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Mondragon as the new city-state

elysian.press

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Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#111

Post by Aloisius »

jmyeet wrote: post #4

There is no value without labor. This was recognized by everyone from Karl Marx to Abraham Lincoln to Adam Smith. Smith even conceded that profit was impossible if workers retain their surplus value, which is exactly the point. I bring this up because that's what capitalism is: draining the surplus labor value from workers to the capital-owning class. In feudalism, the artistocracy and th emonarchy extracted that val…

> There is no value without labor.

Yet wine is higher valued than grape juice.

Value can clearly exist without labor.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#112

Post by tecleandor »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #97
conaclos wrote: post #67

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

Probably more influenced by the Falange driving against classic capital and communist analogs. This was setup under Franco's Spain.

But not BY Franco. Note in the article how the government removes social security support from the coops and they have to set up healthcare themselves.

Arizmendiarrieta wasn't a Franco follower at all. He fought with the Republicans and went to jail during the war. After that stopped writing in Basque, as that wasn't seen with good eyes in Franco times.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#113

Post by karaterobot »

mikojan wrote: post #85
api wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?

I do not believe it is necessarily about that. It might be a lack of education (not a value statement). Socialism in Spain was not established at once. It was an effort spanning many decades. If we would suddenly find ourselves in a medieval kingdom we would certainly need time (and help) to adapt to that system. Likewise, people from that period would need time (and help) to adapt to ours. Regardless of whether it i…

Note that Mondragon is not a socialist enterprise. It's not obvious to me whether you're saying it is, but I think one of the interesting things about Mondragon is that it's somewhere in between the socialist-capitalist dichotomy. If you came along and said "good news, the state is in charge of all your businesses now" they would not consider their mission accomplished.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#114

Post by nyokodo »

harwoodjp wrote: post #76
api wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?

Why don't workers unite to democratically manage production? The police, propaganda, wage slavery.

> Why don't workers unite to democratically manage production?

Because the majority of workers are doing the minimum amount of work to get by, because ~50% of workers are below average intelligence, because those with the entrepreneurial skill and/or business management competence necessary to make this happen benefit more from the current system and have less motivation to mess with it.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#115

Post by jonnybgood »

teruakohatu wrote: post #108

> Mondragon provides us with a successful, working model. It’s not throwing out capitalism, it’s creating a better form of it. Can any people from this region tell us what the downsides of working for Mondragon are? The article only touched on lower pay. Also how much does the President of the parent Mondragon Corp get paid? The often cited 6:1 or 9:1 lowest paid worker to CEO seems to be applied to CEOs of the vario…

In the OP:

“Lorenzo estimates that the president of Mondragon is the highest-paid position (level 6) with a salary of around €200,000. Managers and directors earn between €80,000 and €120,000.”

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#116

Post by throwaway2037 »

dbingham wrote: post #81
trhway wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t allow genuine innovation in any shape or form, and that in particular leads to highjacking by bureaucrats and degradation. So they may work in short term (work for some at the price of oppressing the ones who don’t fit well into the collective) - I’m from USSR for example - yet the result is predetermined.

That is flatly false. Worker cooperatives are every bit as innovative as any other form of private corporation. These are owned by workers not a centralized government. There are quite a few of them and you may well have purchased their products with it even realizing it. Two additional examples you may have encountered are Equal Exchange and King Arthur Flour. There aren't more of them because they have a hell of a…

    > most businesses are financed through equity sales
Can you explain this more? As I understand, after equity IPO, most companies use debt capital markets to raise money to expand their business.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#117

Post by mikrl »

intalentive wrote: post #7

>If the model is a good one, detractors say it can’t be replicated outside of the Basque Country, and there’s some truth to that. The author doesn't speculate why, but I'd guess it's partly due to Basque ethnic solidarity. Mondragon sounds a lot like the kind of late 1800s / early 1900s syndicalism that later evolved into Italian fascism and German National Socialism. Of course, another big "collectivist capitalism"…

>Of course, another big "collectivist capitalism" success story is China, which is also fiercely nationalist.

Yugoslavia had a dynamic market socialist economy and was powerful enough to align against the USSR for decades, yet was multi ethnic.

It suffered from the typical authoritarian weak succession and was ultimately destroyed by its resurgent ethnic nationalism.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#118

Post by immibis »

trhway wrote: post #84
dbingham wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is flatly false. Worker cooperatives are every bit as innovative as any other form of private corporation. These are owned by workers not a centralized government. There are quite a few of them and you may well have purchased their products with it even realizing it. Two additional examples you may have encountered are Equal Exchange and King Arthur Flour. There aren't more of them because they have a hell of a…

Example of innovation please. I’ve seen first hand that no collective farm is able to produce nor SpaceX nor even EV nor even plant in time and harvest in time.

Open source software

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#119

Post by nataliste »

api wrote: post #71
conaclos wrote: post #67

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?

The paradox of worker-coops is that workers capable of successfully running businesses together are also capable of running businesses independently, so there's no need to form a co-op. It's those incapable of running a business individually or collectively that then form co-ops. Mondragon is the exception, not the rule.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#120

Post by immibis »

trhway wrote: post #91
mikojan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collective farm that produced SpaceX is the United States Government. It carried out all the research and development necessary to create and further the North American space program. And it is existential in furthering it to this day. Without this source of contracts, research projects and income SpaceX would not be able to produce its commercial spin-off products.

You obviously never been to a collective farm. Despite government support to the extent much larger than that for SpaceX collective farms have nothing to show for it.

Maybe because they are farms and not rocket makers
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