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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

#91

Post by rybosworld »

greenie_beans wrote: post #70
rybosworld wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely incorrect.

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

The business ownership in a coop is not "socialized". It's still privately owned.

The definition of socialism is not, and never has been, "workers owning the means of production."

A coop still meets all the characteristics of capitalist entity:

- privately owned

- for profit, with profits going to shareholders

If you think coops are socialist, then you must also think any company that has more than 1 shareholder is socialist.

If you think private ownership (which coops protect and uphold) is allowed under socialism, then you don't understand what socialism is.

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

#92

Post by adolph »

feedforward wrote: post #61
_mlbt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Hunter gatherer bands in the Amazon live the way they have for 50,000 years

As much as “noble savage” is a comforting story, the truth is likely more complicated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67940671

https://www.npr.org/2011/01/12/132853997/Amazon-Once-Was-Hom...

https://davidgraeber.org/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-...

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

#93

Post by Ericson2314 »

dmoy wrote: post #84
xhkkffbf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The percentage of ownership is relevant, as is where the profit goes.

Board control is probably more important than profit on this one, I'd say

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

#94

Post by yoyohello13 »

zbyforgotp wrote: post #81
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.

It is an interesting question why they don’t outcompete other businesses.

Most likely because growth is not really the primary goal.

If an organization has any goals besides growth at all costs it will fall behind.

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

#95

Post by asimpletune »

_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…

Well, for what it's worth democracy doesn't scale without force either. Somebody, i.e. the state, has a monopoly on violence, to protect our property. In any case, you're just talking about state based socialism, like marxism.

But there are other forms of socialism that do just fine and are alive today, like syndicalism. They work because they don't rely on a government to exist, correctly recognizing their power in industry.

The best years of America for the middle class were when there was a good balance between decent paying, unionized manufacturing jobs and the customers who chose to pay higher prices and get American products.

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

#96

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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.

It’s really the non-employee shareholders that take the value, so instead of comparing with CEO and management, you should instead be asking:

“How to transfer ownership of all publicly traded shares such that they are owned solely by the employees and not non-employee investors”

CEOs and management are simply there to prevent the above from happening, which is why they are paid by the board so much.

The boards are the unelected non-employee owners that need to go away

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

#97

Post by Ericson2314 »

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.

C-suite compensation, especially stock-based, is often in part to ensure management loyalty to shareholders vs other things. Worker board membership means management once again has competing loyalties, but now de jure. That means it is not worth it to the share holders to pay the extra "ransom compensation", in addition to workers probably outright being against it. I would thus expect C-suite compensation to go down.

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

#98

Post by losvedir »

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…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing actually legally preventing a Mondragon-type industrial co-op like this from existing in the US, right?

That it's not so common is an interesting question: does it get outcompeted by your standard corporation? Would people rather generally work as employees than take on risk as owners? Something else? I think in a co-op like this, employees would still be eligible for food stamps, and there's nothing preventing them from "decimating" a local economy, either.

I think this is "socialist", and it seems to be working, and everyone is happy, so more power to them. But my understanding is since there's nothing preventing people from setting this up, the "Red Scare" was not a bunch of people going, "hey, change the laws so me and my buddies can set up a co-op". Like, what's the actual policy change desired? "Let folks who want to run corporations and work for them do so, and let folks who want to operate in a co-op do so?" No, because that's our current situation.

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

#99

Post by dexterdog »

tossandthrow wrote: post #63
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.

So in this utopia does the organization run with no management at all or does management all work for $0?

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

#100

Post by Scoundreller »

mamonster wrote: post #83
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…

This reminds me of the yearly complaint in French politics that CAC40 companies are paying monstrous dividends, to which the answer is always: If they are so monstrous then surely you should simply buy the shares yourself? You could just be an Amazon or a Walmart shareholder by logging into your Robinhood account, unlike the feudal regime where to become an aristocrat you would need to be some sort of famous knight,…

Do the CAC40 companies have fixed-percentage-of-profit dividend yields?

Dividends (can be) just writing cheques to yourself with your own money.

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