Worth noting that is completely legal in the USA and even encouraged by the tax code. They are called ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Program). An ESOP configured as an S-Corp that is 100% employee owned pays no federal business tax. Some examples of well known ESOPs in the US are Wawa, Bob's Red Mill, and W. L. Gore & Associates (makers of Gore-Tex).
Worker cooperatives are fully compatible with capitalism. Only mentioning it because sometimes this idea gets unfairly maligned due to some mistaken association with socialism or even communism. There should be more of these sorts of entities in the USA and Europe, and frankly everywhere. It's an assured route towards better conditions for the working class, by making them owners and stakeholders in a more substantial way than merely holding some stock equity (which is kind of a superficial ownership that's sometimes presented as this same type of worker cooperative ownership).
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, especially Green and Blue Mars, provide a nice fictional exploration of this idea. I think Mondragon may even be name dropped.
It is quintessential socialism: collective ownership (of the “means of production”).
It is just embedded in a market system, just as, say, USSR or Cuba was embedded in the global economy.
That doesn’t make it not socialist.
And not all socialism is “bad”. It has to do with whether it is voluntary or not. I am a libertarian, and I fully support communes, housing cooperatives, credit unions and the like. I consider the lack of a superfluous extractive landlord or shareholder class a feature.
Capitalism is not simply free markers - it means "control by people with capital." People control society proportionally to how much capital they have, and those who control vast boards of capital are very uninterested in allowing capital to be spread around more equitably.
I would say that capitalism is not only characterized by private ownership of capital, but also by free market for labor, which could be almost considered a complementary feature (other side of the same coin).
On the other hand, socialism primarily rejects free market for labour in favor of worker emancipation and participation in decision-making. So both socialism and capitalism are compatible with free markets; it's the labor market where the opinion differs.
(As a socialist, I would add, salaries cannot be treated in economics the same way as e.g. price of apples, because apple doesn't care what its price is.)
It remains confusing that, after centuries of profiting off capital generally being a much better strategic choice than profiting off labour, workers insist and persist in trying to make labour work.
If the unions had dumped their efforts into co-ops instead of trying to fight their own companies then they might have managed to have a positive impact. They've been at it for long enough for capital accumulation to have kicked in even at pathetic rates of saving.
Worth noting that is completely legal in the USA and even encouraged by the tax code. They are called ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Program). An ESOP configured as an S-Corp that is 100% employee owned pays no federal business tax. Some examples of well known ESOPs in the US are Wawa, Bob's Red Mill, and W. L. Gore & Associates (makers of Gore-Tex).
Why don't cooperatives of IT professionals exist? It's a business with low capital entry and high dividends.
Workers should prefer to own their company as risks are really low (in contrast to other industries).
They might be rare, but they do exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igalia
AFAIK, Galois is 100% employee owned: https://www.galois.com/life-at-galois
I know people working both at Galois and Mondragón, and they seem to be relatively similar in spirit.
They moved most production work to factories in China, which ironically aren't cooperative.
Worker cooperatives are fully compatible with capitalism. Only mentioning it because sometimes this idea gets unfairly maligned due to some mistaken association with socialism or even communism. There should be more of these sorts of entities in the USA and Europe, and frankly everywhere. It's an assured route towards better conditions for the working class, by making them owners and stakeholders in a more substantial way than merely holding some stock equity (which is kind of a superficial ownership that's sometimes presented as this same type of worker cooperative ownership).
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, especially Green and Blue Mars, provide a nice fictional exploration of this idea. I think Mondragon may even be name dropped.
Yes it is! the Mondragon Accords. my first thought when seeing the title :) had no idea the name was based on something real!
Have been listening to an audio-book of 2312 when I have the time to be fully attentive
It is quintessential socialism: collective ownership (of the “means of production”).
It is just embedded in a market system, just as, say, USSR or Cuba was embedded in the global economy.
That doesn’t make it not socialist.
And not all socialism is “bad”. It has to do with whether it is voluntary or not. I am a libertarian, and I fully support communes, housing cooperatives, credit unions and the like. I consider the lack of a superfluous extractive landlord or shareholder class a feature.
Capitalism is not simply free markers - it means "control by people with capital." People control society proportionally to how much capital they have, and those who control vast boards of capital are very uninterested in allowing capital to be spread around more equitably.
The parent post is not even the worst offender. In his (otherwise good) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Things_They_Don%27t_Tell_Yo..., Ha-Joon Chang completely flips the meaning between free markets and capitalism.
I would say that capitalism is not only characterized by private ownership of capital, but also by free market for labor, which could be almost considered a complementary feature (other side of the same coin).
On the other hand, socialism primarily rejects free market for labour in favor of worker emancipation and participation in decision-making. So both socialism and capitalism are compatible with free markets; it's the labor market where the opinion differs.
(As a socialist, I would add, salaries cannot be treated in economics the same way as e.g. price of apples, because apple doesn't care what its price is.)
It remains confusing that, after centuries of profiting off capital generally being a much better strategic choice than profiting off labour, workers insist and persist in trying to make labour work.
If the unions had dumped their efforts into co-ops instead of trying to fight their own companies then they might have managed to have a positive impact. They've been at it for long enough for capital accumulation to have kicked in even at pathetic rates of saving.
capitalists profit of labour, it's just other people's labour.