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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

#41

Post by _mlbt »

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…

The problem is that socialism doesn't scale without force. Eventually you'll run out of people who willingly go along with doing things for the greater good. Looking at history, once you get larger than a commune or coop it all falls apart. You need force to seize the means of production, and the leaders of this force never give up their "temporary" powers. You also need force to get people to do the necessary but undesirable jobs, usually resulting in a centrally planned economy, which history again tells us results in misery, famine, and failure.

It is also human nature that most of us want someone that tells us what to do. Humans consistently organize into social structures where there is a leader in charge, whether it is a patriarchal or matriarchal extended family structure, a tribe, a club, a company, or a government entity a leader always emerges.

Capitalism is very much like Democracy. It's the worst system other than all the others that have been tried.

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

#42

Post by thesuitonym »

rybosworld wrote: post #36
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.

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

It's the workers owning the means of production, in what way is that not socialist?

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

#43

Post by thesuitonym »

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?

The workers own the means of production. That's the only thing that socialism means.

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

#44

Post by enraged_camel »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #35
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.

Cool, now combine the salaries of the entire C-suite. That’s what the parent comment is referring to.

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

#45

Post by teaearlgraycold »

thesuitonym wrote: post #42
rybosworld wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's the workers owning the means of production, in what way is that not socialist?

It is. People don’t realize socialism isn’t mutually exclusive with capitalism.

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

#46

Post by nullhole »

enraged_camel wrote: post #44
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool, now combine the salaries of the entire C-suite. That’s what the parent comment is referring to.

Also maybe do it across a few more industries.

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

#47

Post by orwin »

rybosworld wrote: post #36
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.

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

It is the worker owning the mean of production, so i don't think you can do more socialist than that to be honest, it's almost the definition of socialism (communism for fellow europeans).

You can find some differences between western co-op and the socialist ideal (mainly, you still have hierarchy and a power structure mostly determined by how much you make), but to me it seems mostly academics.

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

#48

Post by harimau777 »

_mlbt wrote: post #41
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…

The problem is that socialism doesn't scale without force. Eventually you'll run out of people who willingly go along with doing things for the greater good. Looking at history, once you get larger than a commune or coop it all falls apart. You need force to seize the means of production, and the leaders of this force never give up their "temporary" powers. You also need force to get people to do the necessary but un…

> Capitalism is very much like Democracy. It's the worst system other than all the others that have been tried.

There are other systems that we've tried which work much better than the corporate Capitalism that we have in the United States. Most notably democratic socialism/social democracy/mixed economies (with the exact dividing lines between those three depending a lot on who you ask).

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

#49

Post by harimau777 »

anon291 wrote: post #40
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.

Centralized planning is only a feature of certain forms of socialism. It's generally not a feature of democratic socialism or the various anarchist forms of socialism.

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

#50

Post by piva00 »

_mlbt wrote: post #41
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…

The problem is that socialism doesn't scale without force. Eventually you'll run out of people who willingly go along with doing things for the greater good. Looking at history, once you get larger than a commune or coop it all falls apart. You need force to seize the means of production, and the leaders of this force never give up their "temporary" powers. You also need force to get people to do the necessary but un…

Mondragon's example goes exactly against all of your points. It's a 70k workers company ran as a co-op. You can have co-ops running and trading between them, the only point where capital is necessary is for investments in new businesses lines (in the sense of financing capital, not all capital, financing capital from banks can also come from co-op banks).

Undesirable jobs are done either way if people are paid, there's no difference if it's run by capitalists, the government or a co-op, you need to hire people and pay them. A co-op would work the same way.

Capitalism is definitely not like Democracy, democracy has been proven since ancient Greece to be a decent system to organise power, and it has evolved over time to be more inclusive. Capitalism has only shown that if left untamed and to grow on its own it will only consume more, exploit more, and remove freedoms of being a human being in the world if you don't pay up.

Capitalism is useful but every decade it seems to be reaching the limits of what it can be, no better version of capitalism has emerged, every evolution of capitalism has only magnified its destructive power. Democracy has done the exact opposite.

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