Co-op's

Studies show that cooperatives tend to be bigger and last longer than traditional hierarchical capitalist business.

The same faggots who like to attack cooperatives as an unworkable model ignore the massive failure rate of traditional business. Half of all the glorious small business entrepreneurs fail within the first 6 months. Most of the rest fail within the first 2 years. It's hardly the ultra-stable model they like to think of it as.

It's not so much that the democratic element fails. The problem is the motive that cooperatives operate under differs from the traditional corporate structure.

Traditional corporation are profit-first organizations whose primary goal is to extract value on the behalf of the owner/shareholders. Thus, they will take any measures they can get away with in order to satisfy this goal, looking for any way they can to cut production costs and maximizing profits. Actually modifying the production process is messy, has a high cost of investment, and often will only yield marginal benefits. That leaves two primary means by which corporations can alter their profit margins: change the sale prices or modify the labor costs. The former strategy would be expected in a traditional economic model, as companies compete with one another to keep prices at a level that allow for profitability but remain appealing when stacked up to a competitor. The reality however is that companies have shared interests in keeping prices at a certain range to create a situation of artificial scarcity. That means that price variation only goes so far, and often has to be a slow and calculated process. Thus, you are left with altering labor costs, which is the easiest strategy given that there is no current shortage of labor that MUST fill the roles as a matter of survival. Traditional corporations can make perhaps some of the biggest, easiest, and most immediate improvements to their profit margins by lowering labor costs; doing things such as cutting benefits, increasing hours, reducing wages, laying off workers than shifting those responsibilities to the existing workers, etc.

Co-op's primary concern is to create value for the sake of the workers (in the form of higher wages, better benefits, and reduced hours) and buyers (in the form of lower prices and better service). They must remain competitive under market conditions, but in accordance with their stated purpose, they often cannot make the cuts in labor costs necessary to keep up with corporations that drive their workers like slaves. This is somewhat compensated for in the fact that profits do not end up concentrated in the pockets of the men at the top, but it also means that the co-op participants must be willing to make some concessions to stay competitive. That requires the majority of the participants to be rational about what is and isn't feasible as to how the co-op can serve their collective self interests; essentially self-limitation for the preservation of the organization. Thus, while the conditions they create are far and away better than the alternative, co-ops should certainly not be fetishized as some sort of "peaceful path to socialism from within capitalism."

Also pure and simply people sometimes don't understand how to operate co-ops. There's not nearly the resources or education available to council and teach people how cooperatives should be run. Managing a cooperative is something that I have never heard a business student ever mention learning about, and there seem to be very few literary references on the topic. That's not even taking into consideration that they don't receive nearly the same protections under law, receive significantly fewer tax breaks, and almost never receive bank loans for startup or expansion.

I direct them to this report.

Sounds pretty successful to me.

thanks for reiterating what I said here

it's not true
uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf

oh somebody already beat me to it

Sabotage, infiltration, destabilization via "scramble phase" techniques, agent provocateurs, loaded language, emotional manipulations, propaganda.

Unions of co-ops that utilize their collected funding to provide the initial resources necessary for workers to start their own new co-ops are the future and will pave the way to suffocating private industry with worker owned industry.
Full speed ahead comrades!

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literally only by technicality. There's just no other way to have a business in this society.
again, what other option is there in this society?
Well actually, this isn't necessary, co-ops can be a pay per sale thing.

This is for you:

n55.dk/MANUALS/N55/N55.html

Read it, study it and then state your opinion.

They need to provide some evidence for the claim first

For everyone in this thread
1.co-ops are not fucking socialism. They are egalitarian capitalism
2. There is literally nothing wrong with using co-ops as part of a strategy to create evolutionary socialism
3. Co-ops can be converted into firms for producing goods for society without producing commodities whether you are a state socialist, council communist, or anarchist
4. Fuck all of you

Op didn't ask if co-ops were socialism he asked how to refute the lolbert claims that co-ops are prone to failure or uncompetitive

But that's wrong, you fucking retard.

this.
Workers controlling the MOP is socialism.
Leftypol needs to stand against tankie scum trying to change the meaning of socialism to suit their twisted anti-worker bootlicking fantasies.

It's not wage labour since they aren't selling their labour to a porky for a wage who then uses it to produce commodities. The workers produce the commodities themselves and are paid the value of their products. If co-ops use wage labour then by your definition porkies also engage in wage labour.

If lolberts ask about them being uncompetitive show them Mondragon. I don't care about how "competitive" a business in I want to get rid of the market. I'd say Yugoslavia gives us a good model for market socialism.

What studies? I don't see any coops on the fortune 500 hundred list. Are you just pulling stuff out of your ass?

On average they are bigger, on average. Do you think most corporations are multinationals?
And see

ITT Anarkidies and """""""Market socialist"""""""" that never read Marx.

I've read Marx, his critique of political economy was highly idealist at times.

Nice meaningless platitudes faggot

Hey guys I'm going to try starting a co-op with my friends doing a podcast that's also low-key leftist propaganda. Wish me luck.

le oxymoron meme

This is for you. Read it, study it and then state your opinion.

Underrated posts

What the fuck is your point here? Oh let me guess all this ebil sectarian dogma is stopping us from embracing a heaping pile of shit as what will bring about revolution? It is quite ironic and amusing how you're clearly demonstrating your own dogma and ideological thought by uncritically rushing to the defence of coops by screaming like a toddler at anyone who disagrees with you. My god you people really aren't any better than r/socialism, you even agree with a good amount of them on how great cooperatives, the majority of you are also tankies and liberals, the only big difference that comes to mind besides memes is that the administration is less ban happy here.

Seriously though you're pretty much just engaging in wordplay here about "workers control". Fuck I could probably make an argument for how Costco has worker control and therefor is socialist.

Lmao

What? No you're the one closer to a tankie here, painting capitalism red so you can call it socialism and generally just being opprotunist as fuck.

If you truly want the working class to conquer power than you need to stop advocating for running into the same traps over and over again.

you asked for it

A co-operative operating in a market is controlled (yes, controlled) by the law of value, no matter how much "democracy" you put in it.

You cannot have democracy in capitalism; not in the State, not in the workplace, not anywhere.

How about starting with the one that was posted multiple times in this thread?

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...

youtube.com/watch?v=JTrzAubnqvM&list=PLPJpiw1WYdTMLIyASxEheOVjl1vKkajYj&index=3

Check out specifically the interview with Peter Ranis at the end. Ranis argues that when co-ops receive similar benefits to traditional capitalist enterprises, like in Argentina, they have a 93% success rate.

Anyone who is against co-ops is a full ideology prick. Any and all avenues to build class consciousness should be explored.