i.e.<\/em>\u00a0become capitalist enterprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe are not saying that people shouldn\u2019t live in communistic communities if they wish\u00a0to\u00a0and are able to, only reminding that it\u2019s not the way socialism is going to come\u00a0about. We can imagine that, when socialists are measured in millions rather than thousands so that it has become clear that sooner or later socialism will be established in the near future, people will be making all sorts of plans and experiments in anticipation of the coming of socialism and that this will include communal living in the countryside as well as in towns, but we are not there yet since this presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement which must come first. So at the moment, we need to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas rather than promoting experiments in “socialist\u201d living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cooperative movement is a form of activity that is of use to some members of the working class, but not all and its popular proponents such as Richard Wolff are\u00a0a hindrance to the campaign for socialism. At most co-ops\u00a0serve\u00a0as a means of surviving the rigours of the capitalist economy. Genuine cooperative societies (in which the members themselves carry on the work and own and share in common) have invariably failed to make headway against the forces of capitalism. The so-called consumers\u2019 cooperatives that have made headway possess no real element of cooperation. They are merely joint-stock capitalist trading concerns owned by small investors and exploiting their employees like capitalist concerns in general. The outlook engendered by the cooperatives\u00a0is no more favourable to socialist propaganda than is the outlook of non-cooperators. Support of such blind-alley activities confuses the minds of the workers by making them think that the social problem can be solved within capitalism and without socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Capitalism is a mode of production not a method of management. Proponents of the cooperative vision aspire towards enterprises that are small, democratically managed by their workforces and\/or local communities and ecologically balanced with a need to be \u201cnon-enterprises such as consumer cooperatives, credit unions and municipal banks, ownership of industry by towns and cities\u00a0and\u00a0the state \u00a0(municipalisation and nationalisation), and NGOs, along with the many proposed worker-run enterprises (producer cooperatives).\u00a0 At the same time, these approaches do not call for the abolition of the market, accepting competition among enterprises, production for profit rather than use, and the use of money. They project workers\u2019 enterprises competing with each other to sell their goods in the most profitable way. Some propose a workers\u2019 enterprise sector side-by-side with a corporate capitalist sector. Most imagine the continuation of a national state to regulate the overall market. Since the market and the state are accepted, the result must be a reformist, non-revolutionary, program. This is a belief that such an improved society could be reached by using the existing market (starting up new, worker-managed, industries, etc.) and without challenging the existing state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the consequences of believing that big is bad is that certain key aspects of capitalism\u00a0such as markets, money, and buying and selling come to be seen as acceptable provided they only exist locally on a small scale.\u00a0\u201cMarket socialists” \u00a0envisage their model as the alternative to existing society of\u00a0one where there might be no profits, exploitation or a centralised state but there would be local cooperatives and small businesses producing for local markets, local currencies, and small-scale trading between local communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, a small-scale, decentralised market economy where goods and services would be bought and sold for use, not profit. We can’t go back to this which Marx called “petty commodity production” and if we did, it would develop again into the large-scale commodity production that is capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But so far as co-op leaders hold out hopes to the workers that their support will help towards a new order of society, or will even provide an escalator to reach it, they are practising deceit. The only way out for the workers is to organise politically for that purpose. A special objective requires a special organisation for its achievement. However, the objective must not be obscured by lesser things of little or no importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0We stand a society based on the abolition of remuneration in the form of wages and an economy based on the destruction of the wage system, and a de-linking of the value of labour in production from the distribution of society\u2019s wealth to its members. It is not possible anyway to measure an individual\u2019s contribution to production. \u00a0Production is largely social. The contribution of an individual is very difficult to isolate from the contributions of countless others that make work possible\u201d. Any such attribution can only be arbitrary, as in the Parecon blueprint, of having co-workers judge each other\u2019s work would turn gossip and infighting at work presently from an annoyance into a contest\u00a0over wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0The assets of a co-op do not cease being capital when votes are taken on how they are used within a society of generalised commodity production and wage labour. That is to say, there remains an imperative to accumulate with all the drive to minimise the labour time taken to do a task this requires, even in a co-op.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the 1940s or 50s, the consumer cooperatives, like all businesses under capitalism, were increasingly forced to centralise and concentrate capital, due to improved transportation facilities and new retail forms. This trend manifested itself partly in the declining number of cooperatives, and in the increasing membership strength per cooperative unit.\u00a0Often the average age of members rose, as elderly members remained loyal to their cooperatives, and younger ones failed to materialise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally, consumer cooperatives were doomed by inhibitions arising from their pioneering role. Established in an era when small shop-owners controlled retailing, they were initially at an advantage. Their larger operations were more economically rational and offered advantages of scale. As a response shopkeepers joined forces in chain stores, central purchasing organisations, etc. However, new sales systems – including self-service stores, supermarkets, shopping centres and the like – were invented. These new types of businesses featured brand names, systems of accumulated redeemable credits, low prices, and enticing advertisements. As a result, the competitive advantage of the consumer cooperatives deteriorated visibly. The surplus base (surplus divided by sales) decreased, along with the dividends for members and the opportunities for innovation and investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many consumer cooperatives encountered financial difficulties and faced a serious dilemma in their effort to avoid bankruptcy: either they could merge with a regular capitalist business, become a limited liability company, or borrow substantial amounts from banks – in each case, they ceased to be autonomous cooperatives; or they could counter the rising competition through modernisation and operational expansion – thereby increasing the considerable social distance between members and administrators, as well as further reducing involvement among the members and thereby undermining the organisation\u2019s cooperative nature.\u00a0On a world scale, consumer cooperatives have either not been doing well or they have morphed into retail industries without members democratically controlling the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooperatives are usually portrayed by their proponents as more satisfying business arrangements than those found in the hierarchical power structures of corporate or state capitalism. Some have even argued that, if allowed to develop, they would fundamentally alter capitalism in favour of the working class and simultaneously facilitate the instigation of new forms of social ownership and economic democracy.\u00a0Proponents\u00a0claim that cooperatives are owned and controlled by their workers allowing no outside shareholders’ and no \u201cbosses” While a more politically motivated supporter argue that the co-op demonstrates that ordinary working people can evolve democratic enterprise structures which have a fair chance of success; they can come to recognise that professional management is just as necessary in a co-op as it is in a capitalist operation: they can come to behave with unusual forbearance and responsibility in the matter of wage rates and to identify quite closely with the longer-term enterprise goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What both of these two claims conveniently hide from workers is the uncomfortable fact that capitalist notions of profit-making and commodity production are intrinsic features of cooperatives, which have to function within a world capitalist market. If, for whatever reason, they are prepared to misrepresent their character and function \u2014 and it is noticeable that they support the wage system and therefore the exploitation of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is because cooperatives raise capital from financial institutions, pay rent to landlords, produce commodities for profit, and pay wages to workers \u2014 as well as face all the problems inherent in a market economy\u00a0\u2014 that socialists reject the claim that they either represent the Utopian idealism of Robert Owen or are organisational forms approximating to socialism. Cooperatives are in practice no different from any other form of capitalist venture: if profits cannot be secured, if interest or rent cannot be paid on time, then bankruptcy and unemployment are the end result. A high failure rate throughout the twentieth century has shown quite clearly that their lifespan as profit-making businesses is often very short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But underlying all the rhetoric in support of cooperatives is an unquestioned assumption that capitalism, in which co-operatives have to market their commodities, is crisis-free. Cooperatives are not “productive islands” distinct from other forms of capitalism but part of a chain of production and distribution, buying and selling commodities with no other reason but to make a profit. So when an unpredictable crisis erupts \u2014 and they are unpredictable precisely because of the anarchy inherent in the commodity production itself \u2014 it can hit cooperatives as hard as any other form of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what of the apologists themselves? Most support for co-operatives emanates from academic economists and sociologists, journalists and politicians, all of whom see in the cooperative movement a means to mitigate or play down the class struggle. It is not an oversight that these writers fail to urge workers first to abolish capitalism and then to set up cooperatives. The truth is that for the academic or politician the wages system is taken as an article of faith; a perennial economic arrangement never to be questioned. All their pronouncements about cooperatives are couched in the language of commodity production and exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The class struggle exists because the interests of wage and salary earners, on the one hand, and the imperatives of profit and accumulation dictated by capitalism on the other, are antagonistic and diametrically opposed. Cooperatives do not give workers security of employment; do not free them from exploitation, and do not allow the luxury of producing goods outside the parameters of commodity production. Cooperatives under capitalism cannot be organised in any other way. The products they make are available only to those who can afford them \u2014 what workers can pay for and what they want are two completely different things. Only the capitalist class get all the services they want. The profit system, whether unquestioned or defended by apologists for worker cooperatives, acts as a restraint on production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given the sordid and competitive environment in which the working class are exploited, it is quite understandable that some are seduced by the idea of cooperatives. Why, after all, should we not produce socially useful products to the best of our ability and be involved fully in the production process? But it is a mistake to believe that workers can achieve this by retaining the wages system and commodity production. Cooperatives have to produce for markets and are therefore dictated to by them. If workers really wish to work cooperatively, freed from the constraints and pressures of the market, then the only way to do so is within a social system conducive to cooperation. Capitalism plainly cannot provide this framework and workers should realise this fact and organise politically for its abolition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0The only difference is that the cooperative company will always be at a disadvantage when compared to the capitalist business enterprise, even when the former has as much capital as the latter. The cooperative undertaking, because it is cooperative, cannot press any surplus value out of its members, and therefore its capital will not grow. On the other hand, it has to spend its main strength fighting strong capitalist concerns, while it is just that fight of competition that fixes the prices of the products<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The miseries of laissez-faire<\/em>\u00a0capitalism not only produced a socialist movement but also various attempts on the part of workers to ease their conditions by non-political means. Apart from trade unionism, a cooperative movement came into being as a medium of escape from wage labour and as a vain opposition to the ruling principle of general competition. The precursors of this movement were the early communist communities in France, England and America, which derived their ideas from such utopian socialists as Owen and Fourier.<\/p>\n\n\n\nProducers\u2019 cooperatives were voluntary groupings for self-employment and self-government with respect to their own activities. Some of these cooperatives developed independently, others in conjunction with the working-class movements. By pooling their resources, workers were able to establish their own workshops and produce without the intervention of capitalists. But their opportunities were from the very beginning circumscribed by the general conditions of capitalist society and its developmental tendencies, which granted them a mere marginal existence. Capitalist development implies the competitive concentration and centralisation of capital. The larger capital destroys the smaller. The cooperative workshops were restricted to special small-scale industries requiring little capital. Soon, the capitalist extension into all industries destroyed their competitive ability and drove them out of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consumers\u2019 cooperatives proved to be more successful and some of them absorbed producers\u2019 cooperatives as sources of supply. But consumers\u2019 cooperatives can hardly be considered as attempts at working-class control, even where they were the creation of working-class aspirations. At best, they may secure a measure of control in the disposal of wages, for labourers can be robbed twice \u2013 at the point of production and at the marketplace. The costs of commodity circulation are an unavoidable incidental\u00a0expense of capital production, dividing the capitalists into merchants and entrepreneurs. Since each tries for the profit maximum in its own sphere of operation, their economic interests are not identical. Entrepreneurs thus have no reason to object to consumers\u2019 cooperatives. Currently, they are themselves engaged in dissolving the division of productive and merchant capital by combining the functions of both in the single production and marketing corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cooperative movement was easily integrated into the capitalist system and, in fact, was to a large extent an element of capitalist development. Even in bourgeois economic theory, it was considered an instrument of social conservatism by fostering the savings propensities of the lower layers of society, by increasing economic activities through credit unions, by improving agriculture through cooperative production and marketing organisations, and by shifting working-class attention from the sphere of production to that of consumption. As a capitalistically-oriented institution, the cooperative movement flourished, finally to become one form of capitalist enterprise among others, bent on the exploitation of the workers in its employ, and facing the latter as their opponents in strikes for higher wages and better working conditions. The general support of consumers\u2019 cooperatives by the official labour movement \u2013 in sharp distinction to an earlier scepticism and even outright rejection \u2013 was merely an additional sign of the increasing \u2018capitalisation\u2019 of the reformist labour movement. The widespread network of consumers\u2019 cooperatives in Russia, however, provided the Bolsheviks with a ready-made distributive system which was soon turned into an agency of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The division of \u2018collectivism\u2019 into producers\u2019 and consumers cooperatives reflected, in a sense, the opposition of the syndicalist to the socialist movement. Consumers\u2019 cooperatives incorporated members of all classes and were seeking access to all markets. They were not opposed to centralisation on a national and even international scale. The market of producers\u2019 cooperatives, however, was as limited as to their production and they could not combine into larger units without losing the self-control which was the rationale for their existence<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general practice of economic cooperation today is of a joint-stock enterprise, on the part of a number of petty shareholders. Modern industrial cooperation is, therefore, little more than playing at capitalism. Under existing conditions, no business enterprise can succeed except on competitive lines, and so the cooperative societies of today simply represent cooperation to compete, with capitalist concerns, on capitalist conditions. They must successfully compete or go under. Thus, while conferring some slight advantage on their members, cooperative societies have little connection with the present working-class movement, except where they are subsidiary to that movement and serve to help supply it with funds; as in the case of the co-operative societies of Belgium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A society is not transformed by the force of words alone,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If factories anywhere fell into the hands of workers\u2019 committees tomorrow what would happen? Since workers at the moment all over the world<\/em>\u00a0are committed to capitalism because they have not yet grasped any alternative method of organising society, these factories under \u2018workers\u2019 control\u2019 would continue to produce commodities for sale. It would simply be a question of the workers driving themselves, holding their own whips, managing their own exploitation. The factories will be run on socialist lines only when the goods they turn out are no longer for selling on the internal and world markets and when the people working in them have no need for wages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\u00a0sign of insanity they say is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results so why is it that\u00a0many progressives ignore the informed opinion from over 150 years ago of the Chartist leader, Ernest Jones who back then observed: \u201cI contend that co-operation as now developed, must result in failure to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4041,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4039\/revisions\/4041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}