Larry Hogue
Mondragon as the new City-State
Awesome article, Elle, and I’ve been looking forward to it! I wish we had more of this in the US. I used to work in a minor capacity for SAIC when it was employee owned and I always try to buy my flour from Bob’s Red Mill, and I buy my sugar from the farmer-owned Michigan Sugar (although that’s different, I know).
I was going to say the same thing as the earlier commenter: that this is really a form of socialism, not capitalism. The Wikipedia definition of socialism is quite broad and covers social ownership of the means of production, which includes employee ownership: en.wikipedia.org › Socialism (And since the workers are owners of the company, they do own the means of production, right?)
It’s right there in your article when the Mondragon official told the questioner it’s a whole different mindset than the individualist focus on getting rich. Actually maybe it’s a step beyond socialism to communism, when the state will “wither away,” which is essentially what you’re proposing. But socialism and communism are scary words, so maybe “employee-owned capitalism” is a better way to sell the idea.
But that’s all really a question of semantics. Let’s just focus on the practical aspects of bringing this model over to the US. You’ve gone a long way to making this model better known.
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