Again, you’re not the first person to think of this. In practice, it turns out that it’s much easier for traditional companies to secure funding under the financial capitalist system. That’s the world we live in. Lots of people are trying to run cooperatives in all kinds of different ways. In some cases, like Mondragon, they do manage to grow big, but in general systemic pressures favor capitalist structure.
Does difficulty matter? Any communist revolution will be more difficult than establishing a network of cooperatives. I believe that if there is a desire for Socialism, people will spend the time to establish cooperatives.
A communist revolution would fundamentally restructure the way society operates which is a far more valuable goal than establishing a network of cooperatives which simply allows people lucky enough to work in these cooperatives to cope better with capitalist repression. These two things aren’t even remotely comparable, and abandoning freedom for all workers because it’s just too darn difficult is a cowardly position to take.
A communist revolution will abolish capitalist relations and allow creation of a government by the working class for its own benefit. If communist relations could be established via cooperatives without using violence then that would’ve happened already. People have tried doing this for over a century now with nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, communist revolutions have actually allowed workers to seize the means of production and turn them towards the benefit of the working masses. At this point I honestly can’t tell if you’re just trolling here.
Communist revolution has nothing to do with the level of industrialization. Cooperatives would not be taking over as the dominant form of labour organization as long as a country is ruled by the capital owning class because that wouldn’t be in the interest of the capital owning class. If capitalists were willing to give up their wealth and power without a struggle than revolutions wouldn’t be needed in the first place. It’s kind amazing that you don’t understand this basic fact.
What I meant with the lack of industrialization is that those revolutions could be fought with rifles. Today you need tanks and drones. Any revolution is interrupted by cutting global supply lines.
Cooperatives don’t have to be dominant. It could be that people prefer to work in classical hierarchies. There should just be so many cooperatives that whoever wants to live a socialist life can find a place to do so.
I indeed believe that revolution is not needed. There is no unified capital owning class. If you don’t change the political system and let them have their power, why should they waste resources on fighting cooperatives?
That’s complete and utter nonsense. First of all, revolutions happen when significant parts of the military choose to side with the populous against the ruling class. Second, modern military runs on logistics. If the workers do not support the regime then fuel won’t be delivered for the tanks, food won’t be delivered to the troops, and so on. Fighting a civil war is completely different from invading other countries.
Meanwhile, this notion that cooperatives don’t have to be dominant is also nonsensical. As I’ve repeatedly explained to you here, the whole system is designed to make large scale cooperative movements a nonstarter. What you’re proposing here is a fantasy that’s based on your lack of understanding of how businesses actually work under capitalist system. You have this romanticized notion that’s completely divorced from the real world. I highly encourage you to educate yourself on the subject instead of arguing out of ignorance based on your made up idea of how things work.
There very much is a unified capital owning class, but it’s not unified in the simplistic way you seem to imagine it to be. The capital owning class is unified by their shared class interest. It’s not bunch of people in a room doing a conspiracy. It’s a bunch of individual actors acting in their own interest, and they all favor certain types of policies because it provides a common benefit for the capital owning class.
The relationship between a capitalist and a labourer is that the labourer sells their labour to the capitalist in return for a wage. The capitalist wishes to maximize their profit which means paying as low wage as they can while the worker wants to maximize their wage and get as much value out of their work as they can. This is the fundamental contradiction between the interests of the worker and the capitalist.
Under capitalist rule, it’s the capital owning class that holds power in society. This is precisely what analysis of many decades of policy in US shows:
If the cooperative structure does not threaten class interests of the oligarchs then it’s not achieving anything of value. And if cooperatives actually started cutting into the profits of the capitalists then it would be in the shared class interests of the capitalists to fight cooperatives.
You continue to argue a subject that you have superficial understanding of. Perhaps spend a bit of time actually learning about how political economy works before trying to form ideas on how to improve it.
Again, you’re not the first person to think of this. In practice, it turns out that it’s much easier for traditional companies to secure funding under the financial capitalist system. That’s the world we live in. Lots of people are trying to run cooperatives in all kinds of different ways. In some cases, like Mondragon, they do manage to grow big, but in general systemic pressures favor capitalist structure.
Does difficulty matter? Any communist revolution will be more difficult than establishing a network of cooperatives. I believe that if there is a desire for Socialism, people will spend the time to establish cooperatives.
A communist revolution would fundamentally restructure the way society operates which is a far more valuable goal than establishing a network of cooperatives which simply allows people lucky enough to work in these cooperatives to cope better with capitalist repression. These two things aren’t even remotely comparable, and abandoning freedom for all workers because it’s just too darn difficult is a cowardly position to take.
What can you do with a communist revolution that you cannot do with cooperatives, apart from using violence?
A communist revolution will abolish capitalist relations and allow creation of a government by the working class for its own benefit. If communist relations could be established via cooperatives without using violence then that would’ve happened already. People have tried doing this for over a century now with nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, communist revolutions have actually allowed workers to seize the means of production and turn them towards the benefit of the working masses. At this point I honestly can’t tell if you’re just trolling here.
You can’t tell because I am arguing.for a position that communists somehow want to ignore.
For a communist revolution today the means of production are already necessary. Russia and China were possible because they were not industrialized.
Are there capitalist relations within a cooperative? If not then why do you need a revolution when everything is already there?
Communist revolution has nothing to do with the level of industrialization. Cooperatives would not be taking over as the dominant form of labour organization as long as a country is ruled by the capital owning class because that wouldn’t be in the interest of the capital owning class. If capitalists were willing to give up their wealth and power without a struggle than revolutions wouldn’t be needed in the first place. It’s kind amazing that you don’t understand this basic fact.
What I meant with the lack of industrialization is that those revolutions could be fought with rifles. Today you need tanks and drones. Any revolution is interrupted by cutting global supply lines.
Cooperatives don’t have to be dominant. It could be that people prefer to work in classical hierarchies. There should just be so many cooperatives that whoever wants to live a socialist life can find a place to do so.
I indeed believe that revolution is not needed. There is no unified capital owning class. If you don’t change the political system and let them have their power, why should they waste resources on fighting cooperatives?
That’s complete and utter nonsense. First of all, revolutions happen when significant parts of the military choose to side with the populous against the ruling class. Second, modern military runs on logistics. If the workers do not support the regime then fuel won’t be delivered for the tanks, food won’t be delivered to the troops, and so on. Fighting a civil war is completely different from invading other countries.
Meanwhile, this notion that cooperatives don’t have to be dominant is also nonsensical. As I’ve repeatedly explained to you here, the whole system is designed to make large scale cooperative movements a nonstarter. What you’re proposing here is a fantasy that’s based on your lack of understanding of how businesses actually work under capitalist system. You have this romanticized notion that’s completely divorced from the real world. I highly encourage you to educate yourself on the subject instead of arguing out of ignorance based on your made up idea of how things work.
There very much is a unified capital owning class, but it’s not unified in the simplistic way you seem to imagine it to be. The capital owning class is unified by their shared class interest. It’s not bunch of people in a room doing a conspiracy. It’s a bunch of individual actors acting in their own interest, and they all favor certain types of policies because it provides a common benefit for the capital owning class.
The relationship between a capitalist and a labourer is that the labourer sells their labour to the capitalist in return for a wage. The capitalist wishes to maximize their profit which means paying as low wage as they can while the worker wants to maximize their wage and get as much value out of their work as they can. This is the fundamental contradiction between the interests of the worker and the capitalist.
Under capitalist rule, it’s the capital owning class that holds power in society. This is precisely what analysis of many decades of policy in US shows:
If the cooperative structure does not threaten class interests of the oligarchs then it’s not achieving anything of value. And if cooperatives actually started cutting into the profits of the capitalists then it would be in the shared class interests of the capitalists to fight cooperatives.
You continue to argue a subject that you have superficial understanding of. Perhaps spend a bit of time actually learning about how political economy works before trying to form ideas on how to improve it.