Re: Corporations/Side Issue

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

This threatens to lapse into the dreaded market
socialism debate. I do not want to get into that, and
Michael won't allow it anyway. I will just say here,
very briefly, that we do not know, but (a) the case of
Mondragon is not so bad, and is unlike the others, and
(b) there may be a difference between attempts to
create a worker-controlled island in a capitalist sea,
and the operation of worker-controlled enterprisers
(whether corporations or other enterprise forms) where
there is no or little wage labor, and they are the
dominant form. I should mention (c) that at least one
possible form of a worker-controlled enterprise is one
in which the workers are not wage laborers but
cooperators whose remuneration takes the form of a
profit share rather than a wage.

In my opinion, if something like a socialist market
economy won't be stable and better than capitalism,
then capitalist social democracy on the Western
European model is the best we can do. For reasons you
can look up in the PEN-L archives where I and othersd
have discussed the issues, or can read in books -- I
won't discuss them here -- I don't think that a
nonmarket econimy would be either stable or better.

But leave the point be. We are not faced today in
America with a choice of any of these alternatives. If
we could get social democracy, we'd think the
revolution was over and we'd won. But it as utopian
from where we stand as Marx's communism.

jks



--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> --- andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Moreover one could imagibe a market society where,
> > for
> > eaxmple, the corporations did not have
> undemocratic
> > power and wealth, and where the workers managed
> them
> > themselves. Such corporations would be far less
> > problematic than the largest ones we have --
> > including
> > some of my clients.
> >
> > jks
>
********************************************************
> I agree, it would be much better, if workers ran and
> managed the the firms in which they exploited
> themselves for surplus value.  Honestly though,
> hasn't the history of creating such entities, like
> say
> Mondragon or the Amana Colony or the kibbutz
> movement
> and all the utopian socialist movements of the
> past--
> co:operatives included--proven that they always
> morph
> into the undemocratic, totalitarian corporate
> structures which we see ruling us today?
>
> In other words, hasn't wage-labour always resulted
> in
> the developement of capitalist social relations?
>
> Sincerely,
> Mike B)
>
>
> =====
>
****************************************************************
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> Those that are produced by
> top-fermenting yeasts (ales)
> and those that are made with
> bottom-fermenting yeasts (lagers).
>
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>
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