Worker Co-Operatives are Fascist

Imagine a person who wants to eat a cake.
On one hand he wants to indulge in pleasure, on the other hand he wants to keep a healthy diet.

Oh, the humanity! Whatever will he do???

the more the workers want to invest in wages the less they can invest in capital to keep the company afloat this means they have to lower their own wages and now can't even blame anyone,

To answer your question in practical terms, the workers will come up with different solutions and organisation principles. They will cooperate with like-minded people, and whoever succeeds best will set trends, whoever fails terribly will provide a warning for the others.

They are still disciplined by market forces and have to do to themselves all the bad stuff capitalists normally do to them. They have to lower there own wages to save money, fire themselves, work harder etc because they are still commanded by the market and now they can't blame the boss for these problems because they did it to themselves.

There can be no capital in this setting. What you meant to say, the means of production.
There can be no wages in this setting. What you meant to say, surplus value. They cannot lower it either.

There would be communes that work so hard they burn out. They will be communes that work extremely hard but sustainable. There will be communes that take it easy but sustainable. There will be communes that break down due to laziness and non-commitment. Just like there are obsessed, workaholic, easy go and terminally lazy people.

Capitalists deprive them from as much fruits of their labour as possivle. They will retain 100% of fruits of their labour, however.

Yes, in a sense of Marx. There is a direct quote from Poverty of Philosophy which talks about an "abstract capitalist" that would exist in co-op economy, that "capitalist" being the law of value.

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.

tankies and leftcoms unite against market socialism

If I remember correctly, Marx was talking about a presence of wage labour market. Without wage labour employed, there would be no wage labour market either, and this logic would not apply to market socialism.

Socialism isn't perfect society. It is a step above capitalism, and a necessary one, too.

What you're arguing for is nihilism, or black pill: There is no real difference in humanity and all progress is illusory, since an absolutely ideal and flawless state of things is out of reach.

That's not what self-exploitation is. Besides, Lana probably makes over 100k a year just for masturbating, so I wouldn't feel bad for her just because you're a prude.

There's only a finite amount of capital that can be reinvested at one time; the rest of the profit goes to the executives and shareholders. In a coop it goes to the workers, while they also have the choice of not reinvesting, since they actually don't have to expand, they can just keep doing what they're doing, and in reality, expanding probably wouldn't be worth it. That's why coops aren't optimal in Capitalism and rarely get investment.

There are still market forces disciplining them but since coops are not effectively for-profit they do not need to take the measures a regular business would. A regular business most always constantly grow, while a coop doesn't because the workers are just interested in a livelihood.

I like how you get BTFO in this thread

so instead of answering the poster point for point like a man you sneak over here and start talking behind his back about points already covered

lmao you are such a pussy come answer my points in instead of just making another thread for a new audience, for anyone that wants the real thread where these retarded leftcoms are beat out and have no response and move the goal posts and shit all over themselves see where i have literally answered the exact same post which has been copypastad here

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, (You)
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 (You)
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)
(You)
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.

...

Obviously this whole problem I've pointed out could be solved by the abolition of markets. In a market "soocialist" society everything bad in capitalism happens.

The only thing that changes without private owner is now workers have to fight amongst themselves instead of against a capitalist + they have a little more money.

You actually do have to expand because you need to get more capital in order to stay competitive. They have to expand constantly or else they will be producing at over the SNLT. Co-ops are effectively for profit because They need profit to buy constant capital and stay afloat.

I can't really think of a reason to support co-ops as an organizational strategy
1. They are not in any way socialistic
2. They are actually counter to class consciousness as when something bad happens the have only themselves to blame (you can't blame the law of value or something) and turn against each other instead of being united against a boss

The only good thing is that the co-op gets a little more money (which they will probably have to invest in machines to stay competitive).

It is literally impossible to exploit yourself. It is a contradiction in terms. Exploitation requires two parties.

Whats the difference between the boss lowering wages so he can get more surplus value so he can get money to buy machines and all the workers gathering around and voting to lower wages so they can get more surplus value so they can get more money to buy machines.

read this thread

I have already in detail answered this over and over again, the rebuttal has been completely weak

Work is fascist
Kill everyone
Heil Stalin

In this case there's no difference, but when the surplus value is benefice profit, it's better that it belong to the workers instead of the boss.

Worker Co-ops do pay workers a little better than non co-ops but they also stop workers from having someone to rally against. It might even turn them against socialism because they have to exploit themselves and have to blame themselves for it. Unlike a union or a workers party the workers aren't focused on fight the capitalists and are now fighting amongst themselves and against invisible market forces. They are actively counter to class consciousness and do no better than a workers union to establish socialism.

And no the workers won't blame the market for the decisions they make. They can't fight the market and on a surface level they'll just be mad at the people voting against them. And co-ops don't teach workers self management it makes them dislike self management because of the way they work in capitalism.

How the fuck are workers gonna seize the means of production if they don't have practice running it?

This "2 contradictory class interests" argument is total bullshit. The worker already feels conflicted all day because one part of them says "fuck this I don't want to do this work" and other part says "I have to do this work because I don't want to get fired." If you are a co-owner then you are (hopefully) more identified with the organization so that would reduce the amount of worker internal contradiction, because you're doing the work for yourself and not for the boss.

Workers taking on the responsibilities of management and directing the firm is a positive thing because it means workers are liberated from passively doing the same task over and over. Any revolution needs active participants not people who are socialized from birth to death to passively obey authority figures.

This is completely surface level and to be honest unbecoming of this board. Why do you imagine the workers need an artificial focal point to rally against? As explained in that strategy, in the thread, the idea is to bring co-operatives and communities together through the provision of services. You remove the boss, take his share, pay yourself a little better and pay into community pot, several co-ops do this at once, gradually buying up their own means of production and thereby being able to contribute more and more to community services, the workplaces generating this community fund will manage themselves, the fund will be managed by a central committee elected from those who have helped found a co-op and have undergone party education.

The workers are "rallying around" the creation and expansion of the network, their own increase in pay and conditions, and the provision of services to their communities.

From this they will learn 1) How to manage themselves, in the adversity of capitalism 2) how to manage the services around them.

Both of these areas of knowledge are required should the work force ever truly manage its self.

So, they will turn against socialism when they realise that markets will inevitably end up exploiting them? This doesn't make any sense at all, no when the workers see truly how capital functions, and are in charge of its administration, and have amassed most of the fortunes of the earth, then and only then will they be truly equipped to communise. In the mean time, the economic base must be expanded. A union does not do this. A union is a pressure group, nothing more. You may strike, the capitalist has a reserve army of labour, you may make demands, and he will outsource to the third world. The only way to ensure control in your interest is to have control.

What I am suggesting IS a workers party, just with a different MO than most other workers parties.

which western country are you living in where the unions fight the capitalists? I am a member of the IWW, a supposedly radical union, even we do not in any meaningful way "fight the capitalists" EVERY current socialist structure in the west is fugged and not unfuggable. This is what you have to understand, the traditional forms are DEAD. A western economy is developed to a different degree, labour unions had their day.

…. implying unions do anything other than attempt to push back market forces, through wage icnreases and such
…implying unions have not historically been subject to a huge degree of "fighting amongst themselves"

Read Luxemburg my dude reform or revolution what shes says about unions is among the few worthwhile things in there. She also spergs about co-ops but she is talking about 1) a different formation of co-operative enterprise and 2) is wrong about that anyway

this is a nice bald assertion with nothing to support it.

Not at first, but they will learn, baring in mind the strategy, if you actually read is also based entirely around education of workers. Everybody who works in the co-ops will be required to learn. The point is to manage themselves, which is better than capitalism, until a lower stage can be implemented and then eventually the higher stage.

As history shows, implementing even the lower stage without first having the global economic base means you will lose the war with the capitalists.

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

ivory tower is showing, you just assume the workers vote based on surface level reasons, perhaps on a national scale in a bourgeoisie election, but face to face, in your own community, with direct consequences, your reasoning is much more nuanced and indeed will become progressively more so as the direct consequences of your decisions play out in front of you.

I mean, this is simply not factually correct, as i said in the other thread, which you are ignoring entirely the nuance of, and just going for the same
NOT REAL SOCIALISM SELF EXPLOITATION REEEE over and over again

". 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."

On top of that, workers in existing "co-ops" in the west, which are most often not even real co-ops most of the time, report that they much prefer this working environment to a privately own business, and, as has been admitted, earn more and receive more benefits, why are you pretending the workers are so averse to self management when there are real world examples all over the place of it being effective and preferable? Just because it doesn't fit in to your orthodox interpretation of 150 year old theory… that is indoctrination my friend.

You have absolutely no proof that workers would not prefer to manage themselves. I have lots and lots of proof they do

indeed

COME TO THIS THREAD FOR THE EXPLANATION IN FULL

there is private property in mutualism

good job being fucking stupid OP

meant to greentext

What's the difference with conventional capitalist enterprises, then?

This is entirely wrong. Capitalism isn't just about a parasitic class appropriating surplus value, it's about social relations put into motion by market imperatives. Whether your boss is a fat cunt or you best pal won't change a thing about it.

...

Workers do not need to manage firms. They already do this.

You have to cut costs but you also want to pay yourself more, you want to keep the company afloat but you also want time off. This causes a struggle.

Why do they need a personification of capital to fight against? Because otherwise they are trying to directly fight an invisible social force. Who would you blame? The boss or capitalism? The average worker blames the boss and the average worker would blame their co-workers not the social forces behind the decisions they have to make.

The work force does NOT need to manage itself. Worker self management will not exist in socialism because the economy will be planned and owned collectively without firms.

Who would you blame the market or the boss? Its unclear who is to blame and you would likely just blame your co workers.

>onomic base must be expanded. A union does not do this. A union is a pressure group, nothing more. You may strike, the capitalist has a reserve army of labour, you may make demands, and he will outsource to the third world. The only way to ensure control in your interest is to have control.

The economic base of socialism is capitalism. It already exists. Huge companies that operate under plans allready exist and so does a state to nationalize theme. They simply need to be turned towards production for the people.

They don't. I'm not advocating unions at the present time. Co-ops however don't fight against capitalists and instead have to fight invisible market forces which inevitably breaks them.

So if your co-workers voted to lower your wages, you would think: "this isn't their fault its just the law of value! We need to fight market forces!" ebin.

Like I said before, the economic base of socialism is capitalism.

Wow! the co-ops get bigger! They are still just a co-op still producing for market exchange.

Again workers have conflicting class interests when working in a co-op. This turns them off of socialism as they have to produce profit but also want to raise their own working conditions. This leads to workplace squabbles and stuff like this:

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

7/10

...

First of all this role would not exist in communism as individual firms wouldn't exist in communism. And it would be a lot easier to do as now its merely a matter of resource allocation to different parts of society. Also yes CEO's are technically workers as they are paid wages to preform labor.

You have to both prioritize profit and yourself. Those are opposed interests. For the sake of profit you don't want your fellow workers to have sick pay but for the sake of yourself and sympathy to other workers you do want it. This is a form of false consciousness and totally detrimental to revolutionary consciousness.

You've got to be kidding me. This is what happens when you prioritize theory over examining the actual power relations that anyone with two eyes can see.

Okay? But we're not talking about communism, we're talking about worker self-management under capitalism, as a means to move closer to socialism and improve conditions for workers.

You're saying achieving communism is just a matter of "allocating resources" differently? It's that easy huh?

This is true, workers will have to internalize the motivation of profit maximization, whereas currently this is externalized to the capitalist boss. This means that they will have to discipline their desires which do not conform to the goal of profit maximization. But the concrete advantage of this is seizing *power* and *control* which currently resides in the hands of the capitalist boss. Currently it is completely up to the whim of your employer to give workers sick pay, but with worker self-management they get to decide these policies and make them more worker-friendly. Because the alternative to workers struggling to balance profit with humanity, is surrender to the capitalist who will most definitely weigh in favor of profit.

With the boss out of the picture, we "level up" and the next target is the oppressive commoditized market structure itself which puts profit over people. This is positive for revolutionary consciousness because its always positive for workers to achieve more power, flex their muscles, rather than atrophy in a passive, dependent state as they are currently.

So the workers, in the transitional phase of lower lower phase co-op capitalism need to learn how to self manage so they can self manage in lower stage co-op capitalism? Why do they need to learn how to self manage if in communism they wouldn't need too.

Planning in communism would just be allocating resources. Probably easier than running a company.

So workers are now both capitalist and worker. Great.

This is the same as unions forcing bosses to be nice. Co-ops could not have "worker friendly" policies because they operate for profit. At least not more "worker friendly" than a nice boss would be. Nice bosses are actually the worse (just like nice slave owners) because they further perpetuate the exploitive society.

So internalizing capitalist profit maximization and fighting amongst themselves makes workers MORE conscious?

A capital strike against any co-opping business would happen real quick if they had anywhere near this amount of power. Not to mention arrests, censorship, and murder.

Luckily Co-ops aren't revolutionary. Otherwise Franco would have knocked on Mandragons door.

Our elites shit their pants over paid vacation and $15 minimum wage right now. What is or isn't revolutionary is immaterial to the capital class's collective action.

I don't know, maybe to prevent it from turning into state capitalism? What is the point of communism if you're just handing off control to some other governing body? I don't want to be in the position of receiving orders, to me that is pretty fundamental to both anarchy and communism.

Seems rather rose-tinted and naive. Allocating is only half of the equation - first you have to produce the things you're going to allocate. Production is an entire process that must be conceived of, executed, and managed not unlike running a company. Except it is a society-wide "company" and is therefore orders of magnitude more difficult to run, if you want to do it well.

If co-ops become universal then there are no more capitalists, because capitalists only exist in a relationship of exploitation and extraction of surplus value, which wold be no more. It would be capitalism without capitalists.

And with universal co-ops there would be no more bosses, nice or otherwise, who are perpetuating exploitation because there would not be exploitation. You wouldn't have to luck out and get a nice boss because working conditions are under your collective control. I would rather combat alienation rather than alienation + exploitation.

It kinda sounds like you would not advocate for ending slavery, because then the slaves just become workers so what's the point? So let's not advocate for ending wage slavery, because then the wage slaves would just become capitalists.

It makes them conscious of the alienation produced by a market/profit driven society, because they experience it directly without the intermediary of the capitalist assuming a parental stewardship role shielding them.

firms are fundamentally incompatible with communism. If a firm exists then that means its not owned by society as a whole. You might "receive orders" but you would be doing so from society as a whole.

So now instead they blame each other and themselves.

I agree. In communism that would be the case. However the improvements in conditions in the "transitional" co-op capitalism phase would be about as good as having a nice boss because they still operate for profit.

what?

Now fellow workers and yourself are the intermediary you blame!

Oh my god you are literally a complete idiot. We are talking about getting rid of the OWNER. Not the MANAGER. Have you EVER had a job, or do you know basic tenets of socialism? These are two different occupations.

You don't know what you are talking about.

I have specifically said they don't.
Its not an invisible social force when you are forced to be engaged with it, which the worker is not currently.
Baseless assertion, not even backed up by a theoretical logical chain, never mind any actual proof.
Because you say so?
Why because you say so, how are you going to seize the economy? You have no resources, no arms, probably not even any comrades. No support from the working class, at all, no meaningful structures what so ever, and a concentration of expansion of capital never before seen in history, with a strong reactive force ready to prop it up. What the fuck are you suggesting beyond "we'll just own everything instantly and be able to plan for every need without any kind of intermediary plan" what you are giving me is the goal. Not any kind of a solution to achieving that goal.
>Who would you blame the market or the boss? Its unclear who is to blame and you would likely just blame your co workers.
Another baseless assertion and meaningless rhetorical question.
Exactly, so why in fuck is everybody so against socialising the capitalism, this is a definite step forward. We consider capitalism a step forward from feudalism or a slave society, so socialised capitalism is a step for from late stage capitalism. We might even consider late capitalism a more advanced form of capitalism preferable to 1850's capitalism, what with the welfare state and so on. The main thing that stops us from communising is a lack of class consciousness and a lack of means of production. This strategy gives both to the work force.

why would this strategy work now when it has failed before, and with a large, global socialist revolutionary movement backing it up, with much more support from the working class, why would this model work better now? Why is your new revolutionary communist faction no.1047 going to be the one that makes the difference? Times have changed.
Then why ask me why im not advocating for them? So basically you are here admitting you don't have a real reason why i should support unions over co-ops, because you literally wont advocate for them, but then in the next line "co-ops are still worse because they don't fight the capitalists" Worse than what? You haven't told me why unions are any better and don't get broken down by invisible market forces.
But in the real world, outside of your doctrines, this isn't typically what happens within a co-op, co-op workers are for the most part paid more than non co-operative or even union workers.

And yes, if I could see clearly that, although everybody was working hard, doing their job , etc, and still the economy tanked, I would begin to wonder why.
wow you are completely obtuse. You literally ignore the entire spirit of the post, provide no answered to it, then pretend im saying "co ops get bigger" when in fact i am saying all of this, which you even qquoted, so everyone can see you didn't answer it it:

", 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 "

KEY PHRASE ==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,==

Explain to me how workers in a privately owned are ==more likely to communise== than workers in a network of co-operatives

So you are still repeating, ad nauseum, something which is by this point in the discussing accepted by both sides and completely and totally besides the point.

WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT CREATING SOCIALISM, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR SOCIALISM.
but there is still LESS conflicting class interest and MORE material gain
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH

yes and HOW ARE YOU PROPOSING WE GET TO COMMUNISM YOU DUMB REDDIT RETARD

YOU ARE NOT EVEN ENGAGING IN THE DISSCUSSION, THE DISCUSSION IS HOW TO GET THERE, NOT WHAT IT IS, WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT IS, IT ISN'T HARD TO GRASP, ITS FREE SHIT, FOR EVERYONE, AND YOU DONT HAVE TO WORK FOR IT. ABOLITION OF THE VALUE FORM. WE GET IT. KNOWING THAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU SPECIAL

For my own sake i want to have sick pay. You are literally autistic if you dont understand this.
rather than prioritising profit for the boss, as well as profit and yourself
So the workers, in the transitional phase of lower lower phase co-op capitalism need to learn how to self manage so they can self manage in lower stage co-op capitalism?
no so they OWN THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, so that when class conciousness is raised, they have the POWER TO COMMUNISE, AND at the same time, learn to manage themselves, giving them the CONCIOUSNESS TO COMMUNISE.
Even the soviet union had a level of self management., every efficient system does, imagine if workers had to defer up on absolutely every decision, it would be a total mess. Self management is necessary for the eventualy whithering away of the ideological and repressive state apparatus. Think about a sports team, sure they have a captain, but every player knows what they are their to do and are imbued with the authority to make split second decisions when they need to, because they have to in order to complete the task. This doesn't mean they act self self interestedly , but that they act as an autonomous part within a cohesive whole.
where did you get the resources to plan to allocate?
i like how by this point you are saying "probably" like you aren't even sure of your own weak BS any more.
Capitalists are generally more conscious of their own class than workers, they need to be in order to maintain their class interest, they must understand what makes them bourgeoisie and reproduce it. This is exactly why the model will elevate consciousness, as this new experience of capital will be imbued on the worker.

no it isn't. Are you incapable of nuanced thought? You talk like somebody whose knowledge of communist and general philosophical/economical/anthropoligical thought is a few pages from wikipedia.

In a union you ask the boss to do things, and you act out if he doesn't, and he puts your job off shore.

In a co-operative it is in nobodies interest to ship their own job to china.

BUT THEY DO. RIGHT NOW.IN THE REAL WORLD>
NOT FACTUALLY CORRECT.
I forget that the current work force under capitalism and labour unionised work force is in fact a completely cohesive body with absolutely no infighting and the presence of co-ops would totally disrupt this harmonious order….

Owning and managing capital forces you to be conscious of capital, just like entering a warzone makes you conscious of flying bullets. They are an actual reality for you to deal with and you must. So you come to know the "reality" through experience. Which is generally what shapes human perspective, rather than any kind of "correct theory"

Which would be fantastic agitation to begin seizing the means with violence.

more "because i say so"
then why did the CIA spend most of the 50's-90's crushing co-operative enterprise in Latin America?

not but several large co-operative networks owned by their workers is closer to society being owned as a whole by several private shareholders.
you tell me there is no benefit to voting on my own working conditions directly, but then expect me to work for your megafirm that encompasses the totality of society (which you still haven't explained how to get to) because "youll totes be working for society as a whole now…just trust the planning committee" you realise even Michael Parenti, a huge ☭TANKIE☭, had pretty large critisms to make of how the soviet union actually managed distribution and production, not on moral grounds, but grounds of simple efficiency, it was poorly managed. Nobody can really deny that.
You really honestly think people blame themselves for things often besides manic depressives? This is the opposite of how people are wired. People blame the outsiders, i.e. the economy, the immigrants, the rich, etc .
But you would earn all the profit the boss would have made, and you have more benefits, and better wages, and control of your workplace so you can secure these for the future better, and all of this coheres to how co-ops function in the existing world right now. So you are just full of shit.
After all this, you are really telling me who the workers "blame" around the water fountain is important? This is supposedly an application of dialectical materialism? You think the workers will blame each other for wage cuts because they are prone to squabbling and that is the entire reason you cannot move into a new mode of production?

Workers also don't need to own firms. They won't do this in communism. Co-ops just give them the same "worker freindly" policies a nice boss who only exploits his workers when he has to would.

Your co-workers vote to lower your wages. Who do you blame, The market forces of capitalism or your co-workers? Workers in modern times blame their boss not the market forces.

I'm not Lenin I don't have an exact solution on the perfect way to get to communism, I'll I'm saying is that the co-ops are basically just as good for workers as a nice boss who isn't needless cruel and actually turns workers away from socialism due to the conflicting class interests. I think revolution will probably happen due to some sort of revolt during a crisis. Maybe not. What I do know is the network of Co-ops won't get you anywhere.

Unions when they were relevant were a way for workers to directly struggle against capitalism. Co-ops don't and just end up being broken by market forces.

So if a co-op is failing co-op workers won't lower wages ever?

They aren't but worker co-ops don't have a huge incentive to communize either. They still generate for profit and if they can gain more profit without communizing they will. Probably break off into some sort of revisionism.

Co-ops are not the condition of socialism they are capitalism with a human face.

Not by establishing capitalism with a human face.

And capitalism with a human face is not a step forwards, it does not give workers any skills they will need in socialism and it does give workers any control over the means of production as they are still controlled by market forces.

But you also want to cut costs

They don't control the means of production they essentially work directly for market forces. It does not raise class consciousness and its actually a form of false consciousness due to the conflicting class interests present when you operate as both employer and employee.

Firms would be planned. of course their would be more local managers but not everyone needs to know how to do that.

Sure.

If you voted to kick out your friend because you needed to save costs you would blame yourself and feel bad. If your friend voted to kick you out you also would blame him not market forces or something

So AKA a nice boss who only pays himself workers wages and exploits you only when necessary to expand production.

No, thats why I think co-ops are a form of false consciousness. Workers blame each other because of contradictory class interest.

retards

So the workers will just own society and all of its productive forces as totality. Because….by which process?? How will this be achieved?
No the fundamentally change how the worker relates to capital, and they also increase conditions for the worker and give them better tools to sustain these changes.
As i said, in the real world, typically doesn't happen.
I would blame the market forces.

which failed because they not actually command any productive forces, they were a pressure group subject to the infighting you seem to think is only relevant to co-ops.
If you had actually read the thread, it isn't just co-ops, its co-op prividing community services and actively funding stuggle against capital, maybe you should actually go and read the thread.

I don't know why you think most unions struggled against capitalism, what they did was push for changes within capitalism like wages and such.

Did I say that? I'm sure what I said was "typically they don't and typically they earn better wages than a private corp"
this is just a repetition of a baselss assertion from above. A co-operative economy is fundamentally different from a privately owned one, the issue of surplus value alone makes this so, never mind worker management.
So what ARE you doing to do. I assume you are also NOT going to sit in your room masturbating in order to get socialism, but you didn't say that, so what ARE you going to do?
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.
literally "a honduran co-operative farm is basically the same as a slave plantation because they both create commodities for a market we may as well have that." next level indoctrinated, parroted, thoughtless rubbish
and its great that i no longer have a boss taking away my surplus value so this pressure is slightly less than it was before
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.
Mate you are so fucking obtuse. In the same way that the bourgeoisie owning society is closer to communism than feudalism, so the workers owning the means of production is closer to society being owned by the workers entirely than society being owned by the bourgeoisie. Saying "sure" is not any kind of answer. Why do you think it qualifies as one, and why do you think it makes you look like anything other than a butthurt brainlet with no real answers to any real questions who just repeats old theory with no actual grasp of how it works or what it means.
>If you voted to kick out your friend because you needed to save costs you would blame yourself and feel bad
So wait I am blaming both my fellow worker and myself.. at the same time… but not capitalism.. why again?
no i would blame market forces.. im a communist.
no a "nice boss" who doesn't exist and is paid nothing at all. How can you not see the difference? Its like beating your head against the wall. The difference between extracting, say 60,000 a year from a small firm or extracting 0 a year from a small firm, to you is no difference at all. I see, right, that makes complete sense.

their class interest is more aligned without the boss than with it.

Calm the fuck down and take your collective meds, dudes. Yelling on the internet isn't going to suddenly reverse the last 200 years of history and make co-ops a viable form of business, let alone a viable revolutionary strategy.

have a meme to chill

Why would I when he refuses to argue in good faith, deliberately ignoring the points which makes him wrong and pretending I said something else than I have said

so i give you lines and lines of actual analysis and all you have is a shitty ebin meme you could literally replace the words with anything as if it matters.

Bollocks, give me a real argument or shut your stupid fucking mouth

Here's a free lesson buddy, one learned by every raving nutter who came to this board before you with their Master Plan For Communism: nobody wastes their time reading anybody else's posts, and that goes double for the wall of text monstrosities you've been shitting out here and in the surplus-value thread.

For all the complaints about brainlets, most of us seem to be pretty experienced. No argument you can generate is going to come across to anyone as particularly new - especially not the extremely tired 'network of co-ops' one. Once all the arguments for all the positions have been hashed and rehashed enough, we develop a shorthand: memes. Instead of wasting time pointlessly writing out all the words about how you're wrong for the millionth time, we
and start posting.

If you really want your plan to get off the ground, you'd be much better served:
1) summing up your plan in a few short paragraphs
2) developing a clear call to action for people to get involved
3) starting new threads here and wherever else you deem appropriate

Going full autist about how your co-ops will be better at resisting the systemic logic of capitalism than all the other ones that have ever been tried isn't the way to get anywhere. Unless you aren't actually confident about the validity of the idea, and you just want to make yourself feel better by yelling at people about it instead of actually trying it.

But I don't think that, i think those strategies were appropriate to the times and conditions, i just think in the first world armed struggle in normal manner has no hope of success. Not because I think it is morally incorrect, just because I think it would be crushed before it even started, what we have to develop first is an economic base, one that people are willing to fight for. I'm not gonna sit here and say I could have ran the Soviet Union better than the Bolsheviks, or I would have made different decisions in the Spanish civil war, I wasn't there, I have no real idea what was going on. I am, right now, a wage worker in one of the most developed parts of the first world, these are the corrections that I think can be made in the immediate while laying the foundations for more sweeping changes in the future

But neither do co ops. They also have to engage in an armed struggle, that of the market. And here the capitalists hold just as much of a dominant edge as they do on the real battlefields. A capitalist who can exploit his workers can outcompete workers who choose not to exploit themselves, he will outcompete them and take their market share and so on.

They have more of a chance. For one, you don't need to convince people to take up arms against the government to do it. You just need to convince them to set up a business. This will in fact add to the quality of their life, rather than getting shot at or going to prison and being considered no better than a member of ISIS. For another thing, getting guns where I live is pretty difficult, and getting enough to arm a militia is nigh on impossible

If this is the case, why are their actually existing co-operatives right now all over the west and why haven't they all been driven into the ground?

Can you explain why co-operative farming in the Aguan valley is raising living standards considerably and not being outcompeted into the ground, even on top of the armed struggle that it faces?

They don't HAVE to instantly outcompete the largest corporations, they simply have to exist and expand sustainably.

this is what market socialists actually believe

pls listen to this user. this post applies to most boards tbh and discourse on every imageboard would go up if we all kept this in mind.

i need more lana stuff

Because they are insignificant. They amount to no more of the usual bubbling froth you have at the edges of capital.

This is true of any socialist system until capitalism is abolished
by the time this is a problem we would have had to have wrested a sizeable chunk of the market from the capitalist, probably at this point you be progressing to a larger amount of distribution of free goods and services so this would abate this problem as you grew.
what part of this makes you say that?
This is again true of any socialist system until it is a totality

that doesn't really explain why they exist, its more descriptive of their current state of existence in a quantitative fashion

The answer was the second part. Co-ops just survive in the folds of capital's topography, but become dominant nowhere. It's been 200 years now, and the total share of co-ops in gross industrial output has likely never been as low as it is now.

Because capitalists have no reason to make them. That doesn't mean workers cannot join together to make them, the fact is they exist and exist sustainably, which means more can exist,

Your correct as now workers are directly commanded around by capital with its only personification is you and your co workers. As for the better conditions for the workers just like I said only as much as a nice boss who only exploits you when he needs too to keep his company going.

So co-ops that are doing bad don't lower wages?

>I would blame the market forces.

I also don't think co-ops would provide community services if it wasn't profitable to them. You are setting up companies that operate for profit and then expecting them to act against their own interests.

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.

Yeah. Like a boss who only exploits you if he has too.

The difference is only the difference between self exploitation or exploitation by a nice boss and exploitation by a greedy boss.

Just like having a nice boss who only exploits you to expand his company.

Of course managers would be recallable just like leaders are in a democracy. Does this mean everyone in a democracy needs to know how to be a president?

Workers own it, markets control it. Big improvement.

Not every working is a communist and most would probally blame a real person instead of an abstract idea like market forces. If you have a real person screwing you over you will likely blame them rather than the idea of markets.

A nice boss would pay himself a workers wage based on the value of his labor power therefore extracting no surplus.

With the boss they are all proletariat. Without they are a mixture of conflicting interests.

It's 2017. It's been almost 2 centuries since Poverty of Philosophy and Critique of the Gotha Programme were published. It's been almost a century since every single worker co-operative in the history of fascism's inception chose to collaborate with fascist parties. You have recorded data of co-operatives, you can talk to a worker in a co-operative and tell them what their level on the overton window meme is, how far co-ops help win in the ever-important battle of ideas, how likely Joe the co-op worker is to say "yes" to the question "would you like to overthrow the social relation of capital?". All these things consiidered there's still online utopian memers with hilarious schemes that think co-operatives are worth even a modicum of your time.

A while time ago you (or someone who posted that same video) convinced me out of market socialism and into actually read Marx. Thanks.

Coops are a step in the right direction, so are labor unions. Nothing less, anyone that shits on coops only sees them as the end

Co-ops aren't a step in the right direction they are basically a form of false consciousness and give the workers 2 contradictory class interests as they are the employer and the worker.

...

coops fail less, improves workers lives and even though they don't eliminate the need to react to market forces, they give a lot more control to the workers but i guess having someone to blame when something goes wrong is more important

No they're not: marxistsfr.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/union.htm.

No they don't: libcom.org/library/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-working-class-life-basque-town.

I hope the co-op memer college NEETs here actually ever end up working in a co-operative like I have and face the reality of them being the same double-entry bookkeeping hellholes like any other capitalist firm out there.

So you've worked in a co-op? Could you elaborate on your experience?

It was horrible that i owned the means of production i worked on.

Have fun being controlled by impersonal market forces.

Yes I did, at a dairy cooperative here in France, making, checking, developing and designing new dairy products, mainly cheese.

I was a pasturising machine operator. My experience was waking up at 6:30, feeding myself, heading to work at 9 and getting off at 5:30, doing this 5 days a week for a wage slightly higher (2 euros!) than the industry standard. Since every other employee was equal shareholder and workforce input was desired, I got to make the necessary decision to vote on cutting costs and employment democratically, and bringing in and building on ideas on how to keep productivity as high as possible and how to deal with late comers and the "problem" of some employees taking longer bathroom breaks than others; what we should do to motivate them to not need them as frequently.

We also had many talks about vacation and paid leave agreements, but little budged there because going too far would mean we'd lose to our competitors and risk curbing our capital growth and influence on local market share.

It was wage labour, basically.

This is such a dumb argument. When you work with people often they often become your friends. You wouldn't fuck over your friends would you?

What do you think of the whole false consciousness argument?

You misunderstand - the choice isn't 'fuck or don't fuck'. The choice is 'fuck them over now or fuck all of us over when we go out of business'. That's the choice forced on you by the logic of capitalism.

What about it?

Is it accurate based on your experience? Did workers take on a sort of dual class interest?

As long as you make at least minimal proffit or break even you don't go out of business. All you have to do is always have a budget with possible paid leave at any given time in mind.

Your entire understanding of capitalism rests upon a personalised one: the evil man in the top hat is just an asshole, he's greedy and wants to fuck us over! The point is that capitalism forces individuals to bend to its logic: the social relation to production demands that everyone invested in its (re)production do what is necessary to keep profits up. Capitalism is a mode of production that does not care for who manages the allocation of labour; it cares about the allocation of labour happening for its own sake period. The capitalist, or the role of capital manager, is inherent to production for exchange. It literally doesn't matter what form this takes on at all. You will see, like I have, turn people you presumed to be nice people turn into "assholes" because they have to. No one or few individuals escape this totalising, dehumanising and ever-demanding force: only the whole of society can, and it must do so by destroying capital altogether rather than setting up an alternate illusory community of commodities.

Yeah, and it's just how Marx wrote in the Paris Manuscripts and Poverty of Philosophy: workers are turned into abstract capitalists who now hold the burden and interests of expanding capital, a task traditionally relegated to the classical bourgeois.

You know the funniest thing ever is when I heard fucking Reagan praise Nicaraguan co-op workers as they fought off working Nicaraguan communists there who were trying to topple them.

Read that libcom text I linked above: it provides a close hand look and full ethnography of the Mondragon cooperative system, frequently hailed by market socialists and other tripe who fetishise it as a success story for cooperatives, without realising what daily life there is like. It's only a success story in the same way every other business is one: at the accumulation of capital.

Have fun at your economy failing under planned economy without sci-fi computation technology.

read anything

'Minimal profit' is how you get outmaneuvered and driven out of business by your competitors. It's what people mean when they say 'the logic of he market'. This is entry-level stuff, dude. How do you not know this already?

Wew now im convinced. Maybe read some cockshott? Anything other you recommend?

Karl Marx, start here: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm.

Yes this addresses the calculation problem. If you could just refer where he refutes it. Or maybe we could just hope that the planned economy is more efficient than the "anarchy of markets"?

Don't call yourself a socialist if you believe in everything in capitalism except for meanie bosses.

Workers co-ops are syndacalist at worst. Fascism is a little different.

non aggression pact anyone?
the falange also modelled everything down to their uniforms along leftist lines in order to co-opt the left (lol punny) all this says to me is the they have wide appeal.
paying their staff more, and providing better benefits than a normal job
normal co-operatives aren't built around a school of communism specifically. You don't have to have attended this school to be part of a normal co-operative.
compared to a normal worker? Don't pretend to have data on this. unless you're gonna whip it out
what would be a better use of my time?

a four minute video was able to change your mind, must have done a lot of thinking to come to that position… now on to your next trend. You'll be back to liberal in no time at all.

thank you

repeating the already soundly rebuffed none arguments. Removing the boss and continuing anyway demystifies the position of boss and his status in society. Nobody in a co-op can say "but we need capitalists to create wealth and jobs" when clearly.. you don't.

TY

These are still better than working a normal job, and also not representative of co-ops in general, and I have specifically not gone about mondragon because it is not really consistent with the kind of model I have described. Even so, mondragon>united fruit, any day, any time, any place.

So you get paid 2 euros per hour more, for what is that around 40 hours a week? So you get paid roughly 80 euros a week more than other workers? Seems a lot better to me. That would pay almost my whole rent. Every job has long hours, every job has shitty parts, but at least you are paid much better than the other workers.

I myself work in a co-operative cafe, while minimum wage is Britain is 7.20 I get 9 pounds an hour, and me and my friends run the place, instead of some guy that pops his head in once a week to yell at people, who doesn't really know how things work day to day, and makes more than any of us.

No, i don't think I work in socialism, but I've worked in Costa, Starbucks, a series of Independent hipster coffee shops, this is by far and away the best job I have ever had.

AND we barely really have to vote on things, itself mostly just ad hoc and generally people agree because its the sensible thing to do. I understand this could not be the model for anything larger, it would have to be more formalised, but there is no reason a base unit could not work like this.

Yeh its wage labour, but, your wages are higher.

yet another reason I failed to elaborate on but believe fully. Its like this communists don't understand solidarity among fellow workers you spend every day with.

Even amongst capitalists there is variation in wages between different companies, for example Waitrose pays more and has better benefits than Tesco in the UK. You are suggesting there is some absolute subsistence level that you are forced to pay everyone, but this simply is not the case, sure, wage pressure pushes you towards this, but its not an absolute firm rule. In a co-operative you are better equipped to push back.
no, this is the entire understanding of those who say that you need to boss to be a figurehead to rally against. The boss acts in his own class interest, I am suggesting working in my class interest and taking the surplus he takes. Its not about his greed, its about mine. Whatever "greed" really means.
Marx himself did not believe this, he did understand that social institutions could have an effect on the state of things, he just thought it was one small facet of the broader material conditions.
Talking about the owner, the capitalist, not the manager, its like you don't actually understand what a capitalist is. It isn't your line manager, its the guy who originally invested in the company or who owns 51% of shares or whatever. This is who is being removed, not the person who sets the Rotas, which is a job that needs doing.
and who understands capitalism better than the capitalist himself? Warren Buffett understands class war. Yes exactly, the management of capital has always been in the hands of the bourgeois, so they have always been able to manage it in their interest. Why on earth would you want them to maintain this function?
> It's only a success story in the same way every other business is one: at the accumulation of capital.
which is pretty much the whole point of the excerise, to accumulate and collectivise capital for future communisation. And it is pretty well accepted that co-ops generally pay more even if there is still exploitation, ask the average worker what they care about more, having more dollar, or the abstract concept of exploitation.
is it as funny as "communists" who said we should vote for hillary clinton? Or the "marxist leninists" who support fucking Assad? Again, all this says to me is that even reactionaries can't argue with co-operative management. Would Reagan have been saying the same if those same co-ops were developed from a school of communism I wonder?

but co-ops aren't driven out of the market, they just don't expand as rapidly. They collapse less often than corporations. Which should be the true test, not if you can ride a bubble of artificial value until it pops.

This is 1) A strawman of what is being suggested, the theory suggesting a rough roadmap for everything up to fully automated, fully freely distributed, global communism, the removal of the "meanie boss" or the "capitalist owner" is just the first stage of this in the theory. Well, the first stage after education and organisation of the party at least.

Jesus christ ancoms are pathetic

bump why aren't we doing this

If they participate in a market economy, instead of a concert economy, not much.

besides, the extraction of surplus value by the capitalist. I can almost guarentee i have written an answer to whatever you have to say after that, and after that, in this thread

You've disproven that the market acts back upon the workers, who now have to extract surplus value from themselves or be out of a job?

No, because i don't believe it, as you will find I say in the thread, but I think I have 'proven' (presented a fairly robust case)that this effect is lessened under a co-operative economy and that such an economy is more given to abolishing this so called self exploitation, and the commodity form, and giving way to communism, than a privately owned capitalism as normal.

I mean, on a very basic level, look at it like this: If there are less capitalists around, and less capital for other capitalists to own, then automatically their grip is weakened slightly.

The more this happens, the more their grip is weakened.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7

I DO believe in the labour theory of value, which is what I said in my comment. See where I said "no, because I don't believe it" i.e. no, I haven't disproven it, because I think it is true. Jesus anything not to eat whats on the plate

Got something against women do you? Sexist.

It is not lessensed in any way in a co-op economy.

mmmkay sure buddyo

You know all the vacuous bullshit about self-exploitation and coops being forced to "run just like businesses" in this thread is disproven pretty handily by empirical evidence if any of you fucks bothered to read. Here you go, get started.

possible systematic comparisons between worker co-operatives and other firms.
In this paper this data has been used to revisit what were thought until now to be
‘stylized facts’ about worker co-operatives. The evidence presented in this paper
paints a rather different picture from the received view of worker co-operatives as
small, specialised, undercapitalised and rather unlikely businesses. We need to revise
our view of worker co-operatives. Worker co-ops are larger than other firms and not
necessarily less capital intensive, although they may be created more often than
other firms in less capital intensive industries, all else being equal. They are present
in most industries and differences in industry distributions with conventional firms
vary from one country to another.

other firms, even in capital-intensive industries. Labour-managed firms are probably
more productive and may preserve jobs better in recessions than conventional
firms, creating more sustainable jobs. Promoting worker co-operatives could
therefore improve local communities’ employment, and therefore health and social
expenditure and tax revenue (Pérotin 2014).
The most unusual feature of worker co-operatives – worker control – may be key in
explaining the findings outlined here about productivity, investment, employment
and pay. Employee control is thought to increase productivity, and in a labourmanaged
firm adjusting pay to preserve jobs makes sense for the employee-owners.
Worker-members make the decision to adjust pay and they get the future profits
(whereas it is more difficult for a conventional firm to elicit employees’ agreement for
pay cuts in exchange for job preservation, since the firm’s owners have an incentive
not to increase pay when business recovers).

job in which the employee has a say in decisions that affect employment risks.
Employees’ focus on job security may explain worker co-operatives’ accumulation
of collectively-owned capital by profit plough-backs well above the minimum
required by law in Italy and France or specified in the co-operatives’ constitution in
Mondragon. Those reserves can be drawn on for preserving pay and jobs. As a result,
worker co-operatives keep more profit in the firm than conventional businesses
(Zevi 2005).

or particular phases in the business cycle and needs to be further replicated.
However, it is consistent in suggesting that far from being a niche business form
21only appropriate in special circumstances, worker co-operatives constitute a serious
alternative – a high-performing firm type suited to all or a very broad range of
industries, and possibly more sustainable than conventional businesses. However,
worker co-operatives represent a very small part of the business sector because too
few are created. In order to design strategies to overcome this obstacle we need
to examine in more depth the successful experiences of Italy and Spain, where the
worker co-operative sector reaches a different scale altogether than the UK and
French sectors, employing hundreds of thousands of people.

...

Do you even know what a fascist is?

How bout you read the article on what its actually like to work in a real co-op (mandragon) here
libcom.org/library/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-working-class-life-basque-town

Nice quote mining of Marx.

Sorry fam, aggregate data trumps anecdates.

people who think the basic analysis in OP is controversial need to actually read some fucking Marx and Engels.

this is literally all you faggots have. I have genuinely honestly probably read more Marx than you. Reading Phenomenology of The Spirit right now in order to deepen that understanding.

"co-operatives are fascist" is controversial as it is total fucking bullshit, and lacks any critical understanding of what fascism is.

a long, peer reviewed study vs some libcom article that is the blurb of a book you haven't even quoted anything relevant from… yeh i know which information i will believe. I question if you have actually read the book.

I like how you screenshotted posts that were thoroughly btfo by several different posters but did not screen shot the rest of the thread. Its a shame the board was kill so your cherry picking can't be seen by all.

It is also hilarious that your image is called "co-ops aren't socialism" when I have stated exactly this probably ten times now, during the course of this and the other thread, as if it is actually a reply to what I am saying, when it clearly fucking isn't. It holds about as much weight as saying "labour unions aren't socialism" or "an armed militia isn't socialism" for the purposes of this discussion.

Nonetheless, you will find every point in these posts refuted above and in the beyond surplus value thread, you can't just come in this deep and repeat shit that has already been said.

Go read the thread, make an actual response to any of the posts I have made, instead of lazily and smugly brushing stuff off because you are too thick to wrap your head around a nuanced concept.

How low will they go with this hatred for market socialism?

Why are we having this discussion? I mean, yeah, there is this idea of turning capitalism into market "socialism" by competing on the market with co-ops, but that will never work since private businesses can outcompete them.

But anyway, market socialists are not only utopians, they also have no idea how alienation works. How many of you with a co-op fetish have actually worked in a co-op? Do you actually have the impression that voting for who has to clean the pipes is somehow a great thing? It's really not that different from working in a private business. Besides, many modern private businesses have installments that are not that different from a co-op, such as stock ownership of employees or dividend payouts for employees.

That being said, to say that they are fascist is Leftcom retardation.

No, I think voting on pay, hours, benefits, and working conditions is a great thing, along with, having all the value that would have gone to shareholders to spend on these things.

I 'screencapped' the argument/debate from the other thread. Do people think I should continue it with the stuff from in here?

yeah get all this:

I meant more the reasoning behind it, which is that any kind of market is still exploitative, which should be obvious. this is what I see most people taking an issue with, the whole fascism thing is such obvious bullshit/hyperbole that I find your focus on it bizarre.

...

You also share all the risks with your fellow employees.

I'm sorry fam its been a long thread, I got confused and lost in the responses.
The market will exist at the very least until the most significant portion of the world, if not the entire thing, is controlled by a socialist organisation. The soviet union as a whole was still subject to market pressures, as was every other socialist experiment ever.

On top of that, I have "admitted" this several times, it is the truth, I have never denied that. Its besides the point, the point being that the extraction of surplus value by the capitalist is a key feature of the capitalist system.

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.
its the fucking headline

You share exactly the same amount of risk as you had before, you might lose your job, or you might have to take a pay or benefits cut, only your reward is greater. Its not like if the company crashes a single individual is saddled with all the debts and worthless shares like in corporation, only the workers owned the shares as their pay, they no longer receive their pay or they receive less of it, same as in a corporation, only typically co-operatives are less likely to crash, they crash less often, so actually, the risks of job loss or pay cut through business failure are lessened in a co-operative

everything after the first green text is a response to this poster

Alright, done. Anything else I should add?

Lel someone posted this thread on /r/shitleftistssay

wut

leftcom subreddit:
reddit.com/r/shitleftistssay/comments/7g5blp/an_entire_thread_110_posts_of_leftypolyploids/

Oh no, the people on reddit don't agree with us
Whatever will we do

They didn't even have a counter argument

AHAHAHAHA there is no greater victory than this

all good, I was rather assumptive in that respect.

yeah, but like a whole thread later I thought we would be collectively over it. what constitutes fascism is an *entire other* can of worms altogether, and I think even much of the left have that issue confused.

I don't even really disagree with this, but I'm not sure this refutes the main thesis that co-ops are not socialist in and of themselves, whether that was your intention or not. self-exploitation is merely orthodox Marxism imo.

was supposed to be to this poster

i have never tried to refute that though and for what im saying its irrelevant

I will say that, if you're using capitalist banks over credit unions and third-party-owned housing over, say, a democratically resident-controlled community, you've just got a different employer, and are dragging money from the workers to your cappie overlords by different means…

…but, actually-existing marketsoc/mutualism is in fact my preferred environment for launching more utopian, liberationist forms. So, cool.

I can't remember any more if I outlined the entire strategy in this thread or the surplus value thread but in it I talk about moving to mutually owned banks once the network is of a sufficient size.

fascist lmao do you know what fascism is?