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The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

theguardian.com

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Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#31

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

thesuitonym wrote: post #22
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

How are co-ops anti-capitalist? They appear to me no different than a shareholder or partnership. Are most law firms socialistic in that they have partners who work for the firm getting a share of its profits?

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#33

Post by teaearlgraycold »

mgaunard wrote: post #27
jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

In my experience, people would rather be employees paid in cash whose amount is agreed ahead of time than partners where they're paid depending on the company's profits.

I have been wondering if you could make it work in Silicon Valley for a small firm. Take 2-10 people that could be founders and give them the alternative of being the Nth partner. They’d need to bring in 1/N of the profit to earn their keep. I think it’s doable.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#34

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thesuitonym wrote: post #22
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

> co-op customers are treated better and receive better service

I’d argue this is because a co-op can attract higher-quality workers for less than a purely profit-minded shareholder-owned business. (Similar to companies with a unique culture.) Generalise the model and you’ll get the co-op equivalent of the 70s-era UAW running roughshod where they can.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#35

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

JTbane wrote: post #18

C-suite salaries are so high in America I'm wondering if these sort of co-ops could be more competitive on that cost saving alone.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was paid $36M in 2023. The company had, at the end of the year, 310,000 employees. So we can assume that if got paid zero, the company would've been able to distribute about $116 to each of them. Doesn't look very compelling to me, in that particular case.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#36

Post by rybosworld »

thesuitonym wrote: post #22
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

Co-op is not a socialist model at all. It's just an alternative corporate structure.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#37

Post by anon291 »

gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #31
thesuitonym wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

How are co-ops anti-capitalist? They appear to me no different than a shareholder or partnership. Are most law firms socialistic in that they have partners who work for the firm getting a share of its profits?

They're objectively not any less capitalist than a private company with restrictions on share transfers.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#38

Post by bumby »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #29
jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

Socialism is a big tent, by definition that's only one possible manifestation. Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), for the same reason mixed-market economy (as practiced by most liberal democracies) represents not purely one thing or another. Co-ops are nothing new. > The Amish keep their surplus labor value. People don't want to live like the Amish. > I…

>People don't want to live like the Amish.

To the OP's point, do you think living like the Amish is necessary to keeping surplus labor value?

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#39

Post by jmyeet »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #29
jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

Socialism is a big tent, by definition that's only one possible manifestation. Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), for the same reason mixed-market economy (as practiced by most liberal democracies) represents not purely one thing or another. Co-ops are nothing new. > The Amish keep their surplus labor value. People don't want to live like the Amish. > I…

> Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy),

As I just explained, that's not what capitalism is. Capitalism is a relatively new invention (~500 years) that arose from the ashes of feudalism. Exact same economic structure. Different exploiters.

Consider this: markets exist in supposedly non-capitalist countries. They existed in the Communist bloc. We've got cuneiform tablets describing markets going back 5000+ years. Capitalism didn't create markets or a market economy.

This is what I mean when I say that not only do people not know what scoaialism is, they don't know what capitalism is either. Yet the instinct to defend it is so strong, particularly in Americans. That too is relatively new. Abraham Lincoln was a Marxist, for example.

> People don't want to live like the Amish.

Who says they have to? We can point to an example of people living co-operatively in, oh I don't know, the article of this submission?

> The right to private property + market economy.

Then why did market economies exist before and outside capitalism? Private property is a core tenet of liberalism (which really means "neoliberalism" today). Private property in capitalism can be more accurately traced back to enclosures, which are really an evolution of land grants under feudalism.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#40

Post by anon291 »

jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

Socialism as practiced also implies heavy centralized planning to mandate these arrangements and then set price floors and ceilings to set production capacity.

The Amish tend to reject social ownership of land so they are not socialist or communist by any means. Distributist would probably be the best description with any mention in the literature.

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