71–80 of 372 posts
The anarchist culture of the 1800s and 1900s in Spain, especially the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist structures [0], is certainly one of the reasons for Mondagon's existence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard this story ever since I was a shit-eating Ron Paul voting right-libertarian. The whole "collectivist success requires ethnic purity" argument. I don't buy it. It is, inevitably, either an excuse to destroy functional collective institutions, an excuse to advocate for ethnic cleansing, or both.
To elaborate on my previous comment: if you want people to be less individualistic and more community-minded, and especially if you want economic organization to be more cooperative, decentralized and bottom-up, then people are going to need to feel a deep sense of buy-in and belonging, and you don't really see that in an undifferentiated mass of atomized "consuming and producing units". But you do see it among the A…
The difference between Mondragon, the kibbutzim, and other successful examples of collective labor, and the Soviet system, is precisely that the former are not governments, and operate in a capitalist system of property rights and free markets (in a practical rather than spherical cow sense of that term). I'm all for more cooperatives, it's a good model. Operating in a system which doesn't compel that form of organiz…
Perhaps that's not inherent to high-demand talent, but Mondragons current composition and markets. I know a handful of engineering consultancies that are cooperatives in everything but name - and I know ofa couple that are legally coops.
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> There is no value without labor. is this a serious statement?
He's a Marxist and believes in Marx's labor theory of value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value As wikipedia says, "modern mainstream economics rejects the LTV" (for very good reasons). It leads to some pretty obvious absurdities if you take it seriously. For example, 10,000 people digging holes should be more "valuable" than one guy designing a microchip, because hey! The holes take more labor.
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> the founder loses their investment So does the bank, and the state that (more often than not) subsidised said investment through diverse vehicles. If the bank goes belly up, we've seen what happens, we collectively contribute to save them... because we're collectively sharing all the risk of investment in our financialized economies. I agree that some people don't want risk and others do, but as soon as you start s…
Sure, but using tax-payer money to save malfunctioning banks is pretty much the opposite of capitalism.
The anarchist culture of the 1800s and 1900s in Spain, especially the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist structures [0], is certainly one of the reasons for Mondagon's existence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no value without labor. is this a serious statement?
He's a Marxist and believes in Marx's labor theory of value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value As wikipedia says, "modern mainstream economics rejects the LTV" (for very good reasons). It leads to some pretty obvious absurdities if you take it seriously. For example, 10,000 people digging holes should be more "valuable" than one guy designing a microchip, because hey! The holes take more labor.
It would be more accurate to say "modern mainstream economists". To say "economics" here is a real failure on Wikipedia's moderation. Because what they're actually talking about, is the Austrian School of Economics [1]:
> The Austrian school is a heterodox[1][2][3] school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism,
"Individualism" is the key part here because it betrays the intent, which is to disempower people from acting collectively, such as by forming unions. This is a key tenet of classical liberalism so an appeal to authority like "modern mainstream economics" we're really just saying "neoliberalism".
Neoliberalism isn't a neutral account or critique of capitalism. It wholly embraces capitalism as a solution to all problems. Neoliberalism can pretty much be summed up as weaker/smaller government (because it hurts profits) and indivudalism (because collective action hurts profits).
> 10,000 people digging holes should be more "valuable" than one guy designing a microchip
That's an asinine example. I mean what hole are they digging? If it's the Panama Canal, that's pretty valuable. Also, the example of one person designing a chip goes to the heart of the problem that LTV addressses. What does that design do? Well, nothing. It only has value if you make something with it you can sell (or you sell it to someone who does). You want to fab it? Well, TSMC involves a lot of labor. ASML involves a lot of labor. The materials required require a lot of labor.
Plus there's the issue that the chip design itself is intellectual property, which itself is an enclosure (in the capitalist sense).
Everything we as a society is so fundamentally interconnected that it's arbitrary and selective to attribute the value created to a tiny few. And it's done for the gain of the few at the expense of the many.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school_of_economics
The anarchist culture of the 1800s and 1900s in Spain, especially the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist structures [0], is certainly one of the reasons for Mondagon's existence. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?
It's interesting to read about Mondragon in more detail. I just came across the term in Kim Stanley Robinson's solar-system sci-fi epic "2312." The book (highly recommended) heavily references Mondragon; that's the name for the alliance / co-op of all of the planets and settlements that aren't Earth or Mars.