WHY CO-OPS HAVE NO FUTURE?
June 14, 2020 5 Comments
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• I have not thoroughly read your writing on Cooperatives, nor do you criticize the Mondragon cooperative in Spain, the country where I reside. I will try to do that reading, but first I propose for your opinion and debate a certain type of cooperative socialism. It is an alternative model that, in my opinion, surpasses the following models:
• 1 .– Real socialism of the 20th century. With an abstract social property, only material, only inert and non-living matter. The result in this type of non-living socialist property is that some subjects (collective and individual) appropriate it for their benefit: the bureaucracy and the socialist party. This appropriation (and subsequent privatization) not only happened in the USSR and the rest of the socialist countries, including China, Cuba, etc. today, but it has also happened since the 1980s in the western states. It is a scientific proof (the phenomenon that is reproduced at all times and places) of abstract and non-living property does not know how to defend itself.
• 2.-Model with cooperatives owned only by their own workers. That’s just a ‘cooperative capitalism’ –
• 3.-Model with cooperatives owned by their own workers and the rest of workers from all cooperative companies. It is an inoperative pandemoniun and dispersed of properties.
• 4.- Against these socialisms, in my opinion, the correct model of cooperative socialism, of common social property and in a cooperative is that of a STATE IN COOPERATIVE PROPERTY. In other words, all workers are state owners and the state is the owner of all cooperatives.
• Some evidence in favor:
• They are an example of success: the current cooperatives themselves and the capitalist companies themselves (only for their corporate part, not for their employees). All of them with several centuries of success in their operation, growth and profitability. And they are a radical elimination of the ‘social problem’, that is, with the elimination of the ‘problematic State’. All partners feel fully identified with their social entity, with their State, and do not issue the slightest complaint and protest against it. The State has not been dissolved but is no longer a problem. If that’s not communism, it’s a lot like it.
• Some arguments in favor. :
• – The centralization of capital. The concentration of capital, both material capital and subject capital. This centralization is what definitively increases (multiplies) the associated economies of scale, leading to more planning, growth and more profitability.
• – K. Marx has a text (I don’t remember which one) in which he talks about the joy in the work of the members of the cooperatives. I do not know if the cooperativists work with more joy or not, but if I know that a worker has ownership of the product, labor and fixed capital, his return will be higher.
• – Defense of socialist property. The strongest complete defense can only come from a living owner. Only abstract properties and only inert and lifeless materials end up being trapped by some subjects. The legal property de ’of all’ ’ends up being only real property of algunos’ some ’’.
• – Maximum property for workers. Is it that the workers do not have the right to the maximum legal and real property existing on their State?
• – The property of the workers of the State is the step and historical procedure that is precisely lacking so that they possess the maximum ownership of the means of production. From Slavery with slave-workers with no ownership of capital (rental capital and fixed capital) to Socialism (with all ownership of income and fixed capital)
• – Resolution of the problems that Aubert Einsten observed in his work Why ’Why Socialism’ ’. The E Einsten problem ’is that property and social right must not annihilate individual property and right. Conversely, you must integrate it. It is what Capitalism did and it is the step that Socialism lacks. The modes of production are an evolution (from less to more) in the number of owners of the means of production.
A. Einsten said:
”However, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such can be accompanied by complete slavery of the individual. Achieving socialism requires solving some extremely difficult socio-political problems:
1.- How is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy,
become almighty and excessive?
2.- How can the rights of the individual be protected and, with it, guarantee a democratic counterweight to the power of the bureaucracy? ’’
Sincerely
My previous comment on a state in cooperative ownership is not a closed thesis not subject to discussion. On the contrary, it is a thesis open to debate and dialectics. If you think you are interested, I will be happy to discuss it with you. The debate on socialist property is the gran ’great absent’ ’from the socialist debate, in my opinion. Since the idea todo ’all power for the soviets’ ’by V. Lenin, it has rained a lot without steps forward or scientific investigation on that workers power. Because socialist property is the great absentee of the debate ?. Because the property of productive fixed capital, due to its greater size over income capital, is the last of the properties to be transferred by its current owners (today the capitalist class and political parties are) and, therefore, it is the last to be achieved by the working class since the beginning of human society.
a greeting
Antonio, thanks for the comments. The purpose of the workers state as I see it in a socialist society free of capital, is to PPP, that is Protect, Promulgate and Police. By this I mean it Protects the revolution from counter-revolution, Promulgates or passes the laws that give rise to the structures needed to make a socialist society dynamic, and by Police, it protects workers’ rights from being abused or defrauded. What the state does not do is to act as a surrogate for capitalist management. It plays no active role in deciding what will be produced, how quickly it will be produced, how much workers will be paid and what will be set aside for the social fund.. That was Lenin’s indelible mistake; he saw workers working for the state, being paid by the state, with the state dictating working practises and the state owning the products produced.
With regard to property. You are entirely right to say that a socialist society, international in dimension, will be a single giant co-operative. If it is more than one co-operative problems will arise. I have always been careful to separate out personal property from productive property. Personal property will remain the property of the individual, but over time, productive property will no longer be considered property. When we all own a thing it becomes unowned. It is quite hard to grasp this concept. No one says the sky is owned in comparison to the land which is owned. If under capitalism, the sky could be mined or farmed, to be sure it would become owned. Ownership of productive assets exists only because the owner of that property can extract revenue for allowing its use. But when productive property can no longer function in this capacity, when its use is free to the user, in this case society, then the role of property fades into non-existence. Hope this makes things clear.
One last comment that I will make about a factor that links communism with cooperative or common property. That factor is territorial, spatial closeness. And so it happens that in small and small territories, such as in the villages of primitive communism, such as in cooperative enterprises, such as in the partners of a capitalist society, such as in the human couple, communism (cooperation) has already arrived, and has done it much earlier than in the country-territory. For this reason I have given you the examples of cooperative companies and the human couple as proof that in these societies, which are communist societies de ’de facto’ ’even though they are not legally so today, property does not represent any problem. As for country-territory, communism already existed in the non-globalized villages of the Paleolithic for 2 million years until 12,000 years ago. The cause of that communism: the spatial closeness between the subjects. It is this spatial proximity (with access to similar natural resources, the same techniques, etc …) that reduces or eliminates the different productivities / knowledge that cause inequality between subjects, companies and countries. For this reason, due to the size of the territory, communism in the country-territory is only a matter of time. For 12,000 years, the date on which the exits of humans from their primitive villages began and contact with distant human groups took place and with different and LOWER productivity (due to natural resources and worse productive techniques) until today is the period of time necessary for the country-territory to reach a situation of communism. Communism with common cooperative property. Or communism with non-ownership if your thesis were correct. With a high probability (if the thesis of the economic cycles is correct and in which I will not go deeper) that this final step to communism will happen in this same century.
A greeting
This comment is prior to my last post but I should not have successfully uploaded it to the blog. In any case, it was an instructive talk about property in socialism.
‘’ I appreciate your response, Brian. Answer that I think is very useful. I will answer you based on your comment and my reading of your text of ‘’ 21st-century-program-july-2019 ’’.
The concept of Non-Property.- Some objections.
1.- It is a non-property that in your proposal is not applicable to all assets. You only use it for the assets of the means of production (companies) but you do not use it for the rest of the assets, which you call ‘personal consumption items’, and assets in which you include, among others, homes personal. A first question that arises is why non-ownership does not apply to all assets (productive and or productive). That is, if the concept of property is harmful (and conversely, the concept of non-property is positively beneficial), why is it only removed from the means of production? Why doesn’t non-ownership extend to all assets including also personal consumption items?
2.- A more complete definition of the benefits of non-property and the damages of property would be convenient. With a more complete definition and empirical evidence of its benefits. The ownership of the means of production is eliminated but it is not well known why it is done. In summary, what are the current damages to property and what are the future benefits of non-property?
3.- The property. Is property really an obsolete and damaging concept that needs to be replaced? It can be, like most human products, but a somewhat more powerful demonstration (in arguments and evidence) will have to be done before getting rid of it. I’ll just say a few small ideas in favor of it. Property in itself does not appear to be a problem in my opinion until today. In itself, property is only an abstract NEUTRAL concept that, with the consensus of a majority, gives living subjects command, dominance and control over objects. And I understand that control over things is beneficial and useful. Perhaps it should be an ‘egalitarian’ domain over things and nature so as not to abuse them, but the domain, the control of men over things should exist, in my opinion. The problem that property does pose until today is the existence of the owners of that property. And that problem is only given by the number of property owners. Brief saying: there is a social problem if the number of owners is a minority of that society (this has happened, with a historical evolution of owners from less to more, in Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism) and there should be no problem if the number of owners is extended to the social majority of that society, as it should be in Socialism. It is a very useful technique to assess any concept or tool that we want to apply in the subject-country to take a look at how this same concept has worked in the subject-company, and even in the human subject-partner. Those two companies (companies and couples) are the companies before the countries. They are antecedent both in time and space-size, and they are societies that count as many years of useful existence and success. If we make that observation in these companies we see that the property does not pose any problem to its partners. And so, have you read and observed any relevant criticism, protest or complaint about the existence of the concept of property to the members of the cooperatives (for example Mondragón) or even to the members of the capitalist companies? I do not. Except for minority partner complaints.
In other words and in synthesis: the historical problem to be solved is not that of the existence of property, but that of the owner of that property. If only a few citizens are owners (Capitalism and previous modes of production) the problem causes social collapses repeatedly and systematically and if they are all (Socialism), the property problem and the social problem disappear. ’’
Sincerely