Beyond Surplus-Value

99.98% of laborers aren't plato; they don't give a fuck about forms or separating objects from the labor that produced them ent sho on. Scientific/productive advancement creates materially better conditions for them to live in, and 100 pot smoking eaters reading bordiga is just as much an impediment to them as 1 guy on a yacht.

What a stupid post exhibiting complete retardation on anything that has to do with leftism. Fuck off, moron, you just contribute nothing intellectually by the very sound of this post.

Not saying succdem is actually successful in eliminating surplus value being stolen btw

Best refutation I've ever read, enjoy your armchair

t. braindead retard that mutters "gulag" and makes up accusations like a schizophrenic
Don't worry, what you don't of my posts don't really matter that much considering your own state.

/thread

Empty platitude. The factory system has been a blessing for humanity, and you have nothing to put in its place except empty rhetoric.

lol

Why don't we ask some actual socialist thinkers about the matter?

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1866/08/instructions.htm#05

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

This anti-coop trend in left communism masks over the very important fact that what exactly coops are is socialized property of socialized production, and that capitalism tends towards socialized production overall. All that would prevent a fully cooperative economy from being communism is establishing a plan for production.

Co-ops aren't socialised production, that's absurd. They produce goods for exchange on the market, and therefore enter into the same competitive market that all other capitalist firms enter. Capitalist firms aren't shitty by virtue of some moral flaw on the part of their owners. They're shitty because of the structural incentives that are a logical consequence of the system of production for exchange.

Co-ops produce for market exchange. They do not eliminate any aspect of capitalist production except for needlessly cruel bosses. Otherwise all the bad stuff bosses do to workers would be done to workers by themselves.

Congrats on being completely illiterate user.

Co-ops have socialized production because CAPITALISM has socialized production.

What makes co-ops unique is that they have socialized *property* to the extent they have socialized *production*.

And yes, in a market economy, co-ops will produce for exchange. But guess what we as Marxists now about Markets: they are self negating.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

To Marx the issue was exactly one of socializing property, for he knew that capitalism would do the job of socializing and centralizing production to the extent that it destroys markets themselves.

Your first problem is that you've bought into the leftcom hysterics that the issue with capitalism is the firm, in which case you've just substituted the issue of surplus value for an even more retrograde humanist concept of alienation. If you read Marx over here you'd know that Marx had absolutely no qualms with co-ops as a unit. The most immediate problem with capitalist firms is a political problem, in that they produce capitalists. In a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is still capitalism, you will need to have proletariat control of not just formal political structures, but also economic and ideological structures. In a situation where the natural centralization of capitalism is not yet complete, that would mean cooperitization. Communism is the real movement that abolishes the present state of things, and in that sense, coops will absolutely be needed in the process of overcoming capitalism.

you know, if you'd read the other half of the post you'd know that a part of this is creating a plan, but co-ops can just as easily unite to make this plan, if not, it doesn't matter much as the very mechanisms of the market force consolidation and leads to the destruction of the market itself.

All you've done in your criticism is accuse people of trying to be ethical in capitalism, but this is not an issue of ethical capitalism, this is about creating a dialectical process that negates capitalism. A process which Marx was very clear about, came through markets themselves. The job of the proletariat is exactly expropriation and socialization of property, while the job of the market is the socialization of production.

It comes from markets itself because the market has inherent contradictions. The negation of capitalism does not come from friendly capitalism that changes nothing.

Socialized in the sense that a joint stock firm is socialized.

You faggots keep posting these threads like you aren't intentionally missing the entire point.

NOBODY IS SAYING CO-OPS ARE SOCIALISM. However:

The whole point of worker ownership as I understand it is that to place control of the workplace in the hands of the worker is to create the conditions for future value abolition. Why? Because the worker is currently alienated from the management of capital, therefore the worker generally does not understand capital, when the worker manages capital, they become organically class conscious. This is the main point to take away.

Most Marxists agree on a lower stage of the revolution. Every mode of production has had several stages of development, from early capitalism, to late capitalism, to early feudalism, to peak feudalism, to feudalism as it is today.

A co-operatively managed society is as you say, socialised capitalism. So just like feudal/tribal society>feudal society propery>feudal/capitalist society>capitalist society proper, you have feudal/capitalist society>capitalist society proper>capitalist society/socialist society>socialist society>socialist/communist society>communist society.

All that is really being suggested is a lower, lower stage, one which trains the workers to manage themselves first, which will at some point have to be the case, if we are to achieve a truly classless society.

Meanwhile, in the immediate, the conditions of the proletariat are improved, so you give them actual material, self interested benefits to fight for.

On top of that, every other idea in the first world at this point is simply larping. The fact is, you do not have anything close to a revolutionary organisation, and if the market collapsed in a years time, it would be to the benefit of reaction, and not to hours. This last part is a fact, not an opinion.

What else are you suggesting? Yet another "leninist" but in fact trot party? An anarcho-collective?

If you really honestly think armed revolution is happening the first world and be successful you are properly deluded.

Perhaps, in 10 years time, if we had built a network of co-ops, and it was suppressed, we could drum up the militancy to protect it, at the moment we have less than nothing, nothing to protect, no revolutionary structures.

The real movement will be dialectical, it will not happen in one sweeping motion, but will rock back and forth, the old modes of production creating the new, you socialise the capitalism and you have created a new mode, from which socialism proper is much more likely to emerge and be sustainable

Also, if the workplace is in the workers control, they are better equipped to communise, should the inclination take them

why do you keep saying this when it is just fundamentally wrong

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

they are two different things

I'm not against co-ops as a revolutionary strategy (I don't know what sort of organs of working class power will form) but I don't think they're the best strategy.

Commutiy Self Managment Collective Manifesto: Global North Protracted Peoples Urban Economic War

Find a group of people, criteria: Communist, willing and able to save up £$ Euroes,2000/3000/4000??, willing and able to take a central active role in planning and carrying out party activities, these groups should function democratically. The activities are as follows:

Each group should start a recruitment program based around education as a priority and as far as possible drawing membership from local communities, in the inital stage party members should set up a school of socialism that teaches a broad range of Marxist, Anarchist and general socialist theory, history from a left wing perspective, and about local class struggle and issues, as well as the network's aims and goals. This could take the form of a monthly or weekly gathering, from these schools and from the broader socialist community party members can be gradually brought in. Alongside this, party members should conduct physical and self defence training and build an armed wing, preparing specifically for the task of defending the network, with a view to the future of the network and the possible threats it may face.

At the same time, these groups should go into communities and find out how they can help them with their labor and resources, what they need. Inititally use this for sponsorsed fundraisers in order to build funds to purchase a business to be a co-operative, so that the task carried out can be funded by that co-operative and a real need is met and this provision is sustainable for the future. These events can also be used for recruitment and therefore the founding of other co-operatives. The groups should raise money in any other way they see fit besides borrowing at interest, but personal labor and sponsored community services must be part of it, this will also help in the creation of co-operatives, allowing them to come into being already connected to the communities they establish themselves in.

The party members will work in the co-operative,these co-operatives will : be directly democratic, pay in shares instead of wages, provide a needed community service free of charge, pay into a network fund for the expansion and improvment of the network as a whole, including the outright purchase of private property to become collective property, and benefits for the workers such as child care in the initial stage. They will also be constitutionally bound to remain collective property and to function in an environmentally sustainble manner.

As a network they will fund education(for instance by hosting the school of socialism and funding propoganda) and agitation (by providing representatives to help with wage disputes for example, enabling direct action) as well as physical resitance to the state and reactionary groups. At the early stage, these community needs will most likely be small scale, regular food drives, perhaps providing school tutors for struggling children.

Party members will recruit, guide and mentor new groups building new co-operatives.As well as this, once established, the party members able should begin again saving for new co-operatives in a different industry(but this time with the help of the network for funding), in the same community, that provides a different service. When they leave, the party should recruit directly from the local community while providing education to this new recruit so that they are equipped to understand the nuance of a democratic work place and the project as a whole, thus providing jobs within the community and creating the conditions whereby the community manages itself.

In the ideal situation, several co-operatives will have opened at roughly the same time in several different cities.Once established, the collective fund drawn from these will enable these projects to be scaled up, the network might begin providing a house call nurse for a community for example. A food drive might become a food bank, tutoring becomes a night school and so on. Similarly, the industries the groups enter into initially should be easy to access, however once the network is stable they may buy into industries with higher costs of entry, thus two cafes, a food truck, a bar and a corner grocery store, open a supermarket. New co-operatives should be focussed on, but not limited to key industries such as food.

At this stage or perhaps before it, the network should be considering setting up its own mutual bank, so that all funds in the network are controlled as directly by the network as possible, (it may wish to consider alternative currencies such as bitcoin).

From here, with a large and well established network, with popular support generated from community outreach, funds can begin to be accrued for supply chain integration, locking out the capitalist, cutting costs to be given back to the workers and the community around them, as well eventually allowing whole products to created within the network from scratch and therefore being able to be completely freely distributed without exchange value.Supply chain integration will naturally spread the network abroad, and allow for dramatic raising of third world working conditions, if one imagines what started as a cafe eventually integrating its supply chain to include coffee farms in central america, created and run by central american workers themselves with resources provided by the network. Alongside this, with larger and global, industrial spending power comes the ability to build whole power plants, hospitals, and schools, and other necessary services.

The goal of the network is simple, to become so large as to supercede the state in the localised "nation" area, as well as eventually superceding the international capitalist state, undertaken by the combined process of providing free services to communities and providing benefits such as free housing to workers, until all necessary services are provided by the network free of charge, and all employment is within the network. In tandem with this, money will be phased out, as services are provided for free their cost can be deducted from pay according to democratic agreement, until all services are simply provided, as the network grows into new industries so capital is gradually abolished and the state of capitalism has no reason to exist, in its place standing a democratically run network without private property.

The energy industry is key here, once the state has been superceded or perhaps before this point has been reached, the network can begin the process of automating physical labour, the conditions now such that they are able to do this without ultimately creating unemployment and making the workforce work harder. Energy should therefore be the first large scale industry entered into, once the network has a large spending power. In the immediate this will allow co-operative housing and businesses to operate on free energy, the network providing maintainence, reducing overall costs. In the long term, the comittment to environmental sustainablitily is essential, community owned, sustainable energy sources can provide unlimited free energy, from this base, in combination with automation, we may create a world where all human needs are provided as part of one fully automated machine, one that does not pollute or waste, its functions controlled directly by the people whose needs to it must satisfy, politics will become the perfection of the machine.

thread was kill in the board nuke so im just doing it here, what is the best strategy then?

I'm not sure, it depends on whats going on at the time. But obviously centralization will be necessary or else you'll get a ton of factionalism and a disorganized organization.

the time is right now, the place is America+Buddies, outside of that I agree is a different story entirely. I'm talking about the heart of the empire because that is where I live and work.

Here is also where I guess I use the term "organic" centralism, what my spiel up there does not cover is the organisition of the wider network as a whole, beyond starting with the party and creating more and more co-ops, im still working on that part so that it flows nicely, but the basic idea is that you would have the co-ops managing themselves on a day to day basis entirely, while paying into the common fund and electing a delegate to a central committee, there would however be stipulations as to who could be a delegate, for example having to have been through the process of building a co-op already, and have consumed X amount of literature, the central committee would be internally democratic and answerable to the network only in that it would be able to veto any decision with a majority or perhaps super majority vote, thus it would be comprised of only the truly dedicated, educated, as well as elected and they could push forward the network, while still having a check on their power . The actual co-ops would function autonomously and largely self interestedly, while the commitee uses the funds accrued to spread the revolution.

The idea is also that, socialised capitalism, owned by a fully class conscious population , conscious through both their work and also education, would be the perfect breeding ground for communism

I don't see why a network of co-ops is needed. Why not jut have a party of some sort that gets involved in real labor movements like unions?

Good job on completely missing the point. The task of the proletariat is exactly to expropriate the proletariat and socialize the property of the already socialized production.

You think of socialism as some fixed ideal, hand wave about market contradictions when you yourself do not understand those contradictions. This isn't about making a "friendly capitalism" this is about expropriation.

I think you and probably that other user are missing the point. When we talk of centralization we should see it in economic not political terms here. Where we have seen forced centralizations we've seen both massive death, violence ect, as well as an abundance of half measures. Capitalism has always been a much better centralizer than even the most ardent socialist. Compare Stalin's attempts at agricultural centralization with Nixon's. By all accounts, by simply using the state to help along market forces worked the best.

For financial power. To teach self management in a hands on environment, to show self management. For a hold in working class communities. To actually benefit the working class in the immediate by proviiding services.The advent of labor unions came about in specific conditions and those unions have receded along with those conditions, we are in a new stage of capitalism, these new conditions of capitalism I believe are well suited to co-operative ownership.

Any other type of Marxist party is just going to have 100 members and be competing with 5 other trot sects who also have 100 members and eventually become reformist or die out

This sort of thing won't work unless actual revolutionary potential exists. Communists don't spread class consiousness capitalism does.

No, that quote's meaning is pretty clear: abolishing capitalism isn't just doing away with the boss but fundamentally reshaping how society as a whole functions.

And in a certain sense, so has capitalism. So what?

I have. It's called socialism.

what do you think of all this:

i think this whole "wait for a crash" malarky is pretty fucking redundant really. For the crash to have the desired effect you need to have organised in the mean time to seize power or it will no doubt result in fascism which is capitalism in decay. Historically also communists DO spread class consciousness, they set up schools, they educate each other and themselves and the proletariat, education has been central to pretty much every successful communist experiment.

Beyond that, don't know where you are living, but people here are fucking pissed, and they have been for years.

The revolution was crushed throughout the last 50 years, that doesn't mean capitalism isn't in collapse, it just means its sustained itself through further expansion

but you do agree that getting rid of the boss is an essential part of changing how society functions yes? So it is a valuable and worthwhile goal

It is, but it's hardly sufficient — and ignoring that fact is a dangerous omission.

not saying it is sufficient, and im not ignoring it, as the huge post i posted details, im clearly saying though that once you remove the boss, you have two advantages 1) his share is not extracted, so it is yours 2) Decisions with regards to factory property and functioning become the decisions of the workers, even given that they are also subject to market pressures,

i may add that, until capitalism has been almost completely won over, you will be subject to market pressures, value can only truly be abolished under and economic base that covers the entire spectrum of needs in a totality, on earth this means control of most of the globe or the most significant part of it at least. Every single socialist theory will be subject to market pressures until it has won. The question is how to get to winning while those pressures still exist

The only difference between a boss and a co-op democracy is that in a co-op workers are forced directly by market forces to lower their own wages, work harder, fire themselves etc.

They wouldn't fire themselves, that's not how co-ops work. Almost everything is done to preserve job security. Ultimately, the business would go under before there'd be layoffs, although wages would definitely go down.

So say the whole company is going to fail unless costs are cut. Wouldn't the majority of workers fire the deadweight workers as to save money and preserve themselves?

I agree largely with your strategy. More realistic than "waiting for the crash" for sure. But why is it that co-ops are so rare under capitalism? If the capitalist were just superfluous then surely we would see co-ops springing up spontaneously all over the place. But that is not the case.

I think that the commodity form and capitalist boss structure are related. I think that the non-democratic structure is most efficient for producing commodities, the market disciplines any firm that deviates, and that is why workplace authoritarianism proliferates. So perhaps it is not even possible to have workplace democracy without simultaneously abolishing the commodity form.

I think that co-ops are more likely to flourish with a co-op friendly state that actively subsidizes them and even penalizes non-democratic workplaces. So perhaps co-ops must work together with social democracy. In any case, expect a lot of capitalist resistance to co-ops eating up their market share.

Good shit. You know, sometimes I get the impression leftcoms prefer to make up theories about what texts are saying over actually reading them.

No one said they won't.

That's what I've suggested to people before. A system that simply favours democratic work places whether it's worker or community owned and place heavy restrictions on private business so they never can be a primary source of work.

I'm not against the idea of creating coops, but to say that doing anything else is just larping is a bit too much.
How will you coordinate any kind of later revolutionary effort or the efforts of coops? Why won't you try to radicalize unions and participate in elections at least for the purpose of spreading propaganda? What's your problem with community watches, protesting, reading groups and other ways of spreading influence?
The thing is that compared to all this shit you can do right now in the first world, coops aren't that different. You know that they operate under the logic of capital and have to conform to the whims of the market. I don't see how will being democratically exploited somehow magically make people communist and I don't think that it would be closer to a post-capitalist society in any way, since it only democraticizes a segment of capitalism which is in itself already free from value relations.
I still don't have a problem with creating coops on a small scale, but it's still wrong to think that it has too much power to subvert capitalist society.
In the end coops have been less even less effective at destroying capitalism than Leninism or anarchism.

I really do like approaches like these, which focus on building dual power and alternative 'communist' economic and social networks. IMO implementing programs like this in more marginal, post-industrial small towns and cities is the only way to build the material conditions of a mass movement. Revolutionary movements in thoroughly capitalist societies are hobbled by the strength of the security/surveillance state and the reliance on wages, welfare, donations or some form of money in order to operate. If you could find away to bypass this need for funds by satisfying people's basic needs, without having to rob banks or do things that are explicitly illegal, you could provide a real resilient base for transforming society that does not immediately invite outright repression from the state.

I'd like to see such a movement focused on purchasing farmland and forming agricultural cooperatives, providing non-governmental housing projects, and lobbying for municipal public services such as sewer/water/electricity. Ideally any 'cooperativized' could be distributed based on need or through credit/rationing to 'party' members, abrogating the need for wage labor or capital investment. Remove the necessity of wages in order to live and you have a meaningful way to tempt people away from the existing capitalist system, towards a system of free and voluntary labor based on ability. Such a cooperative network could slowly be expanded to include new industries and entire supply chains, and federated based on muncipal districts (or consolidated together, whatever is more pragmatic). Open confrontation by the state would probably be inevitable, but hopefully at this point you have a strong enough social and economic/political structure that popular support and armed defense would be enough to defend it from being repressed by a national army or police force.

All of this could probably only take place in the most marginal of areas at first, like the U.S. Rust Belt and South. Big cities which still benefit from financial/industrial capitalism would be off limits. However, given the imminence of capitalist crisis, resource scarcity and other ecological crises, I don't see the capitalist state being able to effectively coopt such a movement should it take hold in the hinterlands, and outright repression would be a recipie for a civil war which would only undermine the legitimacy of the nation-state.

Not him but it's a thoughtful analysis that agrees with what I said so I'll buy it.

Was industrial capitalism and not local rural production not the reality of Marx’s day?

That being said, I’m a little unclear on what you mean by the commodity form, since I was under the impression that it refers to the production of goods to sell for profit. Wouldn’t something like labour vouchers or an equivalent exchange of cash between consumer and producer then be an abolition of the commodity form?

thats a huge difference. Who is more likely to misstreat other workers, their fellow worker, or some guy who is extracting their labour value?

Why are you so sure the problem is dead weight workers? Why are you convinced the manner in which this is carried out would be exactly the same with a boss, in a purely material sense, there is less costs, because you don't have the dead weight of a boss, so workers are less likely to be fired. On top of that, they are less likely to fire themselves than a boss would in comparison to other options they might take

Not doing, if you are actually creating armed revolution go ahead, but I feel that in the west you will not get far.
see

Unions are fugged and not unfuggable, this was a purposeful process by the capitalist class and they did it well, so well that only reformist unions can even have any kind of membership and its still dropping. On top of that most of the work around these days is not in heavily unionised industries its pretty much the public sector where Im from the rest are piecemeal and have no clout. Also, the main point is that unions and political parties are pressure groups, co-ops give you actual control (obviously not of the market itself)
this are all good things, my strategy literally says start with an educational school of communism. Please read it.
im not just gonna answer this question over and over again, i will answer a more nuanced reply to my counter replies though happy to do that
see
" Because the worker is currently alienated from the management of capital, therefore the worker generally does not understand capital, when the worker manages capital, they become organically class conscious. This is the main point to take away. "
???? which part of capitalist society are you saying is free from value relations?????????????????
You are removing the extraction of surplus value in the work place by the capitalist. Its a huge difference, denying that is really just being obtuse. As I have said before, the sheer renumeration from not having to pay a capitalist is a big change by itself AND again, if the workers run the factory, they have more power to link up with other workers and communise their collective factories.
the scheme I have proposed has literally not been tried, at least not in the way i propose it. Also I would like you to note that co-op models were what was adopted by most of Latin America before the great CIA stomp, in fact they have a history of co-operative farming in Mexico and Honduas and other parts that goes back to the 1600's and right now in Honduras in the aguan valley farmers have seized back their land and are proviiding for their communities through networks of co-ops, there are also right now in Mexio and other parts of Latin America a great many other auto-defensa co-operatives.

first of thanks, my answers to your questions are as follows:
Because there is no profit in investing in them if they are and actually fully mutual co-operative, they only benefit the workers and not the capitalist, that is on top of them being suppressed.
start up capital.
but there are many examples of worker democracy that have functioned
this is probably true, strange coming from an anarcho nihilist but probably true, the problem I think is relying on the state to do this, or relying on lobbying the state to do this, once the network had its own steam, i envision a party that does nothing but fight for the interests of the network in parliament,pushing for policies such as this would be one of those interests. However, I am extremely wary of a segue into more traditional reform-ism if any kind of liberal parliament is involved.

thanks bruv, you say many things here i didn't have the energy to say
particularly this part, which was sort of what i meant when talking of supply chain integration and energy. A renewable energy powered automated farm should be the base unit of society

bump

No.
Socialism is social ownership of means of production. Abolishing commodity form is a step in the larger goal of resolving class antagonism.

This is exactly the role of the non-profit organization.
Social form is not necessarily about production. A commodity could also be infused with some sort of cultural significance.
Unfortunately, Soviet schoolchildren were not given tour of the Ukranian wheat fields, and thus deprived of lifelong impressions of Skeletors with ribs and hollowed cheeks.

when has a communist movement alone been able to start a revolution without any sort of real movement?

Bosses don't do things because they are evil but because they are driven by real market forces. Co-ops also would be driven to do this sort of things, As co-ops still create for a profit they would be incentivized by the market to make as much profit as possible. Co-ops would need to invest in labor saving technology as to stay afloat in the capitalist system, sure they could stay alive without it for a while but they would have to innovate and spend more money on machines in order to generate profit. Workers in any market society would still have to push themselves to work harder generate more value to stay afloat in the market. They are still generating for a profit so they would have to pay themselves less in order to spend more on other things like labor saving tech. Once they get the labor saving tech it will reduce the need for work in the firm. Machines wouldn't be used to lower the amount of time each worker has to work but instead raise the pace and intensity of the work so they can make more money to spend on more labor saving tech so they can make more money to spend on labor saving tech… In a market "socialist" society the falling rate of profit would also still exist meaning co-ops would have to spend more and more and pay themselves less and less to make money as the rate of profit goes downwards. This means co-ops would be incentivized by the market to exploit themselves just in the way the capitalists would have before. If the firm is hitting hard times workers would either be fired on have to lower their own pay inorder to stay afloat just like in capitalism. My main point which you seem to be failing to grasp is that the market forces buiness to act unethically and co-ops still exist in a market and still produce for profits.

A dictatorship of the proletariat would look more like state capitalism.

"But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois."

State capitalism for those industries which are already centralized, the experience of the ussr and China has shown that forced centralization has always led to disaster.

Marx assumed centralization of all industry would occur much quicker than it has in part due to the efforts of the state to break up monopolies and subsidize small business

We have massive industries that are hugely centralized now. Centralism is necessary for any state that aims to survive.

^When you are too stupid to understand a post and try to come up with an intelligent-sounding answer anyway.

didn't say anything about bosses being evil this is a strawman
i have repeatedly acknowledged this,>>2268415 here for instance " A co-operatively managed society is as you say, socialised capitalism"

what you are failing to acknowledge, is that how this would take place would be fundamentally different without the boss. The first reason for this, is that there would be more funds to go around, as the bosses funds would now be the workers, this cost is no longer sunk into the accruing bank account of the unproductive private owner. i said this here:>>2268525

This alone means the workers will be under less pressure to fire themselves. The second reason for worker ownership being a less hostile environment for the workers, as I have also already explained,
is that if the workers themselves make the decisions they are more likely to pursue other options.

So would any socialist state still remaining in a capitalist world, it would just have to do this as a totality . Until you have abolished or mostly abolished capitalism its rules will still apply. I say this already

blah blah, standard regurgitated marx on automation and the falling rate of profit etc but not actually engaging with the spirit of what I'm saying I am not denying any of these ideas, and I never have done in this thread, I am simply suggesting what you might term a "military" for want of better word, strategy, that is, the co-ops, as I have repeatedly said,>>2268415
are not socialism, they are tool by which we may have socialism in the future, a tool by which to organise the working class physically, just like labour unions are not socialism, and soviets by themselves were not socialism, but they may bring us socialism.

here are two instances of me grasping this point:

You just cant grasp that its besides the point. and pretending nothing at all has changed if you remove the private owner. You talk like im talking about removing middle managers, no, im talking about the shareholders who do nothing but own shares, the private owners. The extractors of surplus value and to state, again no, i do not think socialism is all about surplus value, however, it is a key part of the structure of capitalism and giving this surplus value back to the work force strengthens it, a part from anything else well nourished workers are better at resisting.

Also the point you have never answered, is that, a networks of business owned co-operatively is in a much better position to communise than a network of private corporations, it does not make sense, that is, it is not in the class interest of the boss to communise, it is in the class interest of an integrated network of co-operative workers to communise.

when has the real movement ever been a successful or promising socialist revolution without a strong socialist party educating, agitating, and organising the work force?

...

and then there is the main point, that you simply have not suggested a better strategy and nobody here has

Yes and those industries should be nationalized. But there are many others where that would be unfeasible. Small businesses still account for 45% of gdp in the us

It is, and you'd know if your understanding of Marxism went beyond a handful of Richard D. Wolff videos.

reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/4i11mw/why_worker_cooperatives_dont_work/

(inb4 muh reddit)

They do work
reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/4i11mw/why_worker_cooperatives_dont_work/d2ud2hz/

My point is we shouldn't fetishize co-ops as anything more than a organizational method. because they do nothing to get us closer to socialism. They are actually counter to class consciousness because now the workers don't have anyone to blame.

That party is always a bi product of the already existing movement not the other way around.

The nature and structure of owning your own body means that you assume the role of both gourmet and fitness trainer. While we must carry out or jobs as we would in any other kitchen we also have the added responsibility of managing the fitness and insuring athletic success.

The objective interests of gourmets and fitness trainers are opposed to one another, this creates conflict within the body. It is in the interest of gourmets to put things in their mouth while reducing the amount of time they do other things like fitness while it is in the interest of fitness trainers to spend less time eating while increasing the amount of time working out.

As a self-owner of a body your objective interests lie with both filling the inside of your belly with a sixpack and having a sixpack of muscles on the outside as you are fulfilling both roles. The two opposing interests will eventually conflict with one another and decisions will need to be made that are either in the interests of the inside or the outside.

There is a belief among members of the self-owner movement that they are providing an alternative to slavery by managing their own bodies in an egoistical manner. This focus on the form rather than the content should be considered a form of false consciousness and something leftcoms should combat but instead I see a general degree of support for anti-slavery concepts among communists.

…this is a parody right?

Great point its not like i said literally exactly this here

"are not socialism, they are tool by which we may have socialism in the future, a tool by which to organise the working class physically, just like labour unions are not socialism, and soviets by themselves were not socialism, but they may bring us socialism. "

You move the goalposts so much you end up scoring into your own goal.

as you have written it, this is a completely unqualified assertion, I have given multiple reasons why they do, and explained them in detail, you can't just simply assert that they now don't, without actually countering the points.

But, as you have repeatedly said yourself, the bosses aren't to blame, the market forces are to blame, in fact, the workers will now blame the market, which they are actually interacting with as a collective, rather than just being able to lay the blame with the boss, which, as you say "
Bosses don't do things because they are evil but because they are driven by real market forces."

The fact you are still clutching at straws like this, attempting to argue back with one single pathetic and easily swept aside line of text kind of shows the strength of your position.

I already answered why co-ops are better for class consciousness in several other posts, "again no, i do not think socialism is all about surplus value, however, it is a key part of the structure of capitalism and giving this surplus value back to the work force strengthens it, a part from anything else well nourished workers are better at resisting.
Also the point you have never answered, is that, a networks of business owned co-operatively is in a much better position to communise than a network of private corporations, it does not make sense, that is, it is not in the class interest of the boss to communise, it is in the class interest of an integrated network of co-operative workers to communise."

"For financial power. To teach self management in a hands on environment, to show self management. For a hold in working class communities. To actually benefit the working class in the immediate by proviiding services"

" All that is really being suggested is a lower, lower stage, one which trains the workers to manage themselves first, which will at some point have to be the case, if we are to achieve a truly classless society."

and you haven't adequately countered any of those reasons

Well exactly, my suggesting of this strategy is part of the rising of a new new left in its infant stage, I don't know what you are suggesting here, it seems to be besides the point, the emergence of a communist party in any form, by your own logic, shews the emergence of a real movement…

when explained in this much detail co-op faggot makes sense although maybe its cos the other guy is doing such a poor job of arguing

bump

A retarded one.

Hellloooo reddit.

yeah, ripping people off the land and shoving them into factories thereby creating billions of people with nothing to do but labor certainly is efficient from that perspective

bump

Oh I'm sorry, did you think history operated on some other sort of touchy-feely crap? The basis of all human society has been and will continue to be the efficient organisation of the production of human needs. Morality's never even remotely come into it. If you want things to be better, you're going to have to find a way to align 'better' and 'more efficient'. If you don't do that, you're going to fail the same way that China and the USSR and co-ops have.

Hello retard.

(Funny note: I had never heard of Reddit before lurking here)

you think anyone wants to live in a fucking box

Not exchanging commodities = living in a box

The technology to transcend the commodity form already exists in the modern world. It basically has existed in since the factory system became fully mature. We already have enough to create a huge abundance with our machines and automation.

Nice reddit-spacing.

I don't think we have abundance and I also don't think that the commodity form is necessary before reaching that stage, even if we include labour-voucher systems as in TaNS under the umbrella commodity form, just that the alternative methods of allocating items and services would be rather bureaucratic. Look at how medicine works in countries where people don't have to pay for it on an individual basis: You can't just take whatever you personally want to, there is an expert between you and that thing. Imagine that whenever you need a new tire for your bike, you don't order it online for money, but instead have to write a request, justifying why specifically you need that tire so much and that you did nuffin wrong and that you know about how to avoid unnecessary tire damage. Okay, I'm a bit exaggerating here, writing such a request would only be necessary as a sort-of tie breaking procedure, people would be classified in some way and treated preferentially. This doesn't mean one single ranking for society as a whole, rather there would be different classifications of people with respect to particular groups of things, and people in high-need classification with respect to that thing would be treated preferentially over others. Example with the bike tire: My request would be classified based on what other options of travel I have available, is the bike just a hobby or do I use it to commute to my workplace?

The surplus value extracted by the capitalist not spent on reproduction of the profitable conditions is a sunk cost for the firm at large, distributed management without private accumulation is a much more efficient system with less wastage than a private corporation, even under market pressures. For one thing, it allows the workers to pay themselves more, which means they will be more likely to nourish and educate themselves better, meaning a more productive work force. on top of that, without the inefficiency of hierarchy and centralisation where it is not needed, the work force is better able to address concerns.

I refer you back up the thread to here: "the scheme I have proposed has literally not been tried, at least not in the way i propose it. Also I would like you to note that co-op models were what was adopted by most of Latin America before the great CIA stomp, in fact they have a history of co-operative farming in Mexico and Honduas and other parts that goes back to the 1600's and right now in Honduras in the aguan valley farmers have seized back their land and are proviiding for their communities through networks of co-ops, there are also right now in Mexio and other parts of Latin America a great many other auto-defensa co-operatives." I didn't write it at the time, but you made add to this the more co-operative agricultural models of the left faction during the Spanish Civil war. Also places like places like Chile, Nicaragua. I would also remind you that part of the Black Panther Parties program was to set up co-operative farms. What the BPP got right is that you have to actually benefit the communities you are in in tangible ways if you want their support. Co-ops allow the left to do this on a large scale

That said, autistic screeching from leftcoms about the commodity form needs to stop. The fucking idealists.

If co-ops are as efficient as you claim, how come they aren't the dominant form of workplace organisation after 200 years of capitalism? Why do capitalist enterprises drive co-ops out of business, and not the other way around?

Most importantly, what makes you think that you've stumbled upon the one weird trick that nobody's ever thought of and that'll abolish capitalism forever? Do you seriously think nobody's ever thought to try co-ops as their revolutionary strategy before you?

Do people not understand Marx at all around here? The vast bulk of his work was spent trying to drill into everyone's head the notion that capitalism is a systemic problem, and therefore demands a systemic solution. The 'great' idea you had that starts with "If we can just get/force everyone/a bunch of people to do…" is dogshit. It isn't worth the energy it takes to type out. It is the very definition of idealism, and will never change a damned thing.

Because they are not in the class interest of the bourgeoisie and they are very good at holding on to their class power.
One is backed by capitalist imperialism and the other is not. Why did capitalist drive the Soviet Union out of existence?
The weird tricks are specific to time and conditions and I am no the only person saying this. I've just laid out it out as I think it should go.
no because i said the opposite to prove my point in this post

"the scheme I have proposed has literally not been tried, at least not in the way i propose it. Also I would like you to note that co-op models were what was adopted by most of Latin America before the great CIA stomp, in fact they have a history of co-operative farming in Mexico and Honduas and other parts that goes back to the 1600's and right now in Honduras in the aguan valley farmers have seized back their land and are proviiding for their communities through networks of co-ops, there are also right now in Mexio and other parts of Latin America a great many other auto-defensa co-operatives."

and then again, in the post you were responding to

"I refer you back up the thread to here: "the scheme I have proposed has literally not been tried, at least not in the way i propose it. Also I would like you to note that co-op models were what was adopted by most of Latin America before the great CIA stomp, in fact they have a history of co-operative farming in Mexico and Honduas and other parts that goes back to the 1600's and right now in Honduras in the aguan valley farmers have seized back their land and are proviiding for their communities through networks of co-ops, there are also right now in Mexio and other parts of Latin America a great many other auto-defensa co-operatives." I didn't write it at the time, but you made add to this the more co-operative agricultural models of the left faction during the Spanish Civil war. Also places like places like Chile, Nicaragua. I would also remind you that part of the Black Panther Parties program was to set up co-operative farms. What the BPP got right is that you have to actually benefit the communities you are in in tangible ways if you want their support. Co-ops allow the left to do this on a large scale"

Pretending I haven't read Marx is not an argument. Its an appeal to authority at best and I have read Marx anyway.
A systemic solution that will always take years to fully establish itself and take effect. Marx pushed for unions and wage reform in his day.

its not about "just getting" though is it, i have described in detail why if such structures were to built they would be attractive to the prole.

It seems every single one of you, without fail, in order to argue against the theory, must reduce it to something that it simply isnt

"capitalist isn't because bosses are evil" never said they were

"co-ops aren't socailism" said literally the opposite

"if we can just get" But I described entirely the process of how and why people would get.

Can one you fucks actually contend with the central idea, that this is a way to expropriate, just like an armed militia is a way to expropriate. One which will make the conditions for the workers more bearable int he immediate and strengthen them, and will be able to fund further resistance, organisation, education and agitation.

Nobody has given me a single reason why having such an organisation would be a bad thing for the left, other than "muh self exploitation".

Self exploitation is still preferable to being exploited by somebody else. Its one step up the exploitation chain.Would you be in control of stabbing yourself in the leg, or let a coked up maniac who holds you in contempt do it?

and I KNOW the goal is the complete abolition of exploitation, but none of you are suggesting any other actually feasible strategy for getting their, it WILL happen in stages, it WILL be an extremely long process.

There is no getting around this, these are the facts of physics

Because no one thinks it would.

Abolishing commodity production is about changing the nature of production, not halt it.

How the fuck is criticism of the commodity form "idealist"…? Are you just trying to fit in by spewing Marxist-sounding buzzwords? Commodity production is arguably the single most important aspect of the material conditions wrought on by the advent of capitalism.

Clearly some do

I agree that commodity production must be abolished. Just think of it like this, what do the right have mostly that we don't? Corporate backing. The far left has very little to none. We need to create our own backing, one that can exist within capitalism but also subvert it at the same time, until capitalism can be toppled proper

Nobody is saying we should just storm the parliament with our current powers, I was critiquing your organizational methods which should lead a us to a revolutionary situation.
Seems good (although I have fears about whole thing being subverted so there should be some mechanisms to prevent counter-revolutionaries such as alphabet soup agencies subverting the coops)
In contrast to unions, coops are so non-existent as an organization method which is being used to drive class consciousness that they never even had the chance to degenerate into reformism. Thus if we wanted to determine the usefulness of your ideas through purely empirical means then they would miserably fail compared to unions and a bunch of other organizational methods.
Unions can give you control over the way your surplus value is allocated, force companies/government to improve your living conditions through other means and create a revolutionary situation through a general strike (although this one never really succeeded alone, but I'm sure you would think this idea must work because it has never been tried :^)). Political parties can be used to pass reforms or seize the MoP and destroy the bourgeois state. If these things are not control then I don't know what is it.
Ok, my mistake, I was just distracted by your fetishization of coops.
Well, I haven't seen any answers that pleased me, so I'm gonna expand on this for a little bit
There are two very big problems with your idea. The first is the question of capital. How will you acquire so much money that you will able have control over large sections of the economy? For a revolution to succeed, you need 15% of the population to rise up (I don't really remember where did I heard this number, but it's fine for a guess especially because only working age people will be able to take part in a revolution). This means that we will have to seize about 15% of the economy exclusively through purchase. I don't think that I have to pull out any statistics here: the price for this would be a lot of fucking money. You have only one way to acquire this besides allocation of state funds through using the Eternal Science of Marxism-Reformism: very heavily exploiting your workers (granted that you are able stay afloat at all). I don't think that this would help the growth of class consciousness in any way.
In conclusion, this whole coop thing is just an unironic Xi Jinping greentext.

How does more actively taking part in the reproduction of our misery make one class conscious? Every worker can understand capital very well: they live under its yoke day by day.
I have phrased this incorrectly: I should have said that the process of production (not distribution) inside of a company is free from value relations in itself. By in itself I meant "if we pretend for a moment that literally every part of capitalist society didn't exist besides that one company which somehow magically doesn't need the other part to function". Basically coops do not further themselves from capitalism in any way.
Yes. By the capitalist, but not by the worker. You have admitted this here , so I'm not gonna make an argument for this
No, not really. For the sake of an example I looked up the CEO of McDonalds. He made a thousand times less than the gross profits of McDonalds. And of course, this is a lot less true for small businesses. Even the small rise in wages would be meaningless because of the amount profits that will need to be acquired for the expansion of the coops.
I have the feeling the day will come when you will be telling the workers something like
>dude don't worry about being exploited, we at the party wave red flags and read Marx so it's okay and I mean if you exploit yourself really hard we might just achieve communism one day XD
I wonder why… :thinking:
In the aguan valley farmers are seizing back their land through violent struggle. Auto-defensa coops seem just regular community militias to me.
You said to me that a violent revolution is not realistic at the moment, but now you just seem to advocate actually declaring a Protracted People's War on the state.

t. anarcho-dengist

But what are you suggesting?
Thats why you have to create one before you can get on the committee, in order to subvert it you would have to help build it in a very meaningful way and the process would take years, in order to properly subvert it you would have to build enough co-ops to outweigh the rest of the none subversives.
I have stated several times many active and succesful operating co-operative models. Please read thread.
they give you a method to fight for it, they do not give you actual control, if you have to strike to get what you want, you are not in control.
no, they can't. The best we can hope for in parliament is extremely mild social democracy
fetishisation when i have specifically stated that they are nothing but a tool. How on earth is this turning them into a fetish object?
The co-operatives will pool resources as stated in the strategy. As larger business are bought so economies scale are benefited from and the business grows like any other. In the initial stage it will require struggle through labour from the party members who start the initial co ops, after a certain point the co-ops may be opened purely through community funds.

The strategy as stated is supposed to be a protracted war, i.e. you build gradually, solidifying your strength.
because you learn how it works. Through experience
but they don't understand it. They feel its pressures, but are you really telling me most people fully understand it?
how does the first part of this, connect to the secton part
" Basically coops do not further themselves from capitalism in any way." why does that logically follow?
but the fact remains that you remove the value extraction of the capitalist
>No, not really. For the sake of an example I looked up the CEO of McDonalds. He made a thousand times less than the gross profits of McDonalds.
Because the CEO is not the shareholders who receive these gross profits, and is not necessarily the relationship we are trying to eliminate, although the CEO is often a major shareholder. It is the entirety of these "gross profits" we shall take. Do you see now?
in the west, it is not realistic. In mexico it is. The fact remains they are providing for their communities along collectivist, co-operative lines, how they expropriated that property is not important, if we are simply using the example to show how co-operative management can be effective for managing resources and businesses within capitalism

Imagine being this butthurt from market socialism. Its shocking how all these marxist leninist want to redefine socialism after i make few threads about co-ops/market socialism.

I'm not sure what you meant to respond to in my comment. I agree with your statement, co-ops can be useful within capitalism just like the welfare state or an UBI can, I just think it's a terrible idea to let the word go around unchallenged that "co-ops are socialism" and that all you need to do to abolish capitalism is fire the boss.

I am because it distorts the meaning of what it is to be a socialist.

I'm not a ML, I'm a LeftCom. You're closer to Marxism-Leninism's superficial socialism than you might believe.

That's rich coming from someone who proudly do away with the core tenets of Marxist analysis.

I haven't read or even seen those threads. You're much less relevant than what you seem to think.

im just arguing it how i see it. The traditional ML structure has really had its day

i think his post is ironic user

Anything else than your anarcho-dengism. Spread propaganda, agitate, unionize, participate in election not for the sake of reforms but to actually have a presence in the public sphere, community organizing/militias and even coops on a reasonable scale.
I didn't see any example actually connected to non-violent class struggle my fucking sides. The fact that coops exist doesn't mean that they are revolutionary in any way. Seriously, the fucking Falange of parties supported Mondragon, to give an example. Give me an actual instance where coops were used as the main basis of organization and support for a communist movement. And no, armed conflicts don't count, your whole scheme is built upon being a good boy and playing by the rules of the bourgeois state and capitalism in general.
How is forcing your bosses to pay you more not control?
How is forcing the capitalists to give you free shit not control? I also talked destroying the bourgeois state, you know, violent revolution and all that.
I acknowledged that this is the only way to acquire capital. You haven't explained to how would you avoid heavy exploitation on a massive scale which would be absolutely necessary to build up capital. I don't think that you have ever considered how big the coops would have to grow if you want achieve actual mass support through them. To give you a picture, Wallmart, the largest company on Earth and mainly based in the US was only able compose 2,6% of its GDP.
How does punching yourself make you any stronger or understand fighting better than getting beaten up?
You don't have to be a worker-capitalist to understand what is it like to be unemployed, to have your wages stagnate and to see just how much safe are some people in the system from these things without actually contributing anything to society. On the contrary, it might even obfuscate class struggle by not embodying your oppression in a figure of authority but in an abstract concept beyond your control.
I was making a point about how coops don't change anything compared to capitalism because capitalism =/= hierachies and stuff.
No, you won't be able to take everything. Not even just to stay in competition, but to outcompete everyone and become larger than the largest fucking company in the world you will have to invest a lot in machinery and other technology, reserve money for expansion and somehow at the same time somehow provide good living conditions for the workers.
That is very important. If you violently expropriate the MoP, you are essentially cutting yourself off from all trade, all possible investors and any chance to purchase the MoP.

Perfect song for the perfect butthurt. Marxism leninism is literally anti worker compared to market socialism.

I already told you I wasn't a Marxist-Leninist.

a petulant infantile response
all of these are included in my plan, how will you fund propoganda and agitation on a scale to compete with the capitalist?
what are you doing to do that is going to stop the downward trend in union membership across the west? Why is your union going to be different?
elections aren't the public sphere, businesses that people use every day are.
what community organizing and how will you fund it, particularly militias
and…. they still exist as entities and improve their communities
but im not saying that by themselves they are revolutionary
the falange also modelled everything down to their uniforms along leftist lines in order to co-opt (lol punny) all this says to me is the they have wide appeal.
they form the main basis of class struggle in the aguan valley, do you think the aguan valley is more or less likely to pursue more radical forms of socialism than the ones controlled by landlords and drug cartels?
in the west. The third world has different conditions and therefore requires different struggle, primarily, weaker states and landlords meaning armed struggle is viable.
How is more control than voting directly on your pay? A boss can say no to a union and they do, regularly. Bosses are also subject to market pressures, and much more likely to cave to the markets more egregious demands then workers who control their own wages.
Oh gee idk maybe because in most places in the west most of the population don't actually want this, and vote against it, and there is a large media industrial complex backing this up, and thats why there is no communist party that isn't a fringe group or utterly reformist in any western parliament
primarily because I accept that it will still exist, however the workers will still have a more effective means for pushing back against it.
the strategy I laid out talks very specifically about levels and stages of growth, I am well aware I am suggesting we grow to be bigger than capitalism proper. Global revolution is the entire point and goal. Walmart employs roughly 1% of the US population. Imagine the benefits to the US if 1 in every hundred of its workers had been educated in socialist literature through their workplace, and was paid a little more than other workers, and received more benefits, and this network was providing services to other proles for free. Do you think this would be a net positive or net negative for class struggle?
lol wut, how does training to get hit make you better at getting hit? This metaphor isn't really like for like with what I'm suggesting, so it doesn't really matter, but you realise you have just basically asked "why do boxers spar"

but this would be a false conciousness, because the exploitation does not stem from the figure of authority. This is entirely my point, co-ops demystify the capitalist.
"capitalism=hierachies and stuff" I think ill just leave this particular thread here and allow you to stop digging.
the is where the whole idea of starting small comes from, of course you won't be able to instantly provide hospitals, but the fact remains there ARE the resources in the west to provide everyone with hospitals, its just a case of controlling and distributing the property properly. I'm not suggesting instant value abolition, in fact I have quite firmly railed against that, what I am suggesting is a gradual build up of dual power, supported by a solid economic base, which will gradually provide more and more of these services as it expands.
this would surely be an argument in my favour?

bump

bump this was good bread keep arguing autists right now im favouring the co-op thing tbh

Until one of the faggot leftcoms can respond to the black flag poster they have been eternally BTFO and should stop posting in threads about co-operatives with their repetitive and blunt edged bullshit

One of the worst hodgepodges of a sentence composed by a "Marxhead". 100% falseflagger.

LEFTCOM UTTERLY BTFO

This thread needs to be Archived

...

...

"admits" like I ever denied it. In fact, i literally stated it over and over and over and over again.

Just because co-ops gives workers better wages doesn't mean it actually does anything. Minimum wage gives workers better wages. This doesn't mean raising the minimum wages is a way to socialism. Co-ops do raise workers wages but also force them to reproduce capitalism and internatlize class conflict. They do not raise class consciousness or do anything for the worker more than raise wages.

Except, 'yknow, allow them to self-manage the workplace

"Self-managing" inescapable market imperatives, yes.

They won't need to self manage in communism because all production will be controlled by society as a whole and firms won't exist. Don't fetishize democracy, there is nothing inherently good about workers deciding how to exploit themselves.

Uh huh, whatever. Blackflag poster already covered this stuff in here and the other thread, I'm not getting into it.

Continued with stuff from

Anti-coop black flag responded here:

BLACK FLAG NEVER RESPONDED

there is no point made here that isn't a waak repetition of previous point, which was destroyed already, its also in a different thread than this one,Nonetheless

I think they would. Which is all would need to say to refute without evidence something which has been asserted without evidence. The entire point is the network is built around this institutions, indeed, they would be a large part of what gained the network noteriety and allowed it to grow, these services are good publicity, in business terms, and also provide a higher quality of life for the workers in the network. I would vote for them.
Yes. Thats true. You get paid a higher wage in capitalism with a human face than pure capitalism. However it actively pushes back revolutionary movements by spreading false consciousness.
So the first part is the poster going back on themselves pretending that there are no real world benefits, which obviously they are. The second part about false conciousness is another baseless assertion with not even a logical chain of thought behind it. Doesn't say how or why they spread false conciousness or any proof at all of co-ops making it harder to have a revolution. Just states it as if it was irrefutable fact.
This simply doesn't make sense as an answer to what I said, not at all.
see hes simply repeated himself here, he said "having co-ops is just like having a nice boss" i said "How fucking obtuse are you, repeating "capitalism with a human face" over and over, its capitalism without surplus value extraction to a large degree and where the workers are in control of their own means of production. You are literally pretending there is absolutely no difference, when there are in fact differences, undeniable, both qualitative and quantitative." So he said again "The difference is only the difference between self exploitation or exploitation by a nice boss and exploitation by a greedy boss."

why would I answer that when he has said literally nothing new and just repeated himself?

he then does this again
.

Again, refusing to acknowlege that there are less costs invovled in running a business if you don't have to pay your boss a cut. Not even answering that crit. Why would I bother responding when he has again just repeated something worthless?
This is, again, a worthless strawman of the point I made, which has absolutely nothing to do with "everyone in a democracy knowing how to be president"

what I said was: " They need to learn who is the best at managing, and they need to learn the best ways to discern this, and in order for this to happen this needs to be a process by which bad management can be gotten rid of, i.e. recalled. It simply is not the case that you can have a great man manager and he will secure the revolution, this is completely undialectical, there must be feedback, and for the feedback to be of a high quality, the work force must be educated, and it must be involved in the applications of its education, so it may learn first hand through experience, the only true way to become class concious."

which he even qupted before he strawmanned
here he denies, again without any actual argument or evidence, that workers controlling their workplace, having more value to move around and being in control is an improvement, another useless, substances-less repetition.

Refuses tp acknowledge that the whole strategy is built around a school of communism and that co-op workers would be educated in socialist history etc. Idiot.
This is just complete and total fantasy with no basis in the real world. Here he is literally arguing that a boss has more incentive to pay himself less in a corporation than a co-op. If anybody is still with him after this I really think the world is fucked beyond repair and hes right co-ops won't work.
No, with the boss most are proletariat and there is one or several capitalists, without the boss they are all proletarians.

This is why I did not respond to this post, because the whole thing is a fucking joke start to finish

but do not give control of wages, so its a completely different idea
why because you say so?
and benefits, and control, and put them in a better position to communise should the inclination take them, and reduce the economic and therefore military power of the bourgeoisie by taking capital out of their hands.

exactly the same as a total socialist state still existing within capitalism then. Or are you advocating for global spontaneous revolution LMAO

and….how are you planning to get there? To a place where all production is controlled by society as a whole and firms don't exist? Magic?
i have specifically talked about it as a tool. Stop using big words you don't understand.
you cunts are so dishonest, as if i haven't answered this thoroughly and then you just repeat it again and again like it has any merit. It may indeed be self exploitation but there are clear inherent benefits.

Ultimately market forces would be governed by wages just like in any capitalist system, just a bit higher. Workers wouldn't be able to pay themselves more than a small surplus over a normal wages because investing that surplus would be far more profitable.
Because they give workers two conflicting class interests. Marx explained this 100 years ago with the poverty of philosophy. The workers on one hand want to pay themselves more but on the other want to accumulate capital so they accumulate capital so they can accumulate capital…
Again I find it unlikely that workers in a co-op would raise wages or benefiets more than a little. If they were producing in a market economy with capitalists they would have to use the surplus to stay competitive with capitalists firms like Mandragon does.
Your argument about co-ops communizing doesn't make sense either. They would make far less profit by giving products away for free and keep in mind they still operate for profit. If you had a choice to make less profit for yourself and therefore pay yourself less wages why would you do that?
Yes… and put it directly into the hands of impersonal market forces?

Not through capitalism.

sorry fucked up the quote:

I'm not saying I agree with it, but for those wanting worker's co-ops, it's an incremental, reformist strategy. It's a cooperative model in a competitive environment, that helps workers and gets rid of the capitalist/worker relationship in the process.

When you talk about 'abolishing the commodity form,' that's not like cracking an egg and throwing away the eggshell. If we're talking about reification here, then that's a vast ideological adjustment that would take generations to accomplish. That's like getting rid of your idea of what a chicken is, what is yolk and what is white, what time is, what an action is.

do you mean this the other way around? I'm going to assume you do. In which case, as already stated, until you have the most significant part of the world under your control, your wages will still be under market pressures.
but you do agree, that they would have more, which is what I have been saying.
i mean there is concrete evidence of this all around the world that has been stated in this and the other thread but sure keep just saying that they don't like that changes the reality of actually existing worker co-operatives.
and even this co-op, built along a different model than I am suggesting, still manages to pay its workers more and they have more benefits than a normal worker, and no doubt better working conditions.
I have said this repeatedly. What you are failing to answer, is that when the firms are literally in the hands of the workers, they have the literal physical, legal, tangible whatever, power to dispose of that firm as they see fit, should the inclination take them, which they did not have before. Further, the aggressive and well armed class interest of the bourgeoisie is weakened.

I'll copypasta what I said in the other thread here too:

"Also, the point which none, NONE of you have managed to counter is that, workers in a network of co-operatives, linked by mutually funded community services, are much more likely to communise than a bunch of private businesses, they may even come around the this process entirely organically over time. Think about it, if the network controls every business in a neighbourhood, and all the goods and services used in that neighbourhood also come from the network, all the funds are simply being transferred to different parts of the network, i.e. they don't go anywhere, at this stage you may simple stop moving around the abstract value and continue doing as you did before and voila, communism "

and then later on…"
Think about what we are saying hypothetically here, imagine for a second this scheme is carried out successfully in one country to the extent that it now controls the economy of that country more or less completely, in the sense that its policies conduct how the populace relates to the market forces in their battle with them. (but not controlling those forces themselves). So, the country is controlled by a federated network of co-operatives, centered around even mutual banks, what you have done is remove the bourgeois class interest within that country, its influence no longer applies, save as an external force, even while the market rages on and the worker exploits himself, the worker is at least no longer struggling against the power of the bourgeoisie and so is more free to communise, further, on a national level, if you have control of the former military, or military responsibilities, you have liberated such an amount of capital from that bourgeois interest that you have made a real, measurable,tangible dent in its military capabilities."

If i had the choice to provide needed community services for my own community that i myself rely on I would vote for them.
Oh come on, its like you are so close, the door is open, but you are just refusing to come in, like a shy kid at a birthday party. The impersonal market forces will control us until we control them and not before. What I am suggesting is a strategy to collect together the power to control those market forces. It is quite clear in my eyes that we are closer to worker control of the market if all relations to the market for the workers are controlled by the workers themselves, rather than private interest. What I will say about your next comment will illustrate this further
to be absolutely clear here, what you are saying "we will not get to communism through capitalism" which for somebody supposedly upholding the immortal teachings of the great messiah Karl Marx, is frankly just fucking laughable. Could you explain to me the difference between a Menshivik and a Bolshevik please? Then why that relates to this topic.

I have already done this in one or other thread, i think even in response to you, but i will do it again tribal society>federated village communties>City states (weak feudalism)>nation states (stronk feudalism)>early capitalism/weakening feudalism> Early ascended capitalism (i.e. france circa 1850)>late capitalism (france circa 1960>present day?????> collectivised capitalism>collectivised capitlaism/socialism>socialism>socialism/communisation in part>full communisation.

yes another reason why communism cannot exist in one country

They may have a bit more (or they may have to invest more instead of paying themselves more) but this does not mean much. Sweden has higher wages.

Sure. They wouldn't be able to pay themselves that much more because they have to compete with capitalists who take all the surplus and reinvest. So they would have to exploit themselves almost as much as capitalists in order to compete with capitalists.

Doesn't matter at all. They may as well be bourgoise as now they run for profit. They can make less by giving stuff away and communalizing. They have the same incentives. Also the thing about the "bourgoise interest" doesn't make much sense to me. if you replace the capitalist (people who want to accumulate capital) with other people who want to accumulate capital whats the difference in incentive to communalize.

And accept a voluntary pay cut and loss of benefits because of it? Or sacrafice your competitiveness and risk losing your job.
By obeying market forces. Ebin
There is no difference in incentive between a capitalist and a worker functioning as a capitalist though.

I was saying we won't abolish capitalism by establishing capitalism. We will abolish capitalism by establishing a different mode of production.

Im not sure the strategy is really reformist or revolutionary, because I am not suggesting that we lobby the state to create more co-ops, rather that we create them ourselves in order to prepare for future revolution.

Im not saying its an immortal science, were the networks successful, I could see less stable areas, such as latin america, violently expropriating for co-operative use, rather than buying up the land through collective pooling, which they are already seeing to a degree as I mentioned in Honduras and mexico in particular. The model I suggested is specifically for the first world because that is where I live, those are the conditions I know.

I also don't expect the levels of socialisation of services to be uniform either.

When you talk about 'abolishing the commodity form,' that's not like cracking an egg and throwing away the eggshell. If we're talking about reification here, then that's a vast ideological adjustment that would take generations to accomplish.
this is exactly what I mean, the idea that we can just rid the world of the commodity form in even 50 years as a direct process has been disproven by the soviet union, I personally support critically the soviet union and its achievements, i'm not saying it was a total failure, but abolish value they did not, and they had a long time to do it. One of the massive reasons they did not manage to complete the project, if not the main reason, is that global revolution faltered, which meant that they were still answerable to capitalist markets, and became even more so as time went on. For this reason I think we should consider that for the global revolution to take place it must take place to some extent and for a great deal of time working within a market context, the market itself will be one of the last things to go, as we talk about it in this thread a lot, it is a vast, "impersonal" force, you cannot simply control one facet of the market, even over a national level, in a country as large as the soviet union even, and exact control over it. The only way to control it, is to act on it as a totality. Bare in mind the soviet union existed in a time when I could takes months to get messages to places even within their own borders. Globalisation was in its infancy, now it is extremely developed. This developed, integrated, global economy cannot simply be abolished with military force, what we are talking about in dealing with it is nothing short of the unification of the entire global proletariat, only at this point will they be able to get rid of the market, or affect change on the market, without their jobs simply being shipped over seas, or face an embargo for their efforts to collectivise, etc etc.

I'm not trying to come at you aggressively cos it seems like you get the gist, this is just what I think about the points you have raised

Which is why we must develop a global network before we communise?
As stated repeatedly they typically have more in spite of the costs of reproduction. Sweden has higher wages yes, but it does not have any greater a degree of worker control than any other places.

The relationship is both a slight quantitive change, i.e. more shit, and a qualititive change, i.e. a different relationship to production, relating to the mode of production through democratic federation of class comrades rather than simply being ordered around by somebody whose interests you do not share.
Did I say "that much more" or did I just say "more." I am not arguing whether they are paid exorbitantly more, or only slightly more, just that it is in fact more and not less or the same. So, it is more, as you admit. So workers will have to work less, giving them more time to educate themselves, become class conscious, etc , while working in an environment that actively teaches class consciousness, as well allowing the worker to engage tangibly with the market in a more direct manner than before. So again, the difference between feudalism and capitalism, capitalism is preferable to feudalism, why is socialised capitalism less preferable to straight capitalism>
Imagine a market collapse in current society, it is dealt with in the interests of private capital, because everything is owned by private capital, now imagine most of that capital was in the hands of network, run by ordinary workers, who live in communities, who have friends and family, who will not survive in an ivory tower, but who will face the direct consequences of the decisions they make, the incentives are completely different, than the capitalist who simply wants to secure his stocks.
profit that is in the hands of the workers and not the bourg, so, not bourg, because the bourg are specifically those who earn without working by right of property ownership alone.
already talked about incentives, the incentives for the worker are to live in a decent community with good services in a well paying job with prospects for progeny.

Because the second group of people accumulating capital are doing so for their own benefit and not for the benefit of a capitalist, the second group will have grown from the beginning investing part of this capital into the communities around them, and seeing the tangible benefits of that on their own lives, witnessing as they do they economic power they can exact through collective effort, not requiring of them to pick up a gun, or a stick, or even go on a march, but simply to work as they would before, in a better, cushier job. Seeing finally that shareholders are not a required part of production, and suddenly listening to those who talk about wild ideas like "abolition of the commodity form." Really, ask 100 people if they know what that means and I will be surprised if more than 1 says they know and can explain it.

you don't have to because you are taking from liberated surplus
co-ops crash less than corporations
No, by gathering together to resist market forces, in manner which is sustainable given the inevitability of those market forces for most of the duration of the enterprise.
but it isn't " a worker" it is collectives of workers.
well, sure, and how are suggesting we get to this new mode of production?

oh and another thing, you develop a communist theory that doesn't involve violent revolution as a core concept and you have done away with the whole "muh stalin". What I am suggesting is a strategy that will get the liberals on side, which is a large part of unifying the global proletariat

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

So say you have 1 company that exploits its workers at a 100% rate. Part of this profit goes to the capitalist for personal consumption. The co-op that is competing could exploit there workers the same amount and give the sallary to the workers or in order to compete they could pay themselves less and invest more and actually be more exploited but able to offer lower priced commoditys. The second one is incentivized but either way they exploit themselves at an amount fairly near to the amount a normal capitalist would do.

as for workers controlling means of production, they don't really. They still have to bend to every whim of the market. They are ordered around by the market. And again I don't think the whole mutual network will work. You can benefit yourself by not mutually helping people.

In some cases yes they will be paid more.

You don't get class consciousness by listening to the smart anarchists lecture you it arises organically out of the contradictions of capitalism and the way workers experience them. And again a co-op is actively counter to class consciousness as it veils the market relations with your own fellow workers voting against you and giving you 2 different class interests.
made by the socdem gang
the network wouldn't work because each co-op aims to maximize profits. They can gain more profit by not giving away products so why would they? Also they wouldn't have started the crisis just like capitalists don't start crisises the falling rate of profit or something simular would have and they would be forced to destroy capital just like the bourgoise.

I could say the same thing about a capitalist and it would make equally as little sense. The incentive of a capitalist is to live in a good country. Of course if you offer the worker the choice to get himself more money he will take it.

they are the capitalist

again why would a worker voluntarily cut his own pay so he can benefit the community instead of himself.

It doesn't matter if the worker has read Capital they have experience with capital.

Which wouldn't exist as it would be invested in machines to keep up with big capitalists who exploit workers more

In what way is producing commoditys to be exchanged for a profit on a market fighting market forces.

And a joint stock company is a collective of capitalists.

worker councils sound nice but its not up to me.

is this supposed to be the "scientific" part of scientific socialism? Your analogy is not backed up by what happens in the real world, which is that they themselves more and invest less, this is less risky and more sustainable and why co-operatives fail less than other businesses.
they do, more so than if the private owner/s are controlling production in their own interest. Fundamentally, provided they can sustain reproduction of the work force, it is not in their interest to improve wages or working conditions, it IS in the interest of the worker to improve wages and working conditions.
but their mediation with the market is their own, and not the capitalists, and therefore conducted in their interest, and not the capitalists
and so is every other socialist system until it can supercede that market on a global scale
no you can't, you can get short term gains which will result in long term losses.
In any case, the instinct towards this mode of thought is lessened when decisions are made collectively, as the private inclination to do this is cancelled out by the many other private inclinations of the collective, so that the only policies that may get through are the ones with collective value.
how many posts has it taken for you to admit this? And still you say "in some cases" so as not to really admit. Jesus.
He says, on an image board where people gained class consciousness to that extent that many people come here and discard formerly reactionary beliefs
Precisely, and I wish to change the way the workers experience them by placing the management of those contradictions in the workers hands.
no it doesn't, the boss mystifies the market, we are told we need the big smart owner to do the market business while we do the grunt work and he claims the lions share, this is not so, we do not need the owner, he needs us. With co-operatives you connect the proletariat to the market as they themselves much manage their relation to it, they therefore have a much less mediated experience with it than through a private owner, and thus are more attuned to to its machinations.
If they are my fellow workers, then our class interest is the same. If they are a private owner, then our class interest is different.
I'm not talking about nationalisation though, i'm talking about collectivisation. Social democracy works from the top down, what im suggesting works from the bottom up.
with the workers putting a brake on this, as they themselves must work in this place, and have to spend time there, so, like they do in actually existing co-operatives, they would operate a less investiture heavy model, which, as I said already said several times is less risky

Wouldn't co-ops make for a decent transition phase to communism though? If you have everyone managing their own workplace, you can get rid of alienation from the product of your labor, from the labor process, and from your fellow laborers. That would put those people in a much better position than us to figure out how to abolish the commodity form by transitioning to a system where they produce for use. Some co-ops already function that way anyway. I get the sense a lot of people here only think of co-ops as "the firm but without a boss" even though there are a number of different ways a co-op can be organized, including as an entire self-sufficient community (religious enclaves being the example from which the modern "firm without a boss" version was adapted).

Firstly, because they have more products, and therefore have more disposable products, secondly because not only do they have to work in the work place, they have to live in the community. Would you vote for your co-op to pool with several others to fund rehab for addicts in your crime ridden neighbourhood? I would. Also in this strategy, the network is founded around such projects, before the co-ops, the party members are immersed in such community projects, along with education of themselves and others, in order to serve the working class and build networks of solidarity around issues. Furthermore, as I outlined, this strategy incorporate some level of centralism, with the central committee elected from those who have built co-ops. Once founded the co-ops manage themselves on the ground, but are constitutionally bound to contribute to the mutual fund run by the central commitee, the central commitee controls pooled funds, for the creation of more co-operatives, and for community services and worker benefits, thus benefiting from economies of scale with little of the risk of scale. Also, the central comitee is able to mediate the divisive self interest which does exist, thus providing a double check on the reactionary inclinations of the proletariat. The bottom line check is of course education, which I have explained numerous times.
this is completely besides the point I didn't say anything like either of these things.
the capitalist does live in a good country. No matter where in the world he lives, the capitalist is secure and fat. Seriously how stupid are you
well exactly, it is in the workers self interest o join a co-operative network in order to get better working conditions, and through this incentive they help build better community structures simply by working normally. Super simple stuff.
They do not privately own any capital, just their own labour. No single one of them could sell off the company or make any other kind of decision without the consent of the others.
1) Because in actuality it doesn't necessarily mean a pay cut because you have more in the first place
2) It is in the workers own interest to live in communities with waste management facilities
and they have a more direct experience when they manage it themselves. You have proved my point. Nonetheless I intend to foster consciousness in both manners, as both are valuable.
you have already admitted that they would by paid more, do we really have to do this whole thing all over again, the fact is that more of their value is returned to them, and this opens up opportunities for them to expand the network and improve community services, all of this is self supporting, the more community services you provide the more people will consider the idea of trying to open one, which will mean more revenue for the communal fund which will mean more buying power which will mean more services etc, or money spent on expanding the network will allow more community services etc

Part of battle is preparation, you cannot hope to fight the global market forces unless you can contend with them on a global level. You can only do this if you command nearly as much productive forces as the capitalist, because of these market pressures, and because of the fact that you cannot fully communise until you have that global reach, you must therefore work within the capitalist system until it can be overthrown, within that parametre, you must build an as close an approximation to communal structures are you can, and expand these until you have the power to create fully communal structures. There is nothing unmarxist about this, its simply a different conception of how the revolution might be carried out. The starting analyses and the final conclusion are the same
lol this again im sure we had this right at the beginning this LITERALLY basic economics
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

By the sounds of it you don't know what either business model is.

>worker councils sound nice but its not up to me.
How would these workers councils expropriate means of production in the first place?

Exactly

After I'm democratically elected by four people, I'm gonna put everyone who makes a commodity in the gulag

In this cause how would a co-op ever out compete a capitalistic company? Either they exploit themselves or shrink down to a small firm that can't compete.
private owners a just a figure head for capital. They are not controlling in their own interets they are accumulating capital. You are correct that a worker if given the choice between paying himself more or paying himself less he would choose more. But if they had to make a choice between potentially failing or having to lower wages in the long run and firing a couple people now and investing in machines they would choose the latter.
Doesn't matter. They are just forced to do what the capitalist does to them.
Yes… like communism… Hmmm….
So if a result of not helping people I make a ton of money and invest in labor saving tech, in the long run I will fail… why? The inclination of this sort of thought in not cancelled out when stockholders decide collectively. Why are workers differenct?
I never said they wouldn't be paid more in some cases.
…based on there own experiences with the contradictions of capitalism
The new veil is your co workers and yourself. Again workers become capitalists in the abstract.
Again workers in a co-op become abstract capitalists. They have an interest to exploit themselves and their coworkers as to get more profit.
that wasn't my point.
and thus not be able to compete with capitalist companys and fall into mere curiositys in the folds of capital like most co-ops do. Its either exploit or lose.

why wouldn't they sell these new products? they could gain more profit and become richer themselves. (or more likely reinvest to stay more competitive)
If I had to cut my own wages or the profitablity of my co-op and thus my own survival to do so? No way. Just like capitalists won't give away food because they would make less profit and risk losing in the competition. Its even worse in a co-op because workers would be risking there livelyhood not just their money.
All that propaganda slips away when put in a real pay yourself less situation.
If everyone is not liking this new give your products away and make less money or be less competitive they will vote in people who also don't like it and find a way to get around it. You'll probally see this in some kind of "pro-worker" revisionism. You can't give people one interest and force them to act in another way.
in giving away anything they make themselves less competitive and less profitable.
more than getting good wages so he can pay for that?

You understand capitalism in a very human focused way, "that guy owns the firm and he's an asshole! we gotta stop him!" its capital the logic of money making money that bends anyone into being an asshole that we need to fight. The capitalist are just the figurehead and in a co-op the workers and all figureheads. Communism won't happen because we make the workers the figureheads of the impersonal logic of capital. Workers need to actually seize the means of production and abolish the forces that reproduce capitalism not just found a bunch of co-ops which do nothing at all to fight the logic of capital.

Like I said not up to me but probally through violence and directly taking them.

Overall I think the only strong point the black flag guy made supporting mass coops as an organization is 'teaching theory to all the workers'. Every other aspect is indeed self exploitation and only extends and empowers capitalism in the same manner that wellfare and social security protects capitalism from crisis.

And if the workers didnt understand this it would lead to a false class conciousness and prevent communism

What part of "in the real world this is empirically not what happens" don't you understand? What you are saying is simply not coherent with reality and facts
they are accumulating capital in their own interest. It is in their interest to accumulate capital, however it is not in the interest of the workers for a private individual or individuals to accumulate capital using their labour.
and finally he concedes
but typically they do not have do this, as I have said over and over again, typically they are able to pay themselves more AND that job is more secure because co-ops fail less frequently than corporations.
no they aren't, because the capitalist pays as little as he can give them, whereas, they pay as much as they can give themselves. Which is why, in co-ops, the workers are paid more, typically.
you cannot have communism on a local scale, you already admitted this "yes another reason why communism cannot exist in one country"
because in the long run the rate of profit falls. It falls due to competition as you say, a more co-operative economy is less focused around competition and therefore the rate falls less rapidly.
you are really asking the difference between a worker and a stockholder and denying that their interests are different?
"in some cases" you mean, in the majority of cases
So learning and discussing theory to you, is totally useless and can't ever inform those experiences?
this existed before, only before it was along with the mystification of the boss, I didn't say it demystified the workplace as a whole, only the bosses place within it, dropping another barrier to consciousness.
the workers as a unit within the firm do, the individual worker does not. He does not command capital, he merely contributes to its management.

on top of, an interest in paying themselves a decent wage, living in a community that isn't a shithole, solidarity with other workers, solidarity with friends and family. So you see the formerly completely unchecked instinct to accumulate capital specifically for oneself is kept in a number of checks in what no longer kept in before.
what was your point? Name a revolution ever whose goal was instantly abolish the value form, rather than to socialise capital in preparation for its future abolition? Even anarchist experiments have still done this, the Soviet Union and China both did this. I used to be a Kropotkin ancom, instant free distribution through democratic federation, I still love Kropotkins work and insights, but in reality this idea is ludicrous, it may have worked in 1900's Russia, but with the demands of a modern economy it simply cannot happen. It cannot physically happen on a global scale, and it is therefore doomed to fail. This leaves us with the inevitability of a lower stage, however I still disagree that with the idea you can seize the state and use it to abolish value, either through a parliament or a militia or combination of both,you can use it to dramatically increase standards of development, but in the end the centralism required will halt the revolution half way,you must therefore in my opinion super-cede it by building as close an approximation as you can to collective life in the immediate, and then plan for future communisation from this base.
this has already been discussed at length, and it depends what you mean by "compete"there are two clear advantages to co-ops, 1) they are more sustainable and collapse less often 2) they pay workers better. For my purposes these features outweigh the increased ability of a traditional corporation to accrue value for non working stockholders

this is exactly what I am saying??? This allows them to spend more on benefits and community services
which is offset by increased returns on their labour and the costs saved by not having value sucked out by stockholders.
1) Your co-op needs customers, who is going to buy your shit if everybody has to spend all their money on basic essentials? 2) Typically, co-ops do not have to do this, typically they are paid more, you are acting like your choice is to be paid more by a capitalist and not have community services and benefits, or to be paid less by a co-op and have these things, however, given that co-ops already pay more than traditional companies, in fact, even this slight pay hit, is a pay rise. Imagine minimum wage is £7.20 an hour like in the UK, and a co-op will pay you £9 pounds an hour which is roughly what you will get from the same industry working in a co-op, imagine 80p of that extra £1.80 goes to community services, co-op expansion etc, and that extra pound goes to you, you are still earning more than in a corporation. It is true that, yes it is possible that workers would want the full 1.80 to themselves, but consider that what I am essential suggesting is a direct action marketing scheme, not by paying money for TV adds, but by providing community services, giving consumers a reason to come to you over the next business, putting you in the news for positive reasons. Companies spend billions on advertising currently, you could consider the community services merely as advertising costs. They are designed to physically strengthen the proletariat, as well as showing the proletariat what can be done through self managed organisation without private capital. Here you are not just educating for class consciousness, but showing a real alternative that has actual material benefits.

You are forgetting that these co-ops would exist in union around these services, and that the individual co-operative would reap benefits from the success of the network as a whole, it is therefore also in their interest to contribute to the strength of the network, in this way too, another check is added to this instinct.
but typically co-operatives are less aggressively competitive as you yourself have pointed out.
only, empirically their livelihood is more secure because co-ops fail less frequently than corporations.
these situations occur less frequently than pay cuts within corporations do.

they will vote these individuals to a central committee made up of delegates from various communities, I imagine delegates would be drawn from individual co-ops up to a community level, then to a city level, then to a regional level and so on. These delegates would all have their own community and co-operative interest at heart, but they would not be empowered to place it above the interests of the network, because all of the other delegates would also have these interests for their own community, however none has the power to prioritise their own, they will only agree on what is good for the network as a whole, i.e. the things that are in all of their interests, not just their individual interest.
you may see this, in fact dialectically it is likely, but look at the soviet union, because of its centralism, when reaction took hold, it took hold hard, this would not be the case with a co-op network, as the central committee only exists in the context of contributions, so has no financial power of its own, and the individual co-operatives are under no pressure from the central comittee to revert to private ownership at its demand. Further, if the workers chose to cut community benefits as you say, this could be easily reverted once they begin to see the societal effects, not so if the capital was centralised and back in the hands of private owners. I have no doubts there will be back and forward, the globe is vast, and interests and conditions vary, by backsliding is much less likely, the revisionist workers would simply be asking to return to higher wages and less community services, rather than returning to private ownership, which would still not be in their interest.
where is the forcing?
why would he want to pay for things privately when he can chip in with his fellow workers and benefit from economies of scale and do this on a systematic level? When he is already earning a higher wage than before?

bring it back to this reductive ass shit. I never hes an asshole, I said he acts in his own class interest, and we must act in ours. Childish strawman.
nonetheless they are a distinct class with a distinct class interest which is contrary to ours and stands in the way of collectivisation in the immediate and communisation in the long term.
and when everybody is special…nobody is, thus demystifying the function of the capitalist class within capitalism.
which is exactly what I am suggesting they do, just not through armed struggle, although if they can through armed struggle, great, i just don't see that happening anywhere in the west. You would have thought something like this might have happened in the years after 2007… but it did not, the left was not organised, the left still is not organised.
We can all agree on this, the conversation is about how we will get to a point where we are able to do this, so far in that regard you have suggested nothing.
apart from, gathering people into organised collectives and communities around property they themselves own and manage, rather than further disintegrating communities and accumulating property in fewer and fewer hands, the antithesis of primitive accumulation if you like.
How will you organise this violence, why will people listen to you when you say we should use violence, when many, many other groups already do this in the traditional manner I assume you are suggesting, and none of them are paid any mind, how will you purchase weaponary to compete with the combined interests and power of international capital? What will you do once you have seized this property? How will it be managed? Over how broad a scale are you expecting to be able to expropriate property in this way? How will you sustainably defend it while you carry out the rest of the revolution?

Think about it as a dialectical process, crisis of capitalism leads to socialist emergence, (1850's) this leads to reaction, (fascism) which leads to a cemented capital, leaving behind a welfare state to placate the work force,(post war europe, america) which leads to short term stability (the 1950's) but in the long term is unsustainable and produces reaction and so on.

As stated before, a crisis in co-operative managed capital is less likely to back slide after a crisis, rather, as the inclination is already towards collectivisation, it is my belief that instead of reverting to a brutal form of capitalism, given that this would require them to relinquish immediate benefits, instead, they would communise, as was the plan from the start, and indeed they have probably already started doing.

Further to this, as co-operatives are less prone to collapse, a co-operative economy would be less prone to crisis.

Most co-ops are pretty small with the exception of Mandragon. They choose the shrink option.
It is in there Capitalist interest not there worker interest. As a capitalist which they are they want to increase surplus extraction and accumulate capital as a worker they want to invest more in wages and worker freindly policys, these things conflict.
co-op fail less frequently because they choose not to exploit themselves and not to compete. So essentially you end up with a bunch of mom and pop shop co-ops or big exploitative ones like Mandragon. You choose to exploit or you choose to downsize.
In order to stay competitive they have to invest and exploit themselves in order to attain more surplus than the capitalist, or they shrink and turn into just another curiosity in the folds of capital.
Yes I was saying, like communism which can only exist on a global scale.
Yes but you also get a burst of profit everytime you produce under SNLT. And no its not competition that drives the rate of profit down its increase in productivity.
You said that workers have there own self interests in mind, so do stockholders why.
if they wish to out compete then no. If they wish to downsize and shrink into nothing the yes.
You think all the workers in the Russian revolution were well verse in Marx? No they were revolting based on there one experience with the contradictions of capital and for there lives.
Its worse now because you have 2 class interests and you now blame yourself
Doesn't matter, he has the same interest as the capitalist but also the interest of himself as a worker.
that if they do they have to downsize into nothing…

They still have to either exploit themselves to outcompete a capitalistic company or not exploit themselves and shrink to a mom and pop sized company. They have to invest or lose.
It does not need to happen all at once, certain countrys will have diactatorship of the proletariat (sort of soviet style planned economy) until the rest of the workers revolt.

You have 2 choices with co-ops
1. Don't compete and pay yourself well and become just another food co-op mom and pop shop
or
2. Compete and exploit yourself and only pay yourself a little bit more than normal but you can compete.

why would they give away that wealth. They become less competitive and more likely to shrink or have to cut there pay.
In order to outcompete you need to exploit more.
workers who work in other places?
Still either a pay cut for no real reason, (not for myself anyway) or a hit in productivity and the risk of shrinking.
except advertising is way less expensive and thus allows them to either raise pay or raise productivity.
In that case they would have allready shrunk. Its compete like Mandragon or shrink like all the others.
Every time you give something away for free you take a pay cut or a loss in potential productivty. Not fun.

all co-ops want more money and less giving stuff away. They all ellect people who also like that stuff. They vote like that.
Would they be able to see the societal effects through that pay raise or gain in productivity?
I really don't think any of the co-ops would do any community service. Every dollar they spend on community service is one less dollar they spend on themselves and increasing productivity there only method of competition with capitalist companys.
Here is your choice:
1. Pay yourself less
2. Be less productive and shrink
3. Don't and become more productive and pay yourself more
do you really think workers would choose 1 or 2 over 3 because they care of there communitys? Once you place them in this position you have given them the same interest as the capitalist.

and so will anyone else who manages the firm. Including workers in co-ops.
and if you elevate yourself into a capitalist role you have the ame interets.
No, thus further mystifying due to the new figure head of your own co-workers
This is not the antithesis of primitive accumulation ist just a different method managing capitalism becoming more prevelant.

Your acting pretty utopian. All these questions will be answer and can only be answer when the conditions are correct and the revolution comes and conditions are right. Communism does not involve a big plan for a better society or a big plan for how to get there. Revolutions don't happen like that. Organs of working class power arise organically through real action by the working class not by some intellectuals on the internet. The revolution won't happen through reformism or co-ops or anything like that but through a revolution to actually seize the means of production and abolish capital. I can't tell you how it would work or what the result society would look like because its not my choice, I'm not a utopian. Communism isn't a state of affairs to be established its a real movement to abolish the present state of things.

in Honduras a large network of co-op farms provides community services and self defence for communities there. Besides this in the first world what you say is not true Mondragon is only the 17th largest co-operative group in the world. It is however the largest industrial workers co-operative, but there are bigger agricultural ones. Nonetheless none of these run on the lines I propose.
its telling that you just try and sneak "which they are" in there without any justification for it. They are not capitalists as individuals, as individuals they are workers, their collective shares and opinions, codified by vote, act as a capitalist, but this is a fundamentally different relationship than producing value for somebody else to take.
and end up with them having better pay and more benefits in the real world, due to increased control in their working environment.
hang on a seccy i thought they didn't have this choice, which is what you've been saying this whole thread
there are co-operatives of all sizes, you simply lack this knowledge.
I mean it really isn't true, in fact, making working conditions better often increases productivity, which means you can do more with less. It isn't this black and white all or nothing, that is undialectical, there are pressures, and there are upward and downwards trends, and they are affected by other trends. Marx recognised the worker and social institutions limited but still present influence on the material conditions. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is something that effects the market as a whole over large periods of time, it is not a fixed constant and it fluctuates
You keep repeating this over and over, the fact is there are large, small and medium sized co-ops which pay better and give out more benefits and offer more control of the workplace that corporations do.
so you agree with this key part of what I am saying, do you truly believe we can have spontaneous global revolution in the traditional labour ticketed sense? If not you need something inbetween which is sustainable and a platform for further growth.
Socially necessary labour time is a measurement, if you can even call it a measurement, its more like a concept of a measurement that we can't really measure properly, and a vague what at that. I think you need to unpack this a bit more.

The competition forces the capitalist to spend more on more powerful machines, to overspend on reproduction if you like, to get ahead, as all the capitalists compete to do this, so the over all rate of profit falls. The cause is the development and creation of new technologies, not really the competition, but the capitalists are in competition to reproduce these technologies nonetheless, unless you intend to halt the development and production of more efficient productive processes, your only option is to deal with the competition.
and those interests are fundamentally different.
No but somebody had to be. You think in the soviet union there wasn't a push for people read Marx? Really?
and guided by an educated vanguard party who proliferated marxist texts
no, real world, co-ops pay more, how many times do I have to repeat myself with you?
already explained, repeating myself, so on.
why is that worse? Is it somehow worse to be a capitalist than a prole? Most proles dream of being capitalists. Even so, the prole is not a capitalist, because they do not control capital, they simply influence its management with their vote.
which is better than being controlled soully by the interest of the capitalist. INB4 but actually you are controlled by market forces and you will be forced to compete and therefore have pay cuts blah blah back round we go.
just empirically not the case, i think this is fifth time in this single post I ahve said this, you have even admitted yourself in previous posts that they are paid more, although you tried to hide behind saying "in some cases" in fact, it is the great majority of cases, snake.

yeh sure, providing garbage collectors costs 30% of your pay. Also lol that you clearly think refuse collection is unimportant, literally the mind of a child with no conception of how much things actually cost and how a working person relates to that. From this thread I can really tell that you don't work and are not an adult.
just repeating this over and over again ad nauseum i see, pretty fucking lazy, see you've said this a whole bunch of times, and each time i've had several answers, you are using it like a catch all to multiple different nuanced points. Repeating over and over and over.

the FACT is the the accumulation of capital and the negative effects thereof are kept more in check by a co-operative than a corproation and all the empricial evidence supports that. Your argument is one of degrees, i'm saying conditions are better, you are saying they aren't that much better, but we both agree they are still better nonetheless, and you have admitted this
1. Don't compete and pay yourself well and become just another food co-op mom and pop shop or 2. Compete and exploit yourself and only pay yourself a little bit more than normal but you can compete.
Come up with something else.
LMAO seriosly you are going to say this EIGHT TIMES….so far, get a different answer every time and then still repeat it. Jesus christ.
Its like you only operate on the one level, like you got so far and then just thats it, thats as far as the thought experiment can go for you
nine times
generally that is who buys products, it helps if they are able to do so.
no compared to the average workplace it is a pay rise.
ten times, still no new point to be found to any of my other answers
and a less effecitve way to capture the attention of a community.
11 times, not including the time above which was a half time
twelve times, the liberated capital allows you to do both

The reason I am repeating it is because you aren't understanding it.
Here is my point that you just don't get. Capitalists exploit workers quite a lot. In order to compete wth a capitalist you would have to generate a similar amount of profit. How do you generate profit? by exploitation. What happens if you don't generate more profit? They become less competitive and become smaller. They invest less and have to compete less. This means they can last longer. But percisely because co-ops pay workers a larger amount than capitalists mean that they cannot compete with capitalist unless they do one of three things
1. Exploit themselves slightly less than a capitalist, and invest in machines basically extracting the same amount of surplus
2. Exploit themselves more
3. Refuse to exploit and simply "drop out" of the market and became a small firm that doesn't attempt to compete with firms exploit workers a ton.
Mandragon and others went for the first.
All the small co-ops went for the third. In order to actually outcompete capitalists you would have to go for the second.
Any rise in productivty causes a fall in the rate of profit and any firm will always want to cut costs.
There are no exon mobile or google sized co-ops.
Yes.
if they produce more effienctly than everyone else before machines spread they can sell at value while producing under value thus gaining a super profit driving them to invest in machines.
both are self interested.
Do you think all the people who were revolting were well versed marxists and realized capitalism was bad by reading and being educated? No they were starving or being exploited in low paying jobs. Thats why they revolted.
not what I'm arguing.
You have said workers would pay themselves more when given the choice. But they won't pay themselves more when given the choice if they can feel good about themselves and provide community service? Why?
NO IT DOESN'T. Every dolar you give away means a dollar you cannot pay yourself or spend of machines and gain profit.

again with the childish bullshit. You realise the main worry for most parents is what kind of a school their child goes to, etc, you do comprehend that most people aren't Holla Forums dwellers right?
yes people notice when their services are cut, particularly sick people and such
you are basing this off nothing, it is not in their interests to do this.
you really don't think a network of co-ops specifically built around community services from within communities would do community services. We are talking about the actions of what is essentially a vanguard party dedicated to the creation of co-ops here. You are a tool.
you realise outside of burger town most people are happy to pay taxes provided it goes somewhere good that benefits them. Not everyone is a retarded burger lolbert, in fact most people are not.
or they could simply invest at a more sustaible, less risky level, like they do now, and fail less.
thirteen? fourteen times? No answering any of my points, simply repeated
yes and their class interest is as a worker, with a new, diluted interest as one part of the collective capitalist. A totally different combination of influences than simple bourg interest, which will produce a different outcome, and does, in the real world
it just clearly isn't the same interest. You seem to only be able to think in absolutes, and this is completely undialectical 1) and ahistorical 2) The material conditions develop, they produce new emergences, and these in turn produce new material conditions, all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profane. The classes and interests develop and change along with the new conditions, they are not absolutely fixed and they mix and ebb and flow.
How is this further mystifying, this existed before, competition disunity in competition of jobs etc, it will continue to exist sure, but without the added mystification of the boss. So, there is less mystification about roles in the work place, which, if anything, helps to deymstify the entire work place and market system because the experience is much more hands on, rather than being merely an observer to others management of capital

giving people back property to manage themselves if not the opposite of taking property away from people so you can manage it?
buzzwords. I'm not suggesting the make up of future society, im suggesting an organisational method that will allow the proletariat to organise more effectively for when the time comes
and in the mean time? You think we should nothing but wait for these conditions to be right, for the workers to be starving just enough, before we organise and create links solidarity? You think the right aren't doing exactly this right now?
ahahahahahahahahaha.
really, where did this happen? seems to me like a key part of leninist (and bordigist) theory is that you need a vanguard to guide the proletariat with correct theory. You want "spontaeneous" "organic" revolution.. look at the arab spring. The soviets did not merely wait for the workers to become agitated, they actively agitated them by setting up workers councils and so on, organising them around this councils, here the co-ops are simply a replacement for these councils.
flippant dismissal with no justification requires no answer
okay and how will this revolution be carried out if you refuse to organise in the mean time? you think forces strong enough to contend with international capital can just pop up over night?
so to be clear, you don't actually advocate for any particular revolutionary strategy, and therefore, you cannot class your beliefs as actually revolutionary, but are still gonna sit here and call me a reformist or whatever. Imagine this was a conversation held in the international working mans association 6th time around, your advice, your strategy to the gathered workers would be "aint up to me bro im just here for the ride" and that is supposed ot be some radical ultramarxist transcendent ideology?
you're nothing
what makes a network of co-ops any less "real" than any other organisational method? You think unions just came about magically? "organicially" No, incarnations of them existed long before, and during industrialisation they developed into their revolutionary form, since then they have mostly slipped back out.

sounds pretty Anarchist to me.

Same thing. You don't plan revolutions.
If the workers aren't behind you, you might as well do nothing at all. You'll just end up as a group of intellectuals completely disconnected from all actual struglle.
The conditions in Russia were correct. The revolution was litterally triggered by a textile factory strike. If conditions had not been correct the bolsheviks wouldn't have been able to do anything at all.
They will "pop up" when crisis happens. Do you really think a bunch of Marxists just start revolutions? Workers do that.
Untimatley intellectuals are not the revolutionary subject. Workers are. Intellectuals cannot spread class consiosness, it arises organically. Just the like soviets didn't arise from a preplanned network of co-ops but by real action from the working class.
because it doesn't abolish capitalism in any way and its a preplanned movement.
they came about because of a real struggle against bosses not intellectuals gathering all the dumb proles and shaping them into a network of co-ops.

Again. Every dollar you give away is one less for yourself and your company.
Shareholders don't care about society. Why would worker-shareholders.
I don't think someone who is working for themselves and working in there own interest will magically become selfless saints who donate against there own interests.
If given the choice would most people pay as much taxes as they do? Certainly not.
I'm hoping eventually you'll get my point.
They are both worker and capitalist in the abstract. I never denied that. In there capitalist managerial dealings they act as a capitalist.
My point is that when acting as a capitalist they act in the same way a capitalist would but with a side conflicting interest of a worker.
aka shrink.
Because blah blah conflicting class interests…

Its pretty clear no matter what I say I'm not going to convince you of anything. And I don't think I'm suddenly going to be convinced that if we turn firms over to workers they will do go against there own interests and communalize. Lets just agree to disagree and stop this endless debate here.

...

it was an oldie from back when unironic NazBol posting was allowed.
I never saw it reposted and I needed something to go with my one line (meaningful!) reply

again with the lack of nuance pretending two different things are the same thing. Your mind is a blunt instrument. Preparing is different then planning. Preparing things we will definitely need for the revolution 1) Financial Power 2) Popular Support 3) organised solidarity, compared to, planning the revolution "we will storm the winter palace" or planning for after the revolution "we will use the state to direct production towards use"
Workers are never going to be behind us if we have nothing to offer. Why would they be? Even given a crisis of capitalism, why would they not simply choose to blame immigrants and such, if the left has done nothing but wait for the crash and then pop out opportunistically? This would be what would happen if there was a crisis over the next few months.
So workers working in a coop are still exploited but disconnect from all struggle also? To be clear here, you are really actually saying that we shouldn't organise? That is your position, we should literally just wait?
but the bolsheviks were READY for the eventuality which no doubt if we listen to you, we will not be
did they pop up on 2007? Are they popping up now? Do you realise how grossly ignorant of the real world you are, you really think an organic movement without any real organisation is going to be able to resist the level subversion and military prowess it will face? You want a vanguard to run the party, eventually, but you think also at the same time that we should just let the real movement pop up and run itself. Do you realise how outrageously contradictory that is?
No but marxists lead revolutions
Where are you getting the idea this is an intellectuals only movement, im talking about setting up business specifcally for people to work in. Everyone in the network will be a worker.
Nobody ever learned ANYTHING from Lenin OR Marx
this has about as much meaning as the word does when buying cereal in vietnam. Define what you mean by this.

No, because the soveits WERE the pre planned network of co-ops. You think the workers all around russia most of whom could not read just upped and formed workers councils one day or do you think people agitated and pushed for them? If it is really the first you are fucking clueless.
it removes the theft of surplus value by the capitalist
Unions were pre planned, the Russian revolution was pre planned.

Define what you mean by "real"
I am a prole. I want to work in a co-op because of successive struggles with many different bosses, rents, etc. What is not real about this?
this doesn't answer the point made, which is that people choose community and family in many cases, rather than just being endlessly selfish, Mr Von Mises.
Steel rusts, so why doesn't stainless steel? Gee IDK maybe because they are different materials. Dumb fucking piece of shit
it doesn't require that, they are already like that, working people already care for their friends, family, and community, most people aren't autsits like you. The problem is that they are near totally powerless to change that. You have to give them power.
i have answered your "point" in many different ways and all you have done is repeat it.
Then why do they pay themselves more than the average capitalist and give themselves more benefits?
but they empirically do not act in the same way as a capitalist, they pay themselves more than a capitalist would, and tend to make decisions which capitalists would not, which is why they fail less.
ITT capitalists and workers are the same and act the same, shrinking is the stay as growing sustainably at a slowed rate, and following orders is the same as voting
>Because blah blah conflicting class interests…
so you don't actually have an answer, you are just pretty much finally devolving to what you sound like
I don't agree, not at all, you have been wholly unconvincing, and i actually do believe this and want to change things, it matters to me. So it matters that people see what utter bullshit these ideas are once you bring them into the open

1) no you don't. You don't need to become capitalists to overthrow capitalism
2) you won't Ever get popular support without a real crisis.
3) nor will you get any real working class organization.
"the left"s purpose is to help the working class movement in acheiving power. We are not the revolutionary subject.
Workers should organize. Intellectuals organizing does nothing.
Name a time in history that without a capitalist crisis or a war, working class organizations have been founded that actually lead to anything.
Normally yes, but workers are the power behind them alone they are completely powerless.
Very few people will magically become willing to give there lives because they read stuff in a book.
Actual organizations by the working class not by intellectuals. The soviets are an example, no one ordered the workers to form soviets around Russia they did it because class conflict was becoming more intense.

So Lenin just came over and said "hey workers!" "Form councils!" and they did? The local worker and peasant soviets formed in Russia without much interference by the bolsheviks at all.
And now you exploit yourself:
1. Exploit themselves slightly less than a capitalist, and invest in machines basically extracting the same amount of surplus

2. Exploit themselves more

3. Refuse to exploit and simply "drop out" of the market and became a small firm that doesn't attempt to compete with firms exploit workers a ton.

Mandragon and others went for the first.

All the small co-ops went for the third. In order to actually outcompete capitalists you would have to go for the second.
I'm talking about you thinking anyone would actually form co-ops in the exact manner you dictated because you told them too.
So workers will pay themselves more when given the oppurtunity but won't if giving away free stuff will make the community better? Why? And if thats the case why don't workers just pool there wages now?
They fail less because they don't compete.
If they grow large enough to compete they have to exploit themselves just as much or more than the capitalist. Unless you think profit can come from places other than exploitation.
wew.

Do you believe in the theory of exploitation? Because it sound like you don't. If the sole source of profit is exploitation then logically in order for a co-op to outcompete a cpaitalist company and accumulate capital faster they would have to exploit workers more. If they exploited workers less they would grow more slowly and not be able to sell at lower prices, thus losing competition in the market due to higher prices and lower profits.

That's macro.
Exploit whom? Themselves? A firm can have a higher profit than others while having better working conditions. It doesn't follow from the first part of the quote being true in aggregate that the profit of an individual firm corresponds directly to how much it exploits its own workers. The other mistake you make is setting the goals of the workers in a co-op equal to the goal of bosses in a traditional company, and then "conclude" that it would work out in the same way. But people have other goals besides money. I literally work literally and really in a real-world company that literally exists and literally for real offers me overtime pay bc of the particular importance of this particular time of the year for the business, and I'm literally at this very moment (and this is not some hypothetical gotcha thing) not doing that extra work because I have more goals than maximizing my income. Do you understand that?

If you cut more costs you get more profit. Plus the profit rate equalization doesn't happens when companys compete and lower prices, in order to lower prices you need to cut costs.
yes
That doesn't work in a market where you make money or fail. Even if they didn't set out to make money they would be driven to do so in order to stay afloat, if they do not like I said they are unable to compete with more exploitative capitalists who cut more costs (there workers wages) and shrink.
Sure. But you still go to your job and if you work in a co-op and it was going to fail or be unable to compete then you would cut wages right? You can't cut other expenses without cutting into productivity.

Sorry, been working a lot and busy.
You don't need to seize capitalism before you get rid of capitalism? Uh, yes you do. Also according to Marx feudalism>capitalism>socialism>communism, so you literally do.
I have already said numerous times, that you need to be preparing for such a crisis, and if it comes a long and you haven't, it will fall to reaction.
working people are struggling regardless of crisis. I really don't know what you mean by crisis anyhow, wages haven't grown since the 70's, crime in going up, immigration is a global crisis of capitalism. The crisis is now.
BY DOING WHAT.
speak for yourself, I work 40 hour waged weeks. I am the revolutionary subject according to Marx.
I am a worker
I am not an "intellectual" and neither are you. If you or I were, we wouldn't be posting on Holla Forums we would have tenure in some college.
>Name a time in history that without a capitalist crisis or a war, working class organizations have been founded that actually lead to anything.
…name a time in history when capitalism wasn't in crisis
I didn't deny that, never ever. You do admit though that in fact, Marxists DO help to start revolutions, which you denied two posts back.
Oh my god, you try SO HARD to not get simple concepts. Its like talking to a fucking baby boomer. You said and I quote "intellectuals cannot spread class consciousness" (as if it was fact rather than opinion) And yet, I gave you two very real examples of intellectuals who have spread class consciousness, i.e. Lenin and Marx. I didn't say anything about somebody just reading a book and choosing to go out and die. What I did say was that these individuals have raised class consciousness, which is fucking undeniable. If if we assume the pile of work between them has NEVER EVER made somebody pick up the gun after reading it, those who were already picking up the gun often give it a look, and thus hone their "organic" class consciousness, thus raising class consciousness. Prick.
>Actual organizations by the working class not by intellectuals.
so.. me, and all my pals, ….?
Yes and the communists at the time were greatly involved in setting up and steering them. Please don't pretend like they popped up out of pure organic class consciousness because it straight up just isn't true, before the revolution there was a huge amount of agitation from various socialist parties.

point where i said anything at all like that, yet another ridiculous strawman. The bolsheviks agitated and organised councils, to deny that is to deny simply fact of history.
rubbish.
but the value is not stolen by the capitalist. Simple.As.Fuck. co-op workers pay themselves more, so less value is stolen. I am not denying, and never have denied, the LTV, Falling Rate of Profit, etc and so forth. I know how it works. You are simply denying cold hard facts at this point. The proletariat has more to work with when there is no capitalist. IRL they pay themselves more and have more benefits and the businesses fail less often. There is no way of getting around these things. They are facts. You can say its still exploitation, fine, i have already said that, a whole bunch of times. You are failing to admit that the situation is better for the proletariat quantitively, because they have more stuff, but also qualititavely, because they have more control. NOW, I AM NOT SAYING, that they have COMPLETE CONTROL, just MORE THAN THEY DID BEFORE.
mondragon is only the 17th largest co-op in the world.
i suppose you have any data on this whatsover?
But it isn't because I told them to, its because it is in their interest to do so. You are ridiculously obtuse. Reading your bullshit is so fucking tiresome, this is why it has taken me so long to reply. but you need ot be told, over and over, and I will.
because they live in those communities
In many places, such as the aguan valley, and auto defense co-ops in mexico, they do. In normal businesses, all the surplus is taken away by the capitalist, and so they don't have the option.
Why aren't they doing what? Seizing power? Because there are no effective working class organisations.
And yet they endure, and survive, sustainably. I don't know why you seem to think this is somehow not desirable for the project I suggest. They compete enough. You act like at a certain point they just all give up and pack the whole thing in and collapse into nothing, the empirical evidence does not support this though, in fact, they endure longer than most other businesses.
But they don't have to spend money on capitalists, so this just is flat out mathematically impossible, if we are to assume management productivity as a constant. There is no actual reason why they would have to exploit themselves more, and automatically the capitalist being gone gives them more to work with.
no, i don't, but I don't think exploitation is a totally black and white zero sum game. No nuance, again,again,again.
ebin
yes
well i do
They don't need to out-compete the capitalist, they need to exist sustainably and contribute to a community fund.
so why doesn't every co-operative fail? Why do they last longer than normal businesses, this is a nice enough theory, but it doesn't cohere to fact.

Seizing the means of production =/= becoming a capitalist.
Sure the left should prepare to defend the working class movement, but ultimately they are powerless without it.
Well yes capitalism is always in a semi-crisis but obviously capitalism isn't in any sort of risk right now. Its running smoothly and exploitatively.
By defending them from reaction and capitalist forces.
Yes, you alone are not the revolutionary subject. A communist party is not the revolutionary subject. The working class as a whole is.
You know what I mean, you can't have a revolution without masses and you can't get masses on your side by propaganda alone.
Heres the thing, without Marxists revolution can still happen. With only Marxists and no masses no revolution can happen. You can't plan out a revolution that stuff happens organically.
What moves someone from saying capitalism sucks to risking their like life for it. No one who was not allready revolutionary due to the horrible conditions of capitalism is convinced by Marx and Lenin alone to become revolutionary.
Without the rest of the proletariat, essentially just a fringe margin LARPing as revolutions.
Without the Bolsheviks something like soviets, some form of working class organization would have formed. Without the workers and the crisis none would have formed.

Like I said before.
The saint Petersburg and Moscow soviets were set up by the bolsheviks. The local workers and peasants councils all over russia that suprised even Lenin were not set up by the bolsheviks

I'm sciping all the stuff about economic here. I'll adress that in another post.

why haven't they done it yet
Why don't workers now allready pool money like this? If its in there interest why don't they o it now?
if they exploit themselves more they can lower prices…. and win competition.

Here we go with the co-ops and self exploitation thing one more time.
1. Firms that exploit workers more can sell products at a lower price out compete other firms and get more profit
2. Capitalists exploit workers quite a lot
3. Any co-op aiming to directly compete with a capitalist would need to exploit themselves same amount to compete.
4. Any co-op looking to lower prices below that of a capitalistic firm would have to exploit themselves more.
5. It is however possible to "drop out" of the feirce comepetition.
6. They can do this by becoming smaller and more local and having to compete with fewer firms.
7. If they were to grow bigger and expand they have to compete more.
8. Any consumer would buy something cheaper over something more expensive
9. The co-ops which go into large markets like the world market or a country wide market instead of a local market will either be exploiting workers more of the saem amount as the capitalist or selling at a higher price
10. Co-ops that sell at a higher price will lose and be forced to downsize
11. Co-ops that exploit more are not better than capitalist firms
12. Co-ops that exploit the same amount are because they do not have to pay a boss and thus have a slightly higher wage
13. However in a large firm this is basically nill as most of the profit is reinvested and the a lot of people work there
14. Co-ops are also incentivized to not give this surplus to workers instead they can become more profitable by spending it on super profit increasing machines.

And again with the community argument. If it is in the interest of a worker to give away things, then why currently do workers not pool there money and help the community on a larger scale? Before you mention the liberated surplus keep in mind that surplus is essentially profit that they are giving away because they could sell it and reinvest and pay themselves more instead.

You don't understand the post you reply to. You mix up micro and macro and money profit with benefit. Marx never claimed the existence of a logical law that every firm with higher profits must exploit its workers more.

I don't have the impression that the anti-coop shills ITT have much if any real-life work experience or that they bother with anything empirical, instead they make hysterical assumptions all the time: In their minds, competition is so extreme that capitalists have to re-invest all their revenue (did your dad tell you that, kid?) and it doesn't matter how often they get told otherwise. They don't care how it really is, bc. muh Marxist theory (which they also don't know shit about).

And now, I present a relevant passage from your two prophets' holy scripture for leftcoms to sudoku themselves over:
>Co-operative factories furnish proof that the capitalist has become no less redundant as a functionary in production as he himself, looking down from his high perch, finds the big landowner redundant. Inasmuch as the capitalist's work does not originate in the purely capitalistic process of production, and hence does not cease on its own when capital ceases; inasmuch as it does not confine itself solely to the function of exploiting the labour of others; inasmuch as it therefore originates from the social form of the labour-process, from combination and co-operation of many in pursuance of a common result, it is just as independent of capital as that form itself as soon as it has burst its capitalistic shell. To say that this labour is necessary as capitalistic labour, or as a function of the capitalist, only means that the vulgus is unable to conceive the forms developed in the lap of capitalist production, separate and free from their antithetical capitalist character.
Capital Volume 3, chapter 21 (marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch21.htm)

That is just one method of outcompeting others, the other is using better processes. So this:
doesn't logically follow. What you say is like saying a form in which mammals can exist is in the form of a dog, so all mammals must become dogs. What you should ask yourself is whether using better processes is just a random lucky thing, unaffected by whether production is organized co-operatively or not. The answer is of course no, the improvement of processes is very directly related to the weight of the input of people actually doing the tasks.

Once you have some experience in the ＲＥＡＬ ＷＯＲＬＤ and look for examples of the cost of hierarchy, you will easily find them. At my job, there is a task that is not really popular, but that I like to do. I'm far better at it than average, too (it is a type of physical task where this is unambiguous). But I usually get assigned to other things. There are multiple reasons for this: Managers are not as aware of individual performance as the people who are with you the the whole time and performing the same tasks; so these people below the managers have both a better grasp what the tasks entail (names of tasks on paper and in computers stay the same much longer than the tasks themselves) and of how well people do them. Sometimes it happens at my job that very short people get assigned to a task they can barely do or not at all because of their size, which simply wouldn't happen if it were something decided on the ground. Another thing is that managers deliberately make your life worse, so they can potentially improve it again and use that to get you to be subservient to them (manager A plays the good guy and manager B the bad guy when it comes to you, for another worker they switch roles). Hierarchy brings stress which makes the firm less efficient.

Once that capital is seized, and has not yet been turned over to communal production, what is it? The seizure itself does not negate its capitalist relationships necessarily. Mr Commodity Form
this is a completely vacuous statement. Nobody is saying, or has ever said, that the left is powerful without the working class. You endlessly try and make out like i am saying things I am just not saying, in order to avoid conceding that, yes, it is absolutely essential and should be the soul task of the left currently, to educate, agitate, and organise the proletariat. So far you have suggested ZERO. i.e NO solutions for this, none at all, not one.
Which means it is always "semi" the time for revolutionary organisation. Which means the time is now, not "lets wait for muh total collapse" which by the way, has never historically happened. Even during the great depression liberalism still clung on.
No i don't think that is obvious at all, given all of the above mentioned risks.
no
as always. Another vacuous, meaningless line.
How.
Literally so what? You expect the entire working class to act as a cohesive whole without first parts of it acting unlike the rest of it? You literally believe in some recession happening and the entire global proletariat rising up in instant, universal solidarity with absolute unity of thought and action and driving through relentless communisation. You are so out of touch with reality it is ridiculous. Can I ask you some serious questions, how old are you, what sort of working environments are you used to?
Why do you pretend I have ever said otherwise?
its a good thing what I have suggested is actually seizing property and putting it to community use and control then, not just propaganda. Yet again simply pretending I'm saying something that I'm not.
the kind of revolution you want where value is abolished? Where? When? This 'organic'revolution you speak of is taking place currently in Latin America in many places, you know what they are doing? Mostly created agricultural co-operatives which provide community services.
again, pretending as if I have said otherwise, when I have never said anything like this. Answer the points I make, not the ones you wish I was making.
Like which revolutions are you talking about? You realise you are basically saying that without any real understanding of why, proletarians around the world are going to come round to the idea of abolishing commodities organically, but how many proletarians could even properly define a commodity? This is not what they want organically and it never has been this way, what workers push for is higher wages, better living conditions, more social and political freedoms. These are the things they care about, not high brow concepts like value abolition. Frankly, you are utterly clueless it seems as to the motivations of real working people.
also
again, organic revolutions are mostly collectivistic not communistic in the current epoch. or.. y..know… Egypt. So.. outright liberal.

not historically accurate in any way shape or form, in fact the vast majority of not all revolutions have been agitated and organised in some form altthough to differing degrees, the most successful have been the best well planned.
this is hilarious. I have literally answered this in the last past, you've just pretended I haven't, and made the same point again like a fucking robot. You realise people can see and read you doing this yes? I repeat:

"You said and I quote "intellectuals cannot spread class consciousness" (as if it was fact rather than opinion) And yet, I gave you two very real examples of intellectuals who have spread class consciousness, i.e. Lenin and Marx. I didn't say anything about somebody just reading a book and choosing to go out and die. What I did say was that these individuals have raised class consciousness, which is fucking undeniable. If if we assume the pile of work between them has NEVER EVER made somebody pick up the gun after reading it, those who were already picking up the gun often give it a look, and thus hone their "organic" class consciousness, thus raising class consciousness. Prick."

You are really so dishonest as to cherry pick 5% of the quote and then pretend I didn't answer your pathetic point already?

You are on another planet my son. Let me ask you about those workers councils you seem so adamant popped up out of nowhere again, do you think this happened all at the same time, in every single place? Were the first workers to set up their own council just LARPERS? Because at that time, they were a fringe group. Honestly I think you know by this point you are just flat wrong and its only pride keeping you going, the level of cognitive dissonance is fucking astounding.
Only that level of head up your own ass would make you say something like that.
LOL. But it WAS the soviets WITH the Bolsheviks that DID IN ACTUAL FACT, NOT YOUR HYPOTHETICAL NON EXISTING WORLD, happen, in the real world, where we live, within the historical timeline in which we exist. Proof again that in fact you live in theory land and not the real world.
so you mean like, the bolsheviks, the fringe group, started councils and agitated for them, and it was a good idea, which helped the workers, so it inspired workers to set up their own.

Gee its almost like that kind of a situation is exactly what I was suggesting, only with co-ops. Way to shoot yourself in the foot

So you are going to ignore all the points I have made, then change the goalposts around a little, so you can pretend I haven't made them, then repeat the same tired shit you have always been repeating as if i haven't answered every whiny , weak counter to it already over and over.
Why hasn't their been an instant communising revolution ever? InB4 "cos the conditions have never been right" When will the conditions be right? When will you lift a finger? The answer is never. You don't want a revolution, you literally don't advocate for it. As I have already said, co-ops present no return to the capitalist, so it is not in his interest to support them, hence they need to be worker created, and workers don't have any capital, and it is difficult for them to come by it. Your question is retarded anyway, because in many instances, in an accelerating, growing, not a declining manner,they ARE already doing it, in Latin America, in Africa, in South East Asia and also in the west. Not in the manner I suggest exactly, but close approximations.
Why don't workers now allready pool money like this? If its in there interest why don't they o it now?
because their money is controlled by capitalists. Its funny how much you go on about theoritical exploitation but you seem to be completely clueless of its actual real world effects on real working people, like you care more about the abstract idea of a commodity than the actual conditions the workers live in, it smacks of you being some arrogant college student that has never had a job, i.e. the leftist stereotype which makes the left the weak shithole it is. We need less of you and much, much more active workers.
and yet the already have the advantage of not having capitalists, which means they can discount what they would have spent on him and use it to lower price. Also, as I have said over and over again, which is a FACT that you keep denying, is that workers do not do this, they typically have higher wages than corporation workers, because… they care about their own wages funny as that may seem to a true revolutionary who probably has never actually had to struggle in any way in their entire life. People who struggle generally don't have the pretentious attitudes you do, because life beats it out of them.

Which they do or do less so to varying degrees, not as one absolute whole. I can tell you have not worked in various different occupations with different pay and such, or you would know this from first hand experience, organically.
snarky bullshit typical from a keyboard warrior "intellectual" pretending I think capitalists don't exploit workers in order to distract from the worthwhile points made.
minus the amount of money they had to spend on a capitalist or capitalists, meaning the pressure to exploit themselves lessened.
>4. Any co-op looking to lower prices below that of a capitalistic firm would have to exploit themselves more.
So would any other capitalist business, but without the capitalists the co-op has more wiggle room and, typically, empirically, they do no choose to do this.
There is more than once way to compete, slow and steady wins the race is an (empircially verified) way to compete, co-ops fail less often than corporations.

I mean, yeh, they could, but do they, empirically? .. No.
"more" "less" you use comparative words all the time but then don't compare anything to anything. More than a capitalist firm? Why? It would either be the same amount of exploitation or (as it is IRL), less, because they have physically less costs. They do not have to spend money on capitalists.
this is a childs understanding of economics. There is a such a thing as quality. to start with and that is just the first hole in what you are saying. You do realise "any consumer" is a ridiculous statement as consumers are literally everybody, prole and capitalist and everything inbetween
you have given literally no justification for this. It is also NOT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD, AS CO-OP WORKERS HAVE HIGHER WAGES AND MORE BENEFITS.
maybe, but again not typically the case, why would they exploit MORE than the capitalist, why are the pressures of the market HEAVIER on a co-op than a corporation? The market isn't some evil mean force that picks on socialists businesses because it doesn't like them, as you have said many times, a co-op and a corporation are subject to the same market forces.
and yet they have LESS COSTS TO COVER than a corporation so they have more room to drop prices, and pay themselves more, which they do, in the real world.
and yet, there are the real world co-ops, getting bigger, and smaller
which co-ops are you talking about that do this? You haven't provided a single justification for why they would exploit MORE, you have, PERHAPS, presented a case for why exploitation might be the same, because market forces are the same, but you have completely ignored the fact that co-ops have less costs to cover, purely by the fact their surplus is not being extracted to go into the unproductive pockets of the capitalist/s. So even then, the case for it being the same amount of exploitation, is weak to none existent, and you have not even answered this point, never mind properly challenged it. You are, yet again, ignoring its existence because its a question you don't want to answer.
which is most of them, nearly all of them, so you admit then, that they are better than normal corporations… jesus christ how long has this taken? I think this thread is in the third week by now…
its good that the model i suggested it lots of smaller firms chipping into a community pot to become a network of many autonomous co-ops which do not suffer from this drawback.

EVEN THEN, this point has already been covered further up the thread, where you pretended that we were taking the CEO's salary, and not the net profits, which is what the capitalist/s keeps after the cost of reproduction, which is usually substantial. For example, Mcdonalds recently reported net profits of 4.76 Billion Dollars, while it emplous roughly 375,000 people world wide, so you divide it up, thats 12.6 thousand dollars per worker. So probably almost doubling what they would get in a year, but nah, im sure that is "nil"
More or less so than a private corporation? Seriously, why bother to even type this out?

"exploiting yourself" "giving away things… to yourself". What part of, i don't mind accepting fractions of pennies leaving my paycheck so we can have gritted streets in the winter, don't you understand? Its not my fault or anybody elses you are ancap tier autistic and the worst kind of unconcious egoist.
gee IDK maybe because their surplus value is extracted so they are forced to live at near subsistence levels?..For the average mcdonalds worker, im pretty sure they would be more active in their communities if they had an extra 12,000 dollars a year, or, had to work half as many hours, or however you want to quantify it. Your question, which you have asked an embarrasing amount of times is, "why don't proles give away currently what they do not have currently". Fuck off.
read all of my above posts. The extent to which you repeat this ad nauseum is a joke at this point

Capital for a short period of time. They would be communalized pretty quick though.
What you are saying is not that workers will eventually form some kind of organization and in order to work it will have to be a co-op network or something but we should go out and start one. Thus the left without the working class.
You don't start a revolutionary organization, workers form them when class struggle is especially intense. Again most soviets formed without direction from the central bolshevik councils.
At risk of being overthrown or collapsing?
What I was saying is that all the bad stuff happening right now is "part of capitalisms plan".
Violence presumably
>Literally so what? You expect the entire working class to act as a cohesive whole without first parts of it acting unlike the rest of it? You literally believe in some recession happening and the entire global proletariat rising up in instant, universal solidarity with absolute unity of thought and action and driving through relentless communisation. You are so out of touch with reality it is ridiculous. Can I ask you some serious questions, how old are you, what sort of working environments are you used to?
I expect the working class when in deep conflict to form organizations on their own that best fit the situation and overthrow the capitalist mode of production in most devolped countys. I don't think they'll have formed a network of co-ops because some guy on line told them it was in there interest.
Because again you didn't say: the masses will form this network of co-ps you seem to think we will.
They don't have to know what value is to abolish it. Do you think everyone revolting in Russia read imperialism the highest stage of capitalism and picked up a gun in order to abolish the monopolistic capitalist order that had caused the war? no they did it for better conditions yet they also ended the war and fought to end value.

None of that agitation and organization would have meant anything with an actual working class movement and the potential for actual working class organizations.
I concede that I was wrong in saying class consciosness. I was using it to mean something like revolutionary potential while you were using it as a more general knowledge of capitalism's flaws.
Of course the first councils wer somewhat fringe but soon after more followed because the conditions for these councils were actually happning.
And I'm telling you most of the soviets were formed without any sort of bolshevik central commitee telling them to form the,.

Co-ops are not a threat to capitalism. They are a threat to the capitalist. I don't deny that. When will the revolution happen? We'll have another shot when the next crisis comes. Most revolutions are crushed by reaction but we have to protect it this time around, though words and actions.
Why don't they pool the wages they do have? They are not living on bare starvation wages obviously.
…

Ok. I'm not sure exactly where you're being stopped here. You seem to agree with the premises but not the conclusions. I'm going to go through it one more time and you tell me when you start to disagree or else this is going to become me shouting "it doesn't work in a marxist framework!" and you shouting "but actually existing co-op!"
1 - If a firm exploits more it can lower prices more and gain more profit.
2 - Lets say just for the sake of example that capitalists exploit 100$ from there workers.
3 - Any co-op aiming to compete with a capitalist would have to offer goods at a lower or the same price.
4 - They would have to exploit 100$ from themselves to do this. This does not mean they couldn't still pay themselves well because they don't have to pay shareholders
5 - When the workers have exploited 100$ from themselves they will be left with a surplus from not paying the boss
6 - They have 2 choices with what to do with the surplus. They can spend it on themselves or spend it on machines
7 - if they choose to spend it on themselves they are less profitable than they could have been
8 - Capitalists can exploit there workers more and lower prices more, co-ops would have to keep up
9 - if they choose to invest they can sell for a far lower price and actually beat the capitalist while paying the same wage as the capitalist
(I do not deny co-ops can generally pay better wages I am just making the point they are incentivized to not do so)
10 - they can of course drop out into a local market and charge a fairly high price and stay open for a long time
11 - however if they have gone this route they must never grow large enough to compete

if you are still clinging on to the substainable growth thing then explain how you think that can happen with a Marxist framework or reject the marxist framework.

Why don't they do this now then? And it wouldn't be pennies in the large scale because that money could have made the firm more profitable.
Even in the richer areas? Fairly rich proles exist and they tend to gather in certain areas.
read by above post

HOW WILL LEFTCOMS EVER RECOVER?

Can any coop shills here explain why aren't coops the norm today if they are inherently more profitable than normal joint-stock companies controlled by capitalists?

And all that would prevent a fully Capitalist economy from being communism is also establishing a plan for production. Except no Capitalist would truly agree - each will attempt to influence plan in his favor. And so would co-ops.

So - no. For all intents and purposes, co-ops do not have "socialized property". Their property does not belong to the society and is not managed independently of their desires.

Only when co-ops will completely lose any rights to influence development of plan that would go beyond what any labourer in Socialist economy has, will they truly have this common plan of production. But if the owners of their businesses (members of co-ops) must be relegated to the level of non-owners, what is this, if not expropriation of private property of co-ops?

They aren't more profitable. Quite obviously, because profit is maximized by maximizing exploitation and cooperatives aren't exploitative. Coops are more productive, not more profitable.

You were already told, in plain English.
Exploiting its workers is just one way of getting lower prices, the other is improving the processes. Lowering prices is also not the only way of increasing profit, you can also differentiate your product from your competition.
Only if we are talking here of literally exactly the same product, a typical assumption of introductory econ texts and not a very realistic rule of thumb. (I think econ is taught that way because it is the porky perspective that they think so much about money and not the actual usefulness of a thing. The people with the actual brains that design products are often not the business owners themselves.)
You were already told that there are other possibilities: improving production processes and differentiating the product.
Again, you left out what you have been told: that there are more knobs for changing things besides paying less money to themselves. And the cost of the boss is also not simply the money going to the boss, but also the cost of enforcing the hierarchy and a lot of petty bullshit office politics that will get reduced when there is a flatter hierarchy.
Or they can do a bit of both.
"less profitable than they could have been" is not the same as "less profitable than business run in the typical fashion", which is still not the same as going bankrupt. Furthermore, the output of people isn't set in stone. What they spend on themselves isn't an issue entirely separate from their abilities in production, it can result in them being more healthy and productive.
For the 9001st time, not being the most profitable doesn't mean going bankrupt and the profitability of an individual business is not identical with how much it exploits its workers.
"Beat the capitalist", what does that even mean? Do you even think about what you write?
Could you give a concrete example of what you mean here, as it sounds like total BS. Do you perhaps think about two completely different co-ops here, and are just putting that awkwardly into the words of one changing into the other?
What protects you from competition is being big. Maybe there is a non-retarded thought hidden behind this, but your writing is very silly. Again, try to give a concrete example what you mean by that. Btw. I'm 99.999 % sure that Marx would side with me and not you in this exchange.

How do you know it will be short if you haven't planned the revolution because that isn't organic?
All across the entire world, with all those wildly varying levels of industrialisation? Pushing against the embedded capitalist structures and attitudes expressed in the very physical make up of the means of production and exactly how they have been built, on top of the embedded attitudes and cultures of the proletariat in those regions? Define just exactly what you mean by "short" and by what process they would be communalised?
working class people, forming co-ops, and aiding in the formation of other co-ops, is somehow the left without the working class…. I am saying we, the workers, should form co-ops, and that we should then help other workers to form them, and with these networks provide services for our communities. I want to do this, as a prole, because I have worked in a bunch of different privately owned businesses and the structure sucks, this is an organic experience for me. On top of that, I have been reading communist theory and history, so my "class consciousness" has also been developed through this reading. So intellectuals have lifted my class consciousness.
and then goes on to talk about the Bolsheviks. Wut.
Living conditions in the UK have been getting worse for about 20 years now. Really longer than that, but we haven't even had a boom in the boom bust in about 20 years. Crime is on the up, particularly violent crime, racial tensions are high, our air is gradually becoming unbreathable, public health is atrocious and our nhs is collapsing, our parliament is full of pedophiles. Our prisons are so overcrowded and understaffed that they have had to ban staff who work in youth jails from complaining about standards, these youth jails, by the governments own standards, are not deemed "safe", not one single youth jail, never mind the big boy jails, which house adults, and so have far lower standards. There is a housing crisis, meaning that in the last 30 or so years house prices have risen by thousands of percent. The houses that are available are left in bad conditions, because the landlords have no reason to give a fuck, because competition is so high. Homelessness is skyrocketing, as is use of food banks, in work poverty is skyrocketing. We spend millions on extremely flammable cladding. The EU is a total fucking clusterfuck. The migrants aren't going to stop coming, in fact they will more than likely keep coming in greater numbers as time goes on, the environment is collapsing. Wait five years, until everyone you know is working, and hates their job, and works all week and is tired all the time but still has stringently budget everything. Do some community work, look at the actual conditions people not very far away from you live in. You only don't think the time for revolution is now because you yourself are comfortable.

but with first years of agitation and education by socialist parties and inspired by the bolsheviks and their actions.
Or doubling down and becoming even more exploitative, as is the case when capitalism is in decay, only probably this time with the social democratic bubble it will be more far reaching than any fascism and much more insidious
Capitalism doesn't have a plan its just the impersonal market forces churning through
No community structures, no education, nothing that will actually benefit the proletariat materially, just , "violently abolish value". Let me ask, who will be funding this worldwide spontaneous violence? Who will arm everybody everywhere and how will this army be sustained, seeing as how an army marches on it stomach and all… Lmao if you are the same chump accusing me of "fetishizing" co-ops when you fetishise spontaneity as an abstract concept at the expense of actual agitating and organising.

so, a network of co-ops
so in many industries, such as the service industry, manufacturing, and many other industries, most industries, in the west, in the current epoch, co-ops, then. (which they are already doing in the UK to some extent)
oh tyou don't think thats nice. No reason for that, just you've got a hunch, oh okay then.
or, because is is empirically in their interest, because they will get paid more. You don't think they like higher wages, but you do think they want value abolish and will carry it out? and IM the one who is disconnected from the working class? Jesus christ.
because i don't make grandiose statements about the future which as you keep alluding to, cannot be planned for. I don't say "the proletariat WILL do such and such" because im not a pompous ass. I say, the proletariat will benefit from forming collective networks, and should do so, I advocate for that, as the course of action that we, the workers, and me, as one of them, should take. I don't see how it could be any more organic. I am a worker, i want to form a co-op, and then i want to help others do the same, because i want to get rid of capitalists.

So what amounts to semantic bollocks, "you don't SAY" this, ignoring the spirit of what im saying.
do you think value was abolished in the USSR?
so, this backs up my point, that the proletariat does things to better its own conditions
hold on a second, i thought they didn't know what it was and didn't need to know? Nice little tack on at the end there
So you keep saying, why do you think that negates the fact that education, organisation and agitation is also necessary? NOWHERE HAVE I SAID, that working class power is not important, in fact the entire strategy, if you read it, is develop working class power and organise it.
well, this has only happened to me a handful of times on the internet so, cool, good job on doing this. Characters not wasted.
but then with the caviat to pretend im not right again… man. How is workers learning theory not a HUGE bonus for revolutionary potential? Already radicalised workers, organically, then with some theory fertiliser, its 2017..after all.
so, that'll be another point conceded then. How do you know right the conditions are not correct for co-ops as I suggest them?
No, they didn't tell them directly, in some cases, although in many cases, they did, but in the other cases, these workers had been subject to long term agitation by various socialist groups, the ideas were around, and they could see the bolshevik ones in action, so they started their own. Exactly as I mean to happen with the co-op network.
Come on man, you are so close. Just picture for a minute a world without the class interest of the capitalist pushing back against inevitable communisation. You take power away from the capitalist, you have made it easier for the proletariat to gain power

So, in that case, we need to organise, better than the reactionary forces, and we need material power in order to combat theirs. I really don't see how you could say stuff like this and not think that is the case.

it is astounding how dishonest you are man, im trying to be patient, but you are simply ignoring large tracts of text I take a long time to type out and its incredibly annoying.

cont. They don't pool wages because their wages are generally shit, and they don't have the mechanism to change that, they also lack community structures to attend to these needs and distribute goods accordingly. The surplus value extracted by the capitalist is enormous, as I showed with my example previously.

90% sure I just responded to this same post? Is the matrix breaking???? Guess I should take a rest and deal with it in a bit.

Because it is not in the interests of capitalists to invest in co-operatives. On top of that, nobody is claiming they are inherently more profitable. Also again with the "joint stock" thing like you guys literally do not understand basic economic concepts.

But I thought joint stock companies are companies where shareholders control things and that most big companies fit this definition.

Then why can't they single out competition?>>2300652
So you are fucked. They still will won't invest in your coop and you don't have unlimited amount of money.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint-stock_company

More productive in relation to their size.
which is why you form a network. Sigh

Because the goals of capitalism are not the goals of workers. This is not a moral statement, it's basic reasoning.
Socialists can't compete with capitalists for the same reason capitalists wouldn't be able to compete with a slave society: it's easy to be efficient when human dignity is irrelevant.

If this is true, then you should still have a higher chance of beating other companies and should have a higher market share. Every
big company was a small company once, right?
How could that network get enough capital to compete with capitalists? That would be a lot of money and most socialists tend to be poorer (I guess)

Ok, so you don't support blackflagposter's plan. Or do you?

Whoops, I meant that for

Ambivalent. Coops are objectively better than economic monarchies, but at the end of the day it's all bandaids on cancer patients.

No need for theorizing, the empirical data demonstrates it.

mate its as simple as this, you say
"
"4 - They would have to exploit 100$ from themselves to do this. This does not mean they couldn't still pay themselves well because they don't have to pay shareholders"

When the simple fact is, that if they didn't have shareholders, they would probably have 20-100 extra dollars to play around with, depending on the industry.

AND you go all the way through this post ignoring this fact, then basically admit it

"(I do not deny co-ops can generally pay better wages I am just making the point they are incentivized to not do so)"

What I have been saying THIS WHOLE THREAD is that this disincentive DOES exist but it WORKERS ARE MORE HUNGRY FOR BETTER CONDITIONS THAN CAPITALISTS, SO WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE, WHICH THEY DO HAVE, BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL THEIR OWN WAGES, AND HOW MUCH IS SPENT ON REPRODUCTION,THE INCENTIVE IS GREATER THAN IF THE FIRM WAS OWNED BY A PRIVATE CAPITALIST.

You have said some ridiculous shit like the co-ops would be more likely to exploit more than the capitalist, which you gave no reason for. Your arguments have one by one been dissected, and they all fall to pieces, because your base position, which is not some grand marxist ultra ideology as you like to think, is incredibly weak and based entirely in warped ideology.

You go on about a marxist framework, Marx would never leave a variable such as the surplus value extracted out of the picture, because a HUGE amount of the productive forces go there. Talking about basic materialism, you are refusing to acknowledge the presence of an actually existing, empirically verifiable material condition, in order to shoe horn in the wikipedia article you read about the falling rate of profit, or perhaps Luxemburgs pamphlet on reform or revolution, with its (extremely short and non comprehensive) talk on co-ops.

not what happens in the real world
they do not need to compete as individual operations, they need to compete as a network, all the individual operations need to do is turn a profit sufficient to pay their workers and contribute to community services.

I've been doing some calculations, in the case of Exxon mobile, assuming the workers all work the same amount of hours and are paid the same, net profits (i.e., surplus value) divided by the amount workers employed, is 7.8 billion divided by 75300. So, per worker, rounded down, $106,000 dollars of extracted surplus value over the year. I think that would pay handsomely for some community services where these workers live. Of course they maybe would have pay grades and such, so some workers might only be receiving 80,000 dollars, while others might receive 120,000. But again, im sure 80, 50, or even 10 thousand extra dollars a year for every worker would see a large amount more down in terms of community services.

news.exxonmobil.com/press-release/exxonmobil-earns-78-billion-2016-17-billion-during-fourth-quarter

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil

>Why don't they do this now then?
seriously you are asking again, in the case of exxon mobil because their money is stolen to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year.
for me, it would be pennies, and im a worker, who is a selfish economic actor, and wants to benefit from economies of scale, not have to pay a weekly waste receptacle bill to a private company or some shit. I'd rather just vote with my homeboys and have it come out my paycheck, and when we all chip in together we can get it cheaper.
the richer areas are less incentivised because they do not live in the squalor, nonetheless these areas are mostly inhabited by the petit bourgeois.

oops this was meant for

no, because larger companies benefit from economies of scale. That is why the only way to compete is to form a network which allows you to do this.
not necessarily many companies are state formed monopolies or mergers or whatever.
to begin with, by struggling, once the first load had a foothold, the community fund can they pay for new co-ops and so on exponentially.

Where were you when the leftcom was schooled utterly for 200 posts?

...

So if you make a big fundraiser, then you can cheat the whole market. Seems too easy to me.
Well, capitalism has existed for hundreds of years. That must be enough time for a lot of creative destruction.
Why didn't this happen already? It wasn't you who invented forming networks, right?

if you form a robust network of mutual aid, you can cheat the market. Just like capitalists do.
because the proletariat has been trying other organisational forms, democratic centralism, social democracy, anarcho-communism etc. In fact the formation of co-operatives has happen already in many countries such as chile but they were smashed by the CIA

Why don't you just make a revolution then or at least appropriate stuff? The movement should have a lot of supporters by that point. My guess is that you would risk getting crushed by the state at that point anyway.
I'm sure that they do it better because they are the rich ones.
Still, they could've still tried coops. Proles might be poor but not dumb (at least not in every case).
They weren't really big, were they? Also had Allende's government behind them when that existed.

how? With what army?
how? with what army?
by what point?
at what point?
many more of us though
where they have existed they have been succesful

co-operative models were favoured by most latin american socialist experiements before the CIA smash, it was also black panther policy to develop farming co-ops

yep Monopolies (and the tendency towards monopolisation) aren't real and small business + work ethic is the solutions to all our economic woes, how didn't we figure this out before.

Subjectivist econ to the rescue of socialised Capitalism!

You said that we should first form a strong network of mutual aid to cheat the market. If you already have that, why not invest it into a few guns and instead of coop?
Number doesn't really matter. I'm sure you have seen one of those terrifying wealth inequality charts.
What are some examples? Like ones where coops actually developed on a large scale and weren't backed by the use of force, that doesn't prove anything
were they really big tho (and able to compete with others)
I'm going to sleep bye

The debate between people who have to say everything ten times and the others who still misread them continues.

Again, you are mixing up benefit with profit in $.

The post you sarcastically "reply to" literally said:
in reply to and disagreement with a post that claimed you can avoid competition by being small.

but the entire process I have described is a means to achieving that, and sure, if it becomes feasible. forced expropriation is a perfectly acceptable option, but what I think people fail to understand is that that point can only come when the network is ready to withstand the full force of the imperial machine. It needs to have robust enough structures to combat it. Simply gathering some people with guns together and declaring revolution is not going to cut it and never really has. The USSR grew out of workers councils as we have been discussing, through those councils they were able to make real, tangible gains and improve their lives. They came together as an armed force to defend themselves and the revolution, but this wasn't just sparked violence, they existed as a network and that network was threatened, they did not go out seeking to violently expropriate, and indeed the revolution itself was basically bloodless, and only became bloody in counter revolution. The COMMUNity structures for the benefit of the proletariat came first, the "violence" second. You have to have something real and tangible to fight for. People don't fight for ideas, they fight for their lives. If you can provide a life for somebody that didn't have one, then they will fight for it.
indeed, i mean to claw back small amounts of that in preparation for clawing back the whole damn thing. Again, the other thing those charts show is that, there are many more workers than owners.
I mean if you want large scale look at Yugoslavia.
this is the true gorilla post and peak liberalism. Everything, absolutely everything, is backed by the use of force.
they were smashed before they got round to it, that was really just an aside, but everything else they did was pretty successful, it would have been interesting to see the black panthers develop to that level, with real material backing,but again, CIA destroyed it. As for the other examples I mentioned yes it was large scale and yes it was successful. You can also look at revolutionary Catalonia for agricultural workers self management increasing yields of crops.

I'm literally saying we should create our own self managed monopoly, which would at the same time benefit from economies of scale while having none of the drawbacks. The mutual fund would in theory have the spending power to engage in large scale investment, while the businesses themselves would not be subject to the logistical burdens of being part of a large top down corporation. They would contribute into it, the funds would be managed by the elected central committee and develop the network, while the businesses would be free to manage themselves with only the burden of electing members to the committee. Like this, all that matters is that the individual businesses are able to provide for themselves and contribute to the mutual fund, and the network will grow. It is not necessary that each business becomes a large multinational, only that the network itself develops this reach. Larger projects businesses will be purchased when a network of smaller businesses has develop to the point of being able to afford it, as stated in the strategy I laid out at the beginning. You need to think of it not in terms of jumping straight to revolution, but of first organising the proletariat so that they may conduct the revolution. You may have the proletariat on your side during the crash that will inevitably come, but if they are not organised it is worthless, they need to be organised and equipped in such a way as to respond to all the multitude of weapons which will be brought against them, political, media, police, military, cultural, legal, whatever, you can be assured they will face every threat that can be made against them, this requires discipline and organisation, as well as a material base to work from.

What leftcom?

I think leftcom is now synonymous with dogmatic half read never worked, lives in a bubble and always will college student party line regurgitation without critical faculty pretending to be the next Althusser. It seems the black flag has his opponents cornered again.

The next Bordiga, maybe.

...

The problem is that if you plan to rely on forced expropriation too much, you wouldn't really prove your main point which your argument rests on, which is that the workers would get so much money back from the capitalists by establishing coops that they would be able to take on multinational corporations and assume their role. Of course, the counterargument for this is that to take on a multinational corporation, you need enormous amounts of money, and for this, you would need to exploit the workers at an ever increasing rate.
The question here is this: is this rate so high that it would cancel out the benefits originating from curbing the various smaller or bigger managers' salary?
Here we arrive at the empirical evidence provided by you which could decide this unclear question.
The thing is that the evidence was shit. The coops you were talking about have been the result of the direct/government mediated expropriation of the MoP every time and never the gradual expansion of worker's businesses through economic activity:

...

But that isn't what I have said, ever. I have said the opposite, but no doubt in areas the network will be attacked and its defence will involve forced expropriation. A la the USSR pre revolution. Remember I have said repeatedly this a preparation for revolution.
I have certainly shown that they receive large amounts through getting rid of the capitalists. See upwards the part about Exxon Mobil workers recieving roughly 100,000 dollars each.
>Here we arrive at the empirical evidence provided by you which could decide this unclear question.
Which was designed to show co-operatives in action as productive units in the abstract, not in the manner I suggested, which as not been done before.
ditto what I said above, they fact remains they all worked as productive units. Which is the point that was being argued, I am simply saying we used a different method to bring them about.
they were cited as an example of large scale co-operative production. Which they are.
So what you are saying is not only do co-ops work but they lead the way for communism? Interesting. This backs up my point. Apart from that, same as above, they were cited as an example of large scale production along similar lines, not as an example of my expropriation method working, but how you get the co-op is of little relevance to its actual productive output.
>

and co-ops, being economic bodies also, are therefore better equipped in the current conditions in the west to deal with an economic revolution.
and this gradualism is exactly what I intend.
It wouldn't require breaking the law up until the point that the network was going to be crushed and it had to defend itself, this would be the playing out of the revolutionary situation.
exactly what I am talking about, we need to build structures capable of dual power for when the government weakens.
the soviet union still had to work within the global capitalist system. As I have said repeatedly, every economy does until capitalism has been mostly overcome.
The ussr had to do this as an entity. What I am suggesting allows the worker to push for a little less exploitation, in order to use those gains to push for more. That is the nature of capital, once you have a little, its easier to get more. All I'm changing is that the accumulation is collective rather than private. Using capitalism against itself.
well its a fucking huge presupposition, what will this network be built around? Its make up is integral to how it will operate.
and you need to have developed dual power
if you are the same guy this is utterly contrary to a whole bunch of shit you said earlier, and then you admitted you were wrong about.
this has also already been addressed, unions are on the decline, and have been made useless by years of reforism. If you scroll up I say this in full. On top of that, unions only push for changes, they do not give actual control of wages and such. Co-ops do, in this way they are better than unions. Unions are dead, they arose during a period when most people were factory workers or farmers, that isn't the case any more, so different forms will emerge.

this literally doesn't follow from what you were saying before. On top of that, it may have been direct expropriation, but did it lead to instant communisation which is what you were arguing for before? No. During the changeover they still used markets, etc
Capitalists leaching surplus value costs a lot. None of anything that you have said changes this fact. I have clearly shown with other examples, direct examples, such as the exxon mobil example, that large amounts of money are being syphoned off, and that putting that productive force in the hands of the proletariat is a step towars future communism

bump this is now epic bread. One of few actually worthwhile long threads, even though there is a high degree of terrible autism.

fuck you fucking faggot
this thread could've died but you just had to bump it
it's literally pretty two major points being regurgitated and thrown at each other for 200 replies
again, thanks for bumping i hope you choke on your own dick

they cover alot of stuff twice, but in that it develops slowly, a lot of meaningful points are made. If you had not made this comment, I would not have replied, and thus, bumped it again. I want to see what they have to say.

Oh yes, all those small co-ops that started out bigger. Source: Times of My Ass.

suck my dick

thx bbz

So we all agree then… the way forward is co-ops

no

i don't see anybody coming up with a better idea

what about socialism

The question: How will you build socialism
Your answer: Build socialism

i.e. not with coops

Worker self-directed enterprises, more specifically.

Lmao, okay, so if not with co-ops, what is your better idea?

With workers councils, aka Soviets.

I don’t understand your aversion to coops. Their not meant to be the end all be all, just as the Soviet state was never meant to be anything more than a transitory body.

And yet it ended up as exactly that. Really makes you think…

There are literally hundreds of traditional ML or some split thereof parties attempting to do this throughout europe and the US right now, why would yours be any different?

this doesn't make any sense

yes, that's what he said?

I tried explaining this yesterday to someone when they brought up socialism (the faux newz version where it's gubmit welfare and high taxes XD)
Socialism is pretty much like stock ownership taken to an egalitarian extreme, rather than having majority owners or anyone owning a whole enterprise and wages may be subsituted for a percentage of profit that may be more than what they would get in wages. Because they don't have to pay wages, it's less burdensome on small businesses and incentivizes workers to actually perform better as to generate more profit cause that means more $$$ for them instead of kissing their boss's ass for raises and bonuses or otherwise doing the bare minimum not to get fired cause they know they'll get a certain amount just for being there.

aka it actually incentivizes them to engage in harsher self-exploitation

t. welfare queen succdem
They'd be recieving the true value of their labor with profit dividends via equal cooperative ownerishp than with wages/salary; work would be worth it and if you don't work enough the enterprise you own a stake in goes down.
Socialism isn't anti-work.

That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

but when they work harder they actually see the reward rather than it goes to capitalist. Also without the capitalists there is more for them to pay themselves like the black flag said and proved

Doesn't change the fact that they engage in self-exploitation, even if they're "compensated" in the form of higher wages.

it doesn't change the relationship of exploitation, but it definitely puts them in a better position to get rid of it in the future with the added benefit of higher wages so y'know easing the suffering of the working people and boring stuff like that

bump

At my office.
Me: Giving you a higher wage? But user,
*hands go up*
even if I pay you a higher wage to…
*air quotes gesture*
…compensate you…
*hands moving down*
you are still being exploited. Read Bordiga.
*hands join together doing that Monty-Burns thing*

t. leftcom boss

On one hand, yeah. But on the other hand, it requires them to be in a better position in the first place to become a reality.

You are really clutching at straws here, this is utter nonsense and ignoring the entire thrust of what I have previously said, yes, initially, the party will have to struggle and fight, that is simply the nature of class war, through this struggle the cadre become developed.

But no, you do not already need to be a co-op in order to become a co-op. That is a totally asinine sentiment. You may need the help of others, but that is admitted, and the whole point, the more who struggle initially, the more help they can be to the rest of the working class.

I really don't see any problem with this. Any revolutionary organisation will be engaged in struggle. If you don't realize this you are truly babby tier

No, you need political power – or money.

Forgot my shitpost flag.

Right, so you start by struggling as a network, then once you have money, its easier to get money, and so on, as is the nature of capital you don't actually need already existing institutional power, using this method

...

Name a revolution which didn't involved the expropriation of capital. You need capital before socialism. Don't be undialectical. You take the capital, you change its form. That is how it is abolished and by no other means. You cannot communise, or even collectivise, without any resources.

You don't get it. What you're describing here is literally:

Ironically enough, considering your flag, this is Stalinism 101.

Strawman harder. Quote me where I used the word "magicially". Its hilarious to me the people advocating global spontaeneous instant communisation without previous organisation that just happens when the conditions are right like some messianic prophecy are the ones accusing me of wanting a magic revolution when I have quite clearly laid out each stage of what I think should be done.

"Magic" No, form party branches, struggle, work, raise funds, illegally or legally, whatever, make a co-op, provide community services, federate, pool funds, use this pool to expand and make more co-ops.

Tell me what part of that says "magic" you fucking piece of shit. I'm sick and tired of how dishonest you retards are. Argue in good faith or just fuck off.

Literally nobody else has suggested ANY KIND OF A PLAN beyond "we'll just like, have muh glorious revolution, like, y;know, we'll just take the stuff… organisation, agitation, education…. create networks powerful enough to expropriate capital? lmao don't be utopian now the proletariat just does these things automatically when its whipped enough" and yet, somehow, im the one wanting a magic revolution.

Seriously, state your idea of how things should be done, we'll see who relies on magic more.

Never said anything like that and you could not even quote where I supposedly did. But sure, pretend I did, why not.

If your position involves pretending reality isn't how it is, you are wrong

I'm just a communist. Sectarianism on the internet is just pretentious larping. Nobody here is really a Stalinist, they are just somebody who read some Stalin books. Nobody here is really an anarchist, because none are actually working to bring down the state. etc etc I think the USSR was okay but democratic centralism was clearly to blame for how poorly aspects of it were managed and its inevitable collapse into liberalism from the top down rather than the bottom up. The bolshevik party was still the best thing to ever happen to the Russian proletariat.

twice. Its time for you to go back to reddit.

Here:
And here:

Difficult, but not impossible. Also much more possible in most western countries than instantly picking up arms, occupying what, the parliament? And getting swatted in minutes. Or you could agitate through workers councils as suggested by others, but as I already said there are many traditional parties trying to do this in the west and failing. You could try trade or municipal unionism, but these are swamped by reformist unions who hold all the clout, plus union membership in most places is dropping rather than going up. Co-ops are already existing, in fact their use is getting bigger, not smaller, like unions or workers councils or the class party or whatever. All I'm suggesting is starting a network of these already existing businesses with an extra twist. I'm suggesting a constructive program for class struggle, for so called communists to engage in order be able to have a real material effect in communities, thus allowing their views to be shared and proliferated. Seriously, this board hates antifa because they are too smashy, and when they critique this they say "doesn't get the community on our side, doesn't fix the underlying problem of capitalism which creates fascism" which are valid points, but then you deliver something the liberals would probably be mostly on board with, thus bringing them onside, which they are currently not, because they have no material reason to side with communists currently and you shit on that too. Even if there was a crash or some other event that created revolutionary conditions,the communists have nothing to offer as relief, beyond some bloodbath or Bernie Sanders. There is no established communist party in the west that actively benefits the proletariat. Furthermore, Lenin, Mao, etc are good theorists, but a large part of their theory is also time and place specific. They understood, which many do not, that their own theories would not be universally applicable. Therefore, we need a specifically developed theory for our conditions, and they are as I have stated above.

give me one good reason five co-operatives couldn't each save enough between them to open another small business over the course of one or two years, lets say they each give 4,000, so, for a bar or a restaurant about one days gross earnings. So, a tiny amount, roughly one 365th of the annual budget. With every new co-operative, the budget gets bigger. 6 co-operatives can save for a seventh faster than 5. This is, as they say, basic economics, pretty much no economist in the world disagrees with the concept of economies of scale, beyond retarded ancaps. What you a forgetting is that a communist organisations primary purpose is to struggle, this is a form of struggle you can fit into your daily life, providing you with work, and working conditions that allow and are specifically catered for the pursuit of other forms of agitation, while at the same time providing community services for the public at large.

also you did not answer this
why didn't you answer this part of my post? Do you have nothing to say in this regard?

As a matter of fact, it is impossible for the proletariat, by definition.

Competition. As surprising as it may seem to you, most businesses don't grow up into multinational corporations.

by definition, "axiomatic" fuck off outta here with this ancap shit. You are telling me it is IMPOSSIBLE for co-ops to exist… yet exist they do. Seems you are a fucking retard.
yes im sure one word is an adequate answer
point me to the part where I said the co-ops have to do this individually? Because you can't, because I didn't.

oh and still no answer for

Are you avoiding this simple question because you don't even have the beginning of an answer?

rt.com/usa/413913-billions-are-stolen-from-workers/

I think its important for the guy up the thread claiming capitalists don't take very much surplus to understand hes a fucking moron

Look up the MoP owned by Exxon Mobile. It would take something like 31 years of working at that company to make the worker's investment beneficial compared to working at Exxon Mobile (if we assume that they were able to get all that money somehow; employees are paid equally; the market doesn't fluctuate in any way; they were able to purchase the MoP at its assumed value, even things like oil fields and that they were able to assume the same position in the market as Exxon Mobile simply by purchasing the same type and amount of MoP owned by EO).

forgot the source stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Exxon-Mobil-Corp/Financial-Statement/Assets
Property, plant and equipment, at cost, less accumulated depreciation and depletion: 244 224 million dollars
244 224 000 000 / 75000 = 3 256 320
3 256 320 / 106 000 = 30.72

What a load of gibberish.
Which company compared to exxon mobil?
who said the workers were investing? How is this in any way a response to what I said, which was, capitalists take roughly 7.8 billion in net profits from Exxon mobil and if you diide that equally between each worker you get roughly 106,000 dollars, so, with obvious controls, this is roughly the surplus value extracted.

You haven't really made a point you've just said some things

The entire point is that you would have many other businesses in the network, who would pool funds to buy the larger ones. Nobody is suggesting they save and buy it themselves.

The coop.
Who else will? There aren't any other coops around which would and are able to invest that much money. You have to start somewhere.
Yes, and to get to that point, the workers would have to purchase the roughly same type and magnitude of MoP to have a company which produces roughly the same amount as Exxon Mobile, since the shareholders won't just hand the company over to the workers. You probably know that MoP costs money, I simply showed you the costs and compared them to the benefits of having the coop.

gee its not like I literally just answered this and you chose to ignore it entirely

"
The entire point is that you would have many other businesses in the network, who would pool funds to buy the larger ones. Nobody is suggesting they save and buy it themselves."

on top of that, if you actually read the strategy instead of just vomitting nonsense, you would see I actually say this in detail about 200 posts ago:

already described in detail, if you have an actual crit of my description of that process I will happily answer it.

Right but many smaller businesses which become slightly larger ones may do this with relative ease.
never suggested that it would, or that it even needs to happen this way. Im suggesting they build their own

I see absolutely nowhere you doing this, I see you roughly working out exxon mobil running costs and what it would cost only exxon mobil workers to buy it. Which is basically completely meaningless information given what I'm actually saying

this was in answer to

if that wasn't clear

Why is this thread still alive?

because the retard leftcom refuse to accept they have been schooled over and over and keep bleating the same bollocks

I actually believe in this unlike all you 10% leftist 60% gamers 30% anime fucks I and I will push my idea till it is accepted and spread. Simple

bump

bump

bump

sage