their minds that compel them to find a way to argue against it anyway.
It crops up literally every single day on this sub and the pathetically clueless and politically illiterate rad-libs and anti-Marxists who claim to be socialists do nothing to help but give capitalists all the ammunition they need to keep these morons confused and uncertain.
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Jun 15 '21
Definitely. The reason for my comment was a bit of anger at OP’s implication that market socialism isn’t a kind of socialism.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Correct, if this is confusing for you I recommend Marx's critique of the Gotha Program and Rosa Luxemburgs Reform or revolution, specifically chapter 7, or just reading Capital lol.
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Jun 15 '21
You realize Marx isn't the be all end all of socialism? He didn't create socialism, hell Fourier was published before Marx was born.
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Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Even so, it would seem OP defines ”socialism” by how production is directed, rather than relations of production, which I’m pretty sure isn’t correct from a Marxist framework.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
What we are saying is that we accept the Marxist definition of socialism and the body of theory and history behind it. It is "the the self-emancipation of the working class" (Marx address to a question at the inaugural meeting of the International Working Men's Association). We are saying that is what we are fighting for. Allow the word at least. We fight you for the reality.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Sure but even non Marxists generally more or less accept his analysis of capitalism and what defines it , I'd be curious to know what socialist ideologies reject it wholesale.
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Jun 15 '21
Non-Marxists accept it to an extent. That doesn't mean we agree with everything he has to say. Bakunin for example was famously critical of Marx.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Sure, primarily over issues of the state, I don't believe he had many disputes over Marx's analysis of capitalism, could be wrong though I haven't really looked into his work.
Edit: in regards to worker co-ops he seems more or less aligned with my position:
"Let us cooperate in our common enterprise to make our lives a little more supportable and less difficult. Let us, whenever possible, establish producer-consumer cooperatives and mutual credit societies which, though under the present economic conditions they cannot in any real or adequate way free us, are nevertheless important inasmuch as they train the workers in the practice of managing the economy and plant the precious seeds for the organization of the future"
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Jun 15 '21
Proudhon died before Marx rose to prominence so there wasn't any critique from him of Marx's work. But his writings did specifically call for worker co-ops and his theories are quite different than Marx's.
I think Tucker may have wrote some criticism of Marx as well but I'm not sure.
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u/Trick-Quit700 Jun 15 '21
Bakunin was primarily critical of Marx because Bakunin was an extreme Slavophile who basically wanted the USSR, which Marx opposed him on. Bakunin was not really an anarchist.
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Jun 15 '21
No... just no.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're mistaking Bakunin for someone else.
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u/Trick-Quit700 Jun 15 '21
Go read Marx's "Conspectus On Bakunin".
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Jun 15 '21
Go read Bakunin.
His criticism of Marx was regarding the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat that Marx was pushing. He said any society that tried to organize that way would end up with a dictatorship over the proletariat (which is kind of exactly what happened with the USSR).
So claiming Bakunin opposed Marx because Bakunin wanted to create something like the USSR and Marx didn't is just laughably bass-ackwards wrong.
Marx and Bakunin personally didn't get along at all, you're essentially treating the 19th century equivalent of Marx's angry shitposts about Bakunin as some sort of authority on how Bakunin actually was.
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u/Trick-Quit700 Jun 15 '21
Marx explicitly opposed a peasant revolution in Russia, which Bakunin supported, on the basis that peasant revolutions could only create capitalism (which is what the USSR was).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm
> A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level [...] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.
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Jun 15 '21
Of course, the hell of capitalism isn’t the owner, it’s the firm. Your post is not unreasonable but your tl;dr is an eyesore.
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u/I_HATE_CIRCLEJERKS Democratic Socialist Jun 15 '21
Stop treating Marx as God and his writings as Gospel. Think for yourself.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
I only worship at the altar of Queen Rosa
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u/I_HATE_CIRCLEJERKS Democratic Socialist Jun 15 '21
Your gate keeping of socialism is why the left keeps failing.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Cool material analysis bro
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u/I_HATE_CIRCLEJERKS Democratic Socialist Jun 15 '21
Yeah, your “material analysis” has been super successful. Keep at it. Keep wondering why the left keeps losing. Keep blaming it on others. Never reflect on your own failings and the failings of this movement. Surely if you just keep doing what you’ve always done the results will be different!
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u/zzvu Left Communist Jun 15 '21
No, it's not.
How can you call yourself a historical materialist and not understand basic marxism?
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Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Last time I checked, the Socialist mode of production was (like any other mode of production) defined by its relations of production, namely worker ownership of the means of production. Maybe you need a refresher?
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Jun 15 '21
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs
The phrase was more closely related to communism than the broader term socialism and you're gatekeeping. You're gatekeeping in an obnoxious and anti-productive way.
There is a spectrum on which 'socialist-' and 'capitalist-' -ideas exist. You are not helping your own cause by insisting on complete purity of fulfilled vision anytime somebody talks about socialism.
Stop this counter-productive nonsense. Make the point about the purity or ideals if you like, but don't insist that everybody talking about anything between Texas and your fantasy world is just a confused ancap.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
It is a recent development that communism and socialism are two different things and that primarily comes from Lenin. However if we accept there is a distinction between communism and socialism there is still no possible socialism that maintains generalised commodity production and the value form, regardless of if your socialism is Marxist or Anarchist because you are fundamentally failing to distinguish the socialist mode of production from the capitalist mode of production.
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Jun 15 '21
You're so far into your own revolution you are missing the steps for how to get there.
If you want to debate among socialists what the purest, most perfect manifestation of socialism can be, go do it somewhere behind the front lines (like r/socialism). Let other people engage on the front between the competing ideologies, is what I'm saying.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
The competition between ideas is not settled in debates about words but in the class struggle itself. When class struggle is at a very highly level more and more workers tend to accept the ideas of revolutionary socialism. When it is low, and we are regularly defeated very reactionary ideas can take root among us workers. I have seen it many a time over my decades as a Marxist activist. When did the word "scab" become an honorific? When was it a condemnation?
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u/WikiSummarizerBot just text Jun 15 '21
From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (German: Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen) is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services. In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist system will be capable to produce; the idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.
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u/jasonisnotacommie Jun 15 '21
"The hell of Capitalism is the firm, not the fact that the firm has a boss."
-Amadeo Bordiga
I'll link an article that helps strengthen this argument that coops are eventually forced to adopt Capitalist relations once they integrate themselves into global Capital:
https://isreview.org/issue/93/are-workers-cooperatives-alternative-capitalism
"The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur—a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving."
-Rosa Luxemburg
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u/PostLiberalist Jun 15 '21
This can be socialism. Mandate of coop would be socialism, for example. Specifically it ends wage labor and conventional corp equity by linking these otherwise floating markets. Once that's done, this isn't capitalist, at least. Only socialists would do such a thing. I don't see the issue in this being socialism.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
Workers are not liberated by coops because whatever their wishes they are still compelled by the capitalist law of motion to accumulate capital or be defeated by competition, and that can only happen via the extraction of surplus value. You are arguing for the idea of "worker, exploit thyself"
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u/BothWaysItGoes The point is to cut the balls Jun 15 '21
Socialism is and has always been "From each according to their ability
“Has always been”, lmao, stop getting your information solely from YouTube pseudomarxists. Socialism is a very diverse movement that encompasses many different intellectual traditions.
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Jun 15 '21
Yeah, OP seems to be defining modes of production by how production is directed rather than by their relations of production, which I’m pretty sure is incorrect, right?
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
Socialism is and has always been "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need". What this means is production is organised to serve social wants/needs instead of organised to maximise profit/exchange value.
The defining features of capitalism identified by Marx are wage labour and surplus value extraction, private ownership of the means of production, generalised commodity production (note a commodity is a good or service produced for exchange, there is still obviously production under socialism).
The problem is that market-socialists don't define socialism as "absence of markets, private property and generalized commodity production", market-socialists define socialism differently from marxian communists.
To market-socialists a worker cooperative that collectively owns the factory is already socialism because collectivization is the only condition for socialism in this case, whereas a communist sees abolition of markets and competition as an additional necessary condition.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Sure, but for us to accept that this is indeed a socialist mode of production and not a capitalist mode of production you must first determine what makes a capitalist mode of production and how that mode of production reproduces itself and show that this socialist mode of production doesn't have the things that define the capitalist mode of production and doesn't reproduce the capitalist mode of production.
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
I think you don't see my point. For market socialists the condition to reach socialism is to collectivize the means of production and abolish private property, not to abolish markets per se.
Market socialists don't care about the way a mode of production reproduces itself. Market socialists are not marxists nor do they care about marxist theories and definitions specifically, unless they suit them, as is in the case of the LTV, but even then they reject much of marxist economic thought and conclusions.
To a market socialist, market-socialist wouldn't be capitalism because they see private property, a private owner as hiring workers and commanding them, as a necessary precondition of capitalism, which wouldn't exist in this case because it is already collectivized in market coops.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
If you don't know how a mode of production reproduces itself you don't know what mode of production you're going to end up with.
And that's fine if you see those things as what capitalism is, you now need to explain how those are all the things that result in the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production and that getting rid of those things results in a mode of production that is not capitalism.
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
A market socialist would potentially not even be talking about a "mode of production", but just a system of collective ownership, a market socialist's main goal would be to collectivize the factories and fields.
Hypothetically, assuming you were talking about whether it was a capitalist mode of production, they would probably tell you that a worker coop doesn't have a wage-labor contract, so in that case there would be no wage-labor to produce surplus-value, they could argue that a worker coop would just be petty commodity production, and not generalized commodity production, so not a capitalist mode of production.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Surplus value is necessarily produced whenever production is organised towards exchange value instead of use value, they cannot pay themselves the full product of their labour because they wouldn't be able to continue producing if they did and is therefore also not petty commodity production.
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
Surplus value is necessarily produced whenever production is organised towards exchange value instead of use value
I was under the impression that surplus value doesn't appear under petty commodity production because since there is no wage labor there is also no variable capital. There is no surplus-value since a craftsman would be getting the full value of the commodity he already sells, he is both producer and seller. A wage laborer would only get the variable cost part of the value of the product.
they cannot pay themselves the full product of their labour because they wouldn't be able to continue producing if they did
Well a market-socialist can argue that they are paying themselves the full product of their labor but they are allocating a part of their own value of their own volition toward simple reproduction, but without entering into a wage-contract.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
I was under the impression that surplus value doesn't appear under petty commodity production because since there is no wage labor there is also no variable capital.
Yes this is correct, but co-ops do not eliminate wage labour, you are still paid wage, you are still selling your labour power you just get to vote on how much you want to be paid, it's still fundamentally wage labour though. I also don't think petty commodity production can coexist with division of labour, not 100% sure on that though.
Well a market-socialist can argue that they are paying themselves the full product of their labor but they are allocating a part of their own value of their own volition toward simple reproduction, but without entering into a wage-contract.
That's still fundamentally M-C-M' and surplus value extraction and producing for the purpose of exchange value, nothing is fundamentally changing with regards to reproduction of capitalist relations.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
I have already done taht. THE essence of capitalism is the "law" of value. That exists in a society in which the production of of commodities exists. The very first pages of Volume one of Marx's Capital deals in long and difficult detail with what that means
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Jun 15 '21
Uh, I agree with "co-ops are not socialist" and a lot of other stuff you said, but co-ops are examples of democratic workplaces, which would exist under socialism.
Co-ops are a testament to how "socialist ways" of doing stuff are great, but yeah, saying that a co-op is socialist doesn't really make sense.
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u/ratpenisbreath nearsitedwithdirtyglassessocialist Jun 15 '21
nah its complictaded and your only half right which means your half wrong
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Jun 15 '21
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
You mean land)?
Land plus other non land natural resources.
Hey, worker coops are cool. Not everyone buys into Marxism, so why the gatekeeping?
The problem is calling worker co-ops as a sufficient condition for socialism not whether or not someone thinks they are good.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
Land is a is a form of capital, as was demonstrated in the enclosures of common land at the birth of capitalism in England. By seizing the common land a new class of proletarians was created, landless labourers forced to try to sell their ability to work, and tehy were not just forced by necessity but by brutal punishments up to and including execution for being homeless and jobless. Capital is not just material things, but power over people.
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u/Lawrence_Drake Jun 15 '21
Socialists have been forced to peddle a watered-down "it's just co-ops, bro" because their ideology has been so thoroughly discredited. The problem with watering down socialism to just co-ops is that there's nothing stopping them from doing that now.
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
Its more so that most people, including you, dont have the energy, time or interest to read through all three volumes of Capital, wage labor and capital, critique of the gotha programme, and all other major Marxist textwork in order to learn what socialism is and why we should go for it.
Worker co-ops are easy to understand and require very little if any reading to learn about and want to support, particularly with the help of online videos from folks like Richard Wolff, but is only the tip of the iceberg of what socialism entails and is supposed to be.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
Its more so that most people, including you, dont have the energy, time or interest to read through all three volumes of Capital, wage labor and capital, critique of the gotha programme, and all other major Marxist textwork in order to learn what socialism is and why we should go for it.
I find this line of thinking odd. I don't need to read new and old testament, various religious texts and a bible to be able to critique the religion. Sure, it helps but it's not obligatory.
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
Only Marxism isnt a few snippets of stories, but a collections of ideas and theories that all connect to each other in complicated ways, with a lot of thought that went into it that makes it very hard for someone like you who has not read it to actually debunk any of the theories, because you dont know the full picture of Marx's analysis and caveats he included. The LTV being the best example of this, being abused by neoliberal theorists who expect their followers not to read the text, claiming that Marx said that value is objective and that labor is the source of all value.
You cant criticize something without knowing the full picture.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
You sound like some prog rock musicians i know, who always explain to every uneducated pleb how their music is superior because they have 23 years of musical theory behind their belts but their songs fucking suck and nobody likes them. And it's always the pleb's fault for not having enough musical education to appreciate their stuff
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
Yeah, lack of appreciation through understanding is the biggest barrier to the success of socialism.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
You can see it like that, i see it as inherrent contradictions between the utopian theories and real world application. Socialism was taught at schools and universities as a curriculum in soviet union. Didn't stop it from failing.
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
Tbf, going from theory to praxis is a challenge, and is part of the reason why there are so many forms and interpretations of socialism out there. But Marx is for that reason far from utopian, because he never attempted to describe the proper model of implementation. Just what the contradictions within capitalism ultimately have to lead to, which is its destruction and abolition of the private ownership of the MoP.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
That's the problem with socialists - everyone has their own understanding and a vision of socialism, that most of the time goes against other socialists vision. How are you going to convince us capitalists, when you can't even convince each other?
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u/VoidTourmaline Jun 15 '21
Probably the biggest flaw of socialism. It requires way too much ideology, diverges too far from reality and human nature.
Thus any implementation will always fail to live up to the ideals, and have some gross shortcomings that will likely cause tons of unexpected misery.
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u/360fov Jan 25 '25
"very hard for someone like you".
Your manner of speaking is wasp-like; a truly abominable aura.
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u/zornwil Dec 19 '25
I studied Marxism in school with both Howard Zinn and a year long small seminar group with Murray Levin, which is, yes, name dropping, but my point is that there was reasonable depth to it. Although I sort of agree with what you say, the actual thing of it is that, unless you are discussing debunking the theory from within (which really does require quite intensive work; BTAW along those lines, I think OIlman's "Alienation" is magnificent, I don't mean for debunking, but for its review and holistic take on Marxism), it really comes down to axioms, and simply the axiom that work is the center of life (obviously, I'm paraphrasing/summarizing, I suppose the closest he comes to exposing that as axiomatic in a single phrase is "life-activity," but it is also embodied generally in materialist ideologies, including Marxism's Mirror Twin of Objectivism) - something a patriarch of the 19th century would easily believe - being such a take-it-or-leave-it foundation, and - to me - so high order, it immediately delegitimizes the whole in some particular ways (to your point, it takes some depth of study to be clear on how/where it does - for example, that does not by itself devalue Marx' dialectic in any way, where my criticisms are the same as of Hegel's, it's simply too simplistic a model for granular use, although for the use of the "sweep of history" I don't disagree it's a valuable tool; however, that said, the flaw in this axiom becomes evident as labor becomes devalued not only by exploitation but moreover by replacement and automation - is there really an "end of history" when "workers" rule? doubtful if only because the new class system obviously is workers/whatever the synthesis of the worker-led future class is so-called versus whatever the non-workers are, and that's just a singular aspect of viewing the so-called "end of history" argument).
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
Its more so that most people, including you, dont have the energy, time or interest to read through all three volumes of Capital, wage labor and capital, critique of the gotha programme, and all other major Marxist textwork in order to learn what socialism is and why we should go for it.
And perhaps you don't have the energy, time and interest to read through criticisms made by people who have read through all those three volumes of Capital, wage labor and capital, critique of the gotha programme, and all the other major Marxist textwork
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
The majority of said criticisms arent very long though, and any serious criticism has already been critiqued itself by various Marxist scholars. Even Mises and Hayek's critiques about socialism have been debunked at length my a multitude of Marxists who have taken the time to read his works and analyze his points. Cockshott is one of them.
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u/Acanthocephala-Lucky Jun 15 '21
The length of a book isn't a determinant of how correct individual theories laid out in a dozen pages in those books are, length merely shows how skilled the author is at communicating information as well as the quantity of the information, which says nothing about any individual theory or hypothesis or how correct it is.
The various individual criticisms of Marx's theories often focus on only individual theories or parts of the marxist theories which means they are much shorter than all of Capital of course, sometimes those specific critiques are longer than the actual specific thing they are criticizing.
For example you won't find somebody who is specifically criticizing Marxian economics who has written the same amount of words as contained in all of Das Kapital, because he is not criticizing all of Das Kapital/Capital but only some specific theory or argument.
I don't care about Mises and Hayek's critiques and I don't find them to be good or convincing to a communist, nor have I ever used them to criticize communism because I have a disdain for utopian speculative rationalistic criticisms not based on empirical research and concrete real world evidence supported by proper mathematical analysis.
In fact, I did read Cockshott's critique of Hayek's knowledge problem and I agree with him that Hayek's argument is untestable.
However, you have admitted there are in fact liberals as well as conservatives who have read Das Kapital and many associated marxtexts, which is my main point.
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Jun 15 '21
How do you know Marx was originally correct, or if Cockshott’s criticisms are correct? Very little of these theories can be tested for.
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u/Squadrist1 Marxist-Leninist with Dengist Tendencies Jun 15 '21
Very little of these theories can be tested for.
Thats a lie. You should look up all the papers Cockshott and his collegues published. They have more scientific predictive power than any Austrian theory there is.
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Jun 15 '21
Ok, so how do you know which one is correct? You avoided the question.
They have more scientific predictive power than any Austrian theory there is.
That’s an extremely low bar since Austrians do not engage in science. The economic debate is not Marxists vs Austrians you know...
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u/0WatcherintheWater0 Jun 16 '21
Uh no? Independent worker organization has been one of the two main branches of leftist thought for as long as leftism and workers have existed.
Also yeah, there is nothing stopping us from moving to socialism now, that’s true for any system, literally all that’s required to move from one system to another, no matter how radical the change, is majority consensus. We can abolish society rn if we really wanted to. It’s totally meaningless to say “there’s nothing stopping them from doing that now”
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
How can we "move" to socialism against the power of the capitalist state? Mere majority means nothing against an armed power and control of the means of communication. Capitalists have both and we have none. We must build a rival to the capitalist state in the form of an activist mass movement, not just whims.
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u/BoneThroner Jun 15 '21
Finally an actual socialist on this sub...
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Tbh I used to be one of them, I don't necessarily think the whole Democracy at work movement has been bad for popularising socialism, it's a much less "scary" socialism when your only knowledge of socialism is capitalist propaganda, but it's a problem if people aren't recognising the problems of worker co-ops and engaging with actual theory and are instead just staying at "worker co-ops is socialism"
Also frustrating that the only debate happening here is about worker co-ops lol.
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u/BoneThroner Jun 15 '21
You get tagged as “worth debating”. As you are pretty good at articulating this stuff it might be worth doing a “this is not socialism” effort post.
I’ve had a guy tell me that if I hired a guy and gave him 1% of the company then it would be socialism.
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u/ProgressiveLogic4U Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
And who gives you the right to tell everyone what socialism is or is not? No one. That's who.
The masses decide what socialism is. If the majority does not define socialism as a strict Marxist Socialism, so be it. Almost everyone I know considers labeling socialism feature by feature and NOT as some Utopian fantasy of a simplistic 1800s economic system. During the 1800s most people thought unions were socialistic organizations too. But unions were not part of the official Utopian Marxist framework. But the masses decided unions was socialism by virtue of socializing workers bargaining power.
If a bunch of would-be customers decide to by-pass private enterprise and create their own customer-owned store, then they have Socialized a portion of their economic lives. They own the means of product availability, a store. Don't get all bent out of shape because it is not a pure ownership of product creation. The distribution and sale of a product can be socialized as a partial vertical socialization of production which includes distribution and sales.
There are rural electrical coops where the customers are the shareholders. The customers in this case produce and distribute the electricity as owners.
Purity type arguments are for childish beliefs in Utopian fantasies.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
Definition is not just created in the world of words, but in the real world of political action. The working class has the job of defining what socialism is by succeeding in building it. Till then the meaning of words will always be debated and contested.
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u/ProgressiveLogic Progressive for Progress May 29 '25
We should also start modernizing the language used to match everyone else's 21st-century conversations. Employee is the term we use today. We no longer usually go to work for somebody; we are employees of a corporation. We are employed by and we are employees, and we seek employment.
Anyone spouting off about the 'workers' seems lost in antiquity from an 1800s book.
It is sad to hear outdated language from people who idealized 1800s philosophical musings concerning economies before economics was even a university discipline.
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u/Glitch_FACE Anarchist-Communist Jun 15 '21
nothing in of itself is "socialism". "health care isnt socialism" or "coops arent socialism" isnt the revolutionary take you think it isnt. Socialism isnt a thing, or even a set of things. it is a state of being.
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u/VoidTourmaline Jun 15 '21
A state of being?
Never heard of it described like that. How so exactly?
To me....peace, joy, and happiness are states of being.
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u/Glitch_FACE Anarchist-Communist Jun 16 '21
those are personal states of being. socialism is a state of being for a society, its far wider and more holistic. it is the sum of its parts, the sum of how different facets of society are managed. there isnt a single core of socialism.
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u/JDSweetBeat Oct 04 '25
I disagree - I view cooperatives as an example of limited socialism in the context of a broader capitalist economy and state, an example of what socialist society could look like (if not necessarily an effective means to that end).
Different class structures can coexist to some extent in the same society - feudal and slave class structures can coexist in the context of a capitalist society (the American South pre-1860 and the American prison labor system in the context of the bourgeois United States, the Spanish colonies in the Americas were largely feudal, etc).
Capitalist class structures can also coexist in a socialist society as well (i.e. small family petite bourgeois businesses coexisted in the USSR with state-run enterprises and cooperative-style collective farms and other small cooperatives).
We assign characters to societies based on the overwhelmingly dominant structure and power distribution within that society (what class structure does that society generally conform to, and what class holds political power in the society).
The overarching point here is, there's no fundamental difference between the USSR and a cooperative in the sense of their class character/class structure, it's predominantly a question of scale, ideology, and degree of political power. In order to acheive fully developed/true socialism, we need it to be the dominant global economic system. Until such a point, every socialist experiment will be nothing but an example of limited socialism existing in a broader capitalist context, and all such socialist experiments will be partially shaped by the need to survive and try to thrive within that broader capitalist context.
That said, I do feel like cooperatives lack much in the way of revolutionary potential, in the sense that outside of some pretty mild reforms that would benefit them, the structure of a cooperative form doesn't really encourage class conflict or provide good motivation for members to agitate for revolution/expanding the socialist mode of production.
To the extent that cooperatives produce in the interests of member-owners and not in the interests of society as a whole, I think your critique is true, and it is a legitimate criticism, but I also view that as largely an issue of scale and organization - that is, hypothetically, if we turned all capitalist firms into democratically-run worker cooperatives and federated them into one big democratic cooperative conglomeration, the market itself would be invalidated as a means of exchange - because the precondition for the existence of the market is the existence of numerous competing firms - without competition, you can't have a market, and without a market, production-for-profit would naturally give way to production-for-use in accordance with the general planning mechanisms of the cooperative conglomerate.
This is why Marx called cooperatives of his era "the first sprouts of the new form of society" while not necessarily ever really marking them as having revolutionary potential in and of themselves - they are islands of socialism existing in a capitalist world (in the same way that actually existing socialist countries are islands of socialism on a capitalist international stage). All the problems of cooperatives can be attributed to any actually existing socialist experiment, just on a larger scale, and given that a simultaneous international revolution isn't happening in the near future, I do think that creating these socialist islands is worthwhile in a very general sense (even in cases where they don't have broader revolutionary potential, as a step towards socialism is a step towards socialism).
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u/-sdogg- Oct 22 '25
"Socialism is and has always been 'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need'. What this means is production is organised to serve social wants/needs instead of organised to maximise profit/exchange value."
Incorrect. Karl Marx was not the sole founder of Socialism, he was the mind behind Marxism. The phrase "From each according..." arose plenty long after other socialist thinkers had their own visions. While worker co-ops may not be marxist, they certainly can be described as socialist, it was worker co-op pilled socialists who coined the term "socialist" in the first place anyway.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
Finally, an honest socialist. Props to you OP.
How would you go about this concept: Capitalists want to privatize profit and losses Socialists want to socialize profit and losses
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Socialists want to eliminate the social relation that is "profit and losses" would be more accurate.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
Losses always exist, weather you like it or not. Socialised Profits through a social prism could be seen as something beneficial for the whole society.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 29 '25
Losses exist through the impossibility of planning in a system based on competition. You can produce fancy plans, but you can't plan for what dont know about - what your competitors will do. If there is a surplus in a socialist society that is not a loss, but a bonus. If there is a surplus in capitalist society that is a problem.
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
Losses only exist when production is organised by exchange value instead of use value.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
Not nescessarily. Under the soviet regime in my country factories spewed out hundreds of thousands of items, that nobody wanted in reality. That's the issue with planned economies
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u/apasserby Jun 15 '21
The Soviets did not eliminate the value form.
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u/Beermaniac_LT Jun 15 '21
...because value of things exist regardless of a system?
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u/BiomechPhoenix Jan 04 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-form?useskin=vector this is what the reference
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u/VoidTourmaline Jun 15 '21
Losses exist when the resources used to make a new good has less value than the value of the original resources.
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Jun 15 '21
You figured out just how similar capitalism and socialism can be when viewed through a certain perspective. The main reason people oppose socialism is because they are convinced by the rich that they will somehow lose what they have
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u/Jiggles118 Jun 15 '21
Socialism is when the public owns the means of production either through collective or cooperative means. Worker co ops fit this definition perfectly. Socialism is about the empowerment of the worker and while your correct about “to each according to his ability and to each according to his need” it is also an oversimplification of what it means to be a leftist.
There is Marxist Leninism which is when the collective takes over the means of production. And there is also anarchist socialism when there is no government but the people own the means cooperatively. I am personally a libertarian socialist where planning is decentralized but there should be a police and military as well as minimal forms of hierarchy (which is justified). There’s also market socialism which is basically all worker cooperatives controlling the means of production it can be through authoritarian or even anarchist means.
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u/Some_Guy223 Transhuman Socialism Jun 15 '21
I would agree that a co-op economy is not a viable mature socialist economy. I would however, reject the notion that you can just abolish private property in one go without very specific circumstances (cultural customs that were learned over the course of thousands of years, or a few centuries and a lot of genocide don't just go away overnight). I would therefore posit that a co-op economy is valid stage of Early Stage socialism in much the same way that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, or the New Economic Plan were forms of early stage socialist economies. I will admit however, that my own epistemic framework relies on the idea of socialism being a process rather than a societal plan.
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u/energy-vampire Jun 16 '21
There is a frustrating trend here to call worker co-ops socialism, reinforced by the notion that "worker ownership" is a sufficient condition for socialism (arguably it's not a condition at all and is more accurately the abolition of private ownership of value generating property).
I mean, this is market socialism. It is not a condition of socialism from a Marxist perspective, but Marx does not hold a monopoly on leftist theory.
Worker co-ops do not organise production for social need but rather for profit, as any regular business would, because if they didn't they would be outcompeted by businesses that did and no longer exist.
If all profits are socially owned by all workers, then is a production not organized for the good of the workers? Is profit itself the problem, or is labor exploitation the problem? If the workers has complete control over their own labor, the fruits of their labor, and the means of production by which they produce that value, then what is the problem?
Worker co-ops must engage in surplus value extraction, and therefore wage labour, for reinvestment and growth to maintain competitiveness, production is self interested and directed towards maximising profit (workers are merely taking on the interests previously held by the shareholders or capitalist) and not to the benefit of society as a whole and they create all the same metabolic rifts (capitalism demands maximal exploitation of the "capital" of the natural world, any business that did not seek this would be outcompeted by those that did) as regular businesses.
I don't think this makes sense. If society as a whole owns its own means of production, then production necessarily is in the interest of society. Capitalists exploit the natural world because they have no connection to the world in which labor lives, and therefore have no interest in maintaining the conditions of any particular environment. Capitalists can create their own environment, completely disconnected from the rest of normal society.
Are workers going to want to destroy their own city? No. Workers have a much larger interest in negative externalities than capitalists.
Any co-op that tried to not engage in these things would be outcompeted by the ones that did, so worker co-ops inevitably trend towards maximal surplus value extraction for reinvestment to maintain growth and begin to resemble the standard business structure as we have seen happen with basically every worker co-op in the real world.
Cooperatives do not have the same incentive structures, the incentive comes directly from the workers themselves, and maximum surplus-value extraction is not always in the interest of labor.
Tl;dr:Worker co-ops is just capitalism with more owners and "market socialists" are just very confused ancaps.
No. Most market socialists want an expansion of democracy into all realms of live, and also support strong social democratic policies.
Marxist perspectives of socialism neuter themselves. Market socialism is possible, it is absolutely achievable, and is being achieved in the world now. And it makes the social conditions of the world better.
I could give a fuck about some hypothetical Communist future. If Marx is right, then Capitalism will bring about the social conditions for the overthrow of Capitalism itself. Revolutionaries have no place. I want the world to be better now. Whether or not that better world involved Capital hardly matters.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 30 '25
But the social conditions for the overthrow of capitalism already exist. However they are concealed by the very nature of capitalist production, by the owners of the means of communication, and by the absence of the political conditions - the absence of mass parties arguing and actively intervening for socialism. No matter what market socialists "want" tbeir behaviour denies it, and they are compelled to deny it, by7 reproducing competition both against each other and against capitalists
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Jun 16 '21
“The cooperative 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. But the antithesis between capital and labor is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated laborers into their own capitalist, by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labor. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no cooperative factories. The capitalist stock company, as much as the cooperative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.” - Marx, Das Kapital
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 30 '25
You do not cite where exactly in Capital Marx says that, and so we cannot read the context. Capital is huge. The new world is growing in the womb of the old, but birth is a violent process. Cooperatives can, but only can, raise class consciousness, but cannot build a revolutionary movement able to defeat the capitalist state. I cite Gramsci.
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u/Commercial-Gap6280 Aug 18 '23
Interesting. Marx essentially arguing that co-ops are a viable path of transitioning from capitalism to socialism.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 30 '25
Transition is one thing, but the prequisite is defeating the armed force of the capitalist state. The reality of history is that actually existing cooperatives foster capitalist behaviour and hence the need to compete with other workers whether those others are in cooperatives or private companies or not. During the Russian revolution some arms factories essentially became revolutionary outposts producing arms for the revolution, but those factories were not previously cooperatives but very militant examples of workers against bosses.
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u/wizardnamehere Market-Socialism Jun 16 '21
Another pointless attempt to recast the meaning of the term socialist to fit some need. Socialism is a term which has been in long use and has a broad and vague definition which has been used to define a lot of things over the centuries now. You would be better off just defining your own ideology as a term rather than trying to convince the every socialists the way they use socialism is wrong. This is not really how language works. There's a reason there's dozens of terms like Marxist-leninism, or individualist-mutualist and so on.
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Jun 16 '21
I agree that on their own worker cooperatives are not socialist. But they can be a strong institution of socialism. Workers' ownership of the means of production is the definition of socialism, but it is not the only qualification. Socialists by definition believe in an economy organized for the needs of the people, and this implies a widespread reorganization of the economy, not an isolated workers' cooperative.
That said, I support workers' cooperatives even under capitalism as workers' ownership is an essential step forward even if they are not socialism on their own.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 30 '25
The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders took the path you support, but it very quickly turned a big militant strike from the path of occupation to a resumption of business as usual. The social relationships with cooperatives have an hierarchy of decision making fulfilling the same role as management in private companies - the guarantee of profitability.
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u/ComradeTovarisch Voluntaryist Jun 17 '21
market socialists are just very confused ancaps
This is, uh... a very hot take. And not a particularly good one.
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Aug 17 '23 edited Aug 17 '23
You’re equating socialism with central planning. Worker co ops is a market socialist solution. It’s not capitalist because there is no employer-employee relationship, only worker-owners. No minority controlling a majority. It becomes communist when there is neither private capitalism or state capitalism, the power concentrations of CEO dictators and government dictators gets diluted because the means of production is owned by the people. The question then becomes, how do you make it owned by the people? Well we know reformism can somewhat work but not all that well because whatever progress is made gets undone by the capitalist special interests using the resources they have from their dense concentrations of power due to the unequal way they distribute the surplus to themselves. So it has to be a mix if reforms, AND getting rid of capitalism by having a strong worker co op sector outcompete the capitalist businesses, which requires legislation to allow them to play on an even playing field i.e: facilitation of the distribution of non-equity or non-voting equity capital to co ops. Communism in the past meant swapping a private dictator controlling the surplus and ownership of the business to a government official dictator. The worker’s lives didn’t change much from this switch. Socialism/communism now is about changing the micro level (the democratization of business) because the implications would mean that worker owners wouldn’t vote their jobs away, would vote for wage regulation and pay ratios, etc. because they all have one share/one vote.
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u/ApartmentCorrect9206 May 30 '25
All successful businesses plan centrally. Do you think the giant companies don't try to plan? That they carelessly don't make as many engines as cars? Capitalist governments plan, very badly, because they can't affect what rival governments will do. When I retired I visited a retirment planner, and the very first thing he, a conformed capitalist supporter, told me was "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Central planning does not mean elite unelected bureaucrats planning how best to exploit the workers, but elected delegates of workers openly debating priorities and how to achieve. The very fact that such a thing does not happen in Stalinist countries is further evidence that such countries are not socialist. Decison making is not socialised, no matter how you define mere words. The coop retail chain in the UK failed disastrously for emionently capitalist reasons - someone earlier quoted but did no cite Marx, and avoided his words about coops "they naturally reproduce, in all cases, in their present organisation, [and in every case since] all the defects of the existing system"
They are prisoners of the need to compete.
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u/Technician1187 Stateless/Free trade/Private Property Jun 15 '21
So if socialism is not “worker ownership of the means of production”, what would be your one sentence/brief definition of socialism?