Professor Wolff, how do worker coops acquire the capital needed to run the businesses?

Professor Wolff, how do worker coops acquire the capital needed to run the businesses?
youtube.com/watch?v=87395oUPDR0

Wow, it's almost like he's read Marx or something.

Unfortunately not what he said

pump

It's a shame you included the link which reveals your lie

this is literally capitalism

Yes, kids. That's how you build Communism: by taking loans from banks and going to churches. If something doesn't work, YOU AREN'T WORKING HARD ENOUGH.

LARP harder kiddo

so he knows what he's talking about? wow, I am outraged

...

So then, workers administering their own factories is out. Central planning, as we have seen, seems to be unworkable past a certain point.

What is to be done then? What will be the force behind the rationalization of the economy?

Doing it right now.

A machine intelligence coopting humanity's economic production and politics, like in Stellaris.

Forgot.

delete this thread before black flag arrives

someone post that "around blacks, never relax" pic

...

gets me everytime

lol

Fuck it lets do dis again

Question for Mr Wolff, : how do worker coops acquire the capital needed to run the businesses?

My answer:

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.

Care to show it to those who had not seen?

Furthermore, as is not described in this original draft, although it may develop differently, I believe, in order to maintain the revolution, the community fund must be administered by an elected re-callable central committee drawn from those who have shown their dedication to the network by being instrumental in setting up co-operatives and expanding the network, therefore while any worker may work in the network and any worker may be elected to the central committee if their peers deem them valuable, only those workers dedicated to the revolution and its expansion may be a part of the central committee, in the this way the central committee is able to account for discrepancy and dispute in localised production, while production may continue in a self managed fashion as the network expands, while going some way towards deterring party careerism or the creeping influence of the intelligentsia over the workers such as was witnessed in the soviet union. Besides this, the central committee would therefore be made up of proven managers and organisers by design, while still being subject to recall by democratic decision

Well, a cybernetic network doing all the planning is the only alternative I can see.


Come on user, we all know about the USSR's post-industrialization stagnation. I didn't say a planned economy is bound to collapse, I said that it can't properly deal with a consumer-oriented economy.

Then again, it might not be an inherent issue with central planning, but rather with the numerous liberalizing reforms it went through. Or more likely, because the government crudely attempted to ape Western consumerist society instead actually attempting to create a new one.

I don't see the stagnation from up here

You know what he means. The Soviets attempted to emulate the economic conditions of the West but never made the leap from an industrializing, developing state to a post-industrial service and consumer economy. They had plenty of food and steel but the quantity and variety of luxury/non-essential consumer goods was never on par with Western capitalism.

Cockshott himself talks about how Soviet planners always had to play catch-up to yearly consumer demands for specific brands or products.

I do not. Moreover, I know nothing about anything "post-industrial". AFAIK it is an outdated meme created to persuade dumb murrican proles that outsourcing jobs is not going to turn US of A into Third World shithole via some reaganomic magic - a trick most of said proles already caught on.

And I asked you to demonstrate this somehow.

If you are talking about post 1950s stagnation, then you are absolutely correct. I would elaborate on this a bit further (reduction of feedback), but "liberalizing reforms" do grasp the basic problem.

I have no awareness of such attempts (other than Perestroika).

Again, this is extremely vague reference to some extremely dubious concept. I would really like to learn what exactly you are talking about. Is this Perestroika, or is this post-1950s economic development, or is this something that started in 1930s (if not earlier)?

And, obviously, why do you think this to be the case (if it isn't about Perestroika).

My impression is that quality of goods often surpassed that of the West. For example, food standards had been much higher in USSR.

I'm sorry, but getting some cutting edge product 3-4 years later is hardly a failure you are describing. Moreover, you should present sources properly. I can't even guess if this is Cockshotts personal opinion or a result of actual research, I don't know about what time period he is talking about, nor a multitude of other details that are relevant to the discussion.

Here's why I don't think co-ops are that great of an organizational tactic.

Co-ops have 1 benefit over private corparations which is higher wages. These higher wages are at the cost of fast growth, but co-ops can grow sustainably. As for the whole "mutual aid" stuff, I see no reason why a private corparation that exists to create profit (and can pay higher wages if it makes more profit) would donate much of anything to the community. If you give most workers a choice for higher wages and more profit (which they do want, why else would they not invest in tech instead of paying themselves more) or giving stuff away I'm pretty sure the workers would choose a higher wage for themselves especially if the basic services like sanitation are allready provided by the goverment. Plus if workers are so Keen to give away wages (or potential wages in the case of profits) why don't richer workers in more white collar areas give away some of there personal money to build the community allready? Co-ops are like the minimum wage, basically reformism. They give the workers a little bit more money but do not change much about the fundemental structure of capitalism. Like Oscar Wilde said "Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it". Co-ops would make workers less revolutionary by making the basic structure of capitalism a little more barable. For any revolutionary movemeny we can't just settle with that we have to uproot the basics of our economic system not just give workers opiate so its not as bad.

The stagnation in USSR came from dedicating inordinate amount of resources to war materiel.

pretty much the whole video leads to that conclusion though


read Cockshott

Is this the power of market socialism?

Indeed

your post would've been better without this part