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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

#251

Post by lanfeust6 »

jmyeet wrote: post #39
lanfeust6 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism is a big tent, by definition that's only one possible manifestation. Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), for the same reason mixed-market economy (as practiced by most liberal democracies) represents not purely one thing or another. Co-ops are nothing new. > The Amish keep their surplus labor value. People don't want to live like the Amish. > I…

> Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), As I just explained, that's not what capitalism is. Capitalism is a relatively new invention (~500 years) that arose from the ashes of feudalism. Exact same economic structure. Different exploiters. Consider this: markets exist in supposedly non-capitalist countries. They existed in the Communist bloc. We've got cune…

Capitalism has a definition, and you don't get to change it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

> supposedly non-capitalist countries.

They are State Capitalist. There's no supposition about it. That the governing body is captured by Communist ideologues has no bearing. Hence there are now billionaires operating in China and Russia.

> They existed in the Communist bloc.

They were re-introduced so fast it would make your head spin when Lenin's reforms were shown to be a disaster.

> Capitalism didn't create markets or a market economy.

I did not say so, and this is perhaps where your confusion lies. I said Capitalism is the right to private property and a market economy. I did not say markets are strictly endemic to Capitalism. Although you'll find no scalable one in a liberal democracy devoid of Capitalism.

> We can point to an example of people living co-operatively in, oh I don't know, the article of this submission?

A co-op is not tantamount to a society, it's an employer. The existence of a co-op in itself does not jeopardize the right to private property, or by extension Capitalism.

This is why the quiet part the zealots eventually meander to is "see, we just have to force people to..."

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

#252

Post by anthonymartinez »

astrange wrote: post #244
marricks wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shopping at winco a couple years back, which is employee owned, and one of the cashiers was in his 40s/50s and mentioned he had a couple million in retirement. Very cool to hear, dude will likely be better off than me. Employee owned corporations are good.

Unclear why hearing that someone else is richer than you is supposed to be cool, regardless of if they're capitalist coded or cashier coded.

i dunno why you wouldn't want to celebrate the success of others, especially when they're essential workers!

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

#253

Post by slothtrop »

bumby wrote: post #38
lanfeust6 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism is a big tent, by definition that's only one possible manifestation. Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), for the same reason mixed-market economy (as practiced by most liberal democracies) represents not purely one thing or another. Co-ops are nothing new. > The Amish keep their surplus labor value. People don't want to live like the Amish. > I…

> People don't want to live like the Amish. To the OP's point, do you think living like the Amish is necessary to keeping surplus labor value?

Labor theory of value is bunk.

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

#254

Post by anigbrowl »

astrange wrote: post #244
marricks wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shopping at winco a couple years back, which is employee owned, and one of the cashiers was in his 40s/50s and mentioned he had a couple million in retirement. Very cool to hear, dude will likely be better off than me. Employee owned corporations are good.

Unclear why hearing that someone else is richer than you is supposed to be cool, regardless of if they're capitalist coded or cashier coded.

Because it suggests non-capitalist business models can be more successful than generally imagined.

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

#255

Post by greenie_beans »

rybosworld wrote: post #246
greenie_beans wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

two people, you and some other guy who is also wrong and doesn't know the 7 principles of coops based on his comment (you still haven't argued about how those principles are capitalist, so pretty sure the onus is on you anyway). there are plenty of examples in the other comments on this post supporting my opinion. being a contrarian doesn't mean you're right. and re: strawman, i just met you at your level after you u…

"being a contrarian doesn't mean you're right" - oh the irony You never had an argument beyond "I'm right and you're wrong" lmao. I asked you to respond to specific questions like: Explaining how a privately owned, for-profit org (a coop) can exist in a socialist world. You ignored it and have now devolved to emotional responses only.

i'm not responding to those comments because you clearly aren't informed about the definition of socialism, particularly the nuances and the debates that leftists have about this definition all of the time. nor do you understand what a cooperative is. it's not worth my time to go tit for tat in a debate if we're not operating on the same knowledge, and you're not willing to learn.

you are just somebody who argues on the internet, a natural contrarian who thinks they are right about everything, while being totally wrong. i call it the hacker news contrarian effect. it's quite amazing to witness. good day, sir.

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

#256

Post by anigbrowl »

hollerith wrote: post #160
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also maybe move whatever other goalposts you can find until the Marxist theory begins to make sense.

Also keep stubbornly clinging to the idea that organizing and coordinating workers is not real work.

It is, but it's not worth the massive sums some executives pay themselves.

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

#257

Post by reaperman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #210
jancsika wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> graphics department (PowerPoint) You started the paragraph with the word "workload," but here the load is about as close to zero for the average employee as one could get without being pedantic about it. People aren't using virtual brushes and learning color theory to digitally paint their PowerPoints, or even composing their slides effectively in the visual space provided as a graphic designer would in Photoshop.…

Maybe I named the department wrong, but my point is, back before PowerPoint, in the era of more analog presentations, large companies had a separate group of people you would ask to prepare charts and graphics for your presentation. Nowadays, you have to do it yourself. My point is that all of us are constantly distracted by random, intermittent tasks outside our specializations, which previously were done by dedicat…

A few corporations still have a separate department dedicated entirely to generating things like PowerPoints. McKinsey for example. The consultants are good at creating PowerPoints if they need to, but they can just outline it or flesh it out as much as they like and toss it over the fence to the "PowerPoint department" which will complete it overnight based on the instructions/outline/information/draft sent in by the requesting consultant.

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

#258

Post by OkayPhysicist »

rybosworld wrote: post #59
thesuitonym wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's a bastardized interpretation of what socialism is. Socialism is defined by social ownership. The society as a whole owns production, rather than individuals or groups. A coop is a just group that divides up ownership among all the workers, not the society/community. The division isn't necessarily even. And the workers don't necessarily have 100% ownership between them. For example, there are coops with publicl…

There is a full spectrum of left ideologies that call themselves Socialist, so your claim of "is not and never has been the definition" is flatly wrong. Collectivists and Syndicalists, in particular, are Socialist schools that are strongly onboard with worker co-ops (typically described as trade unions running their businesses).

And FAANGS are not owned by their workers, full stop. Less than 5% of Google's shares are owned by employees, and most of those shares are owned by management. Bezos personally owns more Amazon shares than everyone else in the workforce combined, Meta is well known for being in a strange situation where Zuckerberg personally owns more than half of all voting shares. Vanguard owns more shares in Netflix than the entire workforce combined. Apple has negligible employee owned shares.

Your misinterpretation comes from a willful twisting of the words "workers" (does not typically mean "the founder personally") and "owning" (which is typically understood as "having control over" rather than "maybe could break the tie between a handful of investment firms").

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

#259

Post by astrange »

anthonymartinez wrote: post #252
astrange wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unclear why hearing that someone else is richer than you is supposed to be cool, regardless of if they're capitalist coded or cashier coded.

i dunno why you wouldn't want to celebrate the success of others, especially when they're essential workers!

I don't think this situation is the same thing as celebrating the success of others!

Of course in my neck of the woods (Silicon Valley) it's expected that all 50 year olds are multi millionaires, as all you need for that is have owned a house for a few decades.

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

#260

Post by xhkkffbf »

dbingham wrote: post #130
Anon1096 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many tech companies like Microsoft and Netflix, there is only 1 stock class and SWE employees get stock grants that aren't restricted on vest. You just conveniently picked the FAANG company where most of its workforce are warehouse employees.

But the employees don't own a controlling share. For it to be a worker cooperative it really needs to be entirely owned and governed by the people working there.

How do you handle companies like AMZN where Jeff Bezos still plays a role. Yes, he seems to be busy doing other things but he does seem to have a role. And the founders at all of these companies are still doing things. Even Bill Gates has some kind of role, right?
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