Was on for Znet for the first time in a while and came across this:
Worker Cooperatives: Retooling the Solidarity Economy
It's a fairly standard article talking about co-ops but interestingly there is a "Rebuttal to Communists" at the bottom which links back to this libcom blog; Co-operatives, capitalism and the IWW by Steven, using it as the "(libertarian) communists" position. Unsurprisingly the rebuttal isn't great, seeming to willfully miss the point of the blog.
Here's the section in question. (it reads much easier on the website).
"Post Script: A Rebuttal to Communists
Communists often consider worker cooperatives vulgar because cooperatives function within the market. They’re not perfectly horizontal and don’t provide according to one’s need all the time. Some disillusioned anarchists, too, recognize the problems with very large cooperatives like Mondragon, which increasingly operate like multinational corporations, employing foreign labor and pursuing expansive growth.
Indeed, cooperatives are not a cure-all for state capitalism. But they’re damn better than the master-slave relationship entailed in capitalist enterprises.
Some examples of a (libertarian) communist critique of the co-op:
“[The cooperative] coffee shop will still be existing within a capitalist marketplace, and so will still be subjected to competition and the whims of the market.[i\]
[i]So while their boss may not cut Joe’s hours, if market forces dictate it they will have to cut their own hours themselves.”[i\]
[i]The marketplace is risky. If you don’t want to take risk, grow your own food and live off the grid. At least it’s the workers who decide to cut back, rather than executives, investment bankers and extractive shareholders who decide they want to a higher dividend and will cut back on safety equipment, pensions or insurance benefits.[i\]
[i]Cooperatives never promised to do away with fluctuations in the market, they merely offer an alternative to the master-slave relationship. Co-ops don’t throw discipline, sometimes draconian survival measures, out the window. Cooperatives need to be smart, by diversifying, assuring access to their own capital pool and investing in agriculture so that worst case senario, nobody goes hungry. There’s always work to be done in the soil.[i\]
[i]“Facing going out of business, the co-op members either internalise the capitalist boss, and cut their own wages, conditions or jobs,1 Or they go bust.”[i\]
[i]Prices fluctuate (even Lenin, in his New Economic Policy, embraced the price mechanism). Technologies become obsolete. These are the risks of marketplace production.[i/]
[i]But isn’t it better to pool risk with your community rather than a capitalist, who enjoys the payoff but both he and the labors share in the losses when the factory must be sold off? The workers would be unemployed, but the capitalist likely has assets elsewhere, so really the workers get screwed either way. Cooperatives are not a remedy for economic risk. And risk will always persist — even if we become primitivists who grow our own everything, there are bad harvests. But at least in a co-op there’s upside potential shared by the laborers.[i/]
[i]“Finally, the co-operative picture shows money (wages) being distributed equally to all the workers. The IWW aims for the abolition of wage labour. And if the idea is that after a revolution everyone will have to keep working and just all earn the same amount of money than actually this is not a socialist society at all but will actually be a form of dysfunctional capitalism.”[i/]
[i]Socialist opposition to money isn’t realistic, because, for all the evil done in its name, media of exchange are key to economic specialization (and will continue to be until post-scarcity and the singularity are upon us). The central problem with capitalism is that the worker does not receive the full value of her labor product. How will a collectivized production system ensure that one is paid their due (a.k.a, justice)? The case is adroitly outlined by anarchist Benjamin Tucker, in “Should Labor Be Paid or Not?”[i\]
[i]In No. 121 of Liberty, criticising an attempt of Kropotkine to identify Communism and Individualism, I charged him with ignoring the real question whether Communism will permit the individual to labor independently, own tools, sell his labor or his products, and buy the labor or products of others. In Herr Most’s eyes this is so outrageous that, in reprinting it, he puts the words the labor of others in large black type. Most being a Communist, he must, to be consistent, object to the purchase and sale of anything whatever; but why he should particularly object to the purchase and sale of labor is more than I can understand. Really, in the last analysis, labor is the only thing that has any title to be bought or sold. Is there any just basis of price except cost? And is there anything that costs except labor or suffering (another name for labor)?[i\]
[i]Labor should be paid! Horrible, isn’t it? Why, I thought that the fact that it is not paid was the whole grievance. Unpaid labor has been the chief complaint of all Socialists, and that labor should get its reward has been their chief contention. Suppose I had said to Kropotkine that the real question is whether Communism will permit individuals to exchange their labor or products on their own terms. Would Herr Most have been so shocked? Would he have printed that in black type? Yet in another form I said precisely that."
Reeks pf capitalist realism. Pretty terrible. Anyway, just thought I should post this here. Apologies if this has already been discussed on another thread. Did have a quick look but didn't see anything.
Well, the author is an ideologue who is seeming to defend capitalist exploitation in at least one case. Mondragon owns companies which are NOT COOPERATIVES, even the bullshit kinds, where workers have shit wages and can be fired for organizing. We saw this here in the case of Fagor Mastercook.
Whether I am a "disillusioned anarchist" or not is irrelevant in the matter. The relationship in some Mondragon owned companies is just typical capitalist exploitation and there is no way to justify it or pretend it is better than anything else. I really don't know how working for peanuts, in rough conditions, with no say and repressed for organizing is "better" than anything else.
This is really wishy-washy and the author seems to be clueless about the fact that not all businesses which use the word "cooperative" really work that way, nor are all factual cooperatives the same in terms of being egalitarian or not.