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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

#61

Post by feedforward »

_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…

The entire world was socialist from the time of the Lubang Jereji Saleh cave paintings 40,000 years ago until 10,000 years ago. Societies with different classes only sprung up 10,000 years ago. They only scaled with force, and the literature from 4000 years ago to now attests to this.

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

Hunter gatherer bands in the Amazon live the way they have for 50,000 years - even prior to crossing the Bering Straits. Whereas societies where the capitalist mode of production predominant were barely even formed less than 500 years ago. Also from the time of the Paris Commune to the Cold War until now, it has been racked with threatening crises. Even in the US we see self-described socialist politicians being elected nowadays.

It's hard to make capitalism sound permanent when it has been so impermanent.

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

#62

Post by xhkkffbf »

Quarrel wrote: post #25

The co-op structure is less used in the US, but there are quite a lot of significant employee owned corporations (which come with the limited liability benefits to shareholders). There are also quite a few with mixed founder / employee ownership. Publix for instance employ 250,000 people across their supermarkets and are employee / founder owned. A recent list of the largest from Oct 2023: https://www.nceo.org/articl…

Would it be fair to say that companies like AMZN or GOOG have "employee ownership" because of the stock options? If so, it means many tech companies meet this definition.

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

#63

Post by tossandthrow »

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.

If we factor in not just C-suite but the entire middle to top management, then I definitely think there is something to come for.

Though, in the end, the US is extremely adversarial. So these people standing to loose out on the competition would do anything to stifle such innovations.

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

#64

Post by giantg2 »

skciva wrote: post #56
Workaccount2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You end up with ~$2300 more per employee, assuming they all get paid the same and there are 20 of them. Which still isn't much.

Ask the average American worker if they'd like an extra $2300 a year. And yes I understand thats pre-tax. But even so, thats a non-negligible amount for a lot of people.

I'm not diaagreeing, but most of the people working for JPM are not average.

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

#65

Post by greenie_beans »

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?

"capitalism" is simply a way to organize an enterprise. an enterprise can participate in a market without structuring the organization as a capitalist enterprise. free market != capitalism. american-style capitalism consists of a political system that supports the capitalist enterprise structure.

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

#66

Post by Dibby053 »

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.

>in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct

After seeing time and time again the success of workers of bankrupted companies pulling up their compensations and unemployment benefits to rebuild the company in a co-op model, I wonder if it's not the opposite.

"Money attracts money", and I don't think it's too crazy to think that if everybody had access to low-interest credit under the same conditions as the big players, this model would be the norm, rather than the exception.

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

#67

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #54
enraged_camel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You end up with ~$2300 more per employee, assuming they all get paid the same and there are 20 of them. Which still isn't much.

JP Morgan works in 65 countries, in some of them 2300 would be a year of salary.

Venezuela avg salary 230$ per month

Vietnam avg salary 277$ per month

Lebanon avg salary 190$ per month

Nigeria avg salary 730$ per month

Pakistan avg salary 293$ per month

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

#69

Post by rybosworld »

orwin wrote: post #47
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 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.

Workers participating in ownership is not what socialism is.

Socialism is about societal ownership. A coop is not societal ownership. It is still private ownership in practice.

How many tech workers own shares in their company? Are those companies socialist?

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

#70

Post by greenie_beans »

rybosworld wrote: post #60
thesuitonym wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is completely incorrect.

how is "socializing" the ownership of a business not socialist?
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