I admire and fully share your passion for the co-op model, but I find your conceptual confusion very perplexing. A co-op is not a capitalist enterprise, by its nature it's socialist. A capitalist enterprise has the capitalist(s) who own(s) the corporation, and the workers under the capitalists' orders who are exploited to create a profit. That's what capitalism is.
So this sentence is a theoretical nightmare: "Could we eventually create a capitalist paradise where democratically run companies use their profits for the good of their worker citizens?"
Such a paradise would by definition not be a capitalist paradise, it would be a socialist paradise.
This is not a mere semantic issue. If we're not clear about what we're doing, we'll just end up with a new coat of cosmetic on the same old capitalist dystopia that we have now - let's call it pinkwashing by analogy with the greenwashing that disguises environmental destruction with shiny green labels. It's a bit like that commune in The Last of Us, where even some of the members it still think they're all-American capitalists, and can't recognise what they really are.
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So keep up the good work but please be honest with yourself about what you're actually doing - you're promoting a socialist transformation of society, and good for you!
It is true that there are many socialist thinkers who use Mondragon as an example of socialism, but that is not the true definition of the term. Socialism means that the means of production (the economy) is owned by the state. The most common textbook case study of this is the USSR.
Capitalism, on the other hand, means the means of production are owned by private individuals. As in, companies are owned by people, not the state. In this way, Mondragon is as capitalist as Google or Apple. The only way they differ is how they use their profits. The means of *distribution* might be socially owned, but not the means of *production*.
A similar example of this might be the Nordic countries: their means of production is capitalist (that is, the economy and the wealth it generates is owned by private individuals), but their means of distribution is social (that is, the government then uses that wealth for the greater good). This is often called a social democracy.
So yes many claim the ideas here are socialist (and maybe they are in distribution), but they are actually capitalist in production.
That said, there’s a reason anarchists, socialists, and capitalists all want to claim the model. Perhaps we’ve finally found something that incorporates something of each of them. Something that transcends all three of those terms.
I disagree with your definition "Socialism means that the means of production (the economy) is owned by the government."
There are many forms of socialism, from the statist socialism that you describe here to the libertarian anarcho-syndicalist socialism that you're actually working towards but cannot recognize as such, due to some kind of unwillingness to recognise what it is.
A co-operative by definition is the means of production owned by its workers.
A capitalist corporation by definition is the means of production owned by a private owner or any number of such using a stock or share mechanism to split ownership. This corporation then employs workers to generate added value which generates surplus. The workers do not own the corporation or the means of production, they are exploited by them.
We've been working through Schneider, you and I, and Schneider like you is focused on pragmatics and is extremely light on economic-political theory. But even he recognises what's going on when he quotes Bauwens, who works to create co-ops in Bolivia:
[Sorry using an e-book, no page number possible]
"He believes that cooperatives are the event horizon. They’re bubbles of peer-to-peer potential that can persist within capitalism, and they can help the coming transition proceed. They can decentralize production through local makerspaces while continually improving a common stock of open-source designs. They can practice open-book accounting to harmonize their supply chains and reduce carbon emissions. Open intellectual-property licenses can help them share their resources for mutual benefit. As these networks grow, so will the commons they build, which will take over roles now played by government and private markets. Soon all the free-flowing information, combined with co-op businesses, will turn the economy into a great big Wikipedia or Linux—by anyone, for anyone. The industrial firm, whether capitalist or cooperative, will dissolve into collaborations among peers. Bauwens calls this process “cooperative accumulation.”"
Schneider "Everything for Everyone" Chapter 7
It's clear from this description that capitalist and co-operative are separate ways of conducting an enterprise in this model, and the co-operative is seenas a transition into something that is not capitalist.
I think the general confusion here is that people imagine that "public ownership" is the only alternative to "private ownership", therefore socialist = state-owned, where in fact "worker ownership" is another distinct mode of owning the means of production, leading to a ground-up form of non-state socialism. The role of the state is to fade away under this model of socialism, just as is described in Marx's work.
To me, this comment is besides the point. This model is different than the one Marx proposed, it’s also different from the one Milton proposed. You could call it anarcho-socialist if you want. You could also call it anarcho-capitalist if you want (there’s a book by this name that would make that case if you’re interested). You could call it anarcho-social-capitalism if want! But extending all of these terms to try to encompass democratically run employee owned companies is trying too hard to make this into an ideology rather than what it actually is: a working model that all of these ideologies can get behind.
I simply disagree that capitalism is in any way compatible with this model - if it ever became a serious alternative to capitalist orthodoxy, then capitalists would shut it down - buy it out and close it down. It's best seen as a ready-made alternative for when the transition occurs.
Anarcho-capitalism is just a silly term for a silly thing that wouldn't interest me in the least. I've argued with such an-caps before and they have literally nothing. Their arguments are not even arguments but overwrought cowboy fantasies.
Being "post ideological" is a choice, but it's really quite illusory because political ideologies are not simply words in a book which you can somehow live without, or agree to differ on, they are active schemes to organise society.
Exactly 👆🏻
This is the problem of ideology. It reduces commentary and debate to preset norms and definitions which crowd out any new thinking. Both capitalism and socialism are degenerate terms distorted by whichever power group wants to gain influence by employing these norms. Cooperatives are different to either conventional capitalism or socialism. They continue to evolve in their unique conceptual space and resist easy categorisation, it is one of their great strengths. We should study them and learn from them, but attempting to impose definitions upon them for ideological reasons limits our appreciation of new thinking and directions. Let’s learn from them, not define them.
Yes! It seems to be a model that transcends our prior definitions. So maybe “employee ownership” is a good label. It could be “employee-owned capitalism,” but capitalism is as scary a word for some as socialism and communism are for others. “Employee ownership” takes the ideology out.
I like that
Employee ownership cannot by definition be capitalism which requires owner and worker to be distinct roles.
So employee ownership is a fine name for it, but that is by definition a form of socialism, scary as the term may appear (not so much in Europe where lots of centrist parties are known officially as socialist).
Americans have an ingrained fear-repulsion-complex of the word socialism which basically nobody else in the world has. In Europe both supporters and opponents both basically see it for what it is, not as Satan himself.
Studies show that "Medicare for all" has an 80% acceptance from the public in the US, while "socialized medicine" has an 80% rejection. Yet they're exactly the same thing.
But single-payer Medicare for All would essentially be the same thing.
This exactly! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Thanks for the comment, please see my more detailed comment above in reply to Elle. Essentially you could call it market socialism, but the generalised co-op model is most assuredly not capitalist either in theory or practice.
I am afraid I am completely over ideological interpretations A.P. I no longer find them helpful for the reasons stated in my reply to you. The basis of my concern is applying any ideology to evolving practices denies they may evolve into new forms which I am sure is not your motivation at all but nether the less it is a phenomena I have observed. An insistence on applying any pre-existing ideological theory to evolving structures assumes a certainty of knowledge of the future that is not justifiable. Let new systems evolve their own forms, they may be superior or inferior to existing systems, time will tell, but they have their own agency and should not be retrofitted into pre-existing forms. That is stasis, not progress.
Your assertion that "applying any ideology to evolving practices denies they may evolve into new forms" implies a serious misunderstanding and underestimation of that old stalwart, Marxist dialectical materialism. The "dialectical" in that term involves a dynamic process of engaging with existing structures and practices in society and applying all kinds of insights, precisely in the hope that they do evolve into new forms.
If you think of Marxism in terms of old guys in cardigans smoking pipes, prepare to be amazed by such things as "market socialism - what we're talking about here though our friends try to deny it - "acid socialism" which is a kind of surrealist counterculture version that I really find inspirational, "neo-utopianism", "fully-automated luxury communism", "left-accelerationism" and many other dynamic varieties, in constant evolution. It's very much not the kind of stultified fossil that you would have it.
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For substack.com › 172136528 ap murphy
Apologies A.P., I tried to reply directly to your note but got caught in some identity verification loop I grew bored with. i hope you get this.
I am aware of Marx's fork of Hegel's dialectic. I admire any system that adapts over time and yet I still reject ideology, even the most flexible kind. Ultimately it is an appeal to authority which I am uncomfortable with both in principle and instinctively. Marx begin to import evidence, hence materialism, and was diligent in his research. All very admirable, and as a thinker I do admire Marx, but there remained, even in his time, things he did not understand. Although he spent a long time on money he did not understand its role as a control mechanism which is all it is. To be fair to him he did not have access to the anthropological and archeological evidence that we now have that allows us to track its inception from an abstract symbol of identity in the Ubaid period, and then its capture and mutation into a control device in the Sumerian period. This would have helped his critique by identifying the point in time when an abstract symbol of wealth and ownership ceased being a communal device and was captured by a self defined authority as a control mechanism. Nor was he aware of the modern form of centrally issued fiat money which increased money's role as a control device rather than a medium of exchange. A lot of contemporary economists haven't updated their models to capture this either. This remains my problem with appeals to authority, any authority. It is improbable, although not impossible, that an existing authority of any kind is at the curling edge of the evolution of systems as evolving systems are identifying, developing or building new pathways. For example, Marxism did not anticipate the evolution of money into software. It could not predict this development and so has no utility in defining the future. It can, once this new fork has been developed, assimilate it and look for ways money as code can be made to work within its ideology, and no doubt it will. But that is precisely why I reject any form of ideology. All it can do is assimilate and incorporate the elements that support its philosophy. this may appear to be a creative step from within the ideology. From outside of that ideology it appears to be a tailoring or trimming of potential to fit within a pre-existing narrative, that is, a reduction of potential future paths and an editing out f potential futures. this is the part I reject entirely.