Michael Mappin
Valuetainment
comments
Comments by "Michael Mappin" (@michaelmappin1830) on "Heated Debate On Capitalism with America’s Most Prominent Marxist Economist - Richard Wolff" video.
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@michelem7786 , who said anything about the value of a single worker being more or equal to the wealth produced by a company has a whole?
You don't seem to understand that employees could not get the full value of their labour when they work at a capitalist company. When they work at a socially own company, then they do get all of the well that their labour produces, after expenses, of course. that's why the income disparity between the highest and lowest paid worker at a Cooperative generally Falls between 3 to 1 and 7 to 1. That's because it's usually not possible for a worker regardless of their education or talent to work more than seven times harder than someone else. When a Cooperative produces 25 billion dollars in sales, that money goes to the workers. That is more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. However, when a company such as Walmart or Amazon does 25 billion in sales, that money goes to idle shareholders, many of whom are not even in the same country.
You see, capitalism doesn't even make sense economically or mathematically. Jobs are tight consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. They then have to compete for the remaining jobs, and that competition drives the value of Labor down even further. but how can workers afford the purchase all of the goods and services they are producing if they only get a fraction of the wealth that their labour produces? at the workers only get paid 25% of the wealth, they're only going to be able to afford 25% of what's in circulation. capitalist companies want to maximize profit. they accomplished that by keeping wages as low as possible while getting the workers to produce as much as possible. That creates a huge disparity between purchasing power and the goods and services that need to be purchased in order to maintain jobs through consumption. It's a contradiction. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
however, worker-owned companies don't have that problem because wages are commensurate with production output. if your labour produces $1,000 worth of wealth, you now have $1,000 to spend. however, when your labour produces $1,000 worth of wealth at a capitalist company, you'd be lucky if you end up with half that amount of money. every dollar that goes to you is one less dollar that goes to your employer. every extra dollar that goes to your employer, that's one less dollar you have to spend into the economy for goods and services produced by your fellow workers.
also keep in mind that markets are not unique to capitalism. Production and businesses are not unique to capitalism. Merely selling the product of your labour is not capitalism. If you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. Capitalism requires capitalizing on other people's labour. also keep in mind that labour includes both mental and physical efforts. our economy is the sum total of our work. Capitalist are just middlemen parasites that reduce purchasing power.
for example, not too long ago Bill Gates bought a big chunk of the Canadian railroad. Billions of dollars that used to go to workers is now going to mr. Gates. That's billions of dollars no longer being spent into the economy. Any erosion the first of the power has to be offset with access to credit. Credit keeps the system going temporarily but inevitably the interest attached to that credit will reduce purchasing power even further. that is a natural byproduct of capitalism and is required to maintain jobs through consumption. that's because workers do not get paid the full value of their labour, we can produce far more than we're capable of consuming and it takes less and less labour to produce more and more stuff with each passing day.
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@useresu301 , there's hundreds of thousands of them. Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from those types of workplaces. https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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somehow you got that backwards. When people work at a capitalist company then they don't have any incentive. Capital companies try to get as much work out of their workers as possible while paying them as little as possible. But when workers on the company, then they get the full value of their labour. The more they produce, the better they produce, the more money they make. That's why it's possible for an assembly line worker to make $70,000 a year at a socially owned company but not at a capitalist company. At a capitalist company it doesn't matter if you produce $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product. It All Belongs to the owner. You've basically made that money for someone else. statistically speaking, when workers own their own company, they're happier, more creative, more efficient, more productive, they take less sick days, there's less incidence of substance abuse, Etc. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
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@chrisvouzoukos389 , you didn't listen to the debate? Richard Wolff has started several successful businesses. He's extremely prolific.
There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. Bottom up, Democratic non-hierarchical systems work incredibly well. There's no shortage of hard empirical data. We know exactly how well they compare to capitalist Enterprises.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@mikeg.8904 , yes, if you have no other choice other than to work for someone else in order to survive, then you'll have to make the products that they tell you to make. Everything you make belongs to your employer.
You see, it's easy for rich people to buy factories, railroads, electric companies, Etc. But most workers live from check to check. They can't afford to buy those things. Therefore they have to work for other people. however, if workers can get together as a group, that it makes it easier for them to purchase expensive equipment, warehouses, tools, Etc.
For example, there's a Cooperative in Spain where the workers now own their own Hospital, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Etc. the workers are independent because they don't have to work for someone else. They get the full value of their labour. they don't need to sell their labour for a fraction of what it's worth to someone like Jeff Bezos so that he can become extremely rich.
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@michelem7786 , well first of all to say that communism and socialism are the most course of ideologies , that's simply not true. capitalist Nations have been far more coercive and responsible for far more deaths than communism, fascism, and socialism combined.
Capitalism killed 1.8 billion + people, that's not too far off the mark--especially if we include the deaths resulting from the centrally regulated state-capitalist economies of the Leninist states out there (often fraudulently referred to as "socialist" or "communist"). It looks more like 1,86 billion--and that's not including all the work-related deaths worldwide, which easily exceed many of the wars we have suffered.
Now, of course, the estimated casualty numbers depend on how far back in history we go (we can go back as far as the rise of colonial capitalism--also called mercantilism--during the 1500s and 1600s. And, sadly, the further back we go, the harder it is to find credible data).
But we can try by looking at official estimates of casualties of key events over the decades and centuries. So here goes:
United States Imperialism:
Hurricane Katrina (deliberate faulty construction) 1,836
NATO Intervention in Libya 2011 15,000
Tamils killed by US backed Sri Lankan Gov. 30,000
US Revolutionary War 35,700 (If Russa removes a Monarch its bad right?)
Spanish-American War 100,000
US Made Famine in Bangladesh 1974 100,000
NATO Intervention in Libya 100,000
Guatemala 300,000
US Bombing of Yugoslavia 300,000
Iraq (US Selling Poison Gas to Saddam) 400,000
Iraq (Desert Storm) 500,000
US Bombing Iraq Water Supply in 1991 500,000
Invasion of the Philippines 650,000
US Civil War 700,000
US Concentration Camps of Germans 1,000,000
US imposed sanctions on Iraq 1,000,000
Afghanistan (War on Terrorism) 1,200,000
US Backed Dictator General Suharto 1,200,000
Iraq (War on Terrorism) 1,300,000
1898 American War vs Philippine 3,000,000
US Intervention in the Congo 5,000,000
US Aggression on Latin America 6,000,000
Vietnam War* (including Cambodia & Laos) 10,000,000
Korean War* 10,000,000
Native American Genocide 114,000,000
African Slave Trade 150,000,000
* both wars caused by the us
Japanese Imperialism:
Japanese Occupation of East Timor 70,000
Japanese Bombing of China 71,105
Japanese Massacre of Singapore 100,000
Japanese Germ Warfare in China 200,000
Japanese Democides 5,964,000
British Imperialism:
Second Boer War 75,000
Irish Potato Famine 1,500,000
The Bengal Famine of 1943 10,000,000
British Occupation of India 20,000,000
Famine in Held British India 30,000,000
Misc. nations:
Massacre of the Paris Commune 20,000
Dutch East Indies 25,000
Somali Child Famine Deaths 29,000
228 Massacre 30,000
French Madagascar 80,000
Indonesian Anti-Communist Purges 1965-1966 1,000,000
Indonesian East Timor invasion 1975 5,000,000
Philippine Insurrection 220,000
Franco Regime 300,000
Benito Mussolini regime 300,000
Rebelling Shia Killed by Saddam 300,000
Nanking Massacre 300,000
Spanish Civil War 400,000
Mussolini’s Ethiopia 700,000
Palestinians Killed by Israel 1947-2002 826,626
Nigerian Civil War 1,000,000
Somalia 1,000,000
Iraq-Iran War 1,000,000
Rawandan Genocide 1,000,000
Belgian Congo Colonization 10,000,000
Tsarist Russia (1800s only) 1,066,000
First Indochina 1946-1954 1,750,000
Cambodia Khmer Rouge 2,035,000
Cambodia Pol Pot 3,200,000
South African Apartheid 3,500,000
Congo 1886-1908 8,000,000
Nazi Holocaust 12,000,000
Eastern Europe/COMECON/Warsaw Pact 1946-1991 1,200,000
Soviet-era Capitalism (excluding Stalin era) 11,000,000
Soviet Gulag/concentration/POW camps 2,500,000
Post-Soviet Capitalism in Russia 1,500,000
Stalinist Famine of 1932-33 7,000,000
Stalinist Famine of 1947-39 7,000,000
Stalinist purges-persecution 1928-53 1,200,000
Mao Ze Dong "Great Leap" 1958-63 20,000,000
Post-1949 China deaths (excluding Great Leap) 5,000,000
Chiang Kai Shek regime (China) 7,000,000
Pol Pot regime (Cambodia) 3,000,000
World War One 16,500,000
World War Two 72,000,000
General Disasters by Capitalism:
Hamburg Cholera Outbreak 1892 10,000
Union Carbide Bophal Disaster 15,000
Industrial Revolution Kids & Adults USA 100,000
Industrial Revolution Kids & Adults Global 212,000,000
Chetnik Collaboration & Genocide 100,000
Herero and Namaqua Genocide 110,000
Burma-Siam Railroad Construction 116,000
Albanian Genocide 270,000
Fascist Independent State of Croatia 900,000
Armenian Genocide 1,500,000
Great Depression (America and Europe) 12,000,000
Children Killed by Preventable Diseases Since 9/11 208,000,000
Children Killed by Hunger 2001-2008 9/11 235,000,000
Children Died from Hunger 2009 5,256,000
Children Died from Hunger 2010 6,000,000
Children Killed by Hunger during the 1990s 100,000,000
Capitalist Policy in India 1947 – 1990 120,000,000
Ciggarette Related Deaths Worldwide (1960 – 2011) 306,000,000
IMF-related casualties since 1950 140,000,000
https://i.redd.it/jz1kv95kuh011.gif
https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496
https://www.ranker.com/list/worst-colonial-european-regimes/melissa-sartore
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/13/features11.g22
https://chomsky.info/199910__/
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/stalin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
http://www.flashpoints.info/iss.../Genocide/Genocide_htm.htm
http://tinyurl.com/jqgk9kp
http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#America
http://www.orwelltoday.com/redriding.shtml
http://www.whale.to/b/mullins41.html
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/State_capitalism
http://www.scribd.com/.../American-Corporations-and-Hitler
http://www.iahushua.com/WOI/us_nazis.htm
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t
https://prezi.com/7mdtynonwovn/famous-murders-murderers-of-the-industrial-revolution/
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/britain-1700-to-1900/industrial-revolution/diseases-in-industrial-cities-in-the-industrial-revolution/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25780760
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@michelem7786 , third, " just do it" is not an argument. The argument is that worker-owned and Community owned companies and factories are better for workers and the economy. The argument is not whether a person is legally entitled to start a business. Of course they are, either individually or collectively. The problem is, most people are not in a position to just do it. There are many barriers. most people are in an extreme state of dependency. They live from Check to Check and have huge amounts of debt. Something like 90% of the American population can no longer afford a family on a single income. They can't even afford a $400 emergency. people are going bankrupt all the time just from an unexpected medical bill or other emergency. So no, people just can't do it. Hard enough for people in debt to be able to borrow money for something such as a home or a car, which gives the bank something to repossess if payments are not made. you think a bank is going to lend money to someone in debt for the purpose of starting something as risky as a business in this precarious economic environment?
if people were not in the state of dependency, capitalism would cease to exist. capitalist companies are dependant upon people not being able to extricate themselves from their states of dependency.
for example, there's a socially on bread factory in the United States were assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. that's because the workers own the product of their labour. however, when workers do not own the product of their labour, it doesn't matter how much they produce. It doesn't matter if they produce $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product. It All Belongs to someone else. workers at companies such as Amazon and Walmart produce far more wealth with their labour, but they get paid wages are so low they can barely pay their bills. So obviously if workers had the choice of getting the full value of their labour, they're not going to go work at a company such as Walmart or Amazon.
capitalist companies require desperate workers. That's why capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. That's why the conversion to capitalism was extremely violent and bloody. people fought against the conversion to capitalism because back then everyone recognized wage slavery to be another form of slavery, not much better than chattel slavery and in some cases even worse. that's not my opinion, that's a matter of public record.
and what do you think is going to be better for the economy? A worker that makes $70,000 a year or a worker making minimum wage at a company such as Walmart or Amazon?
here's some labour history:
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
"The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence."
when you work as an employee, the boss tells you when you work, how hard you have to work, Etc. they can cut your wages, your working hours, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
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@michelem7786 , fourth, will you see that no one wants to do it, that is not correct. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. And because they have existed for such a long time, we know exactly how well they compare to capitalist Enterprises. Statistically speaking, not only are these companies more durable, productive, the workers are happier, more creative, more efficient, take less sick days, there's listen to this of mental illness, suicide, depression, Etc. there is no shortage of hard empirical data to look at.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@michelem7786 , seventh, you wanted me to give you one example other than Mondragon? There are simply too many examples to even mention. We're talking hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces. There are also many different types of institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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worker-owned companies vs. Capitalist Enterprises https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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worker cooperatives can go out of business just like any company. I'm sure layoffs happen. But less likely to happen compared to a capitalist Enterprise. statistically speaking worker cooperatives are more efficient, more durable, more Innovative, Etc. Also workers are happier, more creative, more efficient, they work harder, they take less sick days, there's less suicide, substance abuse, alcoholism, Etc.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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not at all. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour and they get to make most of the decisions when it comes to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. Economic feudalism. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China.
when workers own and control their own companies in factories, then they get to keep all of the wealth that their labour produces and they get to be their own boss.
Capitalist company's benefit capitalists. Worker-owned companies benefit workers and communities.
Socialism is more conducive to free markets and thriving economies because wages are commensurate with production output. therefore it doesn't violate the economic principle of achieving equilibrium between supply and demand. Capitalism maximizes the disparity between supply and demand because they do everything they can to keep wages as little as possible while maximizing production output. you can't have production output increasing at a faster rate than income, because then people won't be able to afford the goods and services they are producing! that's why there's so much debt under the capitalist system. jobs are tied to consumption. if consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. and the unemployed people have to compete with one another for the remaining jobs. That drives the value of Labor down even further, increasing the disparity between supply and demand to an even greater degree.
that's why working hours never decrease under capitalism even though labor-saving technology has more than tripled production output since 1950 while cutting the need for labour in half. just like with animal livestock, workers are given just enough to survive. If it wasn't for people fighting against capitalism, we would still be working 18 hours a day 7 days a week along with 9 year old children.
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That's why Richard Wolff is not advocating for the type of Socialism or communism associated with Russia.
Socialism and communism work very well in the United States.
Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from communally owned electric coops. Community is where the word communist comes from. Are you using commie electricity right now? https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
here is a very successful socially owned bread factory. Do you think socialist bread tastes better than capitalist bread?
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
• How about the Ocean Spray cranberry cooperative? Do those workers make minimum wage? 2000 employees produce roughly one and a half billion dollars annually. So how much do you think the workers get paid?
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
• how about these Cooperative owners in Argentina? Do you think they're making more or less money now that they are the actual owners? Do you think the business is actually doing better or worse now that the workers actually own the company and operated democratically? https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
• when you pay your electric bill, when you buy a home, when you buy a condo, Etc, do you want to be buying these things at cost! Or do you want to be putting money into other the pocket of middlemen that aren't actually doing any work or contributing anything? https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
• do you think these workers are making minimum wage? Or are they making a living wage? doesn't sound like they're enjoying being able to actually share in the decision-making process? Does it sound like they are happier having more freedom and control, along with getting paid more? https://youtu.be/8vJDhKMrncw
• these Cooperative is definitely provide more equality, freedom and prosperity compared to capitalist Enterprises. Along with that they have acceptance, the advantage pooling their resources for their families and community, autonomy & Independence (allowed to be unique, it's actually valued instead of discouraged), teaching and education are part of the job -not just simply producing like a Mindless robot!, support, real and genuine concern for your fellow workers and community, sustainable development, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/NO-8iI7GW70
• Evergreen cooperatives! One of the reasons they exist is because it's impossible have a quality life when only making minimum wage. They provide people with a living wage. https://youtu.be/4zU8_ofpPyQ
• even in poor countries during the financial crisis, the workers are still making a living wage, often much more than their American counterparts. https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
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of course he's not crooked. I don't know what would make you think such a thing. His argument is very simple and straightforward. Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. They get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's one of the reasons why wages are so low and why most things are made in China. It's economic feudalism.
And what he says a capital Stoner is like a king, he simply means that the owner is the one that gets to make all the decisions, gets most of the wealth, Etc. They decide when the employee works, when they don't work, how much they get paid, they can cut their hours, replace them with their best friend, they can even tell them when and how long they get to go to the washroom. The boss gets to dictate and the workers have to follow orders, or they get fired or penalized. So yeah, and that sense capitalist owners are like little Kings.
anyway, in regards to automatic systems of organization. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. One worker equals one vote. once again Richard wolf is correct. Those types of workplaces tend to be more efficient, more productive, workers are happier, make more money, there's less incidence of mental illness, workers taking sick days, Etc. there is no shortage of hard empirical data to go by. We know exactly how Democratic workplaces compared to capitalist, top-down undemocratic hierarchical systems.
here is a basic summarization of his argument. https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
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@deason2365 , no, what you just described is capitalism. Under capitalism the rich people own most of the capital and thus control both the economy and the government. Under the capitalist system the government represents the owning class.
Don't you understand that Richard Wolff is not a state socialist? How many times does he have to mention set the problem with hierarchical systems is that they're prone to corruption because those at the top have power over those underneath. That's why he's an advocate of economic democracy where the workers have direct ownership of their own factories and businesses. That type of socialism is bottom-up, democratic and non-hierarchical. It doesn't have anything to do with the government or the military. Your comment makes absolutely no sense at all. When you increase the number of worker-owned companies and factories, that decentralizes power. That makes workers and communities less depended upon the government, not more. It also makes workers and communities less dependant upon capitalist corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods.
You see, when the workers own their own Capital, businesses and factories, then they get the wealth produced by their labour. When capitalists own those things, then they get most of the wealth produced by labour. They then spend that money on trips to outer space, buying politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, accountants, Etc. When that money goes to the workers, they spend it into the economy, and that causes the economy to expand because there's more demand for things that just pizza, beer, trips to the bowling alley, Etc. Economics 101.
You see, at a socialist company the workers get 100% of the wealth produced by their labour. That creates more demand and the economy expands. But the goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Some workers to not get anywhere near 100% of their labour value because if they did, there would be zero profit for the owners. The more successful capitalist company is, the less purchasing power workers have. So technically speaking, capitalism is an anti economic system. Socialism is more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy where the government has less control and power over the people.
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@chrisvouzoukos389 , dude, you talk about sophistry but what you're saying doesn't make any sense. Even if Marxism was a about a centrally planned economy, which it's not, what does that have to do with Richard Wolff position? Richard Wolff is not an advocate of planned economies. He's not talking about planned economies. He's talking about modes of production. Recode even know what the argument is and you're talking about sophistry? 😀
Richard Wolff argument is very simple. Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. They also get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why most things are made in China and why wages are so low. However, when workers own their own businesses and factories, then they get to be their own boss and they get to keep all of the well that their labour produces. Do you understand? That's not sophistry, that's just common sense and should be self-evident.
here's a video you might find of interest. it covers the 10 main misconceptions about Marxism. Marxism is an analytical tool. 99% of what Marx wrote had to do with analyzing capitalism. He wasn't much interested in coming up with answers problems.
A Marxist response to Jordan Peterson https://youtu.be/42eJu22scY8
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@chrisvouzoukos389 , who said anything about having a right to someone else's labour? What are you talkin about? No one said anything about having a right to someone else's stuff. You just can't invent things and then insert them.
Yeah, a person is legally entitled to open a business, either individually or collectively. What does that have to do with the argument? Like I already said, there's hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States. So why are you telling people to start them? Again, you talk about sophistry but you're not making any sense. I will mention again, for the third time, the argument is not about whether someone is legally entitled to start a business, the argument is that worker-owned companies are better for workers and communities compared to capitalist Enterprises. How can this possibly be too complicated for you to understand?
Richard Wolff is pointing out that if you don't want to waste many years of your life making money for other people, if you want to get 100% of the value from your labour, if you don't want to have a boss, someone who has authority over you dictating to you, then you either have to start your own business or you have to join/start a cooperative. A lot of times people are not in the position to be able to start their own company because they don't have the resources. Getting together with a group of people is a good alternative. That's what he's pointing out. just like owning your own home would obviously be preferable, but if you can't own your own home, then Cooperative housing might be a better alternative than paying high rent to some landlord. Why fund someone else's lifestyle When you can be putting that money into your own pocket. the argument isn't that difficult. It's very very simple and very straightforward.
also, since you brought it up, saying that when someone works for someone else that it's always voluntary, that's not correct. most people have no choice but to sell their labour in order to survive. Most people are not in a position to be able to change jobs. In the United States there are millions of people working in horrible conditions. huge number of people commit suicide every day as a result of being stuck in an intolerable environment. Most people live from Check to Check and can't even afford a family on a single income. you want to talk about sophistry, saying that employment is a voluntary Exchange between an employer and employee, that's just libertarian claptrap. It's ridiculous
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@hamisam7651 , but it's because of capitalism that people have to work 12 and 14-hour days. The only reason people today are not working 17 hours a day along with 9-year-old children is because so many people got up and fought against capitalism. Back in the days of JP morgan, rockefeller, carnegie, they had pretty much pure capitalism.
The reason that there's so much poverty and why we still have to work 40 hours a week or more, that's because under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. The richest 1% now has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. That means the vast majority of people have to compete for What Little is left over. Whoever does the most work for the least amount of money, they're the ones that get the jobs. Competition drives people into poverty while simultaneously increasing profits for the few.
Under socialism you wouldn't have to work that long because you would own the product of your labor. You would get all of the wealth that your labor produced. And on top of that, you would get to keep more of your money because when buying goods and services you'd only be paying for the labor, not have you most of that wealth going to shareholders. For example, you have people like Clint Eastwood that made hundreds of millions of dollars in the movies. He used that money to buy Capital which allows him to make thousands of dollars per minute, even while he's sleeping. So when you buy food, toothpaste, chewing gum, electricity, etc, you're not just paying for the cost of the product or the labor, you have to pay people like Donald Trump and Clint Eastwood. That's why things are so expensive. Under a real economic system things will be getting cheaper and working hours would be getting shorter while Prosperity would be increasing.
Productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. But under capitalism that led to the Advent of the billionaire class because everything produced by workers belongs to someone else. It's like if you triple the output of a cow that doesn't help the cow, because the milk belongs to the farmer.
Socialism is the idea that the cow should actually own its milk! Not someone else. I think that's a pretty good idea. But of course the capitals class they don't like that because if you own your own milk, then they can't! Basically we're talking about the difference between freedom and slavery
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@majorjockitch , no, the type of socialism he's talking about gives the maximum control and freedom to the people. We know this to be true because there are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world.
Here is an example of two social owned workplaces in the United States. You'll notice that the assembly line workers at the bread factory make between 65 and $70,000 a year. That's because they own product of their own labour and because they're their own bosses.
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
We know exactly how well Democratic workplaces function compared to capitalist Enterprise is because there are hundreds of thousands of them and there's no shortage of hard empirical data to go by.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
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@ExPwner , yeah, you're a very educated person. Very very intelligent. I'm always very impressed by your acumen.
▪ James Adams:
" I am very intelligent. I have a master's degree in accounting."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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Yeah, the United States is number one for prison population, selling weapons to dictatorships, mental disorders, spousal abuse, serial killers, Etc. However, when it comes to equality, education, literacy, freedom, social Mobility, quality of life, happiness, the United States does very very poorly compared to most European countries.
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@MA-uc9qu , the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about doesn't have anything to do with the government or state ownership.
And it's because people are lazy and greedy that we need socialism. You see, the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about is a non-hierarchical, bottom-up democratic form of organization. That means there's no one at the top that has authority over those underneath. Therefore you don't have to worry about corruption, greedy people, evil people, Etc. Under capitalism you have to worry about those things. Not only can your boss tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom, he can replace you with a family member or any other form of nepotism. Under socialism, you don't have to worry about that kind of thing.
There are 3 main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, social programs, minimum wage, consumer safety standards, Labour laws, Etc. without these regulations capitalism would collapse. this type of socialism is prominent in Canada, the United States, Etc. Americans like to call it Democratic Socialist. in Europe they call it social democracy. Same thing, different name.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs. (state-owned Enterprises). Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour.
a few examples,
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
Here are two examples of socially owned companies in the United States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
If we increase the number of democratic workplaces, that will make it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. that's because you'll have more members of the community with greater purchasing power. People will be buying more beer, pizza, trips to the bowling alley, Etc.
Traditional socialism / anarchism is simply about workers collectively owning and controlling their own company or factory democratically.
Worker cooperatives keep wealth and control with the community and workers. They make them less dependant upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. Therefore, they are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy.
When workers have more money, they spend more. That makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. However, when purchasing power is eroded, which capitalism does because capitalist corporations want to maximize profits by reducing production cost, then the economy contracts because there's inadequate purchasing power to cover the goods and services in circulation.
you might find this diagram helpful
https://images.app.goo.gl/j9yxejh1ok3fy2ah7
this short video should help clear up any misconceptions and preconceived ideas regarding socialism. https://youtu.be/mZ_geTZaJOw
You see, the core concept of socialism has always been about workers owning and controlling their own means of production. That idea goes right back to the time of the Enlightenment. indirect ownership, through the government, that concept came at a much later date.
if you like, I can recommend over a dozen text books on the subject. I can almost guarantee several of them will be available at your Public Library. Do you have a library card? Would you like those references? I would also recommend that you read a people's History of the United States, whether you live in the USA or not. you also might want to do some research on the enclosure movement and the history of wage slavery compared to chattel slavery.
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@arielroman8644 , no, that's not what capitalism is. Capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. Merely selling the product of one's labour is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. If you write a book and sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. When workers own their own means of production and do their own work , that is not capitalism. In order for it to be capitalist the workers would have to hire other people to do the work for them while only paying them a portion of the well that they create with their labour.
The core concept of socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. Traditionally socialism was about the direct ownership of the means of production. Much later on socialism divided into two categories. Direct ownership and indirect ownership to the government. The traditional socialists, people such as myself and Noam Chomsky, don't consider State ownership to be a legitimate form of Socialism. we refer to this as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital and acts as the employer instead of a private individual.
Richard Wolff is a traditional socialist. He's not talking about State ownership. He is making an argument for direct worker ownership.
socialism is conducive to free markets and thriving economies. capitalism is not. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. You can't achieve equilibrium if workers don't get the full value of their labour. If 75% of the wealth produced by labour goes to the billionaire class, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of the goods and services they produce. however, if consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. that's why there's so much debt under capitalism and why there's so much instability.
Capitalism Is a modern form of slavery.
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@RANDassociatesinc , I already did. I gave you two examples. You want more?
>>> Forms of social production:
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social mandate, while still earning an adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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You didn't see that section of the debate where Richard Wolff explains that he's started and operated several successful companies?
We know what Richard Wolff is saying regarding worker-owned companies compared to private companies because there's no shortage of hard empirical data to go by. The data is very very clear.
No, Patrick couldn't even make one single solitary argument or counter-argument. The man didn't even know that markets and capitalism are two different things. Richard Wolff has literally written textbooks on these subjects. He's been teaching these subjects for three-quarters of a century!
We know exactly how well socialist companies compared to capitalist Enterprises. That's because there's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies in the United States and around the world. We have data going back almost a hundred years!
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪ Study number 5: The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
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@angelo-001 , oh cool! thanks for the link!
Socialism doesn't have anything to do with giving money away. The core concept of socialism is workers collectively owning their own business or factory, operating them democratically. Statistically speaking, collectively owned companies are more durable, more stable, more efficient, the workers are happier, more productive, more creative, take less sick days, Etc. They are bought them up, non-hierarchical Democratic forms of organization. Because the workers actually own the product of their labour, the more they make, the more wealth they accumulate.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@ajb7786 , Richard Wolff doesn't know economics or history? Are you out of your mind? do you honestly think a person who was educated at Harvard, Yale and Stanford, achieving a PhD in economics, and then teaching the subject for well over half a century, do you honestly think such a person could accomplish all that without understanding economics? Seriously? If he doesn't understand economics or history, then how come he's never had to make a retraction in any of his Publications? Someone Like Richard wolf ever got making a mistake, his detractors that are funded by multi-billionaires would be throwing it in his face at every turn. It would be brought up at every debate.
Anyway, you certainly can't say that Richard Wolff does not know economics. That's simply not being rational. you seem to be triggered over his criticisms. why are you having such an emotional reaction? Is your identity fused with the capital system? If someone attacks capitalism, do you yourself feel attacked?
And yes, capitalism is a horrible system that's based on exploitation. it was one of the most destructive and wasteful system ever devised. One child dies every 15 seconds from starvation even though we throw away 1.2 billion tons of food annually just to artificially maintained prices within the capitalist Market. 80% of the world's population subsists on $10 a day or less. there's no reason for this. We've had the capability of producing far more than were able to consume since 1929. Since 1950 productivity has more than tripled while the need for labour has been cut in half. most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. However, the two richest Americans have more wealth than the poorest half of the population. that bottom half of the population actually lives 20 years less compared to the top 10%.
capitalism is not even conducive to free markets. it violates basic economic principles. for example, one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a downward spiral. You have a domino effect. but, because corporations want to maximize their profits, they do everything they can to suppress wages. As a result, production output increases at a much faster rate than wages do. so how can workers actually afford all the goods and services in circulation? they can't. That's why there's so much debt. Any erosion of purchasing power has to be offset with increased access to credit. that helps keep the system going for a while, but in the long run, interest on that credit will only serve to reduce purchasing power even further, exacerbating the situation. Capitalism is a religion.
and if that's not bad enough, you also have to consider how it's destroying the planet. we might have already passed the Rubicon in regards to global warming. Capitalism is the most wasteful and destructive system ever devised.
"It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials.
But these facts are not connected across the fields of expertise which track them. As the earth is thus stripped and polluted by ever more unfettered global market operations, the market paradigm of value that leads governments does not factor into its calculus the countless life forms, habitats and systems which are thus extinguished and poisoned. When objections are raised, the followers of the paradigm that rules sternly warn that all is necessary ‘to keep the economy going’. Peoples increasingly observe that their life-ground is being devastated, but no ‘new discovery’ reports that every step of decision behind this process of life-destruction is taken to enact the global market programme."
At this stage of the global market system’s reproduction of transnational money sequences to unheard-of volumes and velocities of transaction and growth, a systematic and irreversible destruction of planetary life-organization emerges for the first time in history. If we consider the defining principles of carcinogenic invasion and eventual destruction of a life-host, and do not avoid or deny the symptom profile in evidence, we discern a carcinogenic pattern increasingly penetrating and spreading across civil and environmental life-organization.
There are seven defining properties of a cancer invasion which medical diagnosis recognizes at the level of the individual organism. These seven properties can now be recognized for the first time at the level of global life-organization as well. And this is the pathological core of our current disease condition.
That is, there is:
(1) an uncontrolled and unregulated reproduction and multiplication of an agent in a host body; that
(2) is not committed to any life function of its life-host; that
(3) aggressively and opportunistically appropriates nutriments and resources from its social and natural hosts in uninhibited growth and reproduction; that
(4) is not effectively recognized or responded to by the immune system of its hosts; that
(5) possesses the ability to transfer or to metastasize its growth and uncontrolled reproduction to sites across the host body; that
(6) progressively infiltrates and invades contiguous and distant sites of its life- hosts until it obstructs, damages and/or destroys successive organs of their life-systems; and that
(7) without effective immune-system recognition and response eventually destroys the host bodies it has invaded.
John McMurtry
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined." ~ Michael Parenti
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People don't have equal opportunity under capitalism. Especially not in the United States. And Richard Wolff is not talking about equal outcome. Where did you get an idea like that from? he's not talking about the type I'm socialism where workers actually own and control their own businesses, directly. That's the type of socialism he's advocating.
for example, almost 60% of the USA gets its electricity from worker and community-owned Electrical cooperatives.
there are hundreds of thousands of democratic, socially owned workplaces in the United States and around the world.
example, Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@djlee21 , Richard Wolff is not advocating the type of socialism that's associated with taxation. second, increasing the number of democratic workplaces would actually decrease in Need for progressive taxation. third, you most certainly do not get to keep most of the wealth that you're labour produces under capitalism. under socialism you do. Like I already pointed out, at a socially owned company, workers own the product of their labour. Therefore, they actually get to keep all of the wealth that their labour produces.
for example, at the socially owned bread factory the assembly line workers are able to make $70,000 per year. That's because they own every loaf of bread that they make. so, if they make a million dollars with a bread, that money goes to the workers. However, when workers produce a million dollars at a company such as Walmart or Amazon, most of that money goes to idle shareholders, many of whom may not even be in the same country. That's the difference between socialism and capitalism.
Socialism rewards workers that allows them to keep all the wealth that they produce with their labour. capitalism allows rich people to keep most of the wealth produced by labour.
under capitalism, when you get a blood test or toilet paper to wipe your ass with, most of the money goes to some Idol shareholder or owner, not to the worker that actually produce those things.
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No, that simply isn't true. When you have 90% of the pie going to 1% of the population, you're going to have a lot of poverty, regardless of hard people work or how much education they get. It's like thinking that everyone can win the lottery if they just buy enough tickets. No, the map doesn't work that way. Just like the lottery, under capitalism, for everyone winter you have to have many losers. The richest 1% now have almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population.
However, as Richard points out, social collectivism greatly improves your odds of succeeding. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@timcoulter7691 , statistically speaking worker cooperatives are more efficient, more durable, more Innovative, Etc. Also workers are happier, more creative, more efficient, they work harder, they take less sick days, there's less suicide, substance abuse, alcoholism, Etc.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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Marxism is a type of science. it's an analytical tool.
all Richard Wolff is suggesting is that workers get together and form their own cooperatives. that way they can keep all of the money the company produces and they can be their own bosses.
For example, almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from these types of workplaces. There are thousands of worker cooperatives in the US.
Another example,
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@AlexB-ts8hd , Karl Marx is an extremely admirable individual. How can one not admire Karl Marx?
How do you know what Richard Wolff has or has not contributed to society? Him and his wife have made numerous contributions the society.
he doesn't support government coercion. you make but yet another assumption. He supports traditional socialism. That is, he supports direct worker ownership and Community ownership. There are hundreds of thousands of those types of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world.
in fact, almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from those types of workplaces. those types of workplaces make workers and communities less depended upon the government, not more. They also make them less dependant upon billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods.
They are more conducive to a free market in the thriving economy because wealth and control stays with the workers and communities. When you increase purchasing power, the economy expands. When you erode purchasing power, which capitalism does, the economy contracts. That's because jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a domino effect. so, in order to keep consumption from slowing in the face of ever-increasing erosion of purchasing power, people have to be given more and more access to credit. More and more credit has to be pumped into the system. That's one of the reasons why interest rates are so low and why there's so much debt. now they're talking about introducing negative interest rates and a universal basic income.
if you have 75% of the wealth produced by labour going to the owners of capital, did obviously workers are only going to have 25% of the needed purchasing power to consume the goods and services they are producing. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when production output increases at a much faster rate than income? how can you achieve equilibrium when under capitalism it is impossible for workers to actually earn enough money to be able to consume all of what they produce?
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@IndoorNewb , who said anything about everyone achieving comparable levels of success, health, wealth, Etc? Where did you ever get an idea like that from? You just take that assumption and then projected onto the speaker?
There's nothing natural about capitalism. I don't know where you got that idea from either. Socialism is natural and conforms to Nature.
You think it's natural for a small minority of people to own the product of the labour of most of the people on the planet? You think it's possible for a person the natural world to be able to convert their labour energy into a billion dollars? Dude, even with the most modern, advanced labor-saving technology, even if you could convert your labour energy into enough wealth where you could save $200,000 a year, it would take you no less than five thousand years to accumulate 1 billion dollars.
There are billionaires out there that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per second while they're sleeping just from their Capital Holdings! There's nothing natural about that.
Socialism is natural because people are only entitled to the wealth that they actually work for. And keep in mind that labour includes both mental and physical efforts. So all of the inventions, all of the technology that we have, all of the knowledge we have, that all came from labour. Capitalism is not about working for a living. It's about capitalizing on other people's labour like a parasite.
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@carad2008 , you honestly believe capitalism is the best we can ever achieve? Capitalism is economic feudalism. Most of the capital ends up being owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. Obviously you should get most of the wealth produced by your labour, not someone else. You don't need capitalism in order to have a business, to have a market, to have production, to have people selling and trading with one another, Etc. so I don't know why you think it's the best we could ever do. Capitalism is more of a religion than an economic system. It violates basic Market principles. However, socialism is more conducive to a free market in thriving economy because wealth actually stays with the workers and communities. Wages are commensurate with production output. Therefore equilibrium can be achieved, which is one of the central goals of economics. How can you achieve equilibrium under capitalism when production output increases at many times faster than income? Jobs are tied to consumption. The consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. But obviously if production is increasing at a faster rate than wages, workers are not going to be able to afford all the things they produce. That's why there's so much death and why the interest rates are so low. Capitalism doesn't even make any sense.
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@ExPwner , I'm actually going to add this comment to your list of intelligent statements. Yeah, the Invisible Hand works just fine. 😀
▪ James Adams:
" I am very intelligent. I have a master's degree in accounting."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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What are you talkin about? Socialist companies are more in line with human nature. That's why statistically speaking workers are happier, more productive, more creative, there's less incidence of mental illness, substance abuse, suicide, etc. There are numerous studies that show that when workers have control over their own lives and labour, they have much better Mental Health. But when you work at a capitalist company, where the boss gets to dictate when you work, how hard you work, what you can wear, when you get to eat, even when you get to go to the washroom and for how long, that's not exactly conducive to human Mental Health. Probably one of the reasons why the United States is number one when it comes to mental disorders. According to the Journal of psychiatry, almost 25% of the American population is suffering from some form of mental illness.
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@nastasedr , dude, you're obviously not familiar with the enclosure movement or the transition to capitalism. That transition was extremely violent and bloody. There's a reason why capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. People had to be driven off of their land with Force before they would consider renting themselves out.
Yes, capitalism is a modern form of slavery. Workers do the work but only get paid a fraction of the wealth that their labour produces. That creates a serious problem when it comes to maintaining equilibrium within the market. one of the central goals of economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you do that if wages are not commensurate with production output? If workers only get 25% of the wealth from the goods and services they produce, then they're only going to be able to afford 25% of the products in circulation. How do you maintain jobs through consumption? You can't. The more wealth you extract from labour, the less workers can afford to buy. It's a pyramid scheme. Why do you think we still have the 40 Hour Work Week even though productivity levels has more than tripled since 1950?
It's like when you give bovine growth hormone to a cow in order to double milk production. Does the cow end up with twice the amount of milk? Does the cow get to work half as many hours? No. The farmer end up with twice the amount of milk. Likewise, give labor-saving technology doubles production, that increase wealth goes to the owners of capital. That's why we saw the Advent of the billionaire class rather than a reduction in working hours.
any erosion of purchasing power has to be offset with increased access to credit. Otherwise, consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. Unemployed people have to compete with one another and that drives the value of Labor down even further. However, would you increase purchasing power, then the economy expands.
maybe some labour history would be helpful:
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/theres-a-huge-desire-to-revamp-our-exploitive-economy-bubbling-in-the-collective-unconscious/
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
"The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence."
when you work as an employee, the boss tells you when you work, how hard you have to work, Etc. they can cut your wages, your working hours, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
https://chomsky.info/nothing-for-other-people-class-war-in-the-united-states/
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
https://chomsky.info/20141201/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
https://chomsky.info/the-common-good/
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
From <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith>
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@nastasedr , I was using 25% as an example to make a point. Yes, of course there are risks when you open up a company, it doesn't matter whether the company is socially owned or privately owned.
again, the argument is that worker-owned companies and factories are better for workers and communities. They are more conducive to a free market in thriving economy because wealth and control stays with the workers. When the workers have more purchasing power, they can spend more into the economy. However, when it comes to capitalist companies, they want to maximize profit. How do they do that? By maximizing production output while simultaneously keeping costs as low as possible. that includes wages. But that creates a disparity between purchasing power and the goods and services in circulation. One of the reasons why there's so much debt and why interest rates are so low. Pumping credit into the system keeps things running temporarily. But the interest attached do the debt only serves to reduce purchasing power even further in the future. You cannot have continuous expansion on a finite planet. It's no longer necessary for people to work 40 hours a week in order to produce all the goods and services needed by Society. The only reason people are working 40 hours a week now is because capitalism is driven wages down so low people need to work that many hours in order to survive.
. have a few textbooks I would recommend that you read. They should be available at your Public Library.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism https://archive.org/details/historyofcapital00mich
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles https://tinyurl.com/y6xqz7cw
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge. . ISBN 978-0415241878.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0-8476-7396-4. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ethics-efficiency-and-the-market-9780198285335
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital." https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/16915671?q&versionId=19853882 .
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@nastasedr , worker-owned companies are not capitalist. Merely selling the product of your labour is not capitalism. if you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and you sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. Also, markets are not unique to capitalism.
Yes, of course people can get together and start a business if they have the means to do so. But no, you can't say nothing is stopping people. You obviously don't understand how capitalism works. Capitalism is dependant upon people being an extreme state of dependency. That's why it didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. If you remove that state of dependency, then capitalism would cease to exist. If you could get the full value of your labour, would you work for a company such as Walmart or Amazon? no. Of course not.
There's a socially on break Factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. That's because they own the product of their labour. When you're an employee, not only do you have to follow orders like a dog, you end up doing all the work while someone else gets a big chunk of the money. They call it wage slavery for a reason. Anyway, economic democracies are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. Capitalism is not a viable system. Violates basic market and economic principles. one of the reasons why Adam Smith was a anti-capitalist. He pointed out that the division of labour would reduce the working class to a bunch of mindless idiots. I would recommend getting some of Richard Wolff text books and Studying his material.
And what's this idea of using Force? where did you get that idea from? An economic democracy provides more freedom. It removes centralized concentrations of power and authority. Richard Wolff is talking about a democratic, non-hierarchical bottom-up system of organization. There's no Force. Just the opposite. You don't even understand the argument.
Yeah, that's right, if we had equal opportunity, then worker cooperatives would win out. Obviously. there's a reason why 44% of the GDP comes from worker cooperatives in some regions of Europe. If you have the option of getting the full value of your labour, If You Can Be Your Own Boss, if you have equal voting power at your place of employment, would you instead choose to work at a dictatorship for a fraction of what your labour is worth? No, I don't think so. The vast majority of people are not in a position to start their own company or cooperative because capitalism as them in the state of dependency. Most people live from Check to Check and are scared to death of losing their jobs. something like 60% of the American population can't even afford a $400 emergency. They're afraid of going bankrupt from an unexpected a medical emergency even though they have health insurance.
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There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world. There's one place in Spain where over 100,000 people own their own factories, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Hospital, Etc.
Worker-owned companies are more efficient, more productive, workers are healthier, more creative, take you or sick days, Etc.
Here's a multi-billion-dollar capitalist business owner that sold 50% of his company to his employees. What was the result? Did that decrease efficiency and economic success? Nope. Just the opposite. The results were so staggering he's actually going to give the other 50% of the company to his employees!
https://youtu.be/35epDjB_7WE
There are studies in data going back well over a hundred years! We know exactly how well socialist companies compare to capitalist Enterprise
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@lukemiller1385 , I didn't say that it's not possible for an average person to become a billionaire. I said it's extremely unlikely. I said the vast majority of people, especially people living in the United States, will die either at the same socioeconomic level they were born into, or lower. You need to realize that for every 1 billion are there has to be hundreds of thousands of people to support that wealth. In order to have two billionaires with more wealth than the poorest half of the American population, you have to have a lot of poverty. As a massive wealth expands in the hands of the few at the top of the Apex, poverty has to expand at the foundation. That's why the average American can no longer afford a family on a single income. As a consequence of having more billionaires we see more and more of the GDP that used to go to workers going to Capital owners. There's a dynamic there. A correlation.
I did anyway, what does any of that have to do with the argument? The argument that Richard Wolff is putting forth is very simple. Worker-owned Enterprises provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities compared to capitalist Enterprises. workers get to keep all of the well that their labour produces and they get to be their own bosses. People should only be entitled to the well that they generate with their own Labour. Living off of other people's labour, which is what capitalism is about, is immoral and parasitic. again, every time you have a dollar going to someone who didn't work for it, somewhere else you have someone who worked for a dollar that they don't get. Wealth just doesn't materialize out of thin air. it requires labour mixed with capital. also keep in mind that labour includes both mental and physical efforts. if you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. that is you converting your work, both mental and physical efforts, into a marketable product.
if you are really interested in free markets and people being properly compensated for their hard work, then you would be in support of socialism and against capitalism. capitalism is the economic system of parasites.
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@andrewderksen3342 , yes, socialism is more conducive to Small Business Development, markets, thriving economies Etc. Capitalism destroy small businesses, markets, and economies.
Under capitalism people are forced to grab as much of the market share as possible. They want to maximize profits by increasing production output while decreasing wages. larger company's end up driving the smaller companies out of business. Workers don't have adequate purchasing power to buy all the goods and services that are producing. Jobs are tied to consumption. Consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. Employed workers compete with one another for the remaining jobs. That competition drives the value of Labor down while again increasing production output. Consumption has to be maintained by increasing access to credit. That's why everybody's in debt.
However, if you increase the Cooperative sector, then you're basically keeping wealth with the workers and communities. Workers have more money to spend, the economy expands. That makes it easier for people to start their own small businesses.
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@nayanmipun6784 , under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. They also get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China.
Capitalism is about owning for a living. It's the idea of collecting wealth without actually having to work. The more Capital you have, the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. No work required. for example, For example, there is a person who won the lottery last year where i live. he won 60 million dollars. That money is currently sitting in a bank account. He is getting 3% interest on that 60 million.
That comes to 1.8 million dollars a year.
That's $150,000 per month.
That's $35,000 per week.
that's $5,000 a day.
That's $200 an hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, for the rest of their life, until the day they die. and they will pass that privilege onto every child they have and every woman that they marry.
now let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has about 200 billion dollars now. So, hypothetically speaking, if he were to dump all of his Capital assets and just put that money into the bank account at 3% interest, he would be accumulating 6 billion dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing.
That's 500 million dollars a month.
That's a 115 million dollars per week.
That's 16 and 1/2 million dollars per day.
that's 685,000 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
How long does it take you to use the washroom? Let's say it takes you 1 minute to take a dump. by the time Jeff Bezos takes a dump, he has an extra $12,000 in his bank account. 😃
where do you think that money comes from? Every dollar of that has to come from labour. Every time you take out a student loan, every time you buy toilet paper, a toothbrush, finance a house, a car, Etc. you have to pay some rich individual for that privilege. He gets to collect that amount of money without doing any work at all. And, unless he's actually capable of spending $600,000 an hour, with every passing hour, he'll be making more money than he did before.
capitalism is the economic system of parasites. now when it comes to socialism, democratic workplaces, then you truly get rewarded for your contribution. you get the full value of your labour. for example, there's a socially on bread factory in the United States where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. that's because the own the product of their labour. however, and assembly line worker at a capitalist company would be lucky to make a bit more of the minimum wage. That's because they do not own the product of their labour. It doesn't matter if they make $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product. Most of that money goes to the owner of the company.
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@nayanmipun6784 , under the capitalist system most people will remain in the state of dependency due to no fault of their own. Again, most of the wealth ends up going to people that don't work. That's why we now have a situation where the two richest people have more wealth in the poorest half of the US population. The eight richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. It's not possible for a person to convert their labour energy into a billion dollars. Even if you made $100,000 a year it would take you no less than 10,000 years to accumulate a billion dollars. Every time you have a dollar that goes to someone who doesn't work, somewhere else you have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get. That's why we still have a 40-hour work week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. Capitalism is the economic system of parasite it is economic feudalism. Economic democracy is more conducive to innovation, free markets and thriving economies. Capitalism squanders most of the resources and human potential. Most people don't even get a chance to go to school. 80% of the world's population subsists on less than $10 a day. One child dies every 15 seconds from starvation even though we throw away 1.2 billion tons of food and relief in order to maintain prices artificially within the capitals Market because the more there is a something the less it's worth. If food cannot be sold, it's thrown away, regardless of how many starving people there are. Under capitalism markets do not supply demand they Supply what people can afford. So if something becomes scarce, like milk, the Market will supply the cats average people before it supplies the children of poor people. The ruling class loves capitalism because scarce resources get allocated to the 1%
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Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@ExPwner , you don't know anything about US labor history. 😀 Antitrust laws were enacted in the United States to prevent monopolistic practices and promote fair competition in markets, as capitalism leads to the concentration of market power in the hands of a few dominant firms. competition -> winners -> competition between winners -> stronger winners -> ..
Capitalism gravitates toward monopoly for many reasons:
1. Economies of Scale: In many industries, larger companies can produce goods or services more efficiently and at a lower cost per unit. This makes it difficult for smaller competitors to compete, leading to the consolidation of market power in the hands of a few large firms.
2. Barriers to Entry: Monopolies or oligopolies arise when there are significant barriers to entry in an industry, such as high startup costs, access to distribution channels, or intellectual property protection. These barriers can discourage new competitors from entering the market.
3. Network Effects: Some industries, like social media or telecommunications, exhibit network effects. The more users a platform or network has, the more valuable it becomes. This creates a winner-takes-all scenario, where a single dominant player emerges.
4. Mergers and Acquisitions: Large companies acquire or merge with smaller competitors, further concentrating market power.
5. Regulatory Capture: Powerful corporations can influence or capture regulatory agencies, shaping regulations in their favor. This allows them to stifle competition or maintain their dominant position in the market.
6. Innovation and Patents: Companies with significant resources can invest in research and development and secure patents, protecting their innovations from competition for a certain period. This leads to monopolistic advantages in technology-driven industries.
And the list goes on and on. Can you imagine how bad things would be if we didn't have antitrust laws and regulations?
Some of the key antitrust laws in the United States today include:
1. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890: This law prohibits certain business activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace.
2. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914: This law addresses specific practices that the Sherman Act does not clearly prohibit, such as mergers and acquisitions that may substantially lessen competition.
3. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914: This established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for enforcing antitrust laws and protecting consumers from unfair or deceptive practices.
4. The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936: This law prohibits price discrimination that substantially lessens competition or tends to create a monopoly.
These laws, along with subsequent amendments and legal interpretations, form the foundation of antitrust regulation in the United States.
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@derektomlinson6514 , of course. China has a top-down government. Their economy is based on a combination of privately owned and government-owned Enterprises.
There are three main types of ownership:
you have private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), and you have communism (no class, money or state). Communism comes from the word community. It works like this: https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans (create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@TheEMC99 , also, capitalism leads to slavery. Collectivism leads to Independence and prosperity.
Under capitalism most of the capital is owned and controlled by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by Labour and they get to control the economy. Under socialism the workers control the economy. under capitalism the ruling class controls the economy.
There are hundreds of thousands of community-owned and worker-owned companies and factories in the United States and around the world. Those types of workplaces are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy because wealth and control stays with the workers and the community. When you increase purchasing power of workers, the economy expands because workers can buy more stuff.
however, capitalism erodes purchasing power. The imperative under capitalism is to maximize profits. The way that is done is by increasing production output as much as possible while keeping wages as low as possible. But that creates a situation where workers cannot afford the very goods and services they are producing. Basically, capitalism violates basic market and economic principle. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. Therefore you cannot have an economic system where production output is increasing at a faster rate than wages. Put it another way, if you have to bake 10 loaves of bread just so you can afford one loaf, where does the purchasing power come from to buy the other 9 loaves? debt!
community-owned workplaces do not have that problem because wages are actually commensurate with production output.
for example, there is a socially own bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year. they're able to make that much money because they own the product of their labour. when you do not own the product of your labour then you are nothing more than human livestock. just like if you were to double milk production of a cow using bovine growth hormone, that extra milk goes to the farmer. The cow doesn't get to work half as many hours or end up with twice the amount of income. likewise, it doesn't matter if an employee makes $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product. And assembly line worker will get paid close to minimum wage or as little as possible. They've basically made that money for someone else.
capitalism reduces 96% of the world's population to wage slavery. Being a slave is not freedom. working under a dictatorship Where someone else gets to keep most of the money that your labour produces, that is the opposite of freedom.
here's an example of to socially owned companies in the United States. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@ExPwner
James Adams, top quotes....
▪ James adams: "Profits don't cause inflation you moron. How can you possibly be this economically illiterate? Prices are not set by profits. They are set by Supply and demand! This is econ 101."
Doesn't have a clue how increasing prices increases profits. Doesn't understand that when prices rise faster than wages, we are actually earning less money.
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam." Yeah, sure, capitalism doesn't create working class owning class dichotomy we're a very small minority of wealthy people own most of the capital on the planet and get most of the wealth.
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist." Yeah, capitalism doesn't cause any quality. We only have a situation where the rich is 1%, now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. And the eight richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. 😀
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality." Yeah, you're right. Americans are number one for depression because they have so much freedom. 😀
>>>> USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people.
~ (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005.)
>>>> Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime.
~ cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact sheet
▪ James Adams on the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility." How do you think social Mobility is calculated? It's based on a person's ability to access healthcare, education, etc.
▪ Here's an example of your reading comprehension. 😃
https://youtube.com/shorts/jxPulUGuBHU?feature=share
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@crcardenal , that's right, United States is the most capitalist country. And what is the consequence? Now China has a larger economy. In the United States most Americans can't even afford a family on a single income. The USA comes in at number 27 in regards to social Mobility. That means you have a better chance of achieving the American dream in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, even Lithuania has a higher level of social Mobility than the United States. there are Americans that are actually moving to China because they can achieve a higher standard of living there with their education.
▪︎ The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/21/news/economy/davos-oxfam-inequality-wealth/index.html
• starving Americans form one quarter mile-long line up at Food Bank https://trib.al/jSmp1t0
▪The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ The richest 5% of the population owns 67% of the wealth. The poorest 60% of the population owns 1% of the wealth.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪︎ The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/13/child-homelessness-highest-in-more-than-decade-feds-say/?platform=hootsuite
▪︎ 44% of US workforce aged 18-64 makes less than $16 per hour!
30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut back throughout the years by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
▪︎ 44% of fully employed people make $18,000 a year or less
>>> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/
>>> https://therealnews.com/stories/employment-numbers-fully-employed-low-pay-no-security
▪︎ Low-Wage Jobs are the New American Normal.
Low-wage workers make up nearly half of the American workforce, and many of them are the sole breadwinners for their families.
https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-american-normal
▪︎ more than one-third of us healthcare costs go to bankruptcy! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-costs-administration/more-than-a-third-of-us-healthcare-costs-go-to-bureaucracy-idUSKBN1Z5261
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes since 2004.
▪ There are 554,000 homeless people on a given night.
▪ The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation.
▪ 3% of American adults—6.8 million people—are either in jail or prison or on parole or probation.
▪ A third of states have a form of debtor’s prison, where the poor are locked up for failure to pay fines or debts.
▪ There are 1.2 million police officers in the US—almost equal to the population of the state of New Hampshire.
▪The police have killed 15,000 people since 2000.
▪ There are 55,000 children presently in juvenile detention.
▪ In 2017 Over 30 million Americans had no health insurance and even more are under-insured with high deductibles and co-payments.
As of May 2018, the numbers of people in the U.S. without health insurance have risen to 15.5%, up from 12.7% two years ago, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey. This translates to an increase of four million uninsured people nationwide. ~ forbes.
▪ "the US tops all European countries in terms of the percentage of workers and family members who avoid necessary trips to the doctor because they fear financial ruin from the inflated costs of their private health care." ~
Prof. James Petras (the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies)
▪︎ Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/07/americans-healthcare-medical-costs
▪ USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people. ~
(Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005 Jun;62(6):617-27.)
▪ Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. ~
cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact_sheet
■ Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/senior-citizens-are-replacing-teenagers-at-fast-food-joints
■ "A lot of people, a little over 60%, are filing bankruptcy at least in part because of medical bills. Most of them are insured. It’s clear that despite health insurance, there are many, many people incurring costs not being covered by their insurance" ~ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insurance-medical-bankruptcy-debt
▪︎ With 58% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, corporate America is exploiting poverty through blood and plasma donations while most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds.
~ https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor-late-stage-capitalism/263175/
▪ how life under capitalism causes trauma! https://eand.co/how-life-under-predatory-capitalism-traumatized-a-nation-c90969df042d
▪︎ Companies Spend $340 Million Annually To Stop Workers From Organizing.
Would you prefer that the wealth created by your labour goes into your pocket, or to be used to keep you suppressed and your wages low?
http://labor411.org/411-blog/companies-spend-340-million-annually-to-stop-workers-from-organizing/
▪80% of the population lives on less than $10 a day!
▪50% of the population lives on less than $2.50 a day!
▪The bottom third, more than a billion people, live on a 1.25 a day!
▪ one child dies every 15 seconds from starvation.
▪ 30,000 people die per day from starvation and malnutrition.
▪ 1.2 billion tons of food is thrown away annually in order to maintain prices in the capitalist Market.
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined." ~ Michael Parenti
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@andrewwilson1975 , I never said that states socialism is more conducive to free markets and thriving economies. I said the type of socialism Richard Wolff advocates is more conducive.
You see, when workers own their own companies in factories then they get all of the wealth that their labour produces. That means they have greater purchasing power. That means they can buy more stuff in the economy. When you increase demand, the economy expands.
However, capitalist companies are about maximizing profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. But that creates a situation where production output increases at a faster rate than income. That creates a situation where workers cannot actually afford all of the goods and services they put into circulation. Literally, the more successful a capitalist company is, the less purchasing power workers have. Eventually consumption will slow, people get laid off and can't consume. You end up with a domino effect. That's one of the reasons there is an economic downturn every 4 to 7 years.
Socialist companies don't have that problem because the workers get paid the full value of their labour.
For example, there's a socially owned bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 a year. They can make that much money because they own the product of their labour. An assembly line worker at Walmart or Amazon is lucky if they make 20,000 a year.
That's why under capitalism labor-saving technology doesn't reduce working hours or increase prosperity for workers. Everything produce belongs to someone else. Basically, workers are nothing more than human livestock. If you give a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, the farmer is up with twice the amount of milk. Likewise, if a worker is given a machine that doubles his production output, he doesn't get to work 4 hours of the day instead of eight. He now produces twice as much for his employer.
So yes, socialist companies are far more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy. That's because they do not violate basic economic principles. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when the goal is to keep wages as low as possible for the maximization of profit while producing as much How can you achieve equilibrium when the goal is to keep wages as low as possible for the maximization of profit while producing while getting workers to produce as much as possible?
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No, Patrick couldn't even make one single solitary argument or counter-argument. The man didn't even know that markets and capitalism are two different things. Richard Wolff has literally written textbooks on these subjects. He's been teaching these subjects for three-quarters of a century!
We know exactly how well socialist companies compared to capitalist Enterprises. That's because there's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies in the United States and around the world. We have data going back almost a hundred years!
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪ Study number 5: The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
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@cybrdelic , none of that has anything to do with the argument. Again, the only reason people work for Jeff Bezos is because they don't have the option of getting the full value of their labour elsewhere. If all workers had the option of getting the full value of their labour, they wouldn't work for Jeff Bezos in the first place. That's the point.
Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. That creates a situation where most workers will never have access to Capital. That means they have to compete with one another for jobs with those individuals that do own capital. That competition drives the cost of Labor downward. The more there is a something the less it's worth. That's why the average worker is less expensive send your typical chattel slave. Chattel slaves had to be clothed, fed, given medical, housed, Etc. They also had to be educated. They were huge investment. That's why wage workers were used for the more dangerous jobs. Wage slaves are disposable and easily replaced.
If Amazon was worker-owned, each employee would be making about $400,000 a year. Again, the only reason that workers are willing to slave away for Jeff Bezos for a fraction of what their laborers actually worth, that's because capitalism creates an environment where workers have to compete for jobs. People like Jeff Bezos are dependant upon workers being in the state of dependency. The reason capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement is because workers had to be driven off of their land and separated from their resources before they would submit to wage slavery. If too many worker cooperatives came into existence, that state of dependency would be greatly reduced. More and more workers would seek to own their own means of production. That would greatly drive up the cost of labour for people like Jeff Bezos.
Capitalism is based on extracting as much wealth from labour as possible. Workers are push to produce as much as possible while being paid as little as possible. The last Jeff Bezos pays to workers, the more money he gets to keep.
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@cybrdelic , that has nothing to do with the argument or the facts.
The fact of the matter is that when workers own their own companies and factories, then they get 100% of the wealth their labour produces. When workers work at capitalist companies they do not get anywhere close to the full value of their labour.
Again, the average worker at Amazon produces about $400,000 worth of wealth with their labour each year. But they only get paid minimum wage. Conversely, there is a socially on bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year because they own the product of their labour. Their labour produces $70,000 worth of wealth and they get to keep all of that wealth. But at the capitalist company most of that wealth goes to the owner while the workers are doing all of the work.
That's why so many workers prefer socialism compared to capitalism. Socialist companies provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities.
Who do you think is going to create more demand in the economy? Someone with $70,000 worth of purchasing power or someone who makes minimum wage? When the wealth close to the workers, that is more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy because the workers can buy more stuff! However, when most of the money goes to billionaires, the workers are in a situation where they can't actually afford all of the goods and services they produced. That's bad for the economy. That's why there's so much debt under capitalism. And because workers don't own the product of their labour, labor-saving technology doesn't reduce working hours. A worker is basically no different than a dairy cow. If you give a dairy cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production the cow doesn't get twice the amount of Milk. The Cow doesn't get to work half as many hours. All of that milk belongs to the farmer just like everything produced at Amazon belongs to Jeff Bezos. That's why workers are called wage slaves. In this environment labor-saving technology led to the Advent of the billionaire class.
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@cybrdelic , and what does that have to do with anything that I've said?
Billionaires can afford railroads, electrical companies, apartment buildings, hotels, grocery stores, Etc. They then can make massive amounts of money off of other people's labour. That's how capitalism works.
For example, not too long ago duguay's purchase the Canadian railroad. Billions of dollars that used to go to Canadian infrastructure and workers now goes to Bill Gates. When that money goes to workers, they can buy more stuff. Bill Gates also purchased newly privatized Labs were people get their blood tested. Now people have to pay extra money to Bill Gates to get their blood tested. If you have to pay an extra $5 for a blood test, that's five less dollars you're going to have to buy goods and services produced by your fellow workers. That's one of the reasons why capitalism is not conducive to a free-market and thriving economy. It is the economic system of parasites. With every passing day we have more and more of the GDP going to the owners of capital rather than workers. You can't have an economic system where production output is increasing many times faster than income. Capitalism is a religion. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. Capitalism is in direct opposition to that very basic principle. What do you think would happen if you spend $1,000 every time you earned $50? Likewise, if workers produce $1,000 worth of product for every $50 they earn, and there's not going to be enough purchasing power in the market to maintain jobs through consumption.
If we had an economic system where wages were actually commensurate to production output, labor-saving technology would have reduced working hours to about three or four per week by now. But capitalism is based on wage slavery. It doesn't matter that a worker can now produce a thousand times more per hour than what he could in 1929. All the extra wealth produced by increases in productivity go to the owners of capital. Just like all the milk goes to the farmer and not the cow.
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actually, it's the other way around. they work even better than they sound.
worker-owned companies are statistically more efficient, more stable, more conducive to a free market and thriving economy, the workers are happier, more productive, more creative, they take less sick days, Etc. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. So we know exactly how well they were compared to capitalist Enterprises. But most importantly, workers on the product of their labour. that's why an assembly line worker at a US socially own Factory can make $70,000 a year. You're never see an assembly line worker making that much at a capitals company. That's because they do not own the product of their labour. If they make a million dollars worth of product, they basically made that money for someone else. If most of our GDP came from worker-owned companies, we probably all be working at 10 hour work week by now while having a very high standard of living.
and why would you want to fix the problems with capitalism? Capitalism definitely needs to be regulated for as long as it exists. But wanting to maintain capitalism is tantamount to wanting to maintain slavery. you don't need capitalism in order to have a market, have people producing things, having people selling and trading with one another. those things are not unique to capitalism. capitalism is about the maximization of capital accumulation for the purpose of extracting wealth from labour. it's the economic system of parasites. it's about owning for a living instead of working for a living. socialism is about working for a living and actually getting to keep what you work for. Capitalism is economic feudalism, literally. The type of socialism that Richard is talking about is economic democracy.
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Dude, there are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the United States and around the world. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. We know how they work, we know how well they work. We know how well they compared to capitalist Enterprises. Groups of people start cooperatives just like any individual starts a company. there's no shortage of data.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@daviev6186 , what are you talkin about? The beauty of free market capitalism? What does capitalism have to do with markets? Capitalism is not unique to markets. Also you don't need capitalism in order to have a business, have production, to have markets, to have people inventing things, people selling and trading with one another.
Markets and capitalism are two different things. You could change your mode of production from capitalism to socialist overnight and it wouldn't affect the market. Socialism is actually more conducive to free markets and thriving economies because income is commensurate with production output. one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve and maintain equilibrium. Capitalism makes that virtually impossible because the goal is to maximize profit by lowering production cost as much as possible. but that automatically creates a disparity between supply and demand. you can't be minimizing purchasing power on one end while you can't be minimizing purchasing power on one end while maximizing production output.. people need to be able to afford the things they're producing.
you don't want to system that forces people to do stuff? Well who does? that's why people are fighting against capitalism. that's why people want socialism. Socialism maximizes Freedom while capitalism actually restrict Freedom. It's extremely undemocratic.
when you work as an employee, not only can the boss tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom, he pretty much takes all the money that your labour produces. That's not exactly freedom. however, when it comes to socialize workplaces, there is no boss. You're Your Own Boss. You're free. and you get to keep all the money that your labour produces. if the employees at a democratic workplace make a million dollars worth of product, they have made themselves a million dollars. but if you work at a capless bread factory, it doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how fast you work. It doesn't matter how many loaves of bread you make. Every loaf of bread you make belongs to someone else. so if you make a million dollars worth of bread, you've basically made someone else a million dollars.
you imagine if someone with red hair said the best system for everyone is one in which people with red hair get 99% of the capital and therefore 99% of all the wealth produced by labour. would you will go along with that? Maybe if you had red hair. 😃 but if you don't have red hair, you'd probably look at the person like they're crazy and tell them to go jump in the lake. likewise, the ruling class spends millions of dollars annually on propaganda trying to convince people that their system is best for everyone. A system in which The richest members of society get most of the capital and therefore most of the wealth produced by labour. Do you have any idea how insane that is? think about that.
whoever controls the bulk of capital also controls the market and the government. and the thing is, under the system you don't even need to work for a living. It's the ideology that instead of working for a living you can own for a living. the more Capital you accumulate, the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. so yeah, talk to you about how beautiful capitalism is, that's just weird. what would be dutiful is having a real economic system where people actually get to keep the Money that their labour produces. An economic system where people actually have to work for a living. Not one based on the accumulation of capital for the purpose of extracting wealth from those people that do work. That's called an economic system of parasites.
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@daviev6186 , there are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. Almost 60% of the USA gets its electricity from worker cooperatives. from companies very similar to these two. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
there are 3 main types of ownership:
there is private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), & you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), which is the type of Coop/socialism being discussed in the video.. https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@daviev6186 , nope, I don't want to impose anything. I would like to see it easier for people to get the capital required to start their own businesses or cooperatives. if there was more variety, more options for workers, then businesses would have to compete for workers instead of the other way around. In China something like 30% of the GDP comes from cooperatives, another big chunk comes from state-owned Enterprises, and capitalist Enterprises. That's probably one of the reasons why they're doing so well. But in the USA, with every passing year, the cost of living increases at a faster rate than income. Workers have to become more and more competitive in order to get the job. Whoever has the most education, is willing to do the most work for the least amount of money, that's the person that gets the job. Only problem is, people no longer have adequate purchasing power to consume all the goods and services available. Rates of consumption are held up with debt. And sooner or later it's all going to come Crashing Down. the two richest people now have more wealth in the poorest half of the American population. money that used to go to workers is now going to at 1%. and things are only going to get worse unless something is done to decrease workers States of dependency on corporations
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@noahwallace3458 , statistically speaking economic democracy and worker-owned companies are more conducive to happiness and creativity. Workers are happier, more creative, more productive, they work more efficiently, there's less incidence of mental illness, suicide, substance abuse, workers take fewer sick days, and the list goes on and on.
▪ study number 1:
The ‘Merva-Fowles’ study, done at the University of Utah in the 1990s, found powerful connections between unemployment and crime. They based their research on 30 major metropolitan areas with a total population of over 80 million.
A 1% rise in unemployment resulted in:
a 6.7% increase in Homicides;
a 3.4 % increase in violent crimes;
a 2.4 % increase in property crime.
During the period from 1990 to 1992, this translated into:
1459 additional Homicides;
62,607 additional violent crimes;
223,500 additional property crimes.
▪ Study number 2:
The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪ Study number 3:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 4:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 5:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 6:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
▪ Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass. electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪ "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
▪ Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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The solution is very simple. The argument is very simple and straightforward. You see, under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. The argument is that you should get most of the wealth produced by your labour. So how do you do that? Well, one way to do that is by starting your own business. If you cannot afford to do it by yourself, or if you don't have the skills or education to do it by yourself, then you might think about doing it cooperatively. That's what Richard Wolff is explaining.
For example, there is a socially own bread factory in the United States were assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. That is because they own the product of their own labour. If they make a million dollars worth of bread, they've basically made a million dollars for themselves.
but when you work as an employee at someone else's company, it doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how fast you work. It doesn't matter if labor-saving technology is introduced which quadruples your productivity. Every loaf of bread that you make belongs to someone else. So if you make a million dollars worth of bread, most of that money will be going to someone else. That's all Richard Wolff is pointing out.
let's look at some worker testimony regarding socially owned workplaces:
• How about the Ocean Spray cranberry cooperative? Do those workers make minimum wage? 2000 employees produce roughly one and a half billion dollars annually. So how much do you think the workers get paid?
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
• how about these Cooperative owners in Argentina? Do you think they're making more or less money now that they are the actual owners? Do you think the business is actually doing better or worse now that the workers actually own the company and operated democratically? https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
• when you pay your electric bill, when you buy a home, when you buy a condo, Etc, do you want to be buying these things at cost! Or do you want to be putting money into other the pocket of middlemen that aren't actually doing any work or contributing anything? https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
• do you think these workers are making minimum wage? Or are they making a living wage? doesn't sound like they're enjoying being able to actually share in the decision-making process? Does it sound like they are happier having more freedom and control, along with getting paid more? https://youtu.be/8vJDhKMrncw
• these Cooperative is definitely provide more equality, freedom and prosperity compared to capitalist Enterprises. Along with that they have acceptance, the advantage pooling their resources for their families and community, autonomy & Independence (allowed to be unique, it's actually valued instead of discouraged), teaching and education are part of the job -not just simply producing like a Mindless robot!, support, real and genuine concern for your fellow workers and community, sustainable development, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/NO-8iI7GW70
• Evergreen cooperatives! One of the reasons they exist is because it's impossible have a quality life when only making minimum wage. They provide people with a living wage. https://youtu.be/4zU8_ofpPyQ
• even in poor countries during the financial crisis, the workers are still making a living wage, often much more than their American counterparts. https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
• Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
• almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from these democratic workplaces. https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
• a socially owned robotics company in the United States.
States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
▪︎ pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
▪︎ Here is Mondragon, a Federation of 120 companies, owned and run by the workers! 100,000 employees, 25 billion annual sales! They own their own bank, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, factories, they even have their own social programs and safety-net! Those Research Laboratories are so advanced that Intel, Microsoft and the Ford Motor Company actually pays them to conduct research and solve problems on their behalf!
https://youtu.be/8ZoI0C1mPek
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@continuouslylearning6152 , that's not true. Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. therefore they get most of the wealth produced by a labour. They don't have to do anything. There are billionaires out there that have inherited their wealth and have never had a job in their lives. some of these individuals are accumulating several million dollars per hour just from their Capital Holdings. Even if you only have 60 million, that still generates about $4,000 a day. There's no work required. All you do is go to the bank and put in your bank card. Where do you think that money comes from? Why do you think people have to work 40 hours a week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950? Technically speaking, we could have reduced working hours by half. But under capitalism, all increases in productivity go to the owners of capital, not the workers, not the people that solve problems, not those who work the hardest, the vast majority of it goes to the owners of capital. Just like when you play the Monopoly board game.
And this whole thing about wealth not being a zero-sum game, well there is a limit when it comes to how much labour energy can be converted to wealth. I shouldn't need to explain that to you. and when you have 95% of the wealth going to the richest 1% of the population, you're going to have a lot of poverty and a lot of starvation. that's why 80% of the Earth's population subsist on less than $10 a day. you can't have the richest 1% eating up 95% of the pie while the other seven billion people have to compete over the remaining 5%. social mobility in the United States is almost zero. the average American lives from check to check and is in debt up to their ears. most of these people couldn't even get a loan for a new toilet. LOL sure, you have people like Gene Epstein in the debate who is paid by billionaires to tell you that capitalism is not a zero-sum game and that anybody can become rich, anybody can become a movie star, and entrepreneur, a rockstar, Etc. well if you believe that, then you need to improve your basic math skills. and I also have a bridge for sale.
here's the reality of the economic situation in the United States. today it's actually much much worse and it's going to continue to get worse.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10163646961865618&id=544325617
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@boohacker , well I don't know if we're getting rid of taxes or government entirely. But if workers are making more of the decisions, playing a more active role in society in production, then there becomes less need for government. Also if more of the wealth actually stays with the workers instead of being massively concentrated into the hands of the few, then we would need as much taxation. Under capitalism progressive taxation is necessary because the foundation would quickly be sucked dry well the Apex over bloated, as it is now.
in theory we would quickly transition to a type 1 civilization and communism. Kind of loosely depicted in the type 2 civilization represented in Star Trek. Under socialism labor-saving technology reduces working hours while increasing prosperity. Incentives change. Instead of trying to create a useless jobs because people are dependant upon a 40-hour work week as a result of low wages, the incentive is instead to try to reduce meaningless work and labour. we already have the technological ability to form a natural equilibrium within the biosphere. We've had that ability for quite some time now. Unfortunately it's impossible under capitalism because capitalism requires constant growth and consumption. You can't have consumption on a finite planet. consumption has to be maintained and that's why we have perceived obsolescence, invidious consumption, conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence, Etc. under socialism we'd be able to eliminate needless waste. With superabundance crime rates would drop. many useless and redundant jobs would disappear. you would need as many prisons, prison guards, police, lawyers, judges, Etc. we probably be able to convert to a 10 hour work week very quickly.
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The type of socialism that Richard Wolff is referring to is simply the kind where workers own their own businesses and factories, operating them collectively and democratically. That's type of socialism works very well. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic companies in the United States and around the world. In fact, almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from democratic workplaces what are either owned by the community or the workers.
The main argument is that when workers own the company, they get all of the well that the company produces and they get to be their own bosses. therefore they mostly benefit the workers and communities, making them less dependant upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. and since they keep most of the wealth in control with the workers and community, they're more conducive to a free market in thriving economy.
Jobs are tied to consumption. If you increase purchasing power, then the economy expands. Capitalism, however, erodes purchasing power. The only way to keep the economy from Contracting is by increasing the availability of credit. That keeps the game going in the short-term, but eventually the interest attached to that credit will reduce purchasing power even further in the future. One of the reasons why there's a major economic downturn every 4 to 7 years.
one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. how can you do that under capitalism when the goal is to produce as much profit as possible? Maximum profit occurs when you get as much work out of your employees as possible while paying them as little as possible. so, hypothetically speaking, if 75% of the wealth ends up going to idle shareholders / owners, then obviously the workers are only going to have 25% of the purchasing power required to buy the goods and services they are producing. where does the purchasing power come from they consumed the other 75% in order to maintain jobs?
it's easier for worker-owned companies to maintain equilibrium within the economy because wages are commensurate with production output. Workers get paid according to their contribution. that's why it's possible for an assembly line worker to make $70,000 a year at a socially own bread factory but not at a capitalist company. if a worker makes $70,000 worth of bread at a capitalist company, most of that money goes to someone else. https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
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Of course Richard wolf understands that position. The problem is, it's a false position. Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. That's why they get most of the wealth produced by labour. The consequences their wealth accumulates at a much faster rate compared to everyone else. That wealth translates into economic power. The richest members of society are going to use that power to form their own government in order to protect their private property. And of course they're going to use the power of government to their advantage.
And even if you did have a limited government which only protected private property, then you would end up with it even worse situation than what we have today. Everything would be privatized and the working class would have no choice but to sell their labour for whatever monetary compensation they could get. The entire world would be owned by a handful of people. Workers would have to pay extra money to those owners of capital every time they wanted to buy toilet paper, chewing gum, education, houses, food, Etc. You would have a tyranny.
We came very close to having pure capitalism back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. People like JPMorgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, they were accumulating massive amounts of wealth while squeezing the citizens for every dime they had. They were accumulating massive amounts of wealth well nine-year-old children had to work because jobs didn't pay enough money to survive. Thousands of workers with die on a daily basis from water and food contamination because there was no consumer safety standards. Thousands of workers would also die from unsafe working conditions because there is no labour laws.
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@ExPwner , yeah, and you go around doing the opposite. 😀
James Adams, top quotes....
▪ James adams: "Profits don't cause inflation you moron. How can you possibly be this economically illiterate? Prices are not set by profits. They are set by Supply and demand! This is econ 101."
You claim to have a master's degree in accounting but don't know how increasing prices also increases profits? "sales minus expenses equals profit". And you don't understand that when prices rise faster than wages we are actually earning less money. And that means we're getting poorer under capitalism. Inflation has been increasing faster than wages for a very long time now. The goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible and charging as much as possible for goods and services. Corporations are now making record profits because they are increasing prices as much as they can.
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam."
Yeah, sure, capitalism doesn't create a working class/ owning class dichotomy where a very small minority of wealthy people own most of the capital on the planet, which enables them to get most of the wealth produced by labor and the power to make most of the decisions resulting in just about everything being made in china.
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
Yeah, capitalism doesn't cause inequality. That very statement proves that you have no idea what you're talking about. We only have a situation where the richest 1%, now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 91% of the American population. The 2 richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. And the 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. 😀
Look up Oxfam’s new inequality report: "The super-rich are thriving as millions slide into poverty."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality." Yeah, you're right. Americans are number one for depression because they have so much freedom, leisure time and lack of financial concern 😀
>>>> USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people.
~ (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005.)
>>>> Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime.
~ cdc g o v sheet
>>>> The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation. ~ The Wall Street Journal
>>>>>> As of 2020, According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
>>>> 30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut. ~ Time Magazine
No, that wouldn't cause people to be depressed.
You see, that's why social mobility in the United States is so low! Rather than more people getting access to critical Services over time, services are being cut! You don't even know how social Mobility works. Nimrod.
▪ James Adams regarding the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility." How do you think social Mobility is calculated? It's based on a person's ability to access those basic services.
>>>>> The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index! That's even worse than Portugal and Lithuania!
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Wage slavery is a type of slavery. It's true that it is different than chattel slavery. But when you work at a capitals company you're basically working in a dictatorship. If the boss tells you when you work, how long you get to work, how hard you have to work, he can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. Sure, the wage slave is free to choose we rent themselves out to. Back in the days of the Antebellum South wage slaves were disposable. They would be used for Dangerous work because they could easily be replaced. chattel slaves on the other hand, they were very expensive, they were a huge investment.
you don't own the product of your labour, then you are basically a Slave. everything you produce belongs to your employer. That's why we still have the 40 Hour Work Week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950 because a labor-saving technology. being a wage slave is like being livestock. if you give a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, the cow doesn't get to work half as many hours or have twice the amount of wealth. The farmer does. likewise, when machines double the productivity of a worker, all of that wealth goes to the owner. That's why an assembly line worker at a capitals company earns very little money, but at socially owned companies you have a simply line workers making as much as $70,000 per year at bread factories. that's because the own the product of their labour. if they make a million dollars worth of product, the workers get that money. when you're an employee, you've basically made that money for someone else.
"In what way do wage slaves differ from chattel slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the wage slave, while the wage slave belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave."
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@masinissaibrahimi5569 , why did you show me that video from fee? Are you familiar with the foundation of economic education? Do you know where they get their funding? they are a propaganda organization that's funded by billionaires connected to the oil and banking industry.
But anyway, as far as that video goes, it has nothing to do with the argument at all. Yes, when you own the company then you get most of the money that the company produces. When workers own the company, they get most of the money that the company produces. When you own the company, you get to be the boss. When the workers on the company then they get to be the boss. That is the argument.
Also, that video is being a bit disingenuous. They're talking about mom-and-pop type businesses. the problem is when you're dealing with huge corporations that are making trillions of dollars off of low wage workers. That becomes a serious problem because jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption flow, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a downward spiral. You end up with a domino effect. that's why there's so much debt. The more workers you have making low wages, the less demand you have for goods and services. if capitalists are getting 75% of the wealth from the products produced by workers, then obviously the workers are only going to have it up purchasing power to afford 25% of that which they produce. it's like having to bake 4 loaves of bread just so that you can afford one loaf. so where does the purchasing power come from to buy the other three loaves? that's why they came up with the idea of giving everyone a credit card.
You see, giving people a credit card and pumping credit into the system is tantamount to beekeepers replacing honey with high fructose corn syrup. you see, you can only extract so much honey from the honey bees before they die of starvation. the capitalists were able to fix that problem by using high fructose corn syrup as an alternative. when it comes to workers, you can only extract so much profit from their labour. the more profit you extract, the less the workers can afford to buy. they solved that problem by giving everyone a credit card. and now we owe trillions of dollars for no other reason than the money that should have been going to workers ends up having to be bored at interest. sure, that keeps the Monopoly game going for a while, but in the end the interest attached will erode purchasing power even further.
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@CP-pt1ot , like I already pointed out, of course there are differences between chattel slavery and wage slavery. and no, wage slavery is not just a word. it has a very specific meaning with very specific implications and consequences. words have meaning. the term wage slaves enables us to differentiate between someone who does not own the product of their labour and someone who does.
If you don't own your own labour and you have to rent yourself out in order to survive, then you are a wage slave. wage slaves do not get paid the full value of their labour. That's the point. They do not own the product of their labour. again, when you're a wage slave the boss tells you when you work, when you don't work, how hard you have to work, they can tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom, Etc. You do all of the work and someone else gets the most all the money.
The boss can replace you with his best friend, he can reduce your pay while increasing the amount of work you have to do. It is a literal dictatorship. The only difference is you can choose to take orders from someone else if you are in a position where you can actually switch jobs. Do you have any idea how many people are not in a position where they can financially change jobs?
Initially even the Republican Party considered that type of Labor to be a form of slavery.
here's some Labour history for you.
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/theres-a-huge-desire-to-revamp-our-exploitive-economy-bubbling-in-the-collective-unconscious/
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
https://chomsky.info/nothing-for-other-people-class-war-in-the-united-states/
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
https://chomsky.info/20141201/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
https://chomsky.info/the-common-good/
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
From <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith>
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war." ~
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
page 410 http://www.ultimorecurso.org.ar/drupi/files/Adam%20Smith%20%27The%20Wealth%20of%20Nations%27.pdf
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@CP-pt1ot , I already did make the point succinctly. Worker-owned companies are better for communities and workers. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities. capitalist companies provide those things mostly for capitalists.
and no, what I'm talking about is not a fantasy. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. We know exactly how well they were compared to capitalist companies. There is no Theory involved. We're talking about hard empirical data. We're talkin facts. Not fantasies, not Theory, not speculation. Do you understand?
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@CP-pt1ot , yes, that's true. The cow could continue to work the same number of hours while producing the double twice the amount of milk. the problem is, we've have the ability to produce far more than we're capable of consuming since the 1930s. Industry can't even come close to running at 100% capacity. So when you see a TV Factory that implements labor-saving technology, doubling production output with half the amount of Labor, half the workers end up getting laid off because the market can't not handle that many TVs. speaking of milk, do you have any idea how much milk Farmers have to throw away each year do the overproduction? Even though one child dies every 15 seconds from starvation, we throw away 1.2 billion tons of food annually in order to artificially maintained prices within the capitalist Market. You see, the more there is of something unless it's worth. But since most of the money is actually going to the owners of capital rather than the actual workers, workers need to work 40 hours a week in order to survive. that's why we have so much planned obsolescence. If we didn't have a throw-away disposable economy, the whole system would crash. most of a person's labour energy ends up going into the landfill.
here's a stat going all the way back to 1997!
"It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials."
Global Change Programme (Royal Society of Canada) Vol. 7: No. 3 (1996), 3; and Ernst Weizzsacker, Factor Four. London: Earthscan Books, 1997.
~ https://scienceforpeace.ca/action-and-understanding
~ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/03058298980270020228
~ http://www.jaunimieciai.lt/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-cancer-stage-of-capitalism.pdf
capitalism is one of the most wasteful and destructive systems ever devised.
workers have to be able to afford the goods and services they are producing. hypothetically speaking, if workers only make $25 for every $100 worth of stuff that they produced, where does the other $75 come from? one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when production output is increasing at a much faster rate than income? you can't! That's why there's so much debt. that's why people should only be entitled to the wealth today actually work for.
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well it's points are very simple. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. If workers can obtain their own Capital, then they can keep all of the money produced by their labour and they can own the product of their labour. And they can also be their own bosses. And that is more conducive to a free market and thriving economy because when workers have more money, they can spend more. jobs are tight to consumption. When people buy more stuff, the economy expands. But capitalism erodes purchasing power because corporations do everything they can to maximize profits, and that means hiring experts to figure out all the best ways to reduce production costs. As wages approaches zero, profits are maximized. but that violates one of the central goals of real economics. which is to achieve equilibrium. One way that capitalism gets around that contradiction is by increasing access to Credit in order to offset any reductions in purchasing power.
You see, under capitalism workers are nothing more than human livestock. if a cow is given bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, that milk goes to the farmer.
but anyway, Richard wolf is simply pointing out that if workers can obtain their own Capital, then they can keep all of the money that their labour produces and they can be their own boss. it's bad enough that the boss gets most of the money produced by labour, it's beyond insulting that on top of it he can actually tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. 😃
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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that's not true. There are many pre capitalist societies that had a high standard of living. also, as far as the quality of life we have today, we owe that thanks to the Scientific Revolution which occurred 500 years ago and the fight against capitalism. Capitalism didn't bring us heat our day, the five-day work week, consumer safety standards, the right to unionize, child labour laws, Etc. if it wasn't for all the people that fought and died resisting capitalism, we'd still be making poverty wages just like the third world countries. Back in the days of JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Etc, 1 in 11 workers used to die from exhaustion. 9 year old children had to work 16 hours a day so that families had enough to eat. even back then we have the technological means to produce far more than could be consumed by a society. but, thanks to capitalism, the means of production and Technology were owned and controlled by the richest members of society. Everyone else had to compete with one another for employment with those individuals. that competition drove wages down to Rock Bottom levels. Thanks to labor-saving technology, a Year's worth of product could be produced in less than 6 months. with every passing day more and more could be produced with less and less labour. Those increases in productivity served the owners of capital while workers became more and more desperate.
capitalism is economic feudalism.
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@scottmartin1845 , who said anything about guaranteed outcomes? I don't know what that has to do with socialism. worker-owned businesses can go bankrupt just like capitalist companies that their products don't sell. There are no guarantees. I'm assuming that you're referring to the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is advocating. Or maybe you didn't watch the video.
it's almost impossible for billionaire to lose his wealth.
For example, there is a person who won the lottery last year where i live. he won 60 million dollars. That money is currently sitting in a bank account. He is getting 3% interest on that 60 million.
That comes to 1.8 million dollars a year.
That's $150,000 per month.
That's $35,000 per week.
that's $5,000 a day.
That's $200 an hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, for the rest of their life, until the day they die. and they will pass that privilege onto every child they have and every woman that they marry.
now let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has about 200 billion dollars now. So, hypothetically speaking, if he were to dump all of his Capital assets and just put that money into the bank account at 3% interest, he would be accumulating 6 billion dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing.
That's 500 million dollars a month.
That's a 115 million dollars per week.
That's 16 and 1/2 million dollars per day.
that's 685,000 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
How long does it take you to use the washroom? Let's say it takes you 1 minute to take a dump. by the time Jeff Bezos takes a dump, he has an extra $12,000 in his bank account. 😃
where do you think that money comes from? Every dollar of that has to come from labour. Every time you take out a student loan, every time you buy toilet paper, a toothbrush, finance a house, a car, Etc. you have to pay some rich individual for that privilege. He gets to collect that amount of money without doing any work at all. And, unless he's actually capable of spending $600,000 an hour, with every passing hour, he'll be making more money than he did before.
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@scottmartin1845 , I have no idea what you're getting your ideas from.
Socialism and communism work very well in the United States.
Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from communally & socially owned electric coops. Community is where the word communism comes from. Are you using commie electricity right now? https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
here is a very successful socially owned bread factory. Do you think socialist bread tastes better than capitalist bread?
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Capitalism, however, mostly works for the rich. For the vast majority of people, capitalism is the opposite of freedom: https://youtu.be/4xqouhMCJBI
Capitalism is economic feudalism. So, what does economic democracy look like? See the 41:30 minute Mark. The guy in the red shirt explains how it works.
https://youtu.be/ZfaFriFAz1k
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@scottmartin1845 , dude, are you having a hard time with reading comprehension? There are places in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. Do you know why? There's a reason why the United States is number 27 in the world when it comes to social Mobility. There's a higher Social mobility in Lithuania and South Korea. LOL the two richest people in the US have more wealth in the poorest half of the American population. Well over 60% of Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. It's not that the worker Cooperative model doesn't work well, it's just that for most Americans, the United States of the third world country for them. Also, they have no knowledge of worker cooperatives or how to start one. 😃
▪︎ The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/21/news/economy/davos-oxfam-inequality-wealth/index.html
• starving Americans form one quarter mile-long line up at Food Bank https://trib.al/jSmp1t0
▪The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ The richest 5% of the population owns 67% of the wealth. The poorest 60% of the population owns 1% of the wealth.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪︎ The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/13/child-homelessness-highest-in-more-than-decade-feds-say/?platform=hootsuite
▪︎ 44% of US workforce aged 18-64 makes less than $16 per hour!
30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut back throughout the years by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
▪︎ 44% of fully employed people make $18,000 a year or less
>>> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/
>>> https://therealnews.com/stories/employment-numbers-fully-employed-low-pay-no-security
▪︎ Low-Wage Jobs are the New American Normal.
Low-wage workers make up nearly half of the American workforce, and many of them are the sole breadwinners for their families.
https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-american-normal
▪︎ more than one-third of us healthcare costs go to bankruptcy! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-costs-administration/more-than-a-third-of-us-healthcare-costs-go-to-bureaucracy-idUSKBN1Z5261
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes since 2004.
▪ There are 554,000 homeless people on a given night.
▪ The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation.
▪ 3% of American adults—6.8 million people—are either in jail or prison or on parole or probation.
▪ A third of states have a form of debtor’s prison, where the poor are locked up for failure to pay fines or debts.
▪ There are 1.2 million police officers in the US—almost equal to the population of the state of New Hampshire.
▪The police have killed 15,000 people since 2000.
▪ There are 55,000 children presently in juvenile detention.
▪ In 2017 Over 30 million Americans had no health insurance and even more are under-insured with high deductibles and co-payments.
As of May 2018, the numbers of people in the U.S. without health insurance have risen to 15.5%, up from 12.7% two years ago, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey. This translates to an increase of four million uninsured people nationwide. ~ forbes.
▪ "the US tops all European countries in terms of the percentage of workers and family members who avoid necessary trips to the doctor because they fear financial ruin from the inflated costs of their private health care." ~
Prof. James Petras (the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies)
▪︎ Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/07/americans-healthcare-medical-costs
▪ USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people. ~
(Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005 Jun;62(6):617-27.)
▪ Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. ~
cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact_sheet
■ Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/senior-citizens-are-replacing-teenagers-at-fast-food-joints
■ "A lot of people, a little over 60%, are filing bankruptcy at least in part because of medical bills. Most of them are insured. It’s clear that despite health insurance, there are many, many people incurring costs not being covered by their insurance" ~ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insurance-medical-bankruptcy-debt
▪︎ With 58% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, corporate America is exploiting poverty through blood and plasma donations while most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds.
~ https://www.mintpressnews.com/harvesting-blood-americas-poor-late-stage-capitalism/263175/
▪ how life under capitalism causes trauma! https://eand.co/how-life-under-predatory-capitalism-traumatized-a-nation-c90969df042d
▪︎ Companies Spend $340 Million Annually To Stop Workers From Organizing.
Would you prefer that the wealth created by your labour goes into your pocket, or to be used to keep you suppressed and your wages low?
http://labor411.org/411-blog/companies-spend-340-million-annually-to-stop-workers-from-organizing/
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@andreeaalexandru7811 , of course it works. There are hundreds of thousands of democratically owned workplaces in the United States and around the world. Almost 60% of the USA gets its electricity from worker-owned cooperatives. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from cooperatives. There's a Cooperative in Spain where a hundred and twenty thousand workers own their own University, Hospital, high-tech Research Laboratories, Bank, Etc. The research and development department is so Advanced they get contracts with Microsoft, Intel and the Ford Motor Company. Then there's other massive companies such as the electronics company in China which is owned by the workers. We know exactly how well they compare to capitalist Enterprises. there's no shortage of data to go by
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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of course it's the fault of capitalism. under capitalism Banks, factories, construction for homes, utilities, everything is owned privately for profit. It all goes to the highest bidder. That's why just about everything on Earth is owned by the richest members of society. That allows them to get most of the wealth produced by labour and make most of the decisions. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China. it is economic feudalism. The government and monetary system is owned and controlled by the richest members of society, just like with all the other capital. That's how capitalism works.
Also, capitalism requires debt and fractional Reserve banking in order to remain viable. You see, under capitalism profit is the main objective. Workers are pushed to produce as much as possible while getting paid as little as possible. you have a situation where 75% of the wealth is going to the owners of capital. But that violates basic market and economic principle. That creates a situation where the workers can only afford 25% of the goods and services they are producing. The thing is, jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. unemployed people then have to compete with one another for the remaining jobs. That competition drives the value of Labor down even further, creating an even larger gap between purchasing power and available Goods / services. in order to keep consumption from slowing, credit has to be pumped into the system. But ultimately the interest attached will erode purchasing power even further. It's a temporary fix that's why they keep raising the debt ceiling.
under capitalism the wealth that is created by labor-saving technology end up going to the owners of capital. That's why we still have a 40 Hour Work Week. We no longer have to work 40 hours a week in order to provide all the goods and services needed by Society. But since capitalist and keeps wages down, most people have no choice but to work 40 hours a week or longer in order to survive.
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@NuvoVision , dude, you're not making any sense. No one is saying that the owner of a company shouldn't get all of the wealth or get to make all the decisions. Your company belongs to you. Just like your home. Obviously you wouldn't allow strangers to decide how you arrange your furniture in your house. So what are you talkin about? You sound like a raving lunatic.
Richard Wolff is pointing out that if workers want to be able to keep all of the wealth and make all the decisions then they have to own the company. Simple. It's like if I were to point out to you that you're better off owning a car rather than renting a one. Would you automatically jump to the conclusion that I'm telling you that you should go and steal someone else's car? No. Of course not. Don't talk like such a nutcase.
There are hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies in the United States and around the world. And guess what? None of them were stolen! Amazing, I know.. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned companies.
All Richard wolfer saying is that those types of companies are better for workers. He's also saying that it's easier for a group of people to get together and start a company rather than a solitary individual. That's because most people don't have huge amounts of money or a wide skillset which is needed to run a diverse company. If you're not rich person who can afford numerous professionals, and it's easier to get together with a group of people that different skill sets. That way people can learn from one another. Adam Smith Point to do that capitalism will make people stupid. That's because people are atomized doing specific jobs. But when workers own the company, they become more intelligent because they're taking an active role in all of the functions of the company.
Here's an example of two socially owned companies in United States. A bread factory and a robotics company. The assembly line workers at the bread factory make between 65 and $70,000 a year! That's because they own the product of their labour. Richard wolf is simply pointing out that when you do not own the product of your labour then it doesn't matter if you produce $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product It All Belongs to someone else while the boss pays you as little as possible. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
so I don't know where you're getting your ideas from. All you've got to do is look at the statistics. Workers at Democratic companies are happier, more creative, they take less sick days, they work harder, there's less incidence of substance abuse, depression, suicide, Etc. Also worker-owned companies are more efficient. And of course that makes sense because of the workers actually own the company then obviously they're going to be more motivated. Who in their right mind would want to throw away years of their life making millions of dollars for someone else? Doing all of their work, taking all of their orders while they end up with all the money?. Richard Wolff is just talking about simple common sense. I have no idea what you're talking about.
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@NuvoVision , no, it would naturally take over. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Capitalism was made possible by the enclosure movement. People had to be forced into extreme states of dependency. Billionaires can buy Hospital, parking lots, electric companies, grocery stores, apartment buildings, Etc. They can buy oil companies, massive amounts of land that contain gold mines, oil wells, natural resources, Etc. Most people are not in the position to be able to start their own business. Just like how most people in the United States today can afford a family on a single income. There are billionaires that are accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars per second just from their Capital Holdings. For example, Bill Gates recently bought the Canadian railroad. He also bought Labs where people get their blood tested. Millions of dollars that used to go to workers is now going into his pockets. That's millions of dollars of purchasing power that workers no longer have to buy goods and services from other fellow workers. That's why there's so much debt. People could get your scared to death about automation replacing their jobs. If we had a real economic system, people would celebrate automation. Under the capitalist system workers are nothing more than another form of livestock. If you give a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, the cow doesn't get to work half as many hours. The cow doesn't get twice the amount of milk. That's because the farmer owns the milk that the cow produces. Likewise, workers don't own the product of their labour. It doesn't matter if a worker produces $70,000 worth of wealth or 70 million dollars worth of wealth. It all goes to the owner. However, there's a socially on bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year.. why are they not making minimum wage like the assembly line workers at capitalist companies? That's because they do own the product of their labour. If everyone on the product of their labour, labor-saving technology probably would have caught working hours in halfback in 1950. The only reason we don't have a 18 hour work day today is because so The only reason we don't have a 18 hour work day today is because of the fight against capitalism. Same reason we don't have 9 year old children working 16 hours a day, six and a half days a week.
Again, capitalism was made possible by the enclosure movement. The only reason people work at Walmart where Amazon is because they're in a state of dependency. If you remove the state of dependency, then places like Amazon and Walmart would go bankrupt.
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@NuvoVision , and what do you mean two examples? There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. There's no shortage of hard empirical data that show us exactly how they compared to capitalist companies. Again, the problem is that most people don't have access to Capital the way that billionaires do. That's the problem. All you've got to do is read labour history. Most of the former slave owners didn't care about switching over to capitalism because they knew as long as they had the capital, the workers would have no choice but to rent themselves out or starve. That's where the term wage slave came from. Even the Republican Party called at wage slavery back then.
Capitalism is the economic system of the ruling class. That's why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually producing propaganda saying that it's natural and normal. It's not. It's like saying that blue-eyed people should get to own most of the world and get most of the money without doing any work. While the brown-eyed people have to do all the work, take all the orders, and get the least amount of money. Yeah. That's the basic religion that they have been selling people. You should get most of the wealth produced by your labour. Not someone else. Think about it.
"When a man is placed in a position where he is compelled to give the benefit of his labor to another, he is in a condition of slavery, whether the slave is held in chattel bondage or in wages bondage, he is equally a slave." — Quentin Skinner
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/the-anti-social-socialist-what-is-wage-slavery/.
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence." ~ Eugene Victor Debs
“What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're really selling is your life.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
"The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
Capitalist propaganda since 1945:
• Part 1: http://youtu.be/EIk6-4KosE0
• Part 2: http://youtu.be/QY8i4JXdpxs
• Part 3: http://youtu.be/fUOqrxrrY0k
• Part 4: http://youtu.be/ZQuPMRnInoY
• Part 5: http://youtu.be/ao0P7_P22BM
• Part 6: http://youtu.be/3433t89k4LY
"The history and development of social engineering in the 20th century" http://metanoia-films.org/human-resources/
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@armyretguy7365 , well there are three main types of socialism. The original was about workers directly owning their own Factory or workplace.
The second kind of socialism is indirect ownership through the government. SOEs or state-owned Enterprises.
Then you have the third type of socialism which is regulatory: progressive taxation, consumer safety standards, labour laws, minimum wage, social programs, antitrust laws, Etc.
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firm.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@armyretguy7365 , but in regards to worker cooperatives, there is a huge amount of data available. There's a worker Cooperative in Spain that has a hundred and twenty thousand workers that own their own bank, means of production, high-tech Research Laboratories, Hospital, they even have their own social programs.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@jaredstevens5382 , well it's one thing to become a millionaire. It's quite another to be able to earn a million dollars in one year. Of course there could be millions of millionaires. There might be a new millionaire created every week. Maybe one a day. A million today is not really a lot of money. But to have a million people learning that much on an annual basis? Maybe.
Richard is correct when he points out that it takes a lot of low wages to be able to support the annual accumulation of a million dollars. You see, even with labor-saving technology a person is only capable of converting so much of their labour energy into wealth. Even if you could legitimately earn $200,000 a year and save every penny of it, would take you no less than five thousand years to accumulate 1 billion dollars. For someone to accumulate million per year, well that's a lot of money. And I choose expense? See, all wealth has to come from mixing labour with capital. If you have someone accumulating wealth that they didn't work for, then it has to come at someone else's expense. Every time you have a dollar that goes to someone who didn't actually work for it, somewhere else you have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get. So there's a ceiling limit for how much wealth you could extract from labour. You see, unlike livestock, workers actually need to be able to afford the goods and services they produce. The only reason people can have million-dollar annual incomes today is because of fractional Reserve Banking and access to credit. The more wealth you extract from labour at the less workers can afford. As soon as consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. You have a domino effect. Hypothetically, if 75% of the wealth produced by labour goes to Millionaires and billionaires, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of the actual goods and services they create. So how do you maintain jobs through consumption? Anyway, I guess Richard Wolff doesn't believe labour would actually be able to support a million people extracting $1000000 annually from the economic pie. I mean these are pretty bad as it is. Look at how low interest rates are. Now they're talking about the possibility of introducing negative interest rates and implementing Universal basic income. There's a reason why one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you do that when you have an economic system where production output increases at a faster rate than income? It's a pyramid scheme. Printing money into existence is basically borrowing from the future.
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@jaredstevens5382 , stop copying and pasting what? Citations and references? No, I'm not going to type those things out by hand. That's why I use a computer and not a conventional typewriter. What a weird thing to say. The argument couldn't be any simpler or straightforward. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour and they get to make most of the decisions. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China. That's what we call a plutocracy. It's economic feudalism. People want to achieve socialism because they want to be free. If you don't own the product of your labour then you're nothing more than human livestock. You really think it's necessary for people to work 40 hours a week for most of their lives just so they can afford clothing, transportation and food and a little wooden box to live in? No. Of course not. When you don't own the product of your labour it doesn't matter if you produce $70,000 worth of product or 70 billion. That all belongs to someone else. Just like the milk from a dairy cow. So yeah, obviously workers want to own their own tools and resources. So they don't have to be weighed slaves doing other people's work to make other people money. Why would I want to throw away years of my life making money for you when I could the independent and keep all of the wealth that my labour produces? Sorry, but the argument is solid. You don't think my citations support the argument? Well I'm sorry but they do! Statistically speaking workers that on the product of their labour or happier, more productive, more creative, they take fewer sick days, there's less incidence of depression, suicide, Etc. There are thousands of studies! I couldn't even list them all. And you want me to type the Mofi hand? Are you out of your mind? Anyway, you actually have any counter-argument? You're so far you're not making any sense.
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@jaredstevens5382 , nothing I said was copied and pasted. Do you see why you don't State assumptions as fact? The fact that you would do such a thing, what does that say about you? You see, you completely destroy your credibility. You made a faulty assumption regarding me, you didn't even take the time to test your assumption. Whatever gave you the idea that I was using copy and paste? Anyway, Richard wolf doesn't have any motivation to lie or be dishonest. Do you think he makes money if workers get together and start their own cooperative? You see, the interviewer has a conflict of interest. He has a vested interest in maintaining the capital system. Do you know why it's so hard to convict someone in the court of law without the establishment of motive? Richard Wolff does his lectures and interviews at cost! And even if there was a way for him to profit from worker cooperatives, why would he want to? You think people like him and Noam Chomsky have extravagant lifestyles? The man already has more money than he needs. For people like him and Noam Chomsky, their greatest expense is probably books! Anyway, capitalism is an immoral system. It's based on exploitation and owning for a living. That's extremely disgusting! There are billionaires out there making hundreds of thousands of dollars per second! Where do you think that money comes from? You do realize that a person's only capable of converting so much of their labour energy into wealth, yes? If you extract more from the system than you contribute, then it has to come at someone else's expense. No one earns a billion dollars. It is not possible for anyone to convert their labour energy into that much wealth. Even if you could save $200,000 a year, it would take you no less than five thousand years to accumulate 1 billion dollars. Capitalism is a religion. We need an economic system that's based on science. Thinking that the richest people can own the resources on the earth while everyone else has to pay for Access fees and rent and sell their labour for a fraction of its worth to these owners of capital. That's insane. Why don't you read something that has a bit more credibility, like the Bible! 😃 and by the way, you'll know when I use copy and paste because I use quotation marks. LOL and next time, don't make assumptions about me. Ask first. Then you can either choose to believe me or not. I don't think you can actually know what I'm thinking or what I'm doing. Next you're going to be telling me what my favourite colour is what I just ate for lunch.
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@ceelothatmane9421 , that's simply not true. There are thousands of people that were born rich and simply use their money to buy up capital for the purpose of extracting wealth from labour. My brother never worked a day in his life. He owns multiple apartment complexes. everything he owns was paid for by his tenants. his tenants have to give up almost 70% of their income to him house rent. The tenants have paid for the apartment complex many times over. Not only have they paid for the actual building they live in, they also paid for everything that's in the building, they pay for the building's maintenance, they pay for the building's managers, and, on top of all that, they've also paid for my brother's home, his car, his lifestyle and even his kids.
I recommend watching a documentary that could be found on YouTube called born rich. Those children have never worked a day in their lives. They take their money and they buy things such as railroads, electric companies, apartment complexes, Labs where people get their blood tested, grocery stores, Etc. They didn't hire poor desperate people to do all of the work. So every time you buy toilet paper or get your blood tested, most of your money is actually going to someone who never worked instead of an actual worker who's producing those goods and services in the first place.
Capitalism is economic feudalism. It is the economic system of parasites. people should have to work for a living. capitalism is the idea that you shouldn't have to work for a living. that's why they joke that if you can't find a way to earn money while you're sleeping, then you're going to actually have to get a job and work for a living. yeah, that's the type of jokes they make. and then they paid professional spokespeople and politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, for example, to say that there's no alternative.
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@lukemiller1385 , what does Venezuela have to do with worker-owned companies? Venezuela has the least number of worker-owned companies. It would be better to move to those regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned companies. Don't you think?
yes, the number of billionaires and millionaires are increasing. But what does that have to do with the argument? Socially owned Enterprises mostly benefit workers and communities. Capitalist Enterprises mostly benefit capitalists. If you are underemployed, unemployed, overworked, stressed out from a controlling boss, then worker cooperatives are a good option.. they are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy compared to capitalist Enterprises. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities. Just like capitalist companies provide those things for capitalists.
also, just because the number of billionaires is increasing, That doesn't change the statistical fact that the vast majority of people will never accumulate a million dollars regardless of how hard they work or how much education they have. When it comes to social Mobility the United States only comes in at number 27. so, if you want the highest chances of being able to increase your Social Mobility, then there are 26 other countries that are better than the United States. yes, it's true that your chances of becoming a billionaire are better in the United States if you already have a lot of money, if you are a movie star, a rock star, a sports star, Etc. but for your average person, if you're just a regular worker with a standard education, and there's 26 other countries that you'll be better off moving to in regards to having a higher standard of living and being able to increase your Social Mobility.
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@rube1954rap , there are many barriers. For one thing, most people are in debt up to their ears. They live from check to check. Second, most people are not aware of worker cooperatives. third, it's hard to compete against capitalist corporations that can utilize state-of-the-art technology, multimillion-dollar advertising and propaganda, governmental regulations, Etc. Under the capitalist system most of the capitals owned and controlled by billionaires. they can mobilize both production and labour globally.
No, worker cooperatives are not capitalist. The core concept of socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. Merely selling the product of your labour is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. If you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. Businesses, markets, production, people selling and trading with one another, those things are not unique to capitalism. Worker cooperatives are not capitalist because the workers own the company collectively and they're doing their own work. They're not paying other people to do the work for them while capitalizing on their labour. That's what capitalism is all about. that's why capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. People had to be forced off of their land before they would accept wage slavery. that's why the conversion to capitalism was extremely violent and Bloody. back then wage slavery was considered to be almost as bad as chattel slavery.
but despite all the barriers, cooperative sector is expanding. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. there are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. In the United States almost 60% of the country gets its electricity from socially and communally owned electrical cooperatives.
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@rube1954rap , There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@rube1954rap , since there are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world, we know exactly how well they compared to capitalist companies. There's no shortage of hard empirical data which is been collected over the last 75 years.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@rube1954rap , capitalism exists because people are in the state of dependency. if you remove the state of dependency, then capitalism will cease to exist. for example, there's a socially on bread factory were assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. That's because they own the product of their labour. assembly line workers can't make that much money at a capitalist company. that's because they do not own the product of their labour. If everyone had the option of getting the full value of their labour, would they work for a fraction of their worth at a company such as Walmart or Amazon? No. Of course not.
Capitals and violates basic market and economic principle. For example, what are the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when workers don't get paid the full value of their labour? Is 75% of the wealth goes to the Rich minority, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of the goods and services they produce. Jobs are tied to consumption. Of consumption slows people get laid off and can't consume. The unemployed people end up competing with one another which drives the value of Labor down even further. why do you think there's so much debt? under capitalism nothing gets done unless someone can make a profit. But the problem is we can produce far more than we're capable of consuming. So it gets harder and harder to make a profit. Capitalism is a religion. however, when workers own the product of their labour, then labor-saving technology serves to reduce working hours. Right under capitalism all increases in productivity go to the owners of capital. Just like a cow when it produces milk. capitalism reduces people to human livestock. if a farmer gives a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, does the cow get to work half as many hours? no, you have a farmer with twice the amount of milk. That's why we saw the Advent of the billionaire class rather than a reduction of working hours. Anyway, it's not rocket science. all you have to do is think. Work out the math.
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Well the analogy is very fitting. When you work for an employer you have to do what you're told. Your employer tells you when you work, when you don't work, how hard you have to work, he can cut your wages, replace you with his best friend, even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. The employer gets to dictate and the worker has to follow orders. The owner is basically the king of his business. The workers are subject to have to do what they're told or they get fired. Most people are dependant upon their jobs.
From the beginning of capitalism read up to the early nineteen-hundreds, renting yourself out was considered to be a form of slavery. That's why they called it wage slavery. In the United States even the Republican party was against wage slavery. Renting yourself out was deeply offensive and embarrassing. you see, when you actually don't own the product of your labour, you're basically nothing more than human livestock. Just another form of capital. it doesn't matter if your labour produces $70,000 worth of product or 70 million dollars worth of product. most of that money will go to the owners of capital. that's why we still have a 40-hour work week even though we couldn't Easley produce all the goods and services needed in society with a 10 hour work week. Just like when you double milk production by giving a cow growth hormone, the cow doesn't get to work half as many hours. The mail call goes to the farmer. Just like with an employee.
some labour history;
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/theres-a-huge-desire-to-revamp-our-exploitive-economy-bubbling-in-the-collective-unconscious/
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
"The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence."
when you work as an employee, the boss tells you when you work, how hard you have to work, Etc. they can cut your wages, your working hours, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
https://chomsky.info/nothing-for-other-people-class-war-in-the-united-states/
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
https://chomsky.info/20141201/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
https://chomsky.info/the-common-good/
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
From <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith>
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war." ~
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
page 410 http://www.ultimorecurso.org.ar/drupi/files/Adam%20Smith%20%27The%20Wealth%20of%20Nations%27.pdf
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@dimitrivancamp1013 , easier to play the victim? I have no idea what you're talking about. The argument is very simple and straightforward. Worker-owned companies are better for workers and communities. Capitalist companies are better for capitalists. Worker-owned companies provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities. Obviously.
yeah, if you could start your own business as an individual, then that would probably be preferable. But that doesn't have anything to do with the argument or the facts.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@timothyhufker3565 , that's what socialism is. An economic democracy. Capitalism is economic feudalism. You haven't study basic political ideologies?
economic democracy n.
Economic democracy means that the participants in economic institutions (e.g. factories, stores and universities) decide on the policy of the institution.
Socialism:
1. "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
~ Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• "Socialism is an economic and political system. It is an economic theory of social organization. It states that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the workers who make the products, instead of groups of private owners. People who agree with this type of system are called socialists." ~
Durlauf, Steven N.; E. Blume, Lawrence. "socialism". DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS. Palgrave Macmillan 2013.
What are the 2 key features that make an economy capitalist?
1. production for profit:
most production of goods and services is undertaken by privately owned companies, which produce and sell their output in hopes of making a profit. This is called production for profit.
2. wage labor:
Most work in the economy is performed by people who do not own their company or their output, but are hired by someone else to work in return for a money wage or salary.
The working class makes up about 85% of Society. The top capitalist owners and managers make up roughly 2% of society. They own most of the major capital on the planet.
An economy in which private, profit-seeking companies undertake most production, and in which wage earning employees do most of the work, is a capitalist economy. These twins features - profit-driven production and wage labor - create particular patterns and relationships, which in turn shaped the overall functioning of capitalism as a system.
Capitalism is a system in which the bulk of society's work is done by propertyless labourers who are obliged to sell their labour-power in exchange for a wage in order to gain access to the means of life.
Wage laborers have to sell their labor power to a capitalist simply in order to gain access to the means of their own life and even the means of their own labor!
In the process of supplying the needs and wants of society, workers are at the same time and inseparably creating profits for those who buy their labour-power. The production of goods & services is subordinate to the production of capital and capitalist profit. The basic objective of the capitalist system is the production and self-expansion of capital.
So, when most of our GDP is coming from private companies, most of the wealth is going to the owners of capital. They get to decide how things are produced, where things are produced, what things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China and that's why the richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population.
But if most of the GDP is coming from worker-owned companies, because they're tied to the community, you have most things being made at home and most of the wealth going to the workers who spend that money into the economy. That makes it easier for people to start their own small businesses. The economy expands. It creates demand.
capitalism is an extremely anti- economic system. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. The goal of a capitalist company is in direct opposition to achieving equilibrium. The goal is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting the workers to produce as much as possible. But obviously you can't have an economic system where production output is increasing at a much faster rate than income. That's why there's so much debt. The more successful a capitalist company is, the less purchasing power workers have!
Why do you think it is that labor-saving technology doesn't reduce working hours even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950? Because 90% of the population doesn't own the product of its labour. It's like if a cow is giving bovine growth hormone to double milk production, the cow doesn't end up with twice the amount of milk or wealth. The cow doesn't get to work half as many hours. That's because all the milk belongs to the farmer. That's why I leave her saving technology led to the Advent of the billionaire class rather than reducing working hours while increasing prosperity for everyone. Since we can produce far more than we're capable of consuming, workers get laid off when labor-saving technology is introduced, those people that are laid off have to compete with the other unemployed people and that drives the value of Labor down even further. Workers remain depended upon a 40-hour work week in order to survive. When actuality we should only be working about 10 hours a week... that's why our economy is based on planned obsolescence, expansion and extreme waste. That's why we constantly have to be penetrating into other markets all over the world.
Here are two socialist companies in the United States. You see how they're democratically run? So if we had most of our GDP coming from such go to production, then we would an economic democracy. We would have a socialist economy. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@timothyhufker3565 , dude, what are you talkin about? Why are you associating capitalism with free-market? Are you out of your mind? 😃 capitalism is antithetical to free markets. If you believe in free markets, you believe in people being rewarded for hard work, then you would be anti-capitalist and pro-socialist. Again, capitalism is not about working for a living. It is about owning for a living. You have billionaires out there that are accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars per second just from their Capital Holdings. You think that's conducive to a free-market? You think destroying purchasing power of workers is conducive to a free-market? Every time you have a dollar that goes to someone who doesn't work, somewhere else who have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get.
Socialism is an economic system is based on science. People are only entitled to the wealth that they work for. Capitalism is about capitalizing on other people's labour. It's a pyramid scheme. It's no wonder that you can understand what Richard Wolff saying. You have all these preconceived ideas. Like associating capitalism with free markets. Wow! I don't even know what to say to that. You cannot have a free-market under the capitalist economic system. That's not possible. 😃 under the capitalist system the market is not free for 90% of the population. It gives the richest 2% the freedom to dominate and control the market. LOL. And then those people intern tell you that that's what freedom is. You actually believe these individuals? You take them at their word? http://youtu.be/EIk6-4KosE0 and then, when people like you actually believe what they're saying, they say that's evidence that democracy is dangerous because the average individual is not capable of governing their own lives let alone economic policy. That's why the founding fathers said that country should be governed by those who own it. Yeah, people like Donald Trump. LOL.
You really want to have to pay extortion fees to Someone Like Donald Trump every time you use toilet paper? Use electricity? For ninety percent of the population the only way they can get money for the means of survival is by manufacturing products on behalf of individual such as Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc.
Sure, it makes absolute perfect sense that you would actually support economic feudalism over economic democracy. It's completely reasonable that you would choose an economic system where 90% of the population doesn't actually own the product of its labour, basically reducing those individuals to human livestock.
Actually, maybe the ruling class is right. Maybe the working class is just not capable of governing their own lives. 😀
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@semblanceofdisorder , your comment doesn't make any sense. Just because Democrats are further to the left then far-right Republicans, that doesn't make the leftists.
Anyway, what does any of that have to do with the argument? Capitalism is an immoral system, it's based on exploitation, it's not sustainable, it's extremely undemocratic, it's bad for the workers, bad for the environment, bad for communities, Etc.
worker-owned companies are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. They're good for communities and workers. They decentralize power making People more independent. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities. Etc. That's the argument.
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There are many sources of funding. Where do you think people get the revenue to start a business? Obviously it's going to be easier for groups of people to start their own company than for a solitary individual. There's hundreds of thousands of worker owned companies all over the world. Where do you think wealth comes from in the first place? The workers invent the machines, build the machines, maintain the machines, operate the machines, etc. Under capitalism the richest members of society lay claim to the gold mines, the oil, the land, and therefore end up owning everything the workers produce. If workers got to keep the full value of their labor from day one, all of those machines, all of that capital, they'd be able to pay for it many times over.
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@anncl3983 , There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the Japan Post Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China (where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@anncl3983 , Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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Debra Charles , what assertion do you think I made? What part of what I said do you feel is an assertion?
what exactly is your argument? you honestly believe that a bottom-up, democratic non-hierarchical system where one worker gets one vote oh, you believe that can become a dictatorship? you're not making any sense. Even if workers didn't have 100% control, let's say the only had 85% control, is that not better than working at a capitals company where workers have zero control! is your argument that zero control is somehow better than workers sharing control equally, from the bottom up?
I've already provided a ton of data in this thread. I've also provided a huge list of different types of socially owned companies that exist in Europe. Why don't you listen to some worker testimony:
• Ocean Spray cranberry cooperative? 2000 employees produce roughly one and a half billion dollars annually. So how much do you think the workers get paid?
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
• Cooperative owners in Argentina https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
• when you pay your electric bill, when you buy a home, when you buy a condo, Etc, do you want to be buying these things at cost! Or do you want to be putting money into other the pocket of middlemen that aren't actually doing any work or contributing anything? https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
• shift change trailer https://youtu.be/8vJDhKMrncw
• these Cooperatives provide more equality, freedom and prosperity compared to capitalist Enterprises. Along with that they have acceptance, the advantage pooling their resources for their families and community, autonomy & Independence (allowed to be unique, it's actually valued instead of discouraged), teaching and education are part of the job -not just simply producing like a Mindless robot!, support, real and genuine concern for your fellow workers and community, sustainable development, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/NO-8iI7GW70
• Evergreen cooperatives! One of the reasons they exist is because it's impossible have a quality life when only making minimum wage. They provide people with a living wage. https://youtu.be/4zU8_ofpPyQ
• even in poor countries during the financial crisis, the workers are still making a living wage, often much more than their American counterparts. https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
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@bloodcamarosexmagik4223 , no, that's not true. Under socialism the people have control over the government. that's why it's called social. Same thing with socialist workplaces. Workers own and control their own factories and businesses. They do their own work. They don't capitalize on someone else's labour. They run the companies collectively and democratically. It's a form of social organization that is bottom-up and non-hierarchical. One worker equals one vote. You also have community-owned workplaces. For example, almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from community-owned electrical cooperatives. Would you rather have Communists electricity or capitalist electricity? worker testimony video https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
▪ fact sheet
https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
Just like with private insurance companies. Every time you go to the doctor, every time you use kilowatt of energy, do you really want to be putting money into someone else's pocket it doesn't actually work for a living? Do you really want to the funding some parasites lifestyle? Where I live I pay about $10 a month for electricity. That's because it's publicly owned. Our Hydro is a state-owned Enterprise.
under capitalism the government is owned and controlled by the owners of capital. It is their government. It is their economic system. the government does not represent the working class. Under capitalism the working class is nothing more then another commodity. The renter class.
some labour history:
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/theres-a-huge-desire-to-revamp-our-exploitive-economy-bubbling-in-the-collective-unconscious/
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
"The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence."
when you work as an employee, the boss tells you when you work, how hard you have to work, Etc. they can cut your wages, your working hours, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
https://chomsky.info/nothing-for-other-people-class-war-in-the-united-states/
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
https://chomsky.info/20141201/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
https://chomsky.info/the-common-good/
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
From <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith>
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war." ~
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
page 410 http://www.ultimorecurso.org.ar/drupi/files/Adam%20Smith%20%27The%20Wealth%20of%20Nations%27.pdf
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@bloodcamarosexmagik4223 , dude, capitalism is not a viable system. It violates basic market and economic principles. Don't you understand it's a religion? capitalism is full of contradictions. For example, one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium between supply and demand. You can't do that under capitalism because production output increases at a faster rate than wages. If you have most of the money you going to idle shareholders and billionaires rather than the actual workers, the workers are not going to be able to afford all the goods and services they produce. Jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. They have to compete with one another for the remaining jobs. That drives wages downward while increasing production output even further. Any erosion of purchasing power has to be offset with access to credit. But ultimately the interest attached to the credit Will just serve to reduce purchasing power even further.
however, worker-owned companies don't have that problem. That's because workers actually own the product of their labour. If they produce a million dollars worth of product, that money stays with the workers and communities. Therefore you have a balance between supply and demand. wages are commensurate with production output.
and you can't say it's a pipe dream, because we know exactly how well worker-owned companies perform compared to capitalist Enterprises. Worker-owned companies benefit workers and communities more than capitalist companies. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity. the workers are their own bosses, they get to keep all of the wealth that their labour produces, and there's more equality because they have equal voting power. sovereignty stays with the workers.
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@bloodcamarosexmagik4223 , seriously? 40 million people in the United States live in poverty. The vast majority of Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. they live from check to check. Most people can't take so much as a day off of work in order to look for another job. There are serious barriers the starting a business in the United States if you're in debt. people that have a ton of debt, student loans, Etc, they have a hard enough time borrowing money for something like a mortgage or car, which the bank can repossess If need be. you think they're going to loan money to such people for the purpose of starting a business or a Cooperative in a precarious economic environment? There's a reason why the United States comes in at number 27 in regards to social Mobility. there's a reason why regions in Europe at 44% of the GDP coming from worker cooperatives. we know exactly how worker-owned companies compare to capitalist Enterprises. there's no shortage of hard empirical data to go by.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion,
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@ExPwner , who is denying genocide? 😃 Which country has committed more acts of genocide than the United States?
Accordingly, members of the ‘free world’ competed with one another in denouncing the Soviet Union for the 75 years it existed. But at no time was ‘the free world’ exposed to such criticism by the same criteria of people murdered, killed, starved, persecuted, silenced or dispossessed. Yet its operations were no less subject to humane concern – for example, over two million Vietnamese, over a million Latin Americans, over one million Indonesians and over three million Algerian and sub-Sahara Africans killed by ‘the forces of the free world’ during the same period.
The twentieth century has come to be known as the Age of Massacre, but the mind-bias at work in blocking out one side of the massacre has been repressed from view.
Just in my lifetime the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958Laos 1964-73
Grenada 1983
Iraq 1991-2000s, 2015-
Iran 1987
Korea 1950-53
Kuwait 1991
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986, 2011-
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-Palestine 2010
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2007-08, 2010-
Sudan 1998
Syria 2014-
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002, 2009-
Yugoslavia 1999.
The United States has been committing acts of genocide from the time of the founding fathers! Even Abraham Lincoln was a mass murderer! Over 160 years ago he was responsible for the largest mass execution in US history when when he ordered the killing of 38 Dakota Nation members.
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Even before there were central banks capitalism was unstable. Of course capitalism is unstable. It violates basic market and economic principles. For example, capitalist corporations want to maximize their profit by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. But what is the consequence? Jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. You have a domino effect. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. You can't do that when production output is increasing at a faster rate than wages. The main goal of capitalism is in direct opposition to that basic principle. That's why they pump so much credit into the system. But it's only a matter of time before rates of consumption start to slow, people get laid off, and shareholders dump their stocks.
You see, you can capitalize on animals, such as honey bees, because if you take too much honey from The Beehive, the bees just starve. But if you take 50% of the wealth produced by workers, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 50% of what they're producing. Where did they get the purchasing power to afford the other 50%? You see there is a natural limitation, a ceiling limit, when it comes to how much wealth you can extract from labour. Fractional Reserve banking allows the capitals class to circumvent that limitation.
Workers under capitalism are nothing more than human livestock. When you don't own the product of your labour, you were basically nothing more than a human cow! And that's why labor-saving technology doesn't reduce working hours. If you give bovine growth hormone to a cow in order to double milk production, the cow doesn't get twice the amount of milk. It doesn't get twice the amount of wealth or to work half as many hours. All the milk belongs to the farmer. Likewise, it doesn't matter how much wealth worker produces with his labour. Everything he produces belongs to someone else. That's why it's possible for an assembly line worker to make $70,000 a year at a socially own bread factory but not while working at a company such as Amazon or Walmart.
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@nefuros551 , Marxism is a method of analyzation. 99% of Karl Marx work involved analyzing capitalism. He had very little to say about Socialism or communism. He didn't come up with Socialism or communism. Is Marxism or Karl Marx have to do with the argument? Most workers do not want to be wage slaves. They want to be free. They want to extricate themselves from capitalist slavery. That's why they want to own their own companies and factories. That way they don't have to sell their labour for a fraction of its worth. That's why they prefer socialism over capitalism. A Walmart worker probably produces $100,000 worth of wealth with his labour annually. Maybe even more. There's a socially on bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year just putting bread into a bag! So you can only imagine how much an assembly line worker is producing at a massive company such as Walmart or Amazon. So tell me, what is more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy? A worker getting paid $70,000 a year? Or a worker that gets minimum wage? Who was going to have more purchasing power? Which worker is going to be able to afford more stuff? Which person is going to be able to create more demand? You see, that's one reason why socialism is actually more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy. Again, capitalism erodes purchasing power. That is not conducive to a free-market and thriving economy. If you have to pay an extra $5 to Bill Gates every time you get your blood tested, that's five less dollars you have to buy goods and services produced by your fellow workers.
There is no justification for capitalism. You don't need it in order to have a business. You don't need capitalism in order to have a market. You don't need capitalism in order to have production. So why would anyone support capitalism other than those people that are extracting a huge amount of wealth from capital?
And I already told you that traditional exposure ilysm doesn't have anything to do with the government. What Richard Wolff is talking about in regards to worker-owned companies, that makes people less dependant upon the government. That decentralizes power. It doesn't increase it. So if you're against government, then you would be in favour of what Richard Wolff is talking about. Capitalism requires a huge government because it's the only way a small minority of rich people can control most of the capital and wealth on the planet. It's their government. It's their economic system. The government is controlled by the richest members of the capitalist Society. That's how capitalism works.
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the point is, when Amazon or Walmart produces 25 billion dollars in sales, most of that money goes to Idol shareholders, many of whom might not even be in the same country. but, when a socially own company, such as Mondragon in Spain, when they produce 25 billion dollars in sales, that money goes to the workers. That's the point.
Can assembly line worker makes $70,000 a year when they work at a capitalist company as an employee? No. Of course not. Why? Because they do not own the product of their labour. When you do not own the product of your labour, you are nothing more than human livestock. It doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how fast you work. It doesn't matter if you produce a million dollars worth of bread. Every loaf that you make belongs to someone else. So, if you make a million dollars with a bread, you've basically made someone else a million dollars.
But at a socially owned company, when the workers make a million dollars worth of bread, they get to keep all of that money. And they get to be their own bosses. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
did you know that almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from community and socially owned cooperatives? yeah, maybe you're using communist electricity right now! So, what do you think? you think communist bread and electricity is better than the capitalist version? would you rather work and serve your community or would you rather work and serve some billionaire like Trump? think about it. https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
cuz guess what? in my opinion, communist and socialist bread tastes way way way better than any capitalist bread. 😃
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
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@chrisw9534 , nothing you've said has anything to do with the argument. Yeah, of course people can start businesses under capitalism, what does that have to do with anything? Cooperatives are actually more productive, stable and innovative. Workers are happier, more productive, more creative, they take fewer sick days, there's less incidence of depression, suicide, substance abuse, Etc. And because people are a lot less likely to be laid off when working at a Cooperative, that has a major influence on crime, mental disorders, murder rates, etc, Etc.
▪ study number 1:
The ‘Merva-Fowles’ study, done at the University of Utah in the 1990s, found powerful connections between unemployment and crime. They based their research on 30 major metropolitan areas with a total population of over 80 million.
A 1% rise in unemployment resulted in:
a 6.7% increase in Homicides;
a 3.4 % increase in violent crimes;
a 2.4 % increase in property crime.
During the period from 1990 to 1992, this translated into:
1459 additional Homicides;
62,607 additional violent crimes;
223,500 additional property crimes.
▪ Study number 2:
The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪ Study number 3:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 4:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 5:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 6:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
▪ Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass. electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪ "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
▪ Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@haziq9130 , critique? I think the data speaks for itself.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@nolanarmstrong2458 , no, I'm not assuming anything. The fact that everyone is not responsible, hardworking and honest, that is more of an argument for socialism compared to capitalism. Under socialism people are only entitled to but they work for. They get paid according to their contribution. So if you're lazy, guess what? You don't get paid! But under capitalism, lazy people can have a very serious negative impact on the rest of society, especially if they're in positions of power. Lazy people are attracted to capitalism because you don't have to work for a living. Capitalism is about owning for a living. That's why capitalism is so attractive to parasites. billionaires by up apartment buildings, grocery stores, electric companies, parking lots, Etc. Then they live off of other people's labour.
Not too long ago Bill Gates bought the Canadian railroad. His wealth went from 80 to 90 billion dollars as a result. 10 billion dollars no longer going to Canadian workers and infrastructure. That means Canadians are going to have 10 billion dollars less to spend into the economy. you didn't use that money to buy a newly privatized Labs were people get their blood tested. now every time you get a blood test you have to pay extra money to Bill Gates for that privilege. if five extra dollars has to go to Gates oh, that's five less dollars you have to buy goods and services from your fellow workers. That's why capitalism is destructive to markets and economies.
what's stopping people from starting a business or a Cooperative? Most people are living from check to check. most Americans cannot afford a family on a single income. They can't even afford to take time off of work to look for another job. People are into debt up to their ears. it's hard enough getting a loan just for a car or a mortgage, the banks are more likely to make those loans because they have the house to repossess. But you think they're going to lend money to someone who's in debt for the purpose of starting a business in a Precarious economic environment? I can't even believe you're asking these questions. there are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. Why? Because there are fewer barriers and people have access to Capital. the United States only comes in at number 27 in regards to social Mobility. most people are not in a position to change jobs let alone start a business.
And no, expanding The Cooperative sector is not going to result in genocide or people dying from starvation. workers owning their own companies in factories increases wealth and prosperity. so no, Marx's ideas do not always result in genocide. That is a- historical and empirically false.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually
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@jean-pierredevent970 , under the capitalist system the government's represent the owning class. They do not represent the working class. All the working-class can do is fight for Privileges and protections under the law. Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. That's why they get most of the wealth produced by labour and why they get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, what kind of environment people after Labor in, Etc. When you control the capital you control the economy and government. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China.
But when the workers only control their own companies in factories, then they get most of the wealth produced by their labour. They get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, Etc. Worker-owned companies are tied to the community. They make workers add communities less dependant upon government and capitalist corporations. We are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. When workers have more money the economy expands because they can spend more. Capitalism erodes purchasing power because the goal is to maximize profits by keeping wages as low as possible. That creates a huge disparity between supply and demand.
People should only be entitled to what they work for. People should be paid according to their contributions,. The function of capitalism is to extract wealth from labour. Problem is, people are not honey bees. They need to be able to afford the goods and services are actually producing. If you take too much honey from The Beehive, the bees die. If you extract too much well from labour, consumption slows and people get laid off. That's one of the reasons why we have fractional Reserve banking now. Capitalism is a human livestock management system. The only reason people are working 40 hours a week or longer it's because wages are so low they have to work that long. It's not because we can't meet the needs of society with half as many hours
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@willnitschke , it's amazing that you don't understand simple economics. If a company is privatized and you purchase it for the purpose of extracting profit, where do you think that wealth is going to come from? Out of thin air? 😃
right now at the public utility workers are making a certain amount of money and customers are charged a certain amount of money. Let's say Bill Gates by that utility and wants to get a billion dollars out of annually in profit. Where is that extra billion dollars going to come from?
You either have to lower production costs or you have to increase the cost of electricity. How do you lower production costs? You can pay workers less. Or you can get the same number of workers to produce more electricity at the same rate of pay.
For example, when internet provider was privatized, not only did the cost of the internet increase, one out of every five workers was fired. Four workers then had to do the work that was normally done by five people.
There was a retirement home that was privatized and one of the ways they increased profits for the owners was by reducing the amount of toothbrushes and toothpaste that the old people were receiving. They also reduce the quality of the food.
So yeah, when it comes to medical care, retirement homes, electricity, water treatment plants, those are things you do not want in the private sector. The more wealth capitalist owners extract from those utilities, the greater the cost to the consumer and workers.
There was also a water treatment plant that was privatized and they reduce costs by cutting safety regulations. For the first time in Canadian history we had citizens died from drinking contaminated tap water!
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Richard Wolff is not a capitalist. All the money from Book Sales is donated.
Also, writing a book and selling it into the market, that's not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and sell them in the market, that's not capitalism. People have been selling the product of their labour into markets for hundreds of thousands of years.
What's the difference between a socialist company and a capitalist company? The capitalist company is privately owned and wage labour is utilized for profit.
The Socialist company is collectively owned. They do not utilize wage labour for profit. There is no employer-employee dynamic. The workers do their own work. They own the product of their labour and they sell that product into the market. That's not capitalism!
Richard Wolff is not a capitalist.
What is a capitalist economy? A capitalist economy is one where most of the GDP comes from privately-owned companies that utilize wage labour for profit.
What's a socialist economy? One where most of the GDP comes from socially owned companies and factories.
A socialist economy is democratic. A capitalist economy is a form of economic feudalism.
economic democracy n.
Economic democracy means that the participants in economic institutions (e.g. factories, stores and universities) decide on the policy of the institution.
Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift decision-making power from corporate managers and corporate shareholders to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, customers, suppliers, neighbours and the broader public.
"Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity."
~ O'Hara, Phillip (2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 71. In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
~ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital."
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And of course a book is a product. If you hire someone to do the editing, for example, that makes the book more readable. Increases its value. Therefore the editor is entitled to a certain amount of the wealth comes from Book Sales. If you hire an artist to do illustrations and pictures, that also increases the value of the book. The artist is entitled to a certain amount of the wealth generated from Book Sales.
None of that is capitalism. Those are examples of earnings! Capitalism is about profit. Profit is what you get when you don't work for a living. Earnings are what you get when you do work. Earnings are what you get when you mix your labour with capital to produce a usable product. Capitalism is about the maximization of capital accumulation for the purpose of living off of other people's labour! Profit is maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. That basically means that capitalism is a religion and not really an economic system. One of the central goals of economic sense to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when workers don't get the full value of their labour? How can you achieve equilibrium when workers produce more goods and services than they can actually afford to buy? The goal of capitalism is actually in direct opposition to achieve equilibrium! The more successful a capitalist company is at maximizing profit, the less person power workers have! Basically all the workers have to bake a loaf of bread so that they can afford a slice! If 70% of the wealth goes to the owners of capital, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 30% of the goods and services they put into circulation. That creates a situation where people have to constantly be borrowing more and more from the future. But there's a problem with that. Because we live on a finite Planet. There's only so much hard currency to cover all of that debt. So, the only way to keep capitalism viable, the only way to keep the system running is to somehow circumvent that natural ceiling limit. How do you do that on a finite planet? Fractional Reserve banking! Now you can borrow from the future in perpetuity.
Capitalism is the real life Monopoly game. Workers and citizens get paid just enough every time they pass go to keep the game from collapsing. Those who own the hotels and houses and utilities, they get to live for free. They get to live in extreme luxury without having to do any work. Just about everyone else has to work 40 hours a week just so they can afford access to the very goods and services that they're producing in the first place. They have to work 40 hours a week or more so they can afford to live in a little wooden box, have food and clothing. Yeah, a bigger scam than the Christian religion. 😃
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Capitalist governments don't want socialism. That's why we've seen a massive amount of privatization over the last 50 years. The more money the billionaires make, the more money politicians get. The Billionaire's want to own the hospitals, the bridges, the roads, the labs were people get their blood tested, railroads, factories, schools, jails, Etc. That way when you get a blood test or buy toilet paper, you have to pay some capitalist and extortion fee. Rather than paying a worker who made your toilet paper, most of your money is going to some rich shareholder. You basically have to pay some rich person for the privilege of wiping your own rear end. It's called economic slavery
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@henrychoy2764 , . What are you talking about? Yes, socialist companies are democratic. Democracy is the core of socialism. How can you not know this? The workers have sovereignty. Do you know what sovereignty means? It means no higher authority. The workers are the ones that get to decide on the policies of the institution.
It's Like the core of veganism is eating fruits and vegetables. How could you possibly say that veganism doesn't have anything to do with eating fruits and vegetables? 😀
so you don't even know what socialism is or how it works.
Socialism is economic democracy. What is economic democracy?
economic democracy n.
Economic democracy means that the participants in economic institutions (e.g. factories, stores and universities) decide on the policy of the institution.
Now what is socialism?
• "Socialism is an economic and political system. It is an economic theory of social organization. It states that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the workers who make the products, instead of groups of private owners. People who agree with this type of system are called socialists." ~
Durlauf, Steven N.; E. Blume, Lawrence. "socialism". DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS. Palgrave Macmillan 2013.
• "Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity."
~ O'Hara, Phillip (2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-415-24187-8. In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital."
Socialism is literally economic democracy. The workers and communities own their own means of production and the product of their labor. They get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, etc. Not someone else. The workers have sovereignty. One worker equals one vote. That's about as Democratic as you can get.
Capitalism is extremely undemocratic. The workers have to do what they're told. The number of shares a person can own depends on how much money they have. The more shares you can buy, the more votes you have. That's what's called a plutocracy. Instead of being democratic, one person one vote, you have one share equals one vote. And the number of shares any one person can hold depends on how much money they have.
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Yeah, under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. If workers can obtain their own Capital, then they can get most of the wealth produced by their labour.
For example, there is a socially owned bread factory in the United States where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. Why is it impossible for an assembly line worker to make that much while working at a capitalist company? Because they do not own the product of their labour. And when you do not own the product of your labour, you are basically nothing more than human livestock. And that's what capitalism is. It's basically a human livestock management system.
So when you make bread as an employee at a capitalist company, it doesn't matter how fast you work, how hard you work, how many loaves of bread you produce. They all belong to someone else. So if you make a million dollars worth of bread, you've basically made someone else a million dollars.
Another example. There's a Cooperative in Spain where a hundred and twenty thousand workers own their own bank, means of production, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Etc. They are so Advanced that Intel, Microsoft and the Ford Motor Company hire them for research and development. that Cooperative produces over 25 billion dollars in sales annually. that money goes to the workers because they are the owners.
when a company such as Amazon or Walmart does 25 billion dollars in sales, most of that money goes to Ayatul shareholders, many of whom are not even in the same country.
one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. capitalism actually violates basic economic and market principles. For example, how can you maximize production on one end while simultaneously maximizing profits by suppressing wages? if wages are not commensurate with production output, how can the workers then afford the very goods and services they are producing in the first place? They can't. if you have to bake 10 loaves of bread just so that you can afford one loaf, where does the money come from to buy the other nine loaves?
you see, there is a limitation when it comes to how much profit you can extract from someone else's labour. how does capitalism deal with that contradiction? By constantly increasing the amount of available credit. jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a downward spiral. any reduction in purchasing power has to be offset with access to credit. But that only keeps the system going temporarily. because of the interest attached to debt, purchasing power will be eroded even further in the future. when the credit runs out, people can't consume at all and then individuals start to dump their stocks in the market. that's that's one reason why there's a major economic downturn every 4 to 7 years.
However, socially on workplaces don't have that problem because wages are commensurate with production output. all the money stays with the workers. if there are shareholders extracting 50% of the labour value, you basically have reduced the purchasing power of workers by 50%. And therefore, without access to Credit, rates of consumption would slow by 50%. if you buy 50% less beer, the beer maker in turn has to reduce his rate of consumption. Excetera, excetera, excetera.
that's why we still have a 40-hour work week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. Under capitalism all increases in productivity go to the owners of capital. An employee is nothing more than human livestock. Just like when you take a dairy cow and you give it bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, the cow doesn't end up with twice the amount of Milk. The Cow doesn't get to work half as many hours. You have a farmer with twice the amount of milk. That's why we saw the Advent of the billionaire class rather than a reduction in working hours. if you take 50% of the honey from a beehive, the bees have to work 50% longer in order to replace what you taken. the thing is, capitalists are not depended upon honey bees like they are on Workers when it comes to buying goods and services.
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@ExPwner , all value is subjective? I thought you said you had a master's degree in accounting? Is that true? Yes or no. Please, stated again for the public record.
These are not the comments of intelligent, educated person:
▪ James Adams:
" I am very intelligent. I have a master's degree in accounting."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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, snake oil salesman? that doesn't make any sense. you think he has a patent on The Cooperative name? if you get together with your friends and family and start a business, how does that benefit Richard wolf? Your statement doesn't make any sense at all.
and yes, there is no shortage of statistics. There are hundreds of thousands of worker cooperatives in the United States and around the world. 60% of the American land mass is powered by worker cooperatives. In The Cooperative agricultural sector alone millions of people are employed, providing over 8 billion in paychecks.
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
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@watsongames5543 , maybe it'll be easier if I actually take the time to explain. There are three main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, progressive taxation, social programs Etc.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs
Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour. here are two examples of socially owned companies in the United States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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Socialism is about workers owning and controlling their own businesses and factories. There are hundreds of thousands of these Democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers in communities compared to capitalist Enterprises.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@nyChannel09 , dude, this is very simple to understand. If you start a company then it's yours. You can do what you want with it. If workers start a company then they can do what they want with it.
There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world. There's a region in Spain where almost 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned companies.
There are even worker-owned companies in China! Huawei is one example.
"Huawei is a company wholly owned by its employees. No government or any third party holds shares in our company, intervenes in our operations, or influences our decision-making.
No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees.
Huawei pays out US$9.65 billion in dividends to current and retired staff
Huawei overtook Ericsson in 2012 as the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, and overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung Electronics. In 2018, Huawei reported annual revenue of US$108.5 billion. In July 2020, Huawei surpassed Samsung and Apple in the number of phones shipped worldwide."
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@willnitschke , you're still not making an argument. 😀
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
~ United Nations
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people.
~ University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives.
▪ almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from worker and community-owned electrical cooperatives.
~ NRECA electric-cooperative-fact-sheet
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
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@Twosheets , freedom-loving capitalist? If you were truly interested in free markets and thriving economies, you would be anti-capitalist. Capitalism provides freedom for a very small minority and slavery for the vast majority. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. So how can you say you go by Logic and reason? We're talking basic math here. 80% of the world's population subsists on $10 a day or less. Most Americans can longer afford a family on a single income. If wages and reduction in working hours have kept up with increases in productivity made possible by labor-saving technology, everyone would be making at least $70,000 a year will only having to work 10 hours a week. Since 1950 productivity levels have more than tripled well the need for labour has been cut in half. Are we working half as many hours with twice the amount of income when adjusted for inflation? No. Of course not.
Freedom? Yeah, while over 98% of the people on earth have to slave away working 40 hours a week or longer, the two richest people now have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population in the 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population.
Capitalism is literally modern day slavery. Boss dictates what time you have to get up in the morning to go to work, what you have to wear at work, how hard you have to work, how long you have to work, when or if you get a coffee break, what time you get a lunch break, a lot of companies are now demanding you have to keep a smile on your face for morale, a lot of dictate when and how long you get to go to the washroom, they can cut your wages anytime they want, Etc. You think that's freedom?
But at a socialist company, the workers free! They are their own boss, so obviously they're going to have maximum freedom. They also get to keep all of the wealth that their labour produces, and that means more prosperity. I just for themselves, but the entire Community because when workers have more money they can buy more stuff. That creates demand. The economy expands. A capitalist companies the owners do everything possible to get the workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. But that causes the economy to contract because you end up with more goods and services in circulation than workers can actually afford.
And of course when workers have equal voting power they have more equality. When you work at a capitals company, you have no voting power at all.
So when you say you choose Socialism or capitalism, because of Freedom, that simply doesn't make any sense. That's actually a contradiction.
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@digppa25 , I said that anytime you have a dollar going to someone who didn't work for it somewhere else you have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get. Money doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere. It has to be covered by labour. Labour includes both mental and physical efforts.
Yes, the economy expands but under capitalism it expands at a much faster rate than wages. You see workers only get paid a fraction of the wealth that their labour produces. that's not very conducive to a free market for a thriving economy. for example, if workers only get 25% of the wealth from the products and services they produce, then they're only going to be able to afford 25% of the goods and services in circulation. But there's a problem. Jobs are tied to consumption. The consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume.
you see, you can over capitalized on honey bees because the worst thing that can happen is the bezel start. If you take 50% of the honey from the beehive, the bees have to work 50% longer in order to replace what you've taken. but if you extract 50% of the wealth from the workers, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of that which they produce. Pet causes a serious problem. That's why we have fractional Reserve Banking and credit cards.
but socialism doesn't have that problem because wages are commensurate with production output. for example, there's a socially own bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. that's because they own the product of their labour. but when you're an employee at a capitalist company, it doesn't matter whether you produce $70,000 with your labour or 70 million dollars with your labour. Most of that money goes to someone else. obviously someone with $70,000 worth of purchasing power is going to be able to buy more stuff in create more demand than someone with $20,000 worth of purchasing power.
we still have a 40-hour work week because capitalism keeps wages so low that people have to work that long or longer in order to be able to survive. Industry can't even run close to at 100% capacity. Even if people only work 10 hours a week we could probably produce far more than we're capable of consuming. But under capitalism all increases in productivity go to the owners of capital. That's why we saw the Advent of the billionaire class rather than a reduction in working hours. that's why they're now talking about a universal basic income. It's kind of like increasing the amount of money you get when you're playing Monopoly in order to keep the game going. try playing Monopoly when people don't even receive $200. The game ends very quickly.
Capitalism is a religion. A pyramid scheme.
anyway regardless, Richard Wolff argument is correct. Worker-owned companies are better for workers and communities because they provide more equality, freedom and prosperity. obviously if you get to keep 100% of the wealth of your labour produces, you're going to have more prosperity. For you and the community because you're going to have greater purchasing power which creates more demand. And obviously you're going to have more freedom when you're Your Own Boss. Obviously there's going to be more equality when you have equal voting power. but when you work as an employee at a capitalist company, you're basically working at a dictatorship. The boss dictates, you follow orders or you get fired. And maybe if you're lucky production wanting to be moved to China.
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@digppa25 capitalism is a religion. You cannot have an economic system where production output increases at a much faster rate than income. One of the central goals of Economics to achieve equilibrium. The fact of the matter is that under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. That's why we're in such a mess and why working hours having decreased with increased production made possible by labor-saving technology. This system is not sustainable or viable. People should only be entitled to the wealth that they generate with their own labour. It's not possible for a person to actually earn a billion dollars. When you have someone taking more then what they contribute, it has to come at the expense of someone else.
Worker cooperatives are often more durable and efficient compared to capitalist Enterprises.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
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@digppa25 , no, the goal is not to make private ownership be legal. In fact, worker cooperatives are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. When you have more of the wealth staying at the foundation, then members of the community can afford more stuff. That makes it easier for people to open up their own coffee shop, pizza shop, Bowling Alley, whatever.
the goal is to make it easier for workers to obtain the capital they need in order to start their own cooperatives. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from cooperative.
Worker cooperatives keep wealth and control with communities and workers. The problem with capitalism is that most of the wealth goes to the owners of capital. And you should know that trickle down economics doesn't work. The Apex very quickly becomes bloated and the foundation gets sucked dry. Consumption starts to slow, people get laid off and can't consume, the economy becomes very sluggish and needs credit to be pumped into the system.
you see, capitalism requires workers to be in in a state of dependency. that's why it didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement. people had to be forced into an extreme state of dependency before they would accept the wage slavery. capitalism is a modern form of slavery. if you could get the full value of your labour, say $70,000 a year working as an assembly line worker at a bread factory, would you work for Walmart or Amazon for minimum wage? No. Of course not. The only reason people work at companies like that for such a low wages because they don't have any other option. those companies are dependant upon poor desperate workers.
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@digppa25 , there are some regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. so what you do is eliminate barriers and make it easier for people to obtain the capital they need in order to start their own cooperatives.
Yes, wage slavery is a legitimate form of slavery. Yes, it differs from chattel slavery in that you can choose who your exploiter is and you get monetary compensation, but it's still a form of slavery. That is not my opinion. That is a matter of fact. the enclosure movement force people into a state of dependency intentionally. Now most of the people on earth have no choice but to sell their labour in order to survive. They have to waste years of their life making money for other people while having to follow orders. capitalist Enterprise is basically a dictatorship. The boss tells you when you work, when you don't work, how much you get paid, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. That is a dictatorship. The boss dictates and you do what you're told. Because the richest majority owned most of the capital, the workers have no choice but to compete with one another for jobs. If you don't follow orders, you get replaced.
here's a good documentary on labour history
"The War At Home | Metanoia Films" http://metanoia-films.org/the-war-at-home/
and no, capitalism does not promote or provide freedom for most of the population on the planet. the vast majority of Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income and live from check to check. capitalism suppresses both positive and negative freedom. https://youtu.be/4xqouhMCJBI
some labour history:
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
What is the difference between a wage slave and a chattel slave?
The chattel slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
"The chattel slave is the property of one master, and is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire capitalist class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The chattel slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"As long as he owns your tools (the capitalist) he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence."
when you work as an employee, the boss tells you when you work, how hard you have to work, Etc. they can cut your wages, your working hours, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”"
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war." ~
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
page 410
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@digppa25 , what question have an I answered? If you do not realize that capitalism is an exploitative system. If you don't realize that it's immoral to have a system where you can own for a living instead of actually having to work for the things you have, then yes, you have been brainwashed. Yes, the left produced propaganda, but propaganda is it necessarily wrong or inaccurate. the billionaires can afford to employ millions of people to disseminate their propaganda and conduct research. If someone like Noam Chomsky ever made a mistake in his analysis, those who get paid to do damage control would be all over him in seconds. He would be announcing his mistake on every News Channel probably for years to come. People on the left have to be extremely careful not to make a mistake.
And I'm glad that you're satisfied with your job and are doing well. But just because you are doing well, that doesn't mean that the vast majority of people aren't suffering under the system. 80% of the population subsist on less than $10 a day most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. You've got thousands of people going bankrupt every day because of an unexpected medical bill. Here we have a system where people can own for a living without having to do any work. Must be nice to be able to accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour while playing golf, sleeping, using the washroom, having a shower, Etc. where do you think that money comes from? all of that money has to come from labour. every time you buy a toothbrush, every time you buy toilet paper, every time you borrow money for student loan, house, Etc. every time you have a dollar that goes to someone who didn't work for it, you are literally stealing hours off of other people's lives.
For example, there is a person who won the lottery last year where i live. he won 60 million dollars. That money is currently sitting in a bank account. He is getting 3% interest on that 60 million.
That comes to 1.8 million dollars a year.
That's $150,000 per month.
That's $35,000 per week.
that's $5,000 a day.
That's $200 an hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, for the rest of their life, until the day they die. and they will pass that privilege onto every child they have and every woman that they marry.
now let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has about 200 billion dollars now. So, hypothetically speaking, if he were to dump all of his Capital assets and just put that money into the bank account at 3% interest, he would be accumulating 6 billion dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing.
That's 500 million dollars a month.
That's a 115 million dollars per week.
That's 16 and 1/2 million dollars per day.
that's 685,000 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
How long does it take you to use the washroom? Let's say it takes you 1 minute to take a dump. by the time Jeff Bezos takes a dump, he has an extra $12,000 in his bank account. 😃
where do you think that money comes from? Every dollar of that has to come from labour. Every time you take out a student loan, every time you buy toilet paper, a toothbrush, finance a house, a car, Etc. you have to pay some rich individual for that privilege. He gets to collect that amount of money without doing any work at all. And, unless he's actually capable of spending $600,000 an hour, with every passing hour, he'll be making more money than he did before.
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@aew0aew0 , you don't think I made a case against capitalism? Seriously? Every person on Earth could have a very high standard of living if it wasn't for capitalism. Thanks to capitalism we have one child dying every 15 seconds from starvation even though we throw away 1.2 billion tons of food annually in order to artificially maintained prices in the capitalist Market.
Capitalism requires scarcity because without it prices would drop too far and profits would be minimized. The goal of capitalism is to maximize profit, not eliminate scarcity or help people.
The two richest people I have more wealth than the poorest half of the American population. The eight richest people now have more wealth than the poorest half of the Earth's population. Capitalism transfers massive amounts of wealth from the working-class to those who don't work. It's absolutely obscene.
And because we can now produce far more than we're capable of consuming, we have to have this throw-away culture in order to keep people needlessly employed 40 hours a week. But we don't need to work 40 hours a week in order to supply everyone with goods and services. That's what makes capitalism the most wasteful and destructive system ever devised. Capitalism is a religion. Technically, it is an anti economic system. It defies both reason and logic.
"It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials.
But these facts are not connected across the fields of expertise which track them. As the earth is thus stripped and polluted by ever more unfettered global market operations, the market paradigm of value that leads governments does not factor into its calculus the countless life forms, habitats and systems which are thus extinguished and poisoned. When objections are raised, the followers of the paradigm that rules sternly warn that all is necessary ‘to keep the economy going’. Peoples increasingly observe that their life-ground is being devastated, but no ‘new discovery’ reports that every step of decision behind this process of life-destruction is taken to enact the global market programme."
At this stage of the global market system’s reproduction of transnational money sequences to unheard-of volumes and velocities of transaction and growth, a systematic and irreversible destruction of planetary life-organization emerges for the first time in history. If we consider the defining principles of carcinogenic invasion and eventual destruction of a life-host, and do not avoid or deny the symptom profile in evidence, we discern a carcinogenic pattern increasingly penetrating and spreading across civil and environmental life-organization.
There are seven defining properties of a cancer invasion which medical diagnosis recognizes at the level of the individual organism. These seven properties can now be recognized for the first time at the level of global life-organization as well. And this is the pathological core of our current disease condition.
That is, there is:
(1) an uncontrolled and unregulated reproduction and multiplication of an agent in a host body; that
(2) is not committed to any life function of its life-host; that
(3) aggressively and opportunistically appropriates nutriments and resources from its social and natural hosts in uninhibited growth and reproduction; that
(4) is not effectively recognized or responded to by the immune system of its hosts; that
(5) possesses the ability to transfer or to metastasize its growth and uncontrolled reproduction to sites across the host body; that
(6) progressively infiltrates and invades contiguous and distant sites of its life- hosts until it obstructs, damages and/or destroys successive organs of their life-systems; and that
(7) without effective immune-system recognition and response eventually destroys the host bodies it has invaded.
John McMurtry
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined." ~ Michael Parenti
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@aew0aew0 , don't worry, you can't offend me. 🙂 anyway, the point is since we can produce far more than we're capable of consuming, we could have a high standard of living for everyone on the planet. Not only that, we could probably reduce working hours to 20 a week.
The problem is, under capitalism, the vast majority of people are not free. They are wage slaves. They do not own the product of their labour. So anytime we see increases in productivity made possible by technology, all of that extra wealth end up going into the pockets of the owners of capital. That's why we never see working hours decrease. Workers have to fight to achieve such things. But if workers were free in the first place, then they wouldn't have to fight for a reduction in working hours. A reduction in working hours would occur naturally as labor-saving technology expands.
For example, there is a socially owned bread factory in the United States. The assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. Why can't an assembly line worker make that much money as an employee at a capitalist company? because they don't own the product of their labour. Therefore it doesn't matter how fast you work, it doesn't matter how hard you work, it doesn't matter how many loaves of bread you produce. if you produce a million dollars worth of bread, you have basically produced a million dollars for someone else.
However, at the socially owned Factory, when the workers produce a million dollars worth of bread, that money stays with the workers because they own that bread.
you see, when you do not own the product of your labour, you're basically nothing more than human livestock. just like when you give a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, the cow doesn't get to work as many hours. The cow does not get twice the amount of milk. All of that milk goes to the farmer. capitalism is about capitalizing on the Labour of animals and human beings. human livestock produces a much greater return than animal livestock. if you take 50% of the honey from a beehive, the bees have to work 50% longer in order to replace what you've taken. if the bees do not own their own hive, then it doesn't matter how hard they work. It doesn't matter how fast they work. All of the extra money will go to the owners of The Beehive. The capitalist. that's why we still have a 40-hour work week today even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. if the fees on their own beehive and they got labor-saving technology which doubled their production, then technically they would be able to work half as many hours.
likewise, at a socialist company when 500 workers are replaced with automation, you now have 500 workers to share in the remaining workload. at a capitalist company those 500 people would end up on the unemployment line where they would have to compete with the other unemployed people. That competition drives the value of Labor down.
what is the consequence? the consequences now you have people working longer and harder than ever before; production output is maximized, but on the other end, purchasing power is reduced. that causes a massive disparity between supply and demand. any erosion in purchasing power has to be offset with access to credit. otherwise, consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a domino effect. A downward spiral. That's why we have so much debt. That's why interest rates are Solo and why they're now entertaining the possibility of introducing negative interest rates.
Anyway, this is the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is referring to. It's the kind where workers directly own their own means of production or business. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ. basically, the bees own their own beehive. And that is more conducive to a free market in thriving economy. It's also more natural. symbiotic rather than parasitic.
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@aew0aew0 , what do you mean you think blaming capitalism is silly? How can you possibly say that? Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by Labour. That is a fact. The more Capital you have, the faster your wealth that grows in relation to everyone else. Obviously having an economic system where most of the wealth actually goes to owners rather than workers is going to have serious problems. Obviously you should get most of the wealth produced by your labour. You don't agree? You should be able to own the product of your labour. You don't agree?
Of course capitalism is the problem. When is socially owned company produces 25 billion dollars in sales, that money goes to the workers. They spend that money into the economy, that makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses because people are buying more pizza, beer, trips to the bowling alley, Etc.
What is most of that 25 billion ends up going to idle shareholders, many of whom are not even in the same country, then we have a serious problem. Workers don't have adequate purchasing power to consume the goods and services in circulation. We're not talking about opinion here, we're talking about basic mathematics. So yeah, obviously capitalism is the problem. Not my opinion, mathematical fact.
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@aew0aew0 , well no, you can't argue against facts. You can argue against opinions and assertions, that's fine. But we know where the money is going. that's very easy to substantiate. there's no opinion about it. 🙂
Compensation https://www.facebook.com/100000498825296/posts/3810397245653532/
The percentage of GDP going to workers has decreased since 1950.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10163720662450618&id=544325617
So now we have a situation where 90% of the population gets the least amount of money well less than 1% ends up getting most of the money, even though they don't physically work or produce anything. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10163646961865618&id=544325617
yes, you may disagree when it comes to the idea that you should get most of the money produced by your labour. if you think most of the wealth that your labour produces to belong to someone else, that's up to you. What you think the product of your labour should belong to someone else, that's also up to you. I think it's a little nutty, but each to their own. 🙂 I think people should have to work for a living. You think they should be able to live off of Capital. But the problem with that is every time you have a dollar going to a non producer, somewhere else you have someone who worked for dollar that they don't get. And that's really parasitic. obviously if you take 90% of the economic pie and give it to those who don't work, you're going to end up with a lot of poverty. That's just the reality of the situation. Maybe you don't care. That is your choice and I respect that. 🙂
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@JDS-33 , of course some people work harder then others. Some people want to work more, some people want to work less. Yes, some people are more talented, more skilled, more intuitive, Etc. And yes, some people are greedy While others are not. Those things make economic democracy more desirable, not less.
what do you mean economic democracy is a dream? What do you base that assumption on? you think we can achieve democracy on a social level but not on a economic level? that's what they said about feudalism. They said social democracy would be impossible. Well, We now know that simply isn't true.
Economic democracy doesn't go against human nature. Just the opposite. Why do you think Homo sapiens were able to survive but the Neanderthals couldn't? Human beings are collectivist by Nature. there are hundreds of thousands of socially owned workplaces and factories in the United States and around the world. We know exactly how well they compare to capitalist Enterprises. Statistically speaking, those companies are more efficient, more resilient, more Innovative, Etc. And statistically speaking, workers are happier, more creative, more efficient, they take less sick days, there's less incidence of substance abuse, depression, suicide, Etc.
worker-owned companies are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy because wealth and control stays with the workers and communities. When you increase purchasing power of workers, the economy expands. People are able to buy more stuff. However, capitalism erodes purchasing power. It destroys markets and economies.
for example, in the United States there is a socially own bread factory where the assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. that's because they own the product of their labour. but if you are an employee at a capitalist company, it doesn't matter if you make $70,000 worth of product. It doesn't matter if you make a million dollars worth of product. Most of that money will go to someone else. and that is not conducive to a free market and thriving economy.
there's a Cooperative in Spain where a hundred and twenty thousand workers own their own bank, Hospital, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Etc. their research and development department is so Advanced that they have contracts with Intel, Ford Motor Company, And Microsoft, just to name a few.
there's an absolutely massive electronics company in China That's owned by the workers.
in the United States almost 60% of the country gets its electricity from democratic workplaces.
there are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from democratic workplaces.
so of course we can have economic democracy.
you want me to name you one socialist country that has improve the lives of its citizens? you do realize that the type of socialism being discussed doesn't have anything to do with the government.? I already pointed that out in my first comment. but if you want to talk about State capitalism/socialism, then yes, there are many examples of how life was greatly improved.
when the workers took over in Russia back in 1917, there was close to a 99% illiteracy rate. there was no modern technology. There was no electricity, indoor plumbing, all they had was the very simplest and primitive Farming tools. they were able to accomplish in 50 years what took the United States 300 years to accomplish. And the United States did it with slavery, imperialism and massive worker exploitation. 9 year old children working 18-hour days, Etc. and even though Russia was under constant attack from the time that the workers took over, they were still able to go from A Primitive Society to one where they could put men into space, probes on other planets, they even came up with the first portable phone. technological innovation in Russia far outpaced that of capitalist countries such as Britain and the United States. and the quality of life for its citizens were massively improved. they were able to achieve all of that even though the first thing the United States did was to send troops into Russia when the workers freed themselves from those are in 1917. other countries also sent troops into Russia. Canada, Britain, even Japan! the Japanese didn't leave Russian soil until 1922!
China is another example. consider the success of the Great Leap Forward
https://leohezhao.medium.com/reassessing-the-great-leap-forward-4f21238ee6d
but it's a moot point anyway because the type of socialism being discussed isn't State socialism. there's a big difference between State ownership and worker ownership. you have Community ownership: communism. you have worker ownership: socialism. and you have state ownership: State socialism / capitalism.
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And you can't blame the government or the banking system because under capitalism when you control most of the capital, you also control the economy, the economic system and government by default. The government represents the owning class. It does not represent the workers. All the workers can do is fight for Privileges and protections under the law. That's it.
The reason the capitalist class implemented fractional Reserve banking is because there's a natural limit to how much wealth you can extract from labour. You see, the function of an employee is basically the same function as cattle or honey bees. Or any other form of livestock. So when it comes to cows, the farmers give them bovine growth hormone in order to get more milk. The milk all belongs to the farmer. If a cow can produce twice the amount of milk because of the hormones and Technology, it doesn't get to work half as many hours. It doesn't end up with twice the amount of milk. The same thing with employees. That's why labor-saving technology just makes billionaires richer. That's why labor-saving technology led to the Advent of the do you dare class rather than reducing working hours. Since 1950 labor-saving technology has more than tripled productivity with the same amount of Labor. But workers are dependant upon a 40-hour work week in order to survive because all increases in productivity go to the owners of capital. Anyway, the capitalist class had to implement fractional Reserve banking in order to circumvent the natural limitation of extracting wealth from labour. The more wealth you extract from labour, the less stuff people can buy. You see, jobs are tied to consumption. When it comes to honey bees, they started replacing valuable honey with high fructose corn syrup. If the farmer takes too much honey, the be starved to death. When it comes to workers, you either have to pay them more or you have to increase their access to credit.
Anyway, under capitalism the banks are owned by the richest members of society. The goal of capitalism is to on as much Capital as possible. The rich people on the parking Lots at hospitals, Labs were people get their blood tested, electric companies, they want to privatize the Healthcare System in countries such as Canada so that they can own that too. Even when it comes to wiping your ass with toilet paper, you have to basically pay extra money to some rich owner for the privilege. Capitalism is the real-life Monopoly board game. That's why capitalist like to joke that if you can't figure out a way to make money while you're sleeping, then you're actually going to have to get a job.
All capitalism is crony.
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@tovarisch3039 , your comment doesn't make any sense. For one, what makes you think I have anything to put in order? 2, what does that have to do with socialism? I could just imagine those people back in the days of feudalism who wanted to transition to capitalism being told by the feudal Lords that they should put their house in order before talking about capitalism.
3. "There are people making it under this system." Yeah, so? There are people that made it in the Antebellum South. There are people that made it Nazi Germany. There are people that made it back of the days of feudalism. Your comment doesn't make any sense. Capitalism is an immoral system. The system is based on explotation. It's a system where people can amass billions of dollars by exploiting other people's labour. There are a lot of people that are doing very very well under the system that want to get rid of it. For example, look at Richard Wolff. Or how about Noam Chomsky? Hell, there are billionaires out there that want to transition from capitalism to an economic democracy. Because those people are moral. That's because they know that capitalism is immoral and unsustainable.
Anyway, I find your comment to be very odd. It doesn't make any sense at all.
I didn't say that socialism didn't work because I'm not in charge. Socialism does work. The Socialist mode of production is better for workers and communities. Also, in regards to State socialism, that even works better. Consider how well the socialist countries handled the pandemic compared to capitalist countries. You talk about billionaires being self-made men. No, that's true for the vast majority of those individuals. Even Bill Gates had special privileges due to his family background. Jeff Bezos had family members that kept pumping money into his business that would have gone bankrupt otherwise. No one earns a billion dollars. Even if a person could generate $100,000 a year and save every penny of it, it would take no less than ten thousand years to accumulate a billion dollars. You need to understand that anytime someone takes more than they contribute, it has to come at someone else's expense. That's just the mathematics of the situation. Anytime you wind up with a dollar in your pocket that you didn't work for, somewhere else who have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get. Wealth does not just magically appear out of nowhere. It requires labour to convert Capital into wealth. That's just an unavoidable fact. Socialism is about people actually working for the things they have. Capitalism is about being able to own for a living. Do you have any idea how disgusting that is? Why would anyone support such a parasitical system? Doesn't make any sense.
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@Tovarisch , what are you talkin about? Capitalism doesn't raise people out of poverty. It causes poverty. The only reason we have a middle class today is because the fight against capitalism. How can you not know this? The capitalist did everything they could to prevent people from achieving the eight-hour day, the five-day Work Week, consumer safety standards, old age pensions, holidays, the right to unionize, Etc. It wasn't for the fight against capitalism, Not only we we still have nine year old children working 18 hours a day, the working class would still have a 45 year life span. Capitalism is a religion.
And what do socialist countries have to do with the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about? Haven't I already explained that Richard Wolff is not talking about State socialism? But in regards to State socialism, the socialist countries we're able to deal with the covid pandemic more effectively. China was able to eliminate covid-19 almost a year ago! It's the capitalist countries that did the worst. I hope you're not actually comparing First World countries to third world countries and those countries that are actually under us sanctions. For example, us sanctions in Venezuela have caused the death of at least a hundred thousand people. If it wasn't for China violating the US embargo, supplying Venezuelans with the medication they need it, the virus probably would have destroyed what's left of the country.
I'm not trying to convert you. You can believe whatever you want to believe. You should know that merely selling the product of one's labour is not capitalism. Capitalism is about the maximization of capital accumulation for the purpose of extracting wealth from labour. Basically, it's the economic system of parasites.
Again, I'm not trying to convert you. I'm suggesting you take the time to properly inform yourself. Who knows, maybe you're not a moral person. There's a lot of people that supported slavery. Maybe you believe in wage slavery. Maybe that's the type of person you are. But at the very least you should conduct proper research be able to differentiate between facts, assertions and opinions. Look at the assumptions you made regarding Richard Wolff. You don't think he doesn't know about fractional Reserve banking? You don't think he's well aware of the corruption that takes place under capitalism? Yeah, he understands those things like the back of his hand. Obviously, the man writes textbooks on the subject! It's like someone who has been teaching and Performing brain surgery over half a century and you don't think he understands the difference between a dendrite and an axon. 😀 you're always going to have corruption under capitalism because it is an extremely undemocratic system of organization. The richest members of society control most of the capital on the planet. That means by default they control the government, production, the economy, the monetary system, Etc. There are billionaires out there accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars per second without doing any work at all, it just comes from their Capital Holdings. Where do you think that wealth comes from? When you have hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth going to people who don't actually work, that means you're reducing the purchasing power of workers by that same amount. But there's a problem. Jobs are tied to consumption. Consumption requires money. That's why we have fractional Reserve banking. Capitalism made fractional Reserve banking necessary.
Here, if you want to better understand the connection between fractional Reserve banking and capitalism, I would recommend watching these videos that are from an actual University course on history.
"The close ties between science and imperialism were in fact just one part of a more complex relationship. The third crucial member of this relationship was capitalism, which financed both science and empire, and which led to an unprecedented growth in the world economy. How does a capitalist economy function? How is it different from traditional economies? Is capitalism natural, or is it really a kind of religion?"
Part 1 https://youtu.be/YakALas74V4?list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp
Part 2 https://youtu.be/7SqSWswvxv8?list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp
Part 3 https://youtu.be/rwkkzZZm0tA?list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp
Part 4 https://youtu.be/BR5F-HrCzrM?list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp
I would also recommend checking out these textbooks on the history and evolution of capitalism.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism https://archive.org/details/historyofcapital00mich
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles https://tinyurl.com/y6xqz7cw
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge. . ISBN 978-0415241878.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0-8476-7396-4. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ethics-efficiency-and-the-market-9780198285335
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital." https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/16915671?q&versionId=19853882
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@tovarisch3039 , and why are you using country such as Cuba as an example of failed socialism? That doesn't make any sense. Not only does the United States refused to do business with Cuba, they make it almost impossible for anyone else to do business with him. Any cargo ship that docks at Cuba can no longer travel to the United States.. you have any idea how many democracies the United States has overthrown just since 1945 in order to prevent countries for moving away from capitalism? My God. What was the first thing the United States did when the workers overthrew the Czar in Russia? Immediately the United States got together with France, Japan, Britton, and sent troops into Russia imagine of Russia troops onto American soil? Back in 1917 those poor Russian Farmers couldn't even read and write. They had no electricity, they didn't have running water, there's no such thing as indoor plumbing, Etc. They were completely and utterly illiterate. All of them. All they had was the most primitive handheld Farming tools. That's it. And four countries sent troops in to crush them. The Japanese didn't leave Russian soil until 1922. Do you have any idea how many times do United States and Britain has repeated that process in other countries in order to prevent socialism? Dude, United States actually trained death squads murder socialist women and children in South America. That's not my opinion, that's a matter of public record.
just since 1945 the USA has:
• tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected;
• attempted to assassinate over 40 foreign leaders.
• grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries;
• bombed the civilian populations of over 30 countries;
• used chemical & biological weapons; https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
USA #1 For STD's
S: subversion, sabotage,
T: terrorism, torture,
D: drug trafficking, death squads.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
• Global capitalism - Rich Nations & poor Nations https://youtu.be/Q6WdUkaFyGw
• Humanity can be divided into 3 groups https://youtu.be/GEzOgpMWnVs
• School of the Americas death squads
pt 1 https://youtu.be/HOeaG6-qsVc
Pt 2 https://youtu.be/VW0k3v1RivA
• friendly dictators http://friendlydictators.blogspot.com/?m=1
• Samir Amin
https://youtu.be/CuYR-_tfWFw
Yeah, gee I wonder why socialism doesn't work? For a system that doesn't work the United States certainly goes to a lot of trouble to prevent it from occurring in other countries.
Hell, not only does the United States overthrow other countries in order to prevent worker movements, they also murder their own workers. Back in the days of Rockefeller, JPMorgan, Carnegie, excetera, look at how many workers were murdered when they tried get the right to unionize. Workers, women, children, these people we're murdered and tortured in order to prevent the 10 hour work day and five-day work week. When workers fought for the eight-hour day, the ruling class that they had lost their minds! They vowed workers would never ever achieve the 8-hour workday. I would recommend reading a people's History of the United States. The labour history in the United States is extremely bloody. Capitalists also did everything in their power to prevent child labour laws. There's a reason why the United States has the only first world country to refuse to sign an abolition against utilizing child labour in other countries.
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@BabyYoda5555 , changed my mind about what? There's nothing you said that requires a change of mind. Yes, under capitalism you are free to choose your employer. What does that have to do with the argument? Nothing. And of course the capitalist class is going to use the government in order to facilitate their acquisition of capital and mitigate the risks.
And when you say that I can't change your mind? What does that mean? I never gave you any opinions so far. All I mentioned were basic facts. Your mind can't be changed by facts?
Competition tends towards monopoly. Owners accrue capital at the top but extract it from labour at the bottom. Large enterprises enter, disrupt, and even decimate communities, often leaving workers holding the bag, worse off than they were before.
competition -> winners -> competition between winners -> stronger winners -> .. -> big corporations -> state is corrupted by economic power -> corporations develop propaganda that will appeal to the frustrated, disinfranchiseed poor through think-tanks
Under capitalism economic power is political power. There's a direct correlation between funding and electability. Under the capitalist system there's always a plutocracy.
The richest members of society own most of the capital. That's why they get most of the wealth produced by labour and why they get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why most things are made in China and why wages are so low. That's why the richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. The two richest people have basically the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population.
That is economic feudalism: plutocracy.
• anarchy - rule by no one
• autocracy - rule by one
• oligarchy - rule by minority
• republic - rule by law. (U.S.A - Plutocracy protected by law from the majority 'democracy')
• democracy - rule by majority
• socialism - rule by all
• Theocracy - ruled by or subject to religious authority. .
• Plutocracy (capitalism) - Government by the wealthy. (U.S.A republic).
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You don't need people to enforce socialism. Richard Wolff is not advocating for government socialism. He's advocating for traditional socialism, which is direct worker ownership. It's because people have flaws that hierarchical systems of organization or not recommended. Capitalism is the ultimate hierarchical, undemocratic system. The richest members of society own most of the world's resources. As a consequence, they get most of the wealth produced by labour and they get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why most things are made in China and why wages are so low.
A lot of people supported slavery because there is a massive amount of wealth that could be generated from cheap labour. Capitalism, which is a modern form of slavery, produces even more wealth for people such as Jeff Bezos because most wage slaves are actually cheaper than chattel slaves. There's a reason why back in the days of the Antebellum wage slaves were used for dangerous jobs instead of chattel slaves. Chattel slaves were expensive! They were a big investment. And it was also very expensive to educate them, house them, feed them, provide them with Medical Care, Etc. Wage slaves on the other hand, they have to pay for their own education, their own training, their own medical, their own housing, Etc. And because they have to compete with other wage slaves for jobs, much more disciplined, productive and hell of a lot cheaper.
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@danbennett1643 , there is no fuss. Merely stating the facts.
When most of the GDP is coming from privately-owned companies, we have a capitalist economy. When most of the GDP is coming from worker-owned companies, we have a socialist economy.
A socialist economy is more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy. Worker-owned companies are better for workers and communities. When the means of production are in the hands of the billionaire class, they get most of the wealth from labour and they get most of the power. That's why workers want to control those things. Then they get most of the wealth and get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, Etc. And obviously they should get most of the wealth produced by their labour, not someone else.
Worker-owned companies are tied to the community. When the wealth goes to the workers instead of Rich shareholders, people have more purchasing power. That causes the economy to expand because people can buy more stuff. Capitalism erodes purchasing power because the capitalist class does everything they can to maximize their profits. That means keeping wages as low as possible while maximizing production output. But if 75% of the wealth ends up going to the owners of capital, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of the goods and services they produce.
The problem is, jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume.
Capitalism is economic feudalism. The next stage of human evolution will be to transition to an economic democracy.
There's no shortage of data that shows that worker-owned companies and factories are better for workers and communities:
▪ Study number 1:
The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪ Study number 2:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 3:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 4:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 5:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
▪ Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass. electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪ "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
▪ Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
Here's an example of two very popular cooperative.
▪ Cianbro
Founded in 1949 by the Cianchette Brothers, Cianbro is one of the United States’ largest, most diverse, successful, open shop, 100% employee-owned construction and construction services companies.
.cianbro.com/Who-We-Are
▪ Huawei,
A giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers.
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@realtalk7547 , Richard is not saying you can't do it. He's explaining that under capitalism that for everyone winter you have to have many losers. It's like when you play the lottery. Yes, you can win a lot of money, but in order for you to win you have to have a lot of people that bought tickets that didn't win. Capitalism requires that there be more workers then owners. Like when it comes to landlords that own apartment building. It has to be more available tenants than landlords.
Richard explains that if you can own your own business, then yes, that would be preferable. Just like if you're able to own your own home that would be preferable to living in Cooperative housing. If you work or live in a Cooperative, then you can't have everything your own way. You're part of a family.
Richard is explaining that if you can't do it on your own, if you can't own your own business or factory, in your next best option is to do it collectively. That way you can remove the capitalist Middleman. Like this. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Richard also explains that if we had most of our GDP coming from worker-owned companies rather than capitalist Corporation, then most things will be made at home instead of third world countries. That's because worker-owned companies are tied to the community. Also when it comes to those workplaces the wealth flows to the workers. That causes the economy to expand because the workers can afford more stuff with greater purchasing power. That makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses.
The problem with capitalist companies is that their goal is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. The last workers get paid, the more profit the capitalist gets. But that actually makes it more difficult for people to start their own businesses because purchasing power is reduced for the majority while massively increased for a small minority.
Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. In order for it to exist you have to have a population where between 80 and 90% do not own the product of their labour and have no choice but to work for someone else. So if you do make it into the top 10% with determination, hard work and a bit of luck, that means someone else within that 10% ends up getting pushed back down to the bottom 90. Capitalism is a win-lose economic system. Anytime you have people accumulating masses of wealth without working, you have a lot of people that are working but not getting the full value of their labour. Win lose.
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@realtalk7547 , yes, of course it prevents other people from being successful. Society is only capable of creating so much wealth every year. The economy only Grows by so much every year. There are resources and technological limitations. If you have 99% of the pie going to 1% of the population, then the other ninety-nine percent of the population has to compete over the remaining 1%. That's like a game of musical chairs where a lot of people are going to be left standing.
You can't have groups of people making a hundreds of thousands of dollars per second just from their Capital Holdings while they're sleeping not have it cause poverty for putting large groups of people into a position where although never have an opportunity. Anytime you have a dollar that goes to someone who didn't work for it, somewhere else you have someone who worked for a dollar that they didn't get. It's not possible to earn a billion dollars. It's not possible to convert your labour energy into that much wealth.
You see, people should only be entitled to the wealth that they work for. Labour theory of ownership. There's nothing wrong with accumulating a lot of wealth, as long as you actually work for it without depriving other people. Labour includes both mental and physical efforts. Even if you could convert your labour energy into enough wealth or you could save $200,000 every year after expenses, it would still take you no less than 5 thousand years to accumulate 1 billion dollars.
That's one of the biggest problems with capitalism. Capitalism is not about working for a living. It is a system of exploitation. It is the economic system of parasites. Socialism is about working for a living. Capitalism is about owning for a living. That's why capitalist like to say that if you can't find a way to make money while you're sleeping, then you'll actually have to get a job. They say that you can't get rich while actually working. They also say things like you should never work hard for your money you should always make your money work hard for you.
The reason capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement is because workers weren't in the state of dependency. People had to be driven off of their land and separated from the resources with Force. If someone has the option of owning the product of their labour and getting all of the wealth of their labour produces, they're not going to work for someone like Jeff Bezos or at a company such as Walmart.
I'm not sure what you mean by forced socialism. Socialism is just workers collectively owning their own businesses and factories. That doesn't affect your business. Your business is yours.
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@realtalk7547 , you see, capitalism is a pyramid scheme. If people have to work to produce a loaf of bread just so that they can afford a slice, then you're never going to have equilibrium between supply and demand. One of the goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. Socialism Works economically because workers on the product of their labour. If they produce $5,000 of value, they now have $5,000 worth of personal power.
Why are the assembly line workers at the Socialist bread factory evil to make $70,000 a year? Because they own the product of their labour.
But if you're an assembly line worker at Walmart, or Amazon it doesn't matter whether you produce $70,000 worth of wealth or 70 million. All of that wealth and product belongs to someone else. You produce $70,000 worth of wealth but you only end up with about $20,000 worth of purchasing power. The ramifications in the community for small business owners are going to be very serious because they're not going to be able to compete for that limited purchasing power. The more desperate people become, the less purchasing power they have, the more they're going to have to resort to buying products at companies such as Walmart. So yes, of course capitalism causes massive poverty and deprived hundreds of thousands of people of opportunities that they normally would have had.
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@realtalk7547 , what makes you think I'm not calm? 🙂 is it the font I'm using?
Why do you keep talking about Force? What does Marxism have to do with Force? Marxism is a scientific system of analysis.
Yeah, of course people can start Cooperative businesses under capitalism. Everyone knows that. What does that have to do with anyting? People own private businesses under feudalism for hundreds of years. Is that some kind of justification for feudalism?
Dude, capitalism and markets are two different things. There are many different modes of production that utilizes markets for distribution. Socialism is more conducive to free markets and thriving economies because people own the product of their labour and get the full value of their labour. Under capitalism most of the wealth goes to the owners of capital, not those who work hard.
Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. That's why they get most of the wealth produced by Labour and why they get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc.
Under capitalism the billionaires have most of the control and most things are made in third world countries.
Under socialism most things are made at home and most of the wealth goes to those who work for it. Workers get the full value of their labour and they own the product of their labour. That is freedom. And that's better for the market because when you increase purchasing power people can buy more stuff.
But when it comes to capitalist companies, the goal is to maximize profit by keeping wages as low as possible. That's bad for the market.
Again, if you truly believe what you're saying, then you would be anti-capitalist and pro-socialist.
And that's right, most people have a skewed understanding of what capitalism is and how it works. That's why it's very important to actually study the history of capitalism and its evolution. As well as it's different forms.
Keep in mind that capitalism is not about working. It is about owning capital. Also keep in mind that labour includes both mental and physical efforts. You need to understand that nearly producing something with your labour and selling it into the market is not capitalism! That's extremely important.
Capitalism:
A system of economic production whereby business owners (capitalists) acquire the means of production (capital) and hire workers who get paid for their labor.
Main Characteristics of Capitalist Economies
• Two-Class System.
• Private Ownership.
• Profit Motive.
• Competition.
• The Bottom Line.
• Workers do not own the product of their labour. Total output produced by workers is immediately and automatically the property of the employers.
There are two key features that make an economy capitalist:
1. most production of goods and services is undertaken by privately owned companies, which produce and sell their output in hopes of making a profit. This is called production for profit.
2. Most work in the economy is performed by people who do not own their company or their output, but are hired by someone else to work in return for a money wage or salary. This is called wage labor.
An economy in which private, profit-seeking companies undertake most production, and in which wage earning employees do most of the work, is a capitalist economy. These twins features - profit-driven production and wage labor - create particular patterns and relationships, which in turn shaped the overall functioning of capitalism as a system.
Any economy driven by these two features - production for profit and wage labor - tends to replicate the following trends and patterns, over and over again:
- fierce competition between private companies for markets, sales, and profit.
- innovation, as companies constantly experiment with new technologies, new products, and new forms of organisation - in order to succeed in that competition.
- An inherent tendency to growth, resulting from the desire of each individual company to make more profit.
- Deep inequality between those who own successful companies, and the rest of society who do not own companies.
- A general conflict of interest between those who work for wages, and the employers who hire them.
- Economic cycles or roller coasters, with periods of strong growth followed by periods of stagnation or depression : sometimes these cycles even produce dramatic economic and social crisis.
What is the difference between a capitalist company & a socialist company?
1. Socialist companies are cooperatively owned.
Capitalist companies are privately owned.
2. At socialist companies there is no employee-employer dynamic.
The workers are their own bosses. They all get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, etc.
3. At socialist companies workers own the product of their labour.
At capitalist companies workers do not own the product of their labour, everything they produce belongs to someone else.
4. Organization is either bottom up or horizontal.
Capitalism is a hierarchical, top-down system of organization.
5. Socialist companies are democratic.
Capitalist companies are extremely undemocratic; you do what you're told, or else!
6. The workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour for profit.
7. Equality: at socialist companies everyone is equal in terms of voting power. One share equals one vote.
At a capitalist company workers don't have any voting power at all. That's why during the labour movement so many people fought and died for the right to unionize.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism: 1500-1980
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles .
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105.
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century.
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@realtalk7547 , and why do you keep saying there's nothing stopping a person from starting a cooperative? Yes, under capitalism everyone knows that you're legally allowed to start a business. You pointing that out doesn't make any sense at all and has absolutely no relevance to the argument or anything that I've said.
Under the capitalist system you have to have more workers than owners. That's a simple mathematical fact. Just like when it comes to an apartment building you have to have more tenants than landlords. 😀
Saying that there's nothing stopping a person from starting a business, either cooperatively or individually, that's simply not true. If you're playing musical chairs with 100 people and there's only 10 chairs, how can you say there's nothing stopping you from getting a seat? Seriously? What Richard Wolff is explaining is that your chances of getting a seat or better if you act cooperatively. Billionaires can buy up grocery stores, electric companies, railroads, Etc. Like Bill Gates now owns the largest amount of Farmland in the United States and also owns a big chunk of the Canadian Railway system. Billions of dollars that used to go to workers now goes to Bill Gates. That's billions of dollars no longer being spent into the economy by Canadian workers.
However, your average worker cannot start a multibillion-dollar robotics Factory, for that matter, most workers can't even start simple business. But when you get together collectively, then it makes it easier to start a business. That's the point. If you can't do it individually, then try to do it collectively. That's what Richard Wolff is saying.
So why are you talking about Force? Why do you keep projecting these preconceived ideas?
So far, you haven't made any arguments at all.
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@ExPwner , what are you talkin about? you haven't made any arguments. And the other guy gave up. Again, your statements make no sense.
Although I am going to add your last statement to your list of you're famous quotes. 😀
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam."
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality."
▪ James Adams on the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
You don't understand how social Mobility is calculated. The higher your social Mobility, the more access you have to things such as education and Healthcare. The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index. "Global Social Mobility Index - Wikipedia"
▪ stating assumptions as fact
James Adams:
" I have definitely study the topics of socialism more than you have."
▪ James Adams:
"of course a free market requires capitalism. Capitalism is not at all antithetical to free markets."
How can you not possibly understand that markets predate capitalism by thousands of years? Seriously? Dude, you have some serious problems
▪ James Adams:
"there's nothing wrong with absolute capitalism"
What is that even supposed to mean? There's nothing wrong with pure, unregulated capitalism? No, of course corporations don't need to be regulated because they never endanger workers, exploit workers, poison the environment, produce dangerous products, would exploit child labour without child labour laws.
▪ James Adams:
"You can only have a free market under capitalism."
In my opinion this comment gets first place for being the dumbest! 😃
▪ James Adams:
"feudalism doesn't fall under the oligarchy category. They had a caste system." 😃😃😃😆
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not right-wing, dumbass. The fascists used collectivism. State ownership. That is socialism by definition. Quit spamming when you can't even get basic definitions right."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalist companies never extract wealth from labour. Quit lying about it."
Cites Koch brother-funded 'Foundation for Economic Education'! aka 'FEE'
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not a right-wing ideology. It's on the left!"
▪ James Adams:
"Joe Biden is not right wing! He's a leftist! He is center-left!"
Okay. So then where would that leave Bernie Sanders? 😀 how can you be on the left side of the political Spectrum if you're anti-communist and anti-socialist while being pro-capitalist? Again, your comments make absolutely no sense.
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system of organizations. Socialism is top-down."
▪ James Adams:
"under capitalism workers always get paid the full value of their labour."
▪ James Adams:
"workers are never exploited under capitalism."
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@vladm.6859 , of course if you are an employee you're free to leave your job and find another employer. What does that have anything to do with what I said? Yes, that's one of the key differences between being a wage slave and being a chattel slave. As a chattel slave, your own outright. As a wage slave, your employer owns the product of your labour. When someone owns the product of your labour, you're basically nothing more than human livestock.
For example, there's a socially own bread factory in the United States where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 a year. It is impossible for an assembly line worker to make that much money at a capitalist company. Why? because they do not own the product of their labour. if they make a million dollars worth of product, it belongs to their employer, so they basically made their employer a million dollars. But at the socially own bread factory since the workers are the actual owners oh, they can make $70,000 a year because everything they produce belongs to them.
And of course you sign a contract as an employee. Of course you agree to that contract. Do you have any idea how desperate people are for jobs? Do you have any idea how many people commit suicide or abuse drugs from the stress that comes from the possibility of losing their job? Decent paying jobs better full-time and have benefits, they are becoming more and more rare. that's one of the reasons wages are so low. Workers have to compete with one another for those jobs. automation comes along which replaces workers, those workers end up on the unemployment line with it got to compete with all the other unemployed people. It's a downward spiral. And other problems capitalism is the boss has the power to move production offshore. that increases competition even further!
anyway, whether you live in the United States or not, I would recommend reading a people's History of the United States. you might want to check out the public library and read about the long history of wage slavery in the US and around the world.
some history:
"In what way do wage slaves differ from chattel slaves?
The slave is sold once and for all; the wage slave must sell himself daily and hourly.
The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual wage slave, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.
The slave is outside competition; the wage slave is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the wage slave, while the wage slave belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a wage slave; the wage slave slave can free himself only by abolishing private property in general."
"if you’re, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you’re selling what you produced. If you’re a wage earner, you’re selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self."
"We might just consider the matter of wage labor. It’s pretty hard to remember maybe, but if you go back to the early industrial revolutions, the late 19th century, wage labor was considered essentially the same as slavery. The only difference was that it was supposed to be temporary. That was a slogan of the Republican party: opposition to wage slavery. Why should some people give orders and others take them? That’s essentially the relation of a master and a slave, even if it could be temporary.
If you look back at the labor movement in the late 19th century, you see it had a rich array of worker-owned, worker-directed media: worker-written newspapers all over the place, and many of them by women—the so-called “factory girls” in textile plants. Attack on wage labor was constant. The slogan was, “Those who work in the mills should own them.” They opposed the degradation and undermining of culture that was part of the forced industrialization of the society. They began to link up with the radical agrarian movement. It was mostly still an agrarian society, the farmers groups that wanted to get rid of the northeastern bankers and merchants and run their own affairs. It was a really radical democratic moment. There were worker-run cities, like Homestead, Pennsylvania, a main industrial center. A lot of that was destroyed by force, but I again think it’s just below the surface, can rise easily again."
~ Noam Chomsky
https://chomsky.info/theres-a-huge-desire-to-revamp-our-exploitive-economy-bubbling-in-the-collective-unconscious/
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage. When the producer sold his product for a price, Ware writes, “he retained his person. But when he came to sell his labor, he sold himself,” and lost his dignity as a person as he became a slave — a “wage slave,” the term commonly used. Wage labor was considered similar to chattel slavery, though differing in that it was temporary — in theory. That understanding was so widespread that it became a slogan of the Republican Party, advocated by its leading figure, Abraham Lincoln."
"There are serious barriers to overcome in the struggle for justice, freedom, and dignity, even beyond the bitter class war conducted ceaselessly by the highly class-conscious business world with the “indispensable support” of the governments they largely control. Ware discusses some of these insidious threats as they were understood by working people. He reports the thinking of skilled workers in New York 170 years ago, who repeated the common view that a daily wage is a form of slavery and warned perceptively that a day might come when wage slaves “will so far forget what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced on them by their necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.” They hoped that that day would be “far distant.” Today, signs of it are common, but demands for independence, self-respect, personal dignity, and control of one’s own work and life, like Marx’s old mole, continue to burrow not far from the surface, ready to reappear when awakened by circumstances and militant activism."
https://chomsky.info/nothing-for-other-people-class-war-in-the-united-states/
"Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what they regarded as virtual slavery."
https://chomsky.info/20141201/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
"As I mentioned, public mass education was a major achievement, in which the US was a pioneer. But it had complex characteristics, rooted in the sharp class conflicts of the day. One goal was to induce farmers to give up their independence and submit themselves to industrial discipline and accept what they regarded as wage slavery. That did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that political leaders of his day were calling for popular education. He concluded that their motivation was fear. The country was filling up with millions of voters and the Masters realized that one had to therefore “educate them, to keep them from (our) throats.”
Adam Smith:
"People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits."
• Noam Chomsky (1995) Class Warfare, p. 19-23.
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war." ~
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
page 410
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@vladm.6859 , what do you mean how would the bread factory work in practice? you make it sound like the bread factory is theoretical And doesn't exist. but it does exist. There are hundreds of thousands of these types of workplaces. If you want to know how the bread factory works, why don't you call them up and ask them. I'm sure that the more than happy to do an interview over the phone or Skype.
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
for the vast majority of people on the planet, capitalism is the opposite of freedom. Gene Epstein, and many people like him, are paid by billionaires connected to the oil and banking industry. of course they want people to believe that capitalism is the best system because it does offer them maximum freedom. Maximum freedom for them, means minimal freedom for everyone else. freedom and democracy depends on how much you can afford. 😀 https://youtu.be/4xqouhMCJBI
Capitalism is economic feudalism. So, what does economic democracy look like? See from the 41;30 minute Mark.
https://youtu.be/ZfaFriFAz1k
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@ExPwner , how long have we had the 40 Hour Work Week? How much is productivity increase over that time? Why haven't working hours decreased even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950? Because most of the wealth goes to the richest 1%. Because most things produced under capitalism belong to someone else. It's like when a cow produces more milk. It doesn't go to the cow, it goes to the farmer.
The top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%.
In a paper that uses new data and methods to measure top wealth in the United States, Matthew Smith (Treasury) Owen Zidar (Princeton), and Eric Zwick (Chicago Booth) provide a detailed picture of how America’s ultra-rich build wealth and the pace at which inequality has grown.
Their findings show that wealth is very concentrated: The top 1% holds nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%.
~ Princeton University
~ Chicago Booth, global business school
~ National Bureau of Economic Research
The only reason that we're not working 16 hours a week today is because workers fought and died to achieve the 10-hour day, the eight-hour day, Etc. The capitalist class did everything they could to prevent workers from achieving regulations, the eight-hour day, child labour laws, old age pensions, weekend, Etc.
You need to stop getting your information from organizations such as prageru.
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@V4Andy and what does any of that have to do with Democratic workplaces in the United States? It makes no sense for you to be talking about third world countries and situations that occurred almost a hundred years ago. do you have any idea what China had gone through during the previous 100 years? Are you not familiar with the century of humiliation? Do you know what happened did China during those 100 years? you have any idea what Russia was going through, and had gone through, during the time you're referring to? I just doesn't make any sense for you to be using such examples. you might as well be saying why were the Japanese having a hard time economically after we drop two atomic bombs on them. and Venezuela? again, a third world country that is dependant upon a oil exports and is under heavy sanctions by the United States. do you have any idea what those sanctions have done to their economy? it's bad enough that they're a third world country which had been heavily decimated by imperialism over the last 150 years, but to make matters worse, United States has had heavy sanctions on that country for decades. Longer than the US has been at war with Afghanistan! and then, on top of that, nationalization doesn't have anything to do with the subject we're talking about. Countries like the United States, Canada, Britain, we have an entirely different problem. thanks to technology we can produce far more than we're capable of consuming. we're suffering from an epidemic of overproduction. industry can't even come close to running at 100% capacity. Do you have any idea how many factories, how many tools, how many means of production are sitting idle in the United States right now and have been idle for the last decade? hundreds of billions of dollars in machines just sitting there rusting away wow people are homeless, unemployed, the infrastructure is falling apart, Etc.
anyway, We know exactly how well Democratic workplaces compared to capitalist Enterprises. there's no shortage of data or history to go by.
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪︎ pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
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@Kunfucious577 , well yeah, of course it was an experiment. Same with capitalism. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with Socialism or capitalism, if you give dictatorial powers to an individual such as Adolf Hitler and removed checks and balances that protect you from the abuses of power and wealth, while you're going to end up with problems. Germany prior to World War II was a capitalist country. Saudi Arabia is a capitalist country. Again, it doesn't matter whether you're dealing with Socialism or capitalism, a government can become either more or less democratic under either system.
You don't know how worker cooperatives work? Well, you'll have to do some research.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
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@Kunfucious577 , yes, worker cooperatives have managers and other organizers. The difference is, those managers are not dictators. It's kind of like when a symphony orchestra hires a conductor. The conductor can guide and lead the orchestra, but he's not a dictator. He can be fired at any moment. At a democratic worker Cooperative the workers have complete and total sovereignty. That means there is no greater Authority. The workers get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, Etc.
Capitalism is economic feudalism. Socialism is economic democracy.
Capitalism is about selling the product of someone else's labour. Socialism is when you're selling the product of your own labour. At worker cooperatives workers are doing their own work. They're not getting someone else to do their work. capitalism is about not working for your money, it's about making your money work hard for you. That basically means living off of other people's labour. Socialism is about actually working for a living rather than living off other people's labour through capital. Capitalism is a parasitic system. Socialism is a symbiotic system. Capitalism is a top-down, hierarchical undemocratic system of organization. Socialism is a democratic, bottom up, non hierarchical system of organization.
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@Jana-fp8qp , well yeah, they're never going to give up their power without a fight. People like JPMorgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, they did everything in their power to prevent the working-class from achieving the right to unionize, from achieving the eight-hour day, the five-day Work Week, consumer safety standards, child labour laws, Etc. But because the working class was Unified we achieved the 8-hour day and five day work week. Something we now take for granted. And if the capitalist class has its way, they're going to roll everything back to where we no longer have a choice but to work more than 40 hours a week in order to survive.
But yeah, things are looking good. With every passing day we can produce more and more with less and less labour. There's going to be a lot of unemployed people in the future because the owning class simply does not need as many workers today as it used to in order to produce all of the goods and services needed by Society. That's the way it was back before we had the eight-hour day. Mechanization and assembly lines made it possible to double production output. 50% of the workforce was no longer needed. If you wanted to be one of the 50% that got a job, you had to be the most educated, and willing do the most work for the least amount.
of money.
So, workers either have to become independent by forming cooperatives, or they're going to have to force the capitalist class once again to cut working hours and half without reducing wages. Now they're talking about introducing a universal basic income in order to maintain rates of consumption.
Anyway, I don't know what's going to happen. It certainly is an interesting time in history. But who knows, global warming will probably destroy us anyway
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Have you checked out the statistics regarding worker-owned companies? Workers produce everything! Who you think capitalist hire to get the work done? Engineers, scientists, pipefitters, electricians, Carpenters, Etc. Our economy is the sum total of all our work. Keep in mind that labour includes both mental and physical efforts.
Statistically speaking, not only are worker-owned companies better for workers and communities, they're more stable, more durable, and workers are happier, more creative, more productive, they take fewer sick days, there's less incidence of substance abuse, mental illness, Etc.
Also, there's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world. There's a region in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker-owned companies.
Under the capitalist system most of the capital ends up being owned by the richest members of society. So not only do they get most of the wealth produced by labour, they get to make most of the decisions. That's why most things are made in China, why wages are so low, and why the richest 1% now has almost as much wealth as a poorest 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. Meanwhile, over 40 million Americans require food stamps in order to get enough food to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! And that was before the pandemic. The pandemic drove another hundred million people into poverty. And that's because the for-profit capital system can't mobilize resources effectively to deal with pandemics.
However, because worker-owned companies are tied to the community, if more of our GDP were coming from those types of businesses, most things would be made at home and most of that money would be flowing to the workers. That's more conducive to a free market in thriving economy because workers tend to spend their money into the Market. That creates more demand.
Capitalist companies however, their goal is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. But that violates basic Market in economic principles in regards to equilibrium. The more successful capitalist company is, the more goods and services you have in circulation and the less purchasing power workers have. That's why, technically speaking, capitalism is an anti economic system.
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the point is that the workers get all of the money when they collectively owned a democratic business or factory. when an employee works at capitals company, he does not get all of the money that has labour produces. That's why it's possible for an assembly line worker to make $70,000 a year at a bread factory but only minimum wage at a capitalist company.
There is a Cooperative in Spain with a hundred and twenty thousand workers. There's plenty of incentive for expansion. They started off small, and now they own their own bank, high-tech Research Laboratories, Hospital, University, Etc. Their research and development is so Advanced that they get contracts from Intel, Ford Motor Company and Microsoft. just to name a few.
Capitalism reduces workers to human livestock. And that's why we still have the 40 Hour Work Week. Doesn't matter that productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. All increases in productivity go to the owners of capital just like all the milk produced by a cow goes to the farmer. Corporations do everything they can to maximize profits. and that means they have specialists to figure out how to lower production costs. and they have been very successful. Most people can no longer afford a family on a single income. More and more of the wealth produced by labour is going to the shareholders. If you have 50% more of the wealth going to shareholders instead of workers, how can you not expect rates of consumption to slow by 50%? Jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. So any erosion in purchasing power has to be offset with increase access to credit. the problem is, the interest attached to debt only serves to reduce purchasing power even further. and when the credit Runs Out, consumption slows, people dump their socks, and the economy takes a major downturn.
capitalism is a religion. That should be obvious if anyone just takes the time to examine its basic workings
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Mass stupidity is an issue with capitalism, not socialism. Look at socialist companies around the world. We have dated going back almost 200 years. In those bottom-up, Democratic non-hierarchical systems of organization we see that mistakes are less likely to occur. But when it comes to capitalist organization, then not only do you have to worry about stupidity, you have to worry about greed and Corruption. That's because those of the top have massive power over those underneath. They have dictatorial powers.
Adam Smith pointed out over 200 years ago that capitalism would greatly reduce the intelligence of workers. Citizens become mindless drones because they're usually only knowledgeable of one specific area cooperation. But when it comes to socialist companies, workers become knowledgeable all areas of operation. If you look at the statistics, workers are not only smarter, they're more creative, intuitive, happier, more efficient, Etc. There's less incidence of mental illness, depression, substance abuse, workers take fewer sick days, Etc.
That type of organization makes option virtually impossible. You don't have to worry about workers being forced to pollute their own environment, you don't have to worry about production being moved to a third world country. You don't have to worry about workers being forced to labour and unsafe conditions, Etc. And of course even if you did have greedy people, no one's going to take the chance of being ostracized. The workers are not going to poison their own Neighbors in order to make a few extra dollars.
And because the wealth actually goes to the workers, the workers have more money to spend into the community. That causes the economy to expand. Trickle up instead of trickle down. It becomes easier for people to start their own small businesses because you have more demand. Capitalist companies, on the other hand, they siphon most of the wealth from communities. The goal is to maximize profit. So they try to keep wages as low as possible. That causes the economy to contract because workers don't have adequate purchasing power to maintain jobs through consumption. We now have a situation where the richest 1% now has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. So now most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income and we have most things being made in China. Not only do we have stupid people at the top in control of the entire economy and government, we're also dealing with individuals that are no longer rational due to their own hubris and God complex.
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@zarlok5294 , again, we have data going back almost 200 years! We know exactly how well socialist Enterprises compare to capitalist Enterprises. Ironically, there are billionaire business owners that are actually making more money because they made their businesses more socialist! 😃 https://youtu.be/35epDjB_7WE
Hypothetically, if you were an engineer/ programmer, or just an average worker, would you rather work at a company such as Huawei, or would you rather work for Bill Gates at Microsoft?
"Huawei is a company wholly owned by its employees. No government or any third party holds shares in our company, intervenes in our operations, or influences our decision-making.
No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees.
Huawei pays out US$9.65 billion in dividends to current and retired staff
Huawei overtook Ericsson in 2012 as the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, and overtook Apple in 2018 as the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung Electronics. In 2018, Huawei reported annual revenue of US$108.5 billion. In July 2020, Huawei surpassed Samsung and Apple in the number of phones shipped worldwide."
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The problem with capitalism is that most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. When workers actually own their own Capital, then they get most of the wealth produced by their labour. And they get to be their own bosses. That's the argument.
for example, there is a socially owned bread factory in the United States were assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. that's because those workers own the product of their labour. So when they make a million dollars worth of bread, that money goes to them. But if you are an employee, and you make a million dollars worth of bread, you basically made a million dollars for someone else.
Let's look at some worker testimony just to consider some of the advantageous:
• How about the Ocean Spray cranberry cooperative? Do those workers make minimum wage? 2000 employees produce roughly one and a half billion dollars annually. So how much do you think the workers get paid?
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
• how about these Cooperative owners in Argentina? Do you think they're making more or less money now that they are the actual owners? Do you think the business is actually doing better or worse now that the workers actually own the company and operated democratically? https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
• when you pay your electric bill, when you buy a home, when you buy a condo, Etc, do you want to be buying these things at cost! Or do you want to be putting money into other the pocket of middlemen that aren't actually doing any work or contributing anything? https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
• do you think these workers are making minimum wage? Or are they making a living wage? doesn't sound like they're enjoying being able to actually share in the decision-making process? Does it sound like they are happier having more freedom and control, along with getting paid more? https://youtu.be/8vJDhKMrncw
• these Cooperative is definitely provide more equality, freedom and prosperity compared to capitalist Enterprises. Along with that they have acceptance, the advantage pooling their resources for their families and community, autonomy & Independence (allowed to be unique, it's actually valued instead of discouraged), teaching and education are part of the job -not just simply producing like a Mindless robot!, support, real and genuine concern for your fellow workers and community, sustainable development, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/NO-8iI7GW70
• Evergreen cooperatives! One of the reasons they exist is because it's impossible have a quality life when only making minimum wage. They provide people with a living wage. https://youtu.be/4zU8_ofpPyQ
• even in poor countries during the financial crisis, the workers are still making a living wage, often much more than their American counterparts. https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
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No, everything he says is based on hard empirical data. Socialist companies are much better for the economy and free-market. First, workers don't have to worry about having their livelihood move to a different country nor do they have to worry about being forced to work in unsafe working conditions. Second, when the wealth flows to the workers, those workers spend that money into the economy. That creates more demand. You have people buying more pizza, beer, trips to the bowling alley, Etc. The economy expands. However, when it comes to capitalist Enterprises, goal is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. But that creates a huge disparity between supply and demand. You have too much Supply but not enough purchasing power. That's extremely problematic because jobs are tied to consumption. But at socialist companies the workers get the full value of their labour. Labor-saving technology reduces working hours while increasing the purchasing power of the worker. You have an equilibrium between supply and demand.
Richard wolf knows exactly what he's talking about.
Capitalism doesn't make any sense. Literally, the more successful a capitalist company is, the less purchasing power workers have. How crazy is that? Does that sound like rational economics to you?
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No, the janitor wouldn't have the same decision-making ability of Elon Musk.
Richard Wolff is pointing out that when you work at a capitals company you are basically working at a dictatorship. The boss gets to decide when you work, how hard you work, what you can wear, when you eat, whether or not you get a coffee break. They can even dictate when and how long you get to go to the washroom.
But at socialist companies there is no dictatorship. The workers have sovereignty. Sovereignty means no higher authority. Each worker controls one share. One share equals one vote.
So, at a socialist company, the janitor wouldn't have the same decision-making power is Elon Musk. They would get one vote. If all of the other experts in the company agreed with the janitor, then idea might be implemented.
There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world. Huawei is just one example. Not only do the workers have sovereignty, they get all of the wealth that their labour produces. In other words, they get the full value of their labour, something that's not possible when you work at a capitalist company
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@ExPwner , US leaders have supported some of the most notorious right-wing autocracies in history—régimes that have pursued policies favoring wealthy transnational corporations at the expense of local producers and working people; régimes that have tortured, killed, or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their more resistant citizens, as in (at one time or another) Chad, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, the Philippines, Chile (under Pinochet), Cuba (under Batista), Congo/Zaire (under Mobutu), Nicaragua (under Somoza), Iran (under the Shah), Iraq (under Saddam Hussein until 1990), Morocco (under King Hassan), and Portugal (under Salazar), to offer an incomplete listing.
US imperialists have assisted counterrevolutionary insurgencies that have perpetrated brutal bloodletting against civilian populations; for example, Unita in Angola, Renamo in Mozambique, the contras in Nicaragua, the Khmer Rouge (during the 1980s) in Cambodia, the mujahedeen and then the Taliban in Afghanistan (in the 1980s and 1990s against a Soviet-supported reformist government), and (in 1999–2000) the drug-dealing Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army in Yugoslavia (originally deemed a terrorist organization by the US State Department). All this is a matter of public record, although it is seldom if ever reported in the US media.
Support for rightists extends to Nazism itself. After World War II, US leaders and their western capitalist allies did little to eradicate fascism from Europe, except for putting some of the top Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. In short time, many former Nazis and their active collaborators were back in the saddle in Germany.
Hundreds of Nazi war criminals found a haven in the United States, either living in comfortable anonymity or employed by US intelligence agencies during the Cold War.
CUBA IS ONE OF THE FEW COUNTRIES that has managed to resist—at great cost—the US counterrevolutionary juggernaut. For over a half century the island nation has been subjected to an array of hostile actions designed to undermine its economy and government. The empire justifies its aggression with a familiar mantra: Cuba is a communist régime, a threat to our freedom and an oppression to its own people; therefore we must strive for régime change, of a kind we have imposed on many other countries. Much of the American public swallows this line. We might want to question it.
https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds
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@bluecollarbullionballer4269 , There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans ( create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
There are 3 main types of ownership:
you have private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), and you have communism (no class, money or state). https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
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Communism doesn't go against human nature. People were living communally for at least 70,000 years years. Capitalism has only been around for about 250 years. Capitalism goes against Human Nature. There's numerous studies that have been done. Capitalism is a religion. Do you think in the natural world it would be possible for a person to convert their labour energy into a billion dollars? Even with modern labor-saving technology it's not possible to convert a person's labour energy into that much wealth. Even if you could save $100,000 a year after all expenses, it would still take you do less than 10,000 years to accumulate 1 billion dollars.
Capitalism is technically a religion and an anti economic system. It actually destroys free markets. Free markets require a balance between supply and demand. That's why one of the main goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. But the goal of capitalism is in direct opposition to that goal. The goal of capitalism is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. Therefore it's not possible for workers to be able to earn enough money to buy all of the goods and services that they put in circulation. However, if all of those goods and services are not sold, the economy contracts. If the economy contracts, people get laid off and can't consume. That's why there's so much debt! The better capitalist companies get at maximizing profit, the less purchasing power workers have! Ever-increasing profit extracted from labour has to be offset with increased access to credit in order to maintain market equilibrium.
Why do you think it is that capitalism doesn't reduce working hours even though productivity levels continue to increase exponentially thanks to labor-saving technology? Because everything produced by workers belongs to someone else! Basically, workers are nothing more than human livestock. If a cow doubles its milk supply with growth hormone, it doesn't benefit the cow because all of that milk belongs to the farmer! That's why labor-saving technology led to the Advent of the billionaire class rather than reducing working hours.
But if people actually own the product of their labour, the labor-saving technology would increase prosperity for everyone while decreasing working hours. Would probably only be working 10 hours a week by now..
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@tripleb308 , well I'm not familiar with any capitals companies where assembly line workers are making $35 an hour, even with a union. Those types of jobs usually pertain to heavy industry or car manufacturing plants, all of which have been replaced with automation. and besides, most of the Union's of the United States and Canada have been wiped out. Those that still exist have been rendered anemic.
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
another example is is the Ocean Spray company. they have about 2,000 employees and produce well over a billion dollars in sales annually. they are discussed this video here along with many other worker-owned companies. https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
there is Huawei, a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers.
There's Mondragon, they started off with five workers. Now there's a hundred and twenty thousand workers that own their own bank, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Hospital, Etc. their research and development facilities are so Advanced they have contracts with Intel, Ford Motor Company and Microsoft.
there are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from democratic, worker-owned companies.
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪︎ pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
▪︎ Here is an example of two employee-owned companies in the United States. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
▪︎ Here is Mondragon, a Federation of 120 companies, owned and run by the workers! 100,000 employees, 25 billion annual sales! They own their own bank, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, factories, they even have their own social programs and safety-net! Those Research Laboratories are so advanced that Intel, Microsoft and the Ford Motor Company actually pays them to conduct research and solve problems on their behalf!
https://youtu.be/8ZoI0C1mPek
Mondragon through a critical lens https://medium.com/fifty-by-fifty/mondragon-through-a-critical-lens-b29de8c6049
▪︎ Maybe you could get together with your family and friends and start your own cooperative? 10 steps https://canada.coop/en/programs/co-op-development/how-start-co-op
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no, worker-owned companies are not capitalist. Capitalism is not merely selling the product of one's labour. If you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. Worker cooperatives are not capitalist because the company is owned collectively by the workers and the workers are running the company collectively and democratically. In order for the company to be capitalist, those workers would have to be utilizing wage labour for profit.
No, there is no conjecture. There are hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies in the United States and around the world. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. In the United States 60% of the country gets its electricity from worker-owned electrical cooperatives. Because there are so many cooperatives and because they've been around for so long, there's no shortage of data that shows us how they compared to capitalist Enterprises.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies.
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12% of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@carljacobson7156 , Capitalist invention? So? How many things were invented under slavery, feudalism, fascism?
of course worker cooperatives are not capitalist. the workers are doing their own work. They're not utilizing wage labour for profit. Therefore it's not capitalist. Keep in mind that merely selling the product of one's labour is not capitalism. If you write a book and sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism.
of course what is produced is sold into the market. It doesn't matter what the mode of production is. Markets are not unique to capitalism.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism https://archive.org/details/historyofcapital00mich
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles https://tinyurl.com/y6xqz7cw
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge. . ISBN 978-0415241878.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0-8476-7396-4. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ethics-efficiency-and-the-market-9780198285335
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital." https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/16915671?q&versionId=19853882
There are two key features that make an economy capitalist:
1. most production of goods and services is undertaken by privately owned companies, which produce and sell their output in hopes of making a profit. This is called production for profit.
2. Most work in the economy is performed by people who do not own their company or their output, but are hired by someone else to work in return for a money wage or salary. This is called wage labor.
An economy in which private, profit-seeking companies undertake most production, and in which wage earning employees do most of the work, is a capitalist economy. These twins features - profit-driven production and wage labor - create particular patterns and relationships, which in turn shaped the overall functioning of capitalism as a system.
Any economy driven by these two features - production for profit and wage labor - tends to replicate the following trends and patterns, over and over again:
- fierce competition between private companies for markets, sales, and profit.
- innovation, as companies constantly experiment with new technologies, new products, and new forms of organisation - in order to succeed in that competition.
- An inherent tendency to growth, resulting from the desire of each individual company to make more profit.
- Deep inequality between those who own successful companies, and the rest of society who do not own companies.
- A general conflict of interest between those who work for wages, and the employers who hire them.
- Economic cycles or roller coasters, with periods of strong growth followed by periods of stagnation or depression : sometimes these cycles even produce dramatic economic and social crisis.
Consequences:
• Total output produced by workers is immediately and automatically the property of the employers.
• Does not supply demand, only what people can afford. (E.g. Million people that need food VS a few rich people that want sports cars.)
• Has no means of separating the universal needs of human beings from junk commodities for the masses, or gold toilet-seats for the rich.
• Those without money to buy what they need do not have the right to live.
• Dependence on extreme waste: "It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials." ~ http://www.jaunimieciai.lt/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-cancer-stage-of-capitalism.pdf
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined."
~ Michael Parenti
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@chrisw9534 , yeah, I think I have a pretty good understanding of human nature. 😀
Yeah, some people don't want to own their own businesses. So what? And yeah, if you're hiring people why would you want to give them a say in your company? Nothing you've said makes any sense. What does it have to do with the argument? Also, statistically speaking, workers are a lot less stressed when they actually own the company and run it democratically. There's less stress, less mental illness, less substance abuse, workers are happier, more productive, they take fewer sick days, Etc.
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@ExPwner , you're wrong when it comes to just about everything. You're constantly saying that worker exploitation never happens under capitalism. You say that workers are always paid the full value of their labour regardless of how much they're being paid. You sound like a raving lunatic. And, to embarrass yourself even further, you claimed to have a master's degree in accounting. Yeah, an accountant that doesn't know how to count or understand basic economics.
▪ James adams: "Profits don't cause inflation you moron. How can you possibly be this economically illiterate? Prices are not set by profits. They are set by Supply and demand! This is econ 101."
Doesn't have a clue how increasing prices also increases profits. Doesn't understand that when prices rise faster than wages, we are actually earning less money. And that means we're getting poorer under capitalism. Inflation has been increasing faster than wages for a very long time now. The goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible and charging as much as possible for goods and services. Corporations are now making record profits because they are increasing prices as much as they can.
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam." Yeah, sure, capitalism doesn't create a working class/ owning class dichotomy where a very small minority of wealthy people own most of the capital on the planet, which enables them to get most of the wealth produced by labor. It also gives them the power to have most of the production in countries such as china.
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
Yeah, capitalism doesn't cause any quality. We only have a situation where the richest 1%, now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. And the eight richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. 😀
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@treyfannin8694 , dude, we're talking basic mathematics here. It's not hard to track with the money is going. Fact of the matter is the percentage of GDP going to workers has steadily been decreasing since 1950.
And I didn't say that rich people are the problem. The problem is that under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. That is just a simple fact. The more Capital you have, the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. However, if workers can obtain their own Capital, then they can keep all of the money that their labour produces. And they can own the product of their labour. worker cooperatives are good strategy because then workers can get together at afford things they normally wouldn't be able to individually.
And I don't expect you to believe anything I say. I expect you to be able to substantiate basic information. I expect you to be able to differentiate between facts, assertions and assumptions. That's what I expect. Never engage in faith-based or emotional based reasoning.
The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017
https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/21/news/economy/davos-oxfam-inequality-wealth/index.html
• starving Americans form one quarter mile-long line up at Food Bank https://trib.al/jSmp1t0
▪The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ The richest 5% of the population owns 67% of the wealth. The poorest 60% of the population owns 1% of the wealth.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪︎ The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/13/child-homelessness-highest-in-more-than-decade-feds-say/?platform=hootsuite
▪︎ 44% of US workforce aged 18-64 makes less than $16 per hour!
30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut back throughout the years by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
▪︎ 44% of fully employed people make $18,000 a year or less
>>> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/
>>> https://therealnews.com/stories/employment-numbers-fully-employed-low-pay-no-security
▪︎ Low-Wage Jobs are the New American Normal.
Low-wage workers make up nearly half of the American workforce, and many of them are the sole breadwinners for their families.
https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-american-normal
▪︎ more than one-third of us healthcare costs go to bankruptcy! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-costs-administration/more-than-a-third-of-us-healthcare-costs-go-to-bureaucracy-idUSKBN1Z5261
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes since 2004.
▪ There are 554,000 homeless people on a given night.
▪ The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation.
▪ 3% of American adults—6.8 million people—are either in jail or prison or on parole or probation.
▪ A third of states have a form of debtor’s prison, where the poor are locked up for failure to pay fines or debts.
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@treyfannin8694 , well no, that's not true. A person's ability to generate income is not solely dependant upon their own effort. Environmental factors play a crucial role. For example, there are sections in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker cooperatives. In the United States it's only 1%.
In the United States there is a socially on the bread factory where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. Can an assembly line worker make that much money at a capitalist company? No. It's not possible. Why? Because when you work as an employee at a capitals company, you do not own the product of your labour. If you do not own the product of your labour, then you're basically nothing more than human livestock. Most of your time will be spent making money for other people.
The fact of the matter is that most of the high-paying jobs have been moved offshore. Now good paying jobs are becoming more and more scarce. However, the number of people seeking good jobs is steadily increasing. if you have a thousand people for every one decent job, then obviously everyone can't make a decent wage. It's mathematically impossible.
you see, billionaires can easily by railroads, electric companies, toilet paper manufacturing plants, Etc. Just like in the Monopoly board game.
but most workers cannot afford their own means of production. that puts them in a serious state of dependency. they have to sell their labour for a fraction of what it's worth to those who do own the means of production.
however, a person might be able to start their own business. another strategy would be to join a worker cooperative or to form a worker cooperative. collectively it's easier for people to purchase the tools and equipment they need. for example,
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@carad2008 , the type of socialism that wolf is talking about has absolutely nothing to do with the government.
in regards to government-owned Enterprises, there are many countries that have them. for example, in advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
but it's a moot point anyway because the debate is about worker-owned Enterprises, not state-owned Enterprises.
and if you want to know why there's no third world countries that have been able to convert to Pure socialism, well that's because of imperialism. for example,
just since 1945 the USA has:
• tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected;
• attempted to assassinate over 40 foreign leaders.
• grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries;
• bombed the civilian populations of over 30 countries;
• used chemical & biological weapons; https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
USA #1 For STD's
S: subversion, sabotage,
T: terrorism, torture,
D: drug trafficking, death squads.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/
• Global capitalism - Rich Nations & poor Nations https://youtu.be/Q6WdUkaFyGw
• Humanity can be divided into 3 groups https://youtu.be/GEzOgpMWnVs
• School of the Americas death squads 1 & 2 https://youtu.be/HOeaG6-qsVc
- https://youtu.be/VW0k3v1RivA
• friendly dictators http://friendlydictators.blogspot.com/?m=1
• Samir Amin
https://youtu.be/CuYR-_tfWFw
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@willnitschke , it works both on the macro and micro-level. Guarding the macro-level, look at the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union accomplished in twenty years what took the United States 200 years to accomplish. Anyone had guaranteed access to housing, Medical, Dental, education, employment, Etc. 100% literacy. The Soviet Union did it first. It's because of their accomplishments that Americans started demanding a 40-hour work week, a right to retirement, consumer safety standards, child labour laws, weekends, holidays, Etc.
And then look at the success of Collective ownership at the micro-level. There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world that are massively successful. There's a bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make over $70,000 a year. Can assembly line worker make that much money at a capitalist company? No. Not even close. 😃 getting together collectively allows workers to be able to on their own means of production and the product of their labour.
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@ExPwner , I said the Soviet Union was able to accomplish in 20 years what took the United States 200 years to accomplish. Pretty amazing considering that before the Russian Revolution they had something like a 98% the literacy rate. They had no modern tools. There was no electricity, indoor plumbing, Etc. And even while they were being attacked by Japan, England, the United States, Canada, Etc, they still made amazing accomplishments in record time. Again, they were able to do in twenty years what took American 200.
Soviet Union had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century ( Source: "From Farm to Factory" by Robert C. Allen)
Soviets had a higher (or in some studies around the same) per capita calories consumption compared to the Americans (Source: CIA's declassified reports & Data from Wheatcroft & Allen )
They indeed ended the centuries long cycle of famines in the region (Source: Read anything by Dr. Mark Tauger about the agricultural revolution in the SU)
Education was free and of very high quality. (Source: Report of official US education mission in the USSR (1959))
Soviets had the most doctors per capita in the world (Source: Health personnel in the Soviet Union: Achievements and Problems by Mark G. Field)
Soviets were the first to go into space and had many other firsts.
Soviet Union obviously wasn't able to end racial inequality or sexual inequality but they made great strides in both of them (Source: Human rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Szymanski)
Saved the world from Nazis (I mean, yeah obviously)
And the list goes on and on and on.
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There are already hundreds of thousands of them. they work incredibly well. in fact, almost 60% of the USA gets its electricity from democratic workplaces.
There's a socially on bread factory in the United States where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 a year. Can a an assembly line worker make that much at a capitalist company? Nope. Not even close. In fact, they'd be lucky if they could make slightly more than minimum wage. Do you know why? Because when you're an employee you do not own the product of your labour. So it doesn't matter how hard you work. It doesn't matter how fast you work. It doesn't matter how many loaves of bread you produce. Every loaf you produce belongs to someone else. So, basically, if you make a million dollars worth of bread, you've made someone else a million dollars.
So, if you don't want to lose many years of your life making money for other people, then you either have to start your own business, join your worker Cooperative, or start a worker cooperative. that way you can actually keep all of the money that your labour produces. if you don't actually own the product of your labour, then basically you're nothing more than human livestock. 😃
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." 😃
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@pierrer5048 , No problem. my pleasure. here's some data that might also be helpful:
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@pierrer5048 , There are 3 main types of ownership:
you have private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), and you have communism (no class, money or state). Communism comes from the word community. It works like this: https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
>>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans (create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@rbell38340 , capitalism is not about providing people with jobs or helping communities, or any such thing like that.. the point of capitalism is to extract wealth from labour. it's like when a beekeeper extract honey from beehives. He doesn't do that because he cares about bees. He doesn't do that because he wants the lives of the bees to be better and more fruitful.🙂 the point is to exploit the work of the honey bees. Likewise, that's why people get employees. The more employees you have, not the Richer you can become. The more bees hives you have, the more wealth you can extract from their labour. That is what capitalism is all about.
You don't need capitalism in order to own a business, have a market, have people producing things, have people selling and trading with one another, excetera. That existed long before capitalism. Capitalism is something totally different. Capitalism is what the maximization of capital accumulation for the purpose of extracting wealth from Labour. Just like owning a beehive. So let's be clear on that.
and of course people are legally entitled to start their own businesses. But you can't say that everyone can start their own business, because that's simply not true. you see, a billionaire can just buy up hundreds of thousands of apartment complexes, electric companies, grocery stores, parking lots, Etc. that's why most of the wealth produced by Labour ends up going to a very small minority. You see, under capitalism the more Capital you have the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. That's why you end up with an extreme number of rich people at the top and a very large number of poor people at the bottom.
it's not easy for poor people or people that are in debt to start their own business. what Richard Wolff is pointing out is that it's easier when workers get together as a group in order to start a business. that's what his argument is. otherwise, if you can't start your own business, either individually or collectively, then you're going to have to fight for the best way that you can possibly get while making money and slaving away for someone else.
that's the argument.
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@rbell38340 , There are three main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, progressive taxation, social programs Etc.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs
Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour. here are two examples of socially owned companies in the United States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
He's not suggesting that people give up their private businesses. In fact, if we increase the number of democratic workplaces, that will make it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. that's because you'll have more members of the community with greater purchasing power. People will be buying more beer, pizza, trips to the bowling alley, Etc.
The type of socialism that Richard Wolff is referring to is simply about workers collectively owning and controlling their own company or factory democratically.
Worker cooperatives keep wealth and control with the community and workers. They make them less dependant upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs in consumer goods. Therefore, they are more conducive to a free market in Thrive me economy. When workers have more money, they spend more. That makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. However, when purchasing power is eroded, which capitalism does because capitalist corporations want to maximize profits by reducing production cost, then the economy contracts because there's inadequate purchasing power to cover the goods and services in circulation.
for example, here are two socially owned companies in the United States. A robotics company and a bread factory. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Almost 60% of the USA is powered by these type of workplaces. here is an electrical worker explaining what it's like to work in such an environment. States.
https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
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@rbell38340 , Richard Wolff is not arguing in favour of government socialism.
In regards to State socialism, that would just mean that the government represents the people. Under capitalism the government represents the owning class, not the working class or average citizen.
You're painting with an awfully wide brush. what socialism would look like would largely depend on the culture and structure of the government. For example, socialism in Canada would be very different than it would be in the United States. you seem to be thinking in terms of black and white. obviously having a government that's controlled by the the actual citizens is going to be shaped by the needs and culture of those citizens.
But it's a moot point anyway because Richard Wolff is not talking about that type of socialism. there are three main types of socialism. One type is regulatory socialism. Progressive taxation, price controls, social programs, labour laws, Etc. you have to have price controls under capitalism, otherwise billionaires with the marking up the price on water and medication anytime there's a disaster and then hoarding other Commodities in order to drive up prices.
the second most common type of socialism is when the state owns companies and factories. State-owned Enterprises are common in countries such as Canada, United States, Etc. Not a big deal.
the third most common type of socialism is when workers directly own business or factory. that's the type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about. we need enough Democratic workplaces in society some people are not so depended upon billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer good. otherwise, workers will have to compete with one another for jobs at private companies. Whoever is willing to do the most work for the least amount of money, that's going to be the person who gets the job. that's why wages are so low. the percentage of GDP going to workers is now so low that most people can no longer afford a family on a single income. most people are living from Check to Check and will continue to do so until the day they die. and as privatization / capitalism expands, things are only going to get worse. the percentage of GDP going to workers will continue to decrease while more of it goes to the billionaire class.
if wealth was actually staying with the workers in the first place, we could probably for the working class by more than half.
under capitalism, most of the wealth produced by labour goes to the owners of capital. Just like in the Monopoly board game. that's why we still have a 40-hour work week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950. labor-saving technology only benefits the owners of capital. under socialism, that technology would serve to reduce working hours while increasing prosperity.
capitalism is economic feudalism. I think it's about time that we move Beyond types of feudalism. don't you?
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@rbell38340 , dude, you're not making any sense. Richard Wolff is encouraging workers to start their own co-operatives if they find themselves underpaid, unemployed, in an intolerable situation with their current employer, Etc. Yes, you should always be cautious when someone is trying to sell you something. You have to ask yourself what their motive is. But Richard wolf doesn't have anything to gain from people starting cooperatives. you're not making any sense. there are doctors that go around like Richard Wolff lecturing on the advantages of eating fruits and vegetables. They have absolutely nothing to gain if you eat more broccoli. 😃 likewise, Richard wolf doesn't have anything to gain if you get together with a group of people and decide to run a company democratically.
and his argument is absolutely correct. worker cooperatives make workers and communities less dependant upon the government and billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. they keep wealth and control with the community. And that is more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. Capitalism erodes purchasing power and removes money from the community.
keep in mind that Richard Wolff is talking about WSDEs, not SOEs. Those are two distinctly different forms of socialism. and of course there's a third popular form of socialism involving regulations, progressive taxation, social programs, minimum wage laws, consumer safety standards, Etc.
I think you're getting your ideologies mixed up.
and what does nationalization have to do with anything? increasing the number of worker cooperatives is not going to give the government more power to nationalize companies. That doesn't make any sense.
And dude, when it comes to First World countries, the United States is pretty far down the list when it comes to the best countries to live in. Way down. in fact, if you want to live the American dream, you're better off moving to Norway or Denmark. social Mobility it has been virtually has been virtually non-existent since 1970. Real wages haven't increased since 1970. in fact, in the United States, the percentage of GDP going to workers has steadily been decreasing since 1950. most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income and are one paycheck away from financial disaster.
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@rbell38340 , here, let me break it down for you so that it's less confusing.
There are 3 main types of ownership:
you have private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), and you have communism (no class, money or state). Communism comes from the word community. It works like this: https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
here is a very basic diagram that shows the difference between socialism and communism https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10163916901930618&id=544325617
Also there are 3 main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, social programs, minimum wage, consumer safety standards, Labour laws, Etc. without these regulations capitalism would collapse. this type of socialism is prominent in Canada, the United States, Etc. Americans like to call it Democratic Socialist. in Europe they call it social democracy. Same thing, different name.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs. (state-owned Enterprises). Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour.
a few examples,
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
Here are two examples of socially owned companies in the United States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
If we increase the number of democratic workplaces, that will make it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. that's because you'll have more members of the community with greater purchasing power. People will be buying more beer, pizza, trips to the bowling alley, Etc.
Traditional socialism / anarchism is simply about workers collectively owning and controlling their own company or factory democratically.
Worker cooperatives keep wealth and control with the community and workers. They make them less dependant upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. Therefore, they are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy.
When workers have more money, they spend more. That makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. However, when purchasing power is eroded, which capitalism does because capitalist corporations want to maximize profits by reducing production cost, then the economy contracts because there's inadequate purchasing power to cover the goods and services in circulation.
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The type of socialism Richard Wolff is talking about makes people independent of the state. When workers own and control their own Capital, then they get all of the wealth produced by their labour. They spend that money into the economy. That causes the economy to expand. When rich people own the capital then they get most of the wealth produced by the workers. They spend that money on going to space, paying for propagandist, buying politicians, paying for lobbyists, paying for lawyers to hide money in offshore accounts, buy more Capital such as parking lots of hospitals, electric companies, grocery stores, railroads, water treatment plants, Etc. That way when anyone needs something they have to pay rich people and extortion fee to get access. If you have to pay an extra $10 to Bill Gates to get your blood tested, that's 10 less dollars you have to spend into the economy buying goods and services from your fellow workers.
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@ExPwner , here's an example of real moronic nonsense 😃
James Adams, top quotes....
▪ James adams: "Profits don't cause inflation you moron. How can you possibly be this economically illiterate? Prices are not set by profits. They are set by Supply and demand! This is econ 101."
Doesn't have a clue how increasing prices also increases profits. Doesn't understand that when prices rise faster than wages, we are actually earning less money. And that means we're getting poorer under capitalism. Inflation has been increasing faster than wages for a very long time now. The goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible and charging as much as possible for goods and services. Corporations are now making record profits because they are increasing prices as much as they can.
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam." Yeah, sure, capitalism doesn't create a working class/ owning class dichotomy where a very small minority of wealthy people own most of the capital on the planet, which enables them to get most of the wealth produced by labor. It also gives them the power to have most of the production in countries such as china.
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
Yeah, capitalism doesn't cause any quality. We only have a situation where the richest 1%, now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. And the eight richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. 😀
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality." Yeah, you're right. Americans are number one for depression because they have so much freedom. 😀
>>>> USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people.
~ (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005.)
>>>> Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime.
~ cdc g o v sheet
>>>> The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation. ~ The Wall Street Journal
>>>>>> As of 2020, According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
>>>> 30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut. ~ Time Magazine
No, that wouldn't cause people to be depressed.
You see, that's why social mobility in the United States is so low! Rather than more people getting access to critical Services over time, services are being cut! You don't even know how social Mobility works. Nimrod.
▪ James Adams regarding the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility." How do you think social Mobility is calculated? It's based on a person's ability to access those basic services.
>>>>> The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index! That's even worse than Portugal and Lithuania!
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@ExPwner , I don't cite any examples for capitalism causing depression? Yeah, I did. I cited numerous reputable. Viewed sources on studies that show how capitalism causes unemployment and poverty. When people get laid off, incidence of depression, substance abuse, mental disorders, all of these things increase and number. Along with crime and even domestic abuse.
Just to give one example calma
The ‘Merva-Fowles’ study, done at the University of Utah in the 1990s, found powerful connections between unemployment and crime. They based their research on 30 major metropolitan areas with a total population of over 80 million.
A 1% rise in unemployment resulted in:
a 6.7% increase in Homicides;
a 3.4 % increase in violent crimes;
a 2.4 % increase in property crime.
During the period from 1990 to 1992, this translated into:
1459 additional Homicides;
62,607 additional violent crimes;
223,500 additional property crimes.
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@ExPwner , you don't know how capitalism cause unemployment? 😃 yes, I've given you probably hundreds of citations by now. But even someone such as yourself should understand how and why capitalism cause unemployment. Just to give one quick example, if a market is saturated with a particular product and labor-saving Technologies introduced which doubles production with half the amount of Labor, what happens to those employees? They get laid off!
Also, workers have to produce more value than they actually get paid for. Basically, employees have to bake a loaf in order to afford to slice. Hypothetically, if workers only get 50% of the wealth on the goods and services they produce, then where do they get the purchasing power to consume the other 50%? Where does that purchasing power come from? So, it's only a matter of time before consumption slows down. If consumption slows down, people get laid off. Laid off people can't consume.
How many high-paying jobs with Benefits were lost when regulations were removed allowing corporations to move production to third world countries?
I could go on all day giving examples.
Maybe you need a citation as proof that most of our products are made in countries such as China? lol 😃
And you actually claimed to have a master's degree in accounting.
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@sinfulyetsaved , it has absolutely nothing to do with faith. What it has to do with is hard empirical data. There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies and factories in the United States and around the world. We have data going back over 100 years. Of course workers can operate their own factories and companies. Yes, certain people are better at doing certain things, because they have different skill levels, different talents, and different levels of Education. But that's not an argument against worker ownership. Statistically speaking, where coronavirus has are more productive, more stable, more durable, and much much better for the workers, the community and the economy.
There is a region in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker-owned companies. So yes, of course workers can own their own companies and factories. Of course we can have an economic democracy. No we do not need to be depended upon capitalism in order to have modes of production, markets, people selling things in trading with one another. Markets and people selling the product of their labour, that has been going on for thousands of years before capitalism ever came into existence. Capitalism is about the maximization of capital accumulation for the purpose of extracting wealth from other people's labour. At socialist companies people are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. That's called being a parasite. Capitalism is the economic system of parasites. It's about owning for living rather than working for a living. You see, under capitalism you can accumulate billions of dollars because you're extracting wealth from other people's labour. You can accumulate a billion dollars by using your own labour because you can't convert your labour energy into that much wealth. It's not possible. It doesn't matter what kind of labor-saving Technology you use or how much education or talent you have. People should only be entitled to the wealth they work for. Living off of other people's labour is being a parasite and it's immoral.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
▪ Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies.
▪ Study number 5:
The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
~ workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people.
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@sinfulyetsaved , and no, bottom-up systems of organization are not prone to corruption the way top down systems are. Capitalism is prone to corruption because those are the top has power over those underneath. If the boss wants to replace you with his best friend or his Lover, he could do so. The boss can use his power to blackmail the workers by threatening to move production to a different location. Why do you think it's so hard to form a union these days? A capitalist company is basically a dictatorship. So yeah, when you have that kind of power, corruption is almost guaranteed. Abuse is almost guaranteed. And because a lot of the factories are owned by capitalists but don't even live in the same state, often not even in the same country, they don't care about destroying the environment. They can get away with abusing people.
But when it comes to socialist companies, the consumers and the workers are the owners! So no, can't be greedy. You can't be corrupt. You can't make deals behind closed doors. Look at Volkswagen. They were able to rip off their customers because a small group of people behind closed doors and secrecy were able to program the computers in their vehicles to give false readings in regards to pollution. But you can't do that at a socialist company because everybody has access to all the information and proceedings taking place. And obviously you're not going to pollute your water supply. Obviously you're not going to poison your own children. Can't get away with being greedy.
For example, here is a worker at a socially owned robotics Factory in the United States explaining why you can't be greedy in such an environment. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@DoubleBob , I never noticed wolf evading any questions at all. So your accusations are subjective and based purely on assumption. That's not much of an argument.
Yes, people are allowed to start a business, either collectively or individually. What does that have to do with the argument? Your statement doesn't make any sense. What a weird thing to say. Imagine having a debate about what type of engine is better: the electrical engine or a combustion engine. Telling someone to go and buy the engine they think is best, that's not an argument. 😃
And what do you mean collectively owned companies are not efficient? That's simply not true. Not only are worker-owned companies more efficient, more durable, more productive, they're also much better for workers. Workers are happier, more efficient, more creative, they take fewer sick days, Etc.
There are hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies around the world. Some of those companies are massive! For example, there's a massive electronics company in China owned by its workers. Mondragon is another example. Over 100 thousand workers own their own bank, Hospital, University, high-tech Research Laboratories, they even have their own social programs! The research and development labs are so Advanced they handle contracts with Microsoft, Intel and the Ford Motor Company, just to name a few.
There is a region in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker and community-owned cooperatives. Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from worker-owned Electrical Cooperative.
So there's no shortage of data to go buy. There's data going back almost a hundred years. We know exactly how well worker-owned Enterprises compare to capitalist Enterprises. And again, they're better for workers, they're better for the economy, there's better for the environment, and the list goes on.
▪ Study number 1:
The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪ Study number 2:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 3:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 4:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 5:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace .pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
▪ Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass. electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
▪ "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
▪ Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@DoubleBob , oh, I forgot to address your comment regarding Richard Wolff being dishonest. No, he's not being dishonest. He very clearly and concisely explains the different types of socialism and which one he advocates for. He doesn't consider social democracy and state socialism to be legitimate forms of socialism. He's very clear about that.
There are 3 main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, social programs, minimum wage, consumer safety standards, Labour laws, Etc. without these regulations capitalism would collapse. this type of socialism is prominent in Canada, the United States, Etc. in Europe they refer to it as a social democracy. In the USA they refer to it as Democratic socialism. The exact same thing, different label.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs. state-owned Enterprises. these are public
Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour.
So no, Richard Wolff is not being dishonest. Here is a very basic summary of Richard Wolf's argument. This is what Richard Wolff is a talking about. https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
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@DoubleBob , dude, why are you mentioning Stalin, Pol Pot, Etc? Richard Wolff already explained in the debate that the problem with hierarchical systems of organization is that you have the potential for corruption. Obviously if you have people with power at the top to have control over those underneath, then there is the potential for abuse. That's why people like Richard Wolff, Noam Chomsky, George Orwell, they advocate for a non-hierarchical system of socialism. Do you understand?
Blaming socialism for the actions of Stalin, Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, that's like blaming Jesus Christ for the crimes of the Catholic church when they molested children and burned women at the stake.
I already explained to you that socialism is about worker ownership. It doesn't make any sense the call it evil. There's nothing wrong with workers and communities owning their own factories, tools, resources, businesses, Etc. You calling that evil simply doesn't make any sense.
Not too difficult to learn about the history of traditional socialism. "Libertarian socialism - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
Dude, it doesn't matter if you're dealing with capitalism or socialism. You give a person dictatorial Powers, if you remove the checks and balances in your government, then you're asking for trouble. Saudi Arabia is capitalist. I certainly wouldn't want to live there! Even when you're dealing with State socialism the system can be either more or less Democratic depending on how the government is structured. It doesn't make any sense to call socialism evil. That's just weird. There's nothing wrong with people owning their own resources and tools and getting to keep the wealth that they actually produce with their labour. Why do you think the capitalist ruling class produces billions of dollars worth of propaganda annually? Why do you think they have so many right-wing think tanks funded by billionaires connected to the oil and banking industry? The capitalist class wants to own and control the resources and capital for the same reason that the workers do. Because whoever controls the capital gets most of the wealth from labour. Again, obviously workers should get most of the wealth produced by their labour, not someone else.
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@DoubleBob , And in regards to propaganda, why do you think the ruling class spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually producing it? Cui Bono? Have you studied and researched the history of propaganda? It's all right there in the public record. All you got to do is take time to look and study. There are many social scientists that have researched the topic. You can learn from their work. For example, the work of Alex Carey:
“The 20th century has been characterized by 3 developments of great political importance:
1. The growth of democracy,
2. The growth of corporate power, and
3. The growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” -- Alex Carey, Australian social scientist.
If you don't want to take the time to read through the documentation or Publications in sociology journals, then there are audio recordings available online. Just to give one example, Part 1of 6: http://youtu.be/EIk6-4KosE0
And who do you think is behind that propaganda? Where do you think they get their funding?
Just to name a few sources of funding:
1. Exxon Mobil , the world's largest oil company.
2. The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation
3. Earhart Foundation = >>> the Rockefeller Brothers Trust, Exxon, J.C. Penney, Chase Manhattan Bank, the American Enterprise Institute, which became a prominent source of ideas and people for the Reagan administration.
4. The Castle Rock Foundation, funding radically conservative organizations.
5. Altria Group, formerly Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company. In the U.S. it controls about half of the tobacco market. It has 7 of the top 20 global cigarette brands. companies/ products include: Kraft Foods, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Maxwell House, etc.
6. The John M. Olin Foundation, The foundation closed after more than two decades of setting the stage for the NeoCon wave of the Reagan era. The Foundation gave $21 million to fund various right-wing think tanks including: Project for the New American Century (PNAC)!!! , Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), The Independent Women's Forum, which is an anti-feminist organization predominantly funded by right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Koch brothers' Claude R. Lambe Foundation. On its website, it describes its mission as being "to rebuild civil society by advancing economic liberty, personal responsibility, and political freedom. IWF builds support for a greater respect for limited government, equality under the law, property rights, free markets, strong families, and a powerful and effective national defense and foreign policy."
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@DoubleBob , no, that's not correct. Traditional socialism is not about concentrations of state power. State socialism is a concept that came later in history. That's not my opinion, that's a fact. There's two hundred years worth of literature. So why are you talking about a subject you obviously haven't studied? The core concept of socialism is worker ownership. That concept goes right back to the time of the Enlightenment.
The concept of State socialism game later in history, that's why if you look at the definition of socialism in the encyclopedia you'll notice that it can either be government or Collective ownership. That Collective ownership can either be by the community or by the workers directly. That's not my opinion, that's a fact.
1. "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
~ Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• "Socialism is an economic and political system. It is an economic theory of social organization. It states that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the workers who make the products, instead of groups of private owners. People who agree with this type of system are called socialists." ~
Durlauf, Steven N.; E. Blume, Lawrence. "socialism". DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS. Palgrave Macmillan 2013.
• "Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity."
~ O'Hara, Phillip (2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-415-24187-8. In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism https://archive.org/details/historyofcapital00mich
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge. . ISBN 978-0415241878.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105. ISBN 978-0-8476-7396-4. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ethics-efficiency-and-the-market-9780198285335
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital." https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/16915671?q&versionId=19853882
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socialism has not failed. There are hundreds of thousands of socially owned companies and factories in the United States and around the world. They provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers compared to capitalist Enterprises. There are more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. If you do not own the product of your labour, then you're nothing more than human livestock.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@MrAnonymous1515 , you just make one assumption after another. You have no way of knowing what he's thinking. You're not a mind reader. 😀 if you want to know about Wolff, do some research.
In regard to worker cooperatives, yeah, he's absolutely right. Socially owned companies provide more freedom, prosperity and equality. When you work at a democratic workplace, you get to keep all of the money that your labour produces and you are your own boss. When you work as an employee at a capitals company, the boss can tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. They can fire you and hire their best friend if they want. If you try to get a raise, they can threaten you with layoffs or moving production offshore. Worker cooperatives don't have any of those problems.
Can the assembly line worker makes $70,000 a year at a capitalist company? No. They get paid minimum wage oh, maybe a few dollars more if they're lucky. That's because they don't own the product of their labour.
All of his arguments are very simple and straightforward. They're based on reality and facts. you're assuming what he's thinking and feeling, that's not an argument against anything he sent. That is just purely speculation on your part and you have absolutely no basis whatsoever for your assumptions. 😀
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@MrAnonymous1515 you're assuming that I'm feeling sorry for myself? What do I have to feel sorry for? I own my own business. I haven't had to work for anyone for years. I feel Sorry for those people that do.
anyway, I'll Richard Wolff is doing is pointing out that if you don't like working for a boss, if you don't like losing years of your life making money for other people, if you want to keep all of the money that your labour produces, then you can either open up your own business, join a Cooperative, or form your own cooperative.
I don't know why you're talking about fantasies. Almost 60% of the United States is powered by such workplaces. Some worker cooperatives have over a hundred thousand employees that own their own bank, means of production, Hi-Tech Research Laboratories, hospitals, University Etc. here's a socially owned u.s. company that builds robots brother businesses. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
worldwide, these companies produce trillions of dollars worth of Revenue and employ millions of people. all Richard Wolff is doing is spreading awareness about these alternatives. That's all. he doesn't deal in fantasies. everything that he says it's backed up by hard empirical data and real life examples.
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@MrAnonymous1515 , Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@sinfulyetsaved , what do you mean my comments don't make any sense? I already cited five empirical studies. Do you need more citations?
Or would you prefer to talk about Jesus and God?
Capitalism is inherently immoral and incompatible with Christian values.
▪ Jesus: "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:23).
▪ "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves!"
~ (Matthew 21:12).
▪ “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest."
~ Psalm 15:5
▪ “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit."
~ Proverbs 22:7
▪ "Lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself."
~ Luke 6:34-35
▪ "And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil."
~ Luke 6:35
▪ Jesus: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
~ (Matthew 19:23).
▪ "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despite the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth."
~ (Matthew 6:24).
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@sinfulyetsaved , if you don't think my comments make sense, then I can only assume that you don't ask you understand what socialism is or its history and evolution.
Socialism is about economic democracy. It's about workers and communities controlling their own resources and means of production. That doesn't make sense to you?
▪ Socialism:
1. "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."
~ Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• "Socialism is an economic and political system. It is an economic theory of social organization. It states that the means of making, moving, and trading wealth should be owned or controlled by the workers. This means the money made belongs to the workers who make the products, instead of groups of private owners. People who agree with this type of system are called socialists." ~
Durlauf, Steven N.; E. Blume, Lawrence. "socialism". DICTIONARY OF ECONOMICS. Palgrave Macmillan 2013.
• "Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity."
~ O'Hara, Phillip (2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-415-24187-8. In order of increasing decentralisation (at least) three forms of socialised ownership can be distinguished: state-owned firms, employee-owned (or socially) owned firms, and citizen ownership of equity.
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century. Socialism: "It is an economic system that combines social ownership of capital with market allocation of capital."
▪ "Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production."
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@red.samurai , what makes you think socialists want an equal share of your business? Where did you ever get an idea like that from? And to say that socialists are like fascists, that doesn't make any sense at all. Fascism and socialism are on opposite ends of the political Spectrum. Do you know why Hitler killed so many socialists And communists? You might as well be saying that black people are KKK members at heart. Just doesn't make any sense.
socialism is about workers owning and controlling their own means of production and doing their own work. Democratic worker cooperatives make communities and workers less dependant upon government and billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. So no, it makes no sense but you wouldn't support Richard Wolff and his position.
for example, in the United States there is a socially own bread factory where assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 per year. Can an assembly line worker make that much money at a capitalist company? No. Why? Because we do not own the product of their labour. It doesn't matter how hard they work. It doesn't matter how fast they work. It doesn't matter how many loaves of bread they produce. Every loaf of bread they produce belongs to someone else. if they produce a million dollars worth of bread, they've basically made someone else a million dollars.
so what Richard Wolff is recommending is that workers get together and form their own cooperatives. You see, billionaires can buy grocery stores, apartment complexes, and bread factory is like the rest of us can buy bubble gum. the average individual cannot afford a multimillion-dollar factory. but when workers get together then it makes it easier for them to purchase or build their own companies or factories. that way, when they produce a million dollars worth of bread, they've basically made themselves a million dollars.
worker cooperatives keep more wealth and control with the workers and communities. They make them less depended upon billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. And that is more conducive to a free market in thriving economy because when workers have more money they can spend more. Jobs are tied to consumption. capitalism erodes purchasing power. if 75% of the wealth from the bread production ends up going to billionaire shareholders, how are the workers going to be able to afford the bread they actually create? what do you think would happen if you spent $500 every time you earned 50? likewise, if workers are constantly producing more goods and services than they can actually afford, how can you expect consumption not too slow? if consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a downward spiral. That's why capitalism is dependant upon debt. that keeps the system running for a while, but ultimately the interest attach will serve to erode purchasing power even further in the long run. when the credit Runs Out, consumption slows and the whole system comes crashing down. The trick is to dump your stocks before the downward Trend starts. It's like a game of musical chairs. and then the capitals can buy up houses, and everything else at Pennies on the dollar.
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@red.samurai , Hitler was not a socialist. Where did you ever get an idea like that?
Yes, it's true that "socialist" was used in the party name, but that was just to attract more votes from the working class. You should know that fascism and socialism are on opposite ends of the political Spectrum.
fascists and Hitler hate socialists and communists almost as much as they hate Jewish people. The ideologies are in complete conflict with one another. That's why Hitler had hundreds of thousands of communist and socialist rounded up and killed. I can reference several textbooks if you're interested in examining that history. I might even be able to find a few of them in PDF format.
and what do you mean coops only work in a capitalist environment? I'm not sure where you got that idea from either. A capitalist economy is one where most of the GDP comes from capitalist companies. If most of the GDP came from socially owned companies, then the economy would be socialist, not capitalist. There are some regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker cooperatives.
keep in mind that there are two different types of socialism. one where the workers directly own the means of production. the other, workers indirectly own the means of production through the state.
There are 3 main types of ownership:
you have private ownership (capitalism), you have public ownership (government/SOEs), you have social ownership (coop/WSDEs), and you have communism (no class, money or state). Communism comes from the word community. It works like this: https://youtu.be/8xGY6Lc71ns
There are many institutional forms of public and social ownership. For example,
>>>> Forms of social production:
• State-owned Enterprises (SOEs)
corporations are owned directly by a government (National or sub-national), and operate according to a mandate that may include social criteria.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources that would otherwise idle, providing local Services, developing infrastructure, and providing unemployed people with job experience and training. Decentralized CED initiatives can be important in many developing economies, and in poor or remote regions of developed countries. Some entire communities have been founded and sustained on Cooperative principles in many countries.
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@red.samurai , >>>> Forms of socialized Finance:
• public banks.
Public banks are owned by national or sub-national levels of government; they take deposits, issue loans (create credit), and facilitate financial transactions.
Public banking is widespread in many parts of the world. Countries in which publicly- owned banks play a major role include Japan (the JapanPost Bank is the largest Savings Bank in the world), Germany (with two parallel networks of public Banks: Sparkassen and Landesbanken), and China ( where are the state-owned banking system helped China completely avoid the 2008 - 09 World recession).
• Credit unions and Cooperative Banks.
Credit unions and other Cooperative banks are owned by their members, and govern according to "one person, one vote."
there are at least 60,000 credit unions and Cooperative banks in the world, with trillions of dollars in Combined assets; they are the most developed and Powerful form of cooperative enterprise. Large credit unions are important Financial players in many countries, including: Netherlands (the huge Rabobank has 60,000 employees and 750 billion in assets), and France (three major cooperative bank federations account for almost half of all consumer banking), Sweden (the JAK Bank makes loans without charging interest at all), and Canada (the Desjardins credit union movement is the largest financial institution in Quebec).
• Investment and development Banks.
Publicly-owned investment Banks specialize in targeted lending and investing in key companies (including private companies)with strategic economic importance.
State-owned investment or development Banks play an important role in sector development policy and many countries, including France, the Nordic countries, Japan, and Brazil. Singapore's Temasek Holdings was established to foster broad economic and industrial development there; it partially owns over 50 companies, and is consistently profitable.
• Social investment funds and Foundations.
These Financial funds are mandated to make investments in various firms or social Enterprises, in accordance with a broader social man, while still learning and adequate or Target rate of return.
The solidarity fund is a 10 billion investment fund established by the Quebec Federation of Labor in Canada to invest in businesses which contribute to Quebec's economic and social development. RSF social Finance is a non-profit financial institution , (founded in 1936) focus on lending to nonprofit and social Enterprises in the US. Oxfam UK has started an Enterprise Development Program to channel financial investments to social enterprises in 20 developing countries. Alaska Native Corporations are collectively owned entities founded with Native resource revenues, to invest in a range of businesses and development projects; their collective revenues exceed 10 billion per year.
• Sovereign wealth.
These funds are owned by a national government, funded with state revenues (often from resource production); they invest in strategic businesses and / or generate future investment income to fund public pensions and other public programs.
Sovereign wealth has grown rapidly in recent years, and now totals over US$ 5 trillion in Investments. Petroleum producing countries have been most aggressive in creating these funds (to save nonrenewable wealth for future uses), but some non-petroleum countries have established Sovereign funds as well (such as Korea, China and Singapore). The largest fund is Norway's government pension fund, with assets approaching US$ 1 trillion; it single-handedly owns about 2% of All European corporate shares.
• Microcredit.
Microlending is undertaken on a nonprofit or cost-recovery basis, with a focus on small loans to households and small producers (usually in developing countries or poor neighborhoods).
The most famous microcredit institution is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned cooperatively by its Borrowers; it extends small low interest loans (mostly to women) through a participatory loan management system ( in which groups of borrowers collectively determine who receives new loans, and collectively ensure the loans are repaid). Similar systems have been introduced in other poor countries, and in some regions or neighborhoods of rich countries.
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@FabiWann , well you must not be taking all the variables into consideration. We know that worker-owned companies are more efficient than capitalist companies, workers are happier, take less sick days, or more creative, more efficient, there's less incidence of mental illness, suicide, drug abuse, Etc.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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Yeah, if you own the business then you can use whatever quality paint that you want. When you own the business you get to make all the decisions. What Richard Wolff is pointing out is that if workers want to make their own decisions, then they have to form their own company or factory. That's all. And if those workers produce an inferior product compared to your own, because they're using a cheaper paint, then presumably, your business will be more popular with the customers than the socially owned company. Therefore you will be more profitable. In theory.
Richard Wolff is not incorrect. I'm not sure what you think he was wrong about.
If you're interested, here's some testimony from workers that own their own businesses.
• How about the Ocean Spray cranberry cooperative? Do those workers make minimum wage? 2000 employees produce roughly one and a half billion dollars annually. So how much do you think the workers get paid?
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
• how about these Cooperative owners in Argentina? Do you think they're making more or less money now that they are the actual owners? Do you think the business is actually doing better or worse now that the workers actually own the company and operated democratically? https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
• when you pay your electric bill, when you buy a home, when you buy a condo, Etc, do you want to be buying these things at cost! Or do you want to be putting money into other the pocket of middlemen that aren't actually doing any work or contributing anything? https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
• do you think these workers are making minimum wage? Or are they making a living wage? doesn't sound like they're enjoying being able to actually share in the decision-making process? Does it sound like they are happier having more freedom and control, along with getting paid more? https://youtu.be/8vJDhKMrncw
• these Cooperative is definitely provide more equality, freedom and prosperity compared to capitalist Enterprises. Along with that they have acceptance, the advantage pooling their resources for their families and community, autonomy & Independence (allowed to be unique, it's actually valued instead of discouraged), teaching and education are part of the job -not just simply producing like a Mindless robot!, support, real and genuine concern for your fellow workers and community, sustainable development, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/NO-8iI7GW70
• Evergreen cooperatives! One of the reasons they exist is because it's impossible have a quality life when only making minimum wage. They provide people with a living wage. https://youtu.be/4zU8_ofpPyQ
• even in poor countries during the financial crisis, the workers are still making a living wage, often much more than their American counterparts. https://youtu.be/zaJ1hfVPUe8
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@denverdon3450 , yes, and that's fine. But it doesn't negate anything that I've said.
why does 80% of the population since this on $10 a day or less? Why do people have to work 40 hours a week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950? Why hasn't real wages increased since 1970? Why is the percentage of GDP going to workers steadily been decreasing since 1950? Because most of the wealth produced by a labour under capitalism ends up going into the pockets of the billionaire class rather than the actual wealth producers. That's the point.
If we had a real economic system, chances are people wouldn't need to work any more than 10 hours a week while having three times the standard of living today.
you don't know what economic feudalism is? well a democracy is when everyone has equal voting power. but under capitalism decision making depends on how many shares you can afford. so if someone like get Bill Gates can buy a million shares, he gets a million votes. this is what we call a plutocracy.: rule by money. so a very small minority of people get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, what kind of environment workers have to labour in, Etc.
many people had to die fighting for the right to unionize in order to protect themselves from the powers and abuses of this kind of control and wealth.
Back in the days of JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc, one in 11 workers would die from exhaustion. thousands of people would die daily being forced to work in unsafe conditions. thousands more would die from water and food contamination. 9 year old children had to work 16 hours a day so Stanley's could survive because wages were so low. so even though working hours should be decreasing today thanks to technology and workers should have more disposable income, instead we see more and more workers no longer being able to afford a family on a single income.
in an economic democracy, citizens and workers have control over their resources and means of production. one worker equals one vote. they get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, Etc.
you see, when you don't own the product of your labour, you're basically a Slave. like livestock. when the farmer gives the cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production, does the cow get to work half as many hours? Does the cow get twice as much milk? no, every drop Of Milk The Cow produces belongs to the farmer. likewise, everything workers produce at a capitalist company belongs to someone else. if workers make a million dollars worth of bread, they've basically made someone else a million dollars. but at a cooperative, that money goes to the workers because they are producing their own products. so, if labor-saving technology is introduced which Cuts Manpower in half, the workers now have twice the number of people to share in the remaining workload. working hours can be cut in half. what are the capitals company, those workers are laid off where they have to compete with other unemployed people, And that competition drives the value of Labor down.
that's why the vast majority of people today have to work 40 hours a week or more. that's also why we have so much environmental devastation. in this environment the only thing workers/ citizens can do is beg government to put regulations in place to protect the environment and themselves. and we both know how well that works. under economic feudalism the owners of capital control the government just as they control the resources and means of production.
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@denverdon3450 , absolutely! I agree. The ruling class controls the government. Under the capitalist system they are referred to as the owning class. They own most of the capital and therefore the government represents them. So they love to put in regulations that are going to benefit and protect their interests.
for example, you mentioned immigrants competing workers from the home country. Yes, that's true, competition will drive the value of Labor down. Especially when people are so desperate they're willing to work for a lot less than others.
but who's responsible for such a huge influx of immigrants into the country? Let's just look at one example to start with. in the name of the free market the Billionaire's pushed the government to enact Gatt and NAFTA for Canada and the United States. This was a well-calculated plan in order to increase immigration in the country. they knew most of the farmers in Mexico would not be able to compete with cheap American and Canadian Imports. things like corn, chicken, Etc. we can produce corn at a fraction of the price. People such as Donald Trump knew that if we flooded the Mexican market it would bankrupt the farmers, which make up the majority of the workers in the country. That would enable the corporations to then buy up most of the land and equipment for pennies on the dollar. they also knew that those bankrupted Farmers would be extremely desperate to feed their families.
so you see how the capitalist class using the free market killed many birds with one stone? bankrupting the farmers allowed Americans and Canadians to Offshore production to Mexico while simultaneously providing a Surplus Army of desperate workers. they also knew that because thanks to labor-saving technology there would be way more desperate workers than available jobs. they knew those workers would have no choice but to cross the border. the capital of New the competition from immigration would drive down the prices at those capitalist businesses and factories that couldn't be offshore to Mexico.
the capitalist class has been using economic imperialism for a very long time now. not just against foreign countries, but against its own workers. they've been doing that since the Inception of the United States. Starting with the founding fathers. people like Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, they were notorious for their tactics.
that's why we want to move away from capitalism to a system where workers and communities control the capital rather than the billionaire class. worker cooperatives are not depended upon constant expansion. they don't need to open up more markets in different countries. capitalist do because labor-saving technology allows them to produce more and more with less and less labour.so on one end they're eroding purchasing power and then on the other end they eventually run out of consumers. People can only buy so many cars, refrigerators, Etc. workers are dependant upon a 40-hour work week in order to survive because the increases in productivity, the wealth increased by that productivity, end up going to the owners of the factories rather than reducing working hours.
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@realtyhaven , okay. But you're not doing a very good job. Try harder. 😃
All Richard Wolff is doing is pointing out that under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by labour. it's economic feudalism. When it comes to about 94% of production they get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. Economic feudalism. That's why most of our products are now made in China and why people still have to work 40 hours a week even though productivity levels have more than tripled since 1950.
anyway, Richard Wolff is just pointing out that if workers obtain their own capital, if they form their own business or factory, then they can be their own boss and run things democratically; keeping all of the wealth that their labour produces. that's why there are some socially owned factories in the United States were assembly line workers can make $70,000 a year. An assembly line worker can't make that much money at a capitalist company because the workers don't own the product of their labour. When the workers make a million dollars worth of product, they basically made that money for someone else. but look at Ocean Spray, for example. Two thousand workers own the company. They produce something like 1.2 billion dollars in sales annually. That money goes to the workers. when Walmart or Amazon makes billions of dollars in sales, most of that money goes to idle shareholders, many of whom are not even in the same country.
so, if we increase the number of democratic workplaces, as Richard will suggest, we can keep more wealth and control with the community. And that is more conducive to a free market in thriving economy because people have more money to spend. That makes it easier for other people to start their own private small businesses. That's because people are able to buy more coffee, Pizza, beer, trips to the bowling alley, Etc. you see, jobs are tied to consumption. If consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. It's a domino effect. A downward spiral. However, if you increase purchasing power, then the economy expands. capitalism is bad for the economy because it erodes purchasing power. Capitalists do everything they can to maximize profit by suppressing wages and increasing production output. obviously you can't be constantly producing more why learning less. can you imagine if your spending habits increased at a much faster rate than your income? What would the consequence be? What if you spent $100 for every $50 you weren't? obviously workers have to be able to afford the goods and services that are in circulation. That means wages have to be commensurate with production output. what are the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. Capitalism violates that very basic principle. that's why there's so much debt. people work 40 hours a week because wages are so low. with every passing day we can produce more and more with less and less labour. but all the increases go to the owners of capital. Workers remain depended upon a 40-hour work week in order to survive. that's the consequence of not owning the product of your labour.
not only is everything Richard Wolff saying accurate. It's very straightforward, simple and obvious. even if a person doesn't understand what he's saying, it doesn't take too much effort to actually substantiate the facts.
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@ExPwner , you are a liar and a fraud. You keep accusing claiming that Marxism is wrong when you don't even know what it is or how it works. I asked you 20 basic questions on Marxism and you couldn't answer a single solitary one. For example, Karl Marx never used the term labour theory of value. Ever. Nor did he say that workers should get paid the full value of their labour.
So why are you such a liar and a fraud? Do you actually have a master's degree in accounting as you claim? How could that possibly be true when you can't even comprehend simple economic realities? Just consider some of your comments:
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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Yeah but we live in the real world. That's why we need real solutions. The type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about is a bottom-up, not a hierarchical system of social organization. It's not prone to crops in the way that top-down, undemocratic systems are. Systems like capitalism. We know how well the bottom up systems work because there are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. not only are workers their own bosses and get to keep all of the wealth of their labour produces, they are happier, more creative, more efficient, they work harder, there's less incidence of mental illness, suicide, depression, substance abuse, Etc.
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@libertytreebud5406 , that's why we need a bottom up, Democratic Don hierarchical system of social organization. In that environment the governments are controlled by the people, from the foundation. When communities and workers control their own resources , production and labour, then governments have very little top down influence.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@thestonemaster81 , well you must not have listened to the debate because the type of socialism being discussed doesn't have anything to do with the government. The core concept of socialism is worker and Community ownership. Now you can either have direct ownership or you can have indirect ownership through the government. Traditional socialist such as Noam Chomsky, Richard Wolff, George Orwell, they do not consider State socialism to be a legitimate form of Socialism. That's why George Orwell wrote Animal Farm. That's why traditional socialist call that state capitalism. The state owns the capital and is the employer. You still have the employer-employee dynamic. You still have a top-down, hierarchical system of organization. But when the workers directly owned their own factories and businesses, then there is no employee-employer dynamic. It is a bottom-up, democratic non-hierarchical system of organization which is not prone to corruption the way that top down systems are.
That type of socialism makes workers and communities less dependant upon the government and billionaire corporations when it comes to jobs and consumer goods.
Also, that type of socialism is more conducive to a free-market and thriving economy because when the wealth flows to the workers instead of a small group of billionaire capitalist owners oh, they have more money to spend into the economy. That creates greater demand for pizza, beer, trips to the bowling alley, Etc. The economy expands. But billionaires they already have more money than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes. They take that money and buy up more capital. For example, Bill Gates is now the largest farmland owner in the United States. He also bought up the Canadian railroad system and newly privatized Labs were people get their blood tested. So instead of workers having more money to spend into the economy, you have the exact opposite when it flows to the billionaires. Now workers are going to have even less purchasing power because they have to spend extra money every time they buy food that was transported by Bill Gates's railroad. Every time they get their blood tested they have to pay extra money to Bill Gates. Every time they Park their car at the hospital they have to pay extra money to Bill Gates. Every dollar that goes to Bill Gates is one less dollar purchasing power workers have.
Capitalism is a modern form of slavery. Now because of the capital Bill Gates owns, he can sit back and make literally hundreds of thousands of dollars per second while he sleeping! Where do you think that money comes from? That money has to come from workers. That's trillions of dollars of reduced purchasing power for workers. That's why there's so much debt. Labor-saving technology literally tripled production output while cutting labour requirements by 1/3. Did our prosperity increased by 2/3? Where are working hours cut by 2/3? No, because everything the workers produce belongs to someone like Bill Gates.
There's a socially on bread factory where the assembly line workers make $70,000 per year. However, an assembly line worker at Walmart or Amazon is lucky if they make more than minimum wage. You see, it doesn't matter if they produced $70,000 worth of product or 70 billion. It All Belongs to someone else. That's why labor-saving technology doesn't reduce working hours under capitalism.
Socialism is freedom. It's extremely Democratic because one worker equals one vote. When you're unemployed a capitals company you have no voting power at all. Socialism is freedom because when you own the product of your labour then labor-saving technology actually reduces your workload while increasing your prosperity. When you don't own the product of your labour you were basically human livestock. That's why they call it wage slavery. For example, if you give a cow bovine growth hormone in order to double milk production the cow doesn't get twice the amount of milk. It doesn't get twice the amount of income. It doesn't get to work half as many hours. All the milk belongs to the farmer. That's why capitalist support capitalism because it gives them the power and the wealth. It also gives them the power to control the government. Under capitalism the government is nothing more than an extension of the capitalist class. Under capitalism the government represents the owning class. Not the working class. The working class has to fight for Privileges and protections under the law. They have to fight for the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, child labour laws, Etc. That's all slaves can do.
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@vacpsi5466 , no I'm not retracting anyting. Capitalist or no longer working people to death because the labour movement was able to win protections on the law that prevented them from doing that. have any idea how many women and children have been burned alive in the United States because they were locked into the factories they are working at? Billionaires can literally afford to hire millions of people and get them to do their bidding. They have more power than Kings in a lot of ways. as a consequence you now have most things made in China , wages so low that most people can no longer afford a family on a single income, 80% of the population subsists on less than $10 a day, and a massive number of people that are dependant upon employment at Sweatshop factories for minimum wage. There are numerous incidences of workers at us factories urinating under the assembly line because there are not allowed enough washroom breaks. you have Amazon employees wear diapers out of fear they might piss themselves.
But anyway, capitalism is a religion. It is an immoral system. It is based on exploitation. It allows people to own for a living rather than working for a living. And anytime you have money going to someone who doesn't contribute, it has to come at the expense of someone else. it is the economic system of parasites. Billionaires can buy electrical companies, railroads, grocery stores apartment buildings, and then accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars from other people's labour. It is insane. why do you think we're still working 40 hours a week? Why do you think the cost of living is so hot? We shouldn't be working 40 hours a week in this day and age.
we work this hard and so many hours so that we can have a billionaire class that can live in extreme luxury without having to do any work at all. The system is designed to transfer wealth from those who work to those who don't.
for example, if you win enough money playing the lottery, you'll never have to work again. Your family will never have to work again. Your children and your children's children will never have to work again. Any woman that you have a relationship with will never have to work again.
For example, there is a person who won the lottery last year where i live. he won 60 million dollars. That money is currently sitting in a bank account. He is getting 3% interest on that 60 million.
That comes to 1.8 million dollars a year.
That's $150,000 per month.
That's $35,000 per week.
that's $5,000 a day.
That's $200 an hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, for the rest of their life, until the day they die. and they will pass that privilege onto every child they have and every woman that they marry.
now let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has about 200 billion dollars now. So, hypothetically speaking, if he were to dump all of his Capital assets and just put that money into the bank account at 3% interest, he would be accumulating 6 billion dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing.
That's 500 million dollars a month.
That's a 115 million dollars per week.
That's 16 and 1/2 million dollars per day.
that's 685,000 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
How long does it take you to use the washroom? Let's say it takes you 1 minute to take a dump. by the time Jeff Bezos takes a dump, he has an extra $12,000 in his bank account. 😃
where do you think that money comes from? Every dollar of that has to come from labour. Every time you take out a student loan, every time you buy toilet paper, a toothbrush, finance a house, a car, Etc. you have to pay some rich individual for that privilege. He gets to collect that amount of money without doing any work at all. And, unless he's actually capable of spending $600,000 an hour, with every passing hour, he'll be making more money than he did before. it's insane to have all these people that can accumulate thousands of dollars an hour while sleeping, playing golf, using the washroom, Etc. If you don't think that's the lifestyle of a king, well then that's a very interesting opinion.
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@willnitschke , I didn't say that I got my understanding of Economics from the Monopoly board game. I said the reason the Monopoly board game was invented was to demonstrate how capitalism worked. Yes, it's extremely over simplified, but at the core, that's exactly how capitalism works! The core concept of capitalism is the maximization of capital accumulation. That's not an opinion. 😃
Let's take a look at some textbooks that explain this in detail.
• (Beaud 2001: 41) , History of Capitalism: 1500-1980
• capitalism ( history/analysis) by Paul Bowles .
• O'Hara, Phillip (September 2000). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume2. Routledge.
▪︎ Buchanan, Alan E. (1985). Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford University Press US. pp. 104–105.
▪︎ Gregory, Paul R.; Stuart, Robert C. (2003). Comparing Economic Systems in the Twenty-First Century.
Capitalism:
A system of economic production whereby business owners (capitalists) acquire the means of production (capital) and hire workers who get paid for their labor.
Main Characteristics of Capitalist Economies
• Two-Class System.
• Private Ownership.
• Profit Motive.
• Competition.
• The Bottom Line.
• Workers do not own the product of their labour. Total output produced by workers is immediately and automatically the property of the employers.
There are two key features that make an economy capitalist:
1. most production of goods and services is undertaken by privately owned companies, which produce and sell their output in hopes of making a profit. This is called production for profit.
2. Most work in the economy is performed by people who do not own their company or their output, but are hired by someone else to work in return for a money wage or salary. This is called wage labor.
An economy in which private, profit-seeking companies undertake most production, and in which wage earning employees do most of the work, is a capitalist economy. These twins features - profit-driven production and wage labor - create particular patterns and relationships, which in turn shaped the overall functioning of capitalism as a system.
Any economy driven by these two features - production for profit and wage labor - tends to replicate the following trends and patterns, over and over again:
- fierce competition between private companies for markets, sales, and profit.
- innovation, as companies constantly experiment with new technologies, new products, and new forms of organisation - in order to succeed in that competition.
- An inherent tendency to growth, resulting from the desire of each individual company to make more profit.
- Deep inequality between those who own successful companies, and the rest of society who do not own companies.
- A general conflict of interest between those who work for wages, and the employers who hire them.
- Economic cycles or roller coasters, with periods of strong growth followed by periods of stagnation or depression : sometimes these cycles even produce dramatic economic and social crisis.
What is the difference between a capitalist company & a socialist company?
1. Socialist companies are cooperatively owned.
Capitalist companies are privately owned.
2. At socialist companies there is no employee-employer dynamic.
The workers are their own bosses. They all get to decide what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, etc.
3. At socialist companies workers own the product of their labour.
At capitalist companies workers do not own the product of their labour, everything they produce belongs to someone else.
4. Organization is either bottom up or horizontal.
Capitalism is a hierarchical, top-down system of organization.
5. Socialist companies are democratic.
Capitalist companies are extremely undemocratic; you do what you're told, or else!
6. The workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour for profit.
7. Equality: at socialist companies everyone is equal in terms of voting power. One share equals one vote.
At a capitalist company workers don't have any voting power at all. That's why during the labour movement so many people fought and died for the right to unionize.
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Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪ Study number 5: The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa. org/ workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
w w w .un.o r g/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace . pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
/reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL. pdf
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Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
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@okiedoke6373 , of course the problem is capitalism. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. That is a plutocracy. They get most of the wealth produced by Labour and they get to make most of the decisions when it comes to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, Etc. That's why wages are so low and why most things are made in China. Under capitalism the government represents the capitalist class. if they want to cut taxes for the rich while increasing taxes for the workers, they can do it. If they want to print money, they can do it. The founding fathers were very clear that the country should be controlled by those who own it. That's one reason why people without property couldn't vote. They were very clear that the working-class should remain as nothing more than spectators.
the corruption in the government is what happens during the late stages of capitalism. as concentration of wealth and power accumulates, you move further and further to the right side of the political Spectrum. eventually you end up making the transition to fascism. you have private companies owning the media, social networks, Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, Etc. capitalism is the real-life Monopoly game. of course capitalism is the problem. it's the economic system of parasites. https://youtu.be/4xqouhMCJBI
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@okiedoke6373 , well it's good that you can make money doing welding. but that's not capitalism. Capitalism involves capitalizing on other people's labour. When you're doing your own work, that's not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and sell them in the market, that's not capitalism. If you write a book and sell it in the market, that's not capitalism. When workers own a factory and run it collectively, doing their own work, then that's a form of Socialism. Now hypothetically speaking, if those workers were to go home and hire other people to do the work for them, maybe paying them half of the money that their labour produces, then they would be engaging in capitalism. That's the key difference.
You see, capitalist will try to get as many employees as possible, getting them to do as much work as possible while paying them as little as possible. You see, the idea is, hypothetically speaking, if you can get a million employees and you can make a dollar off of each employee per hour, then you can technically make a million dollars per hour without doing any work.
having a business is good. being productive and selling the product of your labour is good. You're being able to make money welding, that's great! You're going around, helping people, providing a valuable service, that's how things should be.
in regards to your health care, that's not socialism. I mean, don't you have to get insurance from private companies? private companies are capitalist. Americans have to pay private companies a lot of money in the hopes of being covered in the event of an illness. it's kind of like the mob when they would force people The pay money for protection. Americans pay insurance companies for protection and the owners of those companies get filthy rich living off of other people's hard-earned money. It's really disgusting.
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@ExPwner , can't get anything right? No, that would be you.
▪ James Adams:
" I am very intelligent. I have a master's degree in accounting."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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@nickdesanto6119 , and like I said, capitalism requires there to be more workers than business owners. I don't know why that's so difficult for you to understand and comprehend. If it were so easy for a person to be a business owner, then you wouldn't have a situation where 90% of the population doesn't own the product of its labour. Do you have any idea how many Americans work at low-wage positions? Do you have any idea how many people commit suicide on a daily basis because they're stuck in a dead-end job and feel that there's no way out? You just don't get it. What you're saying isn't rational. United States a third-world country for many of its citizens. They come in at number 27 on the social Mobility index where over half the population can't even read above the grade 6 level! And here you are actually believing that anyone can be a business owner. Even if it were possible for 25% of the population become this is owners, you realize how extreme the competition would be? 😀 your average individual not compete with billionaires who can afford state-of-the-art multibillion-dollar technology. Your average person cannot compete with those who can mobilize both labour and production on a global level. Your average individual cannot compete with slave labour from third world countries.
▪︎ The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017. ~
Wall Street Journal
▪ During the last 20 years over 90% of newly created wealth went to the top 1%.
The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%
~ Time Magazine
▪ The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ the richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪︎ The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education. ~2017 stat
▪ The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index! That's even worse than Portugal and Lithuania! Never mind trying to start a business either cooperatively or individually. That number 27 a person would be lucky just to be able to retire debt free. There's a reason why most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. Anyone can start a business? I think not.
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes between 2004 and 2015.
▪ There are 554,000 homeless people on a given night.
▪ The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation.
▪ As of 2020, According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
▪ 30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut back throughout the years by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
Millions of workers in “the world’s wealthiest country” are forced to sell their blood in order to survive. The Washington Post featured a 41-year-old teacher with a $50,000 salary who sells plasma twice per week to get by. “I never thought I would be in a position where I would have to sell my plasma to feed my children,” said Christina Seal of Slidell, Louisiana. “I’ve applied for every government program that I can think of. I don’t qualify for food stamps, I don’t qualify for any programs.” The Post explained that plasma donations “have quadrupled since 2006.”
▪︎ more than one-third of us healthcare costs go to bankruptcy!
▪ A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found 45,000 Americans die each year from preventable causes because they can’t afford healthcare. But, we do have a $1.5 trillion jet fighter that can’t fly in cloudy weather. Go ‘Murcia!
▪ In 2017 Over 30 million Americans had no health insurance and even more are under-insured with high deductibles and co-payments.
As of May 2018, the numbers of people in the U.S. without health insurance have risen to 15.5%, up from 12.7% two years ago, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey. This translates to an increase of four million uninsured people nationwide. ~ forbes.
▪ "the US tops all European countries in terms of the percentage of workers and family members who avoid necessary trips to the doctor because they fear financial ruin from the inflated costs of their private health care." ~
Prof. James Petras (the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies)
▪︎ Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs.
▪ more and more Americans are selling their blood for extra money.
over 40 million Americans, many of them full-time workers, require food stamps in order to get enough food to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! When you're desperate enough, you'll even sell your blood!
"With 58% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, corporate America is exploiting poverty through blood and plasma donations while most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds."
▪ economic insecurity and workplace stress is destroying the mental health of Americans.
USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people. ~
(Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005.)
▪ Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. ~
cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact sheet
▪ and as people become more desperate we see crime rates increasing.
▪ 3% of American adults—6.8 million people—are either in jail or prison or on parole or probation.
▪ A third of states have a form of debtor’s prison, where the poor are locked up for failure to pay fines or debts.
▪ There are 1.2 million police officers in the US—almost equal to the population of the state of New Hampshire.
▪ The police have killed 15,000 people since 2000.
▪ There are 55,000 children presently in juvenile detention.
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@nickdesanto6119 , no, it's not a lie. Capitalism is a two-class system. It's a very basic fact.
What are the 2 key features that make an economy capitalist?
" 1. production for profit:
most production of goods and services is undertaken by privately owned companies, which produce and sell their output in hopes of making a profit. This is called production for profit.
2. wage labor:
Most work in the economy is performed by people who do not own their company or their output, but are hired by someone else to work in return for a money wage or salary.
The working class makes up about 85%of Society. The top capitalist owners and managers make up roughly 2% of society. They own most of the major capital on the planet.
An economy in which private, profit-seeking companies undertake most production, and in which wage earning employees do most of the work, is a capitalist economy. These twins features - profit-driven production and wage labor - create particular patterns and relationships, which in turn shaped the overall functioning of capitalism as a system.
Capitalism is a system in which the bulk of society's work is done by propertyless labourers who are obliged to sell their labour-power in exchange for a wage in order to gain access to the means of life.
In the process of supplying the needs and wants of society, workers are at the same time and inseparably creating profits for those who buy their labour-power. The production of goods & services is subordinate to the production of capital and capitalist profit. The basic objective of the capitalist system is the production and self-expansion of capital."
You'll notice that the disproportionate ratio between workers and owners remains basically constant. So every time you have a winner, someone who is able to make the transition from worker to owner, somewhere else you have someone else that loses, ends up going from owner to worker.
Everybody can't be an owner. It's mathematically impossible. If you have the option of getting the full value of your labour, are you going to go work for someone like Jeff Bezos? People like Jeff Bezos can become insanely wealthy because there's thousands of people but don't have any other choice but to work for him at low rates of pay.
Why do you think we still have the 40 Hour Work Week after 150 years? Because capitalism creates an environment where almost 90% of the population doesn't own the product of its labour. Just about everything produced by workers belongs to someone else. So it doesn't matter if I machine doubles, triple or quadruple your production output if everything you produce belongs to someone else. That's why labor-saving technology led to the Advent of the billionaire class rather than reducing working hours. Owners are always going to be small minority because there's simply not enough of the economic pie left over for the remaining 90%. If you're playing musical chairs with 100 people in 10 of those individuals are controlling 90% of the chairs, then obviously the remaining 90 individuals are not going to be able to find seats. As the remaining seats start to disappear, competition becomes more and more fierce. It's only the big people at the top that are going to survive.
competition -> winners -> competition between winners -> stronger winners -> .. -> big corporations ->
Dude, almost 90% of world stocks is owned by the richest 2% of the population. Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by a very small minority. Capitalism was made possible by the enclosure movement. People had to be driven off of their land separated from their resources before they would submit to wage slavery. In order for capitalism to work, in order for people like Jeff Bezos to have access to an army of low-wage workers, there has to be a lot of people in a state of dependency. It's the only way capitalism can exist.
If you remove that state of dependency, capitalism disappears. As worker-owned companies increased, the cost of wage laborers increases. Eventually people like Jeff Bezos won't be able to make enough profit from labour to keep his business viable. Shareholders are only going to invest when they know they can get more money back in return. If wages become too high, then eventually you hit the ceiling limit in regards to how much wealth can be extracted from labour.
Anyway, Richard Wolff is explaining that it's easier for workers to make the transition to the owning class by working collectively and starting cooperatives. If you can do it as an individual, fine. If not, collectivism is the next best answer. If you still can't make it, then you have to get used to being a wage slave.
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@ExPwner , I'm going to add your last statement to your list of famous quotes. 😀 I'm actually going make a poll here on YouTube and Facebook on which one of your statements is the dumbest. Would you care to make a bet on which one gets first place?
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam."
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality."
▪ James Adams on the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
You don't understand how social Mobility is calculated. The higher your social Mobility, the more access you have to things such as education and Healthcare. The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index. "Global Social Mobility Index - Wikipedia"
▪ stating assumptions as fact
James Adams:
" I have definitely study the topics of socialism more than you have."
▪ James Adams:
"of course a free market requires capitalism. Capitalism is not at all antithetical to free markets."
How can you not possibly understand that markets predate capitalism by thousands of years? Seriously? Dude, you have some serious problems
▪ James Adams:
"there's nothing wrong with absolute capitalism"
What is that even supposed to mean? There's nothing wrong with pure, unregulated capitalism? No, of course corporations don't need to be regulated because they never endanger workers, exploit workers, poison the environment, produce dangerous products, would exploit child labour without child labour laws.
▪ James Adams:
"You can only have a free market under capitalism."
In my opinion this comment gets first place for being the dumbest! 😃
▪ James Adams:
"feudalism doesn't fall under the oligarchy category. They had a caste system." 😃😃😃😆
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not right-wing, dumbass. The fascists used collectivism. State ownership. That is socialism by definition. Quit spamming when you can't even get basic definitions right."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalist companies never extract wealth from labour. Quit lying about it."
Cites Koch brother-funded 'Foundation for Economic Education'! aka 'FEE'
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not a right-wing ideology. It's on the left!"
▪ James Adams:
"Joe Biden is not right wing! He's a leftist! He is center-left!"
Okay. So then where would that leave Bernie Sanders? 😀 how can you be on the left side of the political Spectrum if you're anti-communist and anti-socialist while being pro-capitalist? Again, your comments make absolutely no sense.
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system of organizations. Socialism is top-down."
▪ James Adams:
"under capitalism workers always get paid the full value of their labour."
▪ James Adams:
"workers are never exploited under capitalism."
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@nickdesanto6119 , okay, let me give you an example in order to illustrate my point.
There is a socially owned bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make between 65 and $70,000 a year. Why are they able to make so much money when assembly line workers at capitalist companies make minimum wage? It's because they own the product of their labour! If the workers able to acquire labor-saving technology that doubles their production output, they now have twice the amount of money! Or, they can work half as many hours at the same rate of pay.
But if you do not own the product of your labour, then it doesn't matter if labor-saving technology doubles output because everything you produce belongs to someone else.
Now which person is going to create more demand in the economy? The worker with $70,000 worth of purchasing power or the one getting minimum wage?
You see, one of the main goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. You cannot have equilibrium between purchasing power and production output when workers do not get the full value of their labour. If workers produce a million dollars worth of product but only get 50% of the wealth, then they're only going to be able to afford half of what they produced!
Capitalism is actually in direct opposition to the goal of achieving equilibrium. The goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. Therefore the more successful of capitalist company is the list purchasing power workers have. So technically speaking, capitalism is a anti economic system. Why do you think there's so much debt? Why do you think they have to constantly use quantitative easing? Because jobs are tied to consumption. You see, there's a ceiling limit to how much wealth can be extracted from labour.
You see now why there can never be fully employment under capitalism and why you have to have a greater proportion of workers to owners? It's a pyramid scheme. You have to bake a loaf of bread so you that you can afford a slice. 😀 that's why they have to keep raising the ceiling limit on debt in perpetuity. Because capitalism is a pyramid scheme you have to constantly be boring from the future and increasing the amount that you borrow. That's why capitalism is also depended upon constant growth. You can't have constant growth on a finite planet.
Anyway, socialism doesn't have that problem because workers get the full value of their labour. they own the product of their labour. If they create $70,000 worth of product they now have $70,000 worth of purchasing power. You have equilibrium. But at Walmart if workers produce $100,000 worth of product most of that wealth goes to a very small minority while the workers get minimum wage. If the workers actually owned Walmart, they'd all be making roughly around 400,000 a year!
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@ExPwner , you haven't answered my question. How can companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Microsoft, how would they be able to exist without wage labour? After two years you haven't been able to answer that question but yet you keep saying that wage labour isn't necessary.
Your comments just get more and more ridiculous with the passage of time. Most people actually learn and become more knowledgeable with the passage of time. Not you.
▪ James Adams: "Capitalism is not a class system you fool! Capitalism does not require wage labour! Quit spamming lies. Reported again for spam."
▪ James Adams:
"Michael J. Mappin, capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or inequality."
▪ James Adams on the social Mobility index:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
You don't understand how social Mobility is calculated. The higher your social Mobility, the more access you have to things such as education and Healthcare. The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index. "Global Social Mobility Index - Wikipedia"
▪ stating assumptions as fact
James Adams:
" I have definitely study the topics of socialism more than you have."
▪ James Adams:
"of course a free market requires capitalism. Capitalism is not at all antithetical to free markets."
How can you not possibly understand that markets predate capitalism by thousands of years? Seriously? Dude, you have some serious problems
▪ James Adams:
"there's nothing wrong with absolute capitalism"
What is that even supposed to mean? There's nothing wrong with pure, unregulated capitalism? No, of course corporations don't need to be regulated because they never endanger workers, exploit workers, poison the environment, produce dangerous products, would exploit child labour without child labour laws.
▪ James Adams:
"You can only have a free market under capitalism."
In my opinion this comment gets first place for being the dumbest! 😃
▪ James Adams:
"feudalism doesn't fall under the oligarchy category. They had a caste system." 😃😃😃😆
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not right-wing, dumbass. The fascists used collectivism. State ownership. That is socialism by definition. Quit spamming when you can't even get basic definitions right."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalist companies never extract wealth from labour. Quit lying about it."
Cites Koch brother-funded 'Foundation for Economic Education'! aka 'FEE'
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not a right-wing ideology. It's on the left!"
▪ James Adams:
"Joe Biden is not right wing! He's a leftist! He is center-left!"
Okay. So then where would that leave Bernie Sanders? 😀 how can you be on the left side of the political Spectrum if you're anti-communist and anti-socialist while being pro-capitalist? Again, your comments make absolutely no sense.
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system of organizations. Socialism is top-down."
▪ James Adams:
"under capitalism workers always get paid the full value of their labour."
▪ James Adams:
"workers are never exploited under capitalism."
t.
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@shogunisheremistaa3432 , Democratic workplaces don't reward everyone equally. People are rewarded and paid according to their contribution. There is more incentive to be innovative and hard-working at a democratic workplace. That's why, statistically speaking, workers are happier, more productive, more creative, there's more productive and creative synergy, they take less sick days, have less incidence of mental illness, less incidence of substance abuse, etc, etc. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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No, his ideas are not Theory. We know exactly how well they work because there are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. Increase in the number of democratic workplaces is not going to result in millions of people being killed. Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from community and worker-owned cooperatives. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives keep wealth in control with communities and workers. They make them less depended upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. The decentralized power. They make it harder for people to be manipulated and exploited. Workers are the own bosses and they get to keep all of the wealth that their labour produces. That's why it's possible for an assembly line worker to make $70,000 a year at a socially owned company but not at a capitalist company. Employees at capitals companies do not own the product of their labour. If they make a million dollars for the product, they've basically made that money for someone else.
China is not capitalist. They have a massive State sector, Cooperative sector and private Enterprises. But all three sectors are strictly controlled by the government.
I have friends that live in China and others that visit on a regular basis.
" I experienced life in China for five years and it opened my eyes. The state controls the banks, telecommunication, heavy industry, construction, etc. The commanding heights. In the big "private" corporations, state and workers representatives have a third of the board. Given the restrictions on individual stock ownership, effective control of management decisions. 70% of investments are all centered on the central plan, which is geared towards social goals and not private accumulation. In the five years I was there real income for workers rose 200%, and the party led campaign lifted over 150,000 people out of poverty. What capitalist nation does that? Organized its economy that way?
Proposed laws are posted online, publicized and mass meetings are held for feedback and amendments. Anyone effected by the laws are reached out to, including expats. YCL people came to my classroom during an off hour to tell me of a proposed new national banking law that would effect we foreigners working in China and asked for any feedback, proposed changes, etc. Is that "Fascism?" Wechat and other social media are often filled with videos and commentary about police behavior, corrupt or bureaucratic officials. Not only is nobody punished, the posts are not even taken down! A Chinese colleague of mine actually posted something sympathetic about the HK protests---not a popular opinion nor one that accorded with the "party line." It was not scrubbed, and nothing happened to him.. I even went to him and asked whether the posts might get him in trouble and he laughed."
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Socialism and communism work very well in the United States.
Almost 60% of the United States gets its electricity from communally & socially owned electric coops. Community is where the word communism comes from. Are you using commie electricity right now?
▪ worker testimony video https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
▪ fact sheet
https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
here is a very successful socially owned bread factory. Do you think socialist bread tastes better than capitalist bread?
Alvarado Street Bakery
100% Worker Owned!
The company ships out 40,000 loaves of bread a day, the average worker earns between $65,000 and $70,000 a year, and the ratio of executive to worker compensation is less than 3 to 1. At a capitalist company that ratio can be as high as 750 to 1!
“They're large and successful, they're one of the case studies we point to and that people study,” said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. The San Francisco-based industry group counts some of the country's largest cooperatives.
Website:
https://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/
video:
https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Capitalism, however, mostly works for the rich. For the vast majority of people, capitalism is the opposite of freedom: https://youtu.be/4xqouhMCJBI
Capitalism is economic feudalism. So, what does economic democracy look like? See the 41;30 minute Mark. The guy in the red shirt explains how it works.
https://youtu.be/ZfaFriFAz1k
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@vitolazlo5767 , socialism is worker and Community ownership of resources and production. Of course socialism is natural. Obviously people should own the product of their labour.
There's absolutely nothing natural about capitalism. there's nothing natural about a system where the richest members of society can basically own most of the resources on the planet while charging the other 96% of the population rent and usage fees. There's nothing natural about a capitalist being able to transfer millions of dollars of Labor energy to himself. people are only capable a producing so much wealth with their labour in a certain amount of time. it's not possible for a person to produce a billion dollars with their labour. even if you could save $100,000 a year, it would still take you no less than 10,000 years to accumulate a billion dollars. capitalism is a religion.
socialism is natural and doesn't violate basic Market in economic principles the way capitalism does. For example, one of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. You have to have a balance between supply and demand, just like in nature. Capitalism labour is for profit. Profit is maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. but if most of the wealth is going to the owners of capital rather than the workers, the actual producers, then the workers are not going to be able to afford all the goods and services are produced. For example, if 75% of the wealth goes to the 1%, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 25% of that which they produce. That causes disequilibrium. in order to stop consumption from slowing and jobs being lost, more and more credit has to be pumped into the system. That's why there's so much debt. printing money into existence and constantly raising the debt ceiling will keep the system going temporarily. But ultimately the interest attached to the debt will drive the interest attached to the debt will Erode purchasing power even further in the future. When consumption slows, people get laid off and can't consume. Unemployed people then compete with one another which drives the value of Labor down even further. that erosion of purchasing power has to be offset with even more debt! competing desperate workers then have to work even harder for longer hours for even less money.
so I don't know how you can say capitalism is natural.
keep in mind that capitalism is not merely selling the product of one's labour. if you write a book and sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. people producing things and trading with one another, that is natural. Capitalism is nothing more than a man-made construct that is designed to exploit people and extract value from other people's work.
and socialism is much more efficient than capitalism. Of course it is. capitalism is one of the most wasteful and destructive systems ever devised. it's actually depended upon things such as planned obsolescence, perceived obsolescence, Etc. when people get sick, capitalist to make a profit. There's an incentive for them to pollute the environment or create illnesses such as diabetes, because they can then sell you the solution. you don't see worker-owned companies polluting their own environment. You don't see worker-owned companies moving production to China. Your position doesn't make any sense. don't see community and worker-owned Banks needing to be bailed out.
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@vitolazlo5767 , you see, the fact that you actually considered capitalism to be natural and socialism to be unnatural, that's a testament to the effectiveness of modern propaganda. Capitalism is literally economic feudalism. It is the economic system of the ruling class and parasites. it's like inventing a rule where blue-eyed people are the ones that get to own most of the wealth producing technology and resources and get to their by collect most of the wealth produced by labour. Yeah, if you are not a blue eyed person and someone told you that, you would naturally tell them to go jump in a lake.
Capitalist propaganda since 1945:
• Part 1: http://youtu.be/EIk6-4KosE0
• Part 2: http://youtu.be/QY8i4JXdpxs
• Part 3: http://youtu.be/fUOqrxrrY0k
• Part 4: http://youtu.be/ZQuPMRnInoY
• Part 5: http://youtu.be/ao0P7_P22BM
• Part 6: http://youtu.be/3433t89k4LY
now if you want to research the science behind the development of modern propaganda, along with who was behind it and where the money came from, I would recommend watching this documentary
"The history and development of social engineering in the 20th century" http://metanoia-films.org/human-resources/
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
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@vitolazlo5767 , dude, socialism is worker ownership. There are hundreds of thousands of democratic workplaces in the United States and around the world. Socialize work places are better for workers and communities. They keep wealth and control with the communities and workers. That is more conducive to a free market and thriving economy. It makes workers and communities less dependant upon billionaire capitalist corporations and government when it comes to jobs and consumer goods. There are regions in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from democratic workplaces. In the United States almost 60% of the country gets its electricity from worker on the electrical cooperatives. We know exactly how well the Socialist mode of production compares to the capitalist mode of production. There is no Theory. There is no hypothesis. We're talking about hard empirical data.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
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You don't have to wait for the results. There is no shortage of hard empirical data or history to go by in regards to what type of socialism that Richard Wolff is talking about. For example, let's look at 3 or 4 studies
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
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@chrisw9534 , fact of the matter is that if his workers were getting the full value of their labour, he wouldn't be able to become a billionaire because there wouldn't be any profit for him. High profits are depended upon low wages. The less you pay your workers, the more profit you get. The idea behind capitalism is getting the workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. Capitalism creates an environment where wages incredibly low. That's why most people have to work 40 hours a week in order to survive. It hasn't been necessary for a very long time now for people to work that long in order to meet all the needs of society. Since at least the fifties he had the ability to produce far more than we're capable of consuming. Industry can't even come close to running at 100% capacity. With every passing day we can produce more and more with less and less labour. That creates more and more competition. The workers that get access to the remaining jobs, especially the good jobs that pay and have benefits, are the ones that do the most work for the least amount of money and have the most education. If there were more jobs and fewer workers, that would drive up the cost of Labor.
The only way a worker can get the full value of his labour is what he acts the owns the company or factory that he's working at. For example, let's say you shovel driveways and each driveway is worth $100. But now let's say you want to get someone else to do the work for you. There's lots of poor desperate workers so you pay someone $50 preach driveway they clean on your behalf. You wouldn't be able to pay them the full $100 because if you did, there wouldn't be any profit in it for you. Do you understand? You're able to make $50 profit for each driveway because you're only giving them half of the wealth that they're generating with their labour. That's how capitalism works. The more employees you can get, the more potential profit you can generate. If you can accumulate a million employees that produce $10 worth of profit per hour where you only have to pay them $9 per hour, then technically you can make a million dollars an hour without actually having to do any work.
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@chrisw9534 , when it comes to getting the full value of your labour you don't need to worry about calculating how much the labour is actually worth in relation to the capital. Not when you're working at a cooperative. Just like you don't need a union when you're working at a cooperative. When you're an employee, then you do need a union for maximum bargaining power. When you're in Union negotiations, that's when you have to worried about how much a person's labour is worth in relation to the capital.
All you need to understand that it is not possible for a worker to get the full value of their labour when they're working at a capitalist company.
If you're shoveling driveways and each one is worth $100, the only way you can get the full $100 is if you are doing the work yourself. If you paid someone else to do the work for you, you cannot give them $100. If you did, you would be getting no profit. If you can get away with paying them only $50, then you can make $50 profit per driveway. And that's what capitalism is all about. Capitalism requires people to be in a state of dependency. Obviously if you have a choice you're not going to do all of the work for half of the money. Not where you could get all of the money while doing all of the work.
You see, and that's what Richard Wolff is pointing out. If you want the full $100, then you have to do your own work and you have to own your own shovel. The capitalist wants to own all the shovels. That way they can capitalize on other people's labour. The more desperate workers are, the more work you can get them to do while paying them as little as possible. If someone is really desperate, if they're starving and they have no way to get their own shovel, then you might be able to pay them $1 per driveway, getting 99 % profit.
That's how things were back in the days of JPMorgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Etc. That's why those people used to hire private armies to shoot workers that attempted to gain bargaining power through unionization. The Pinkerton assassinating Union organizers and even shooting family members of those who try to organize.
Capitalism didn't exist prior to the enclosure movement because too many people had too many alternatives. People had to be separated from their land and their means of survival before they would accept wage slavery performing other people's work. This history is well-documented.
One of the reasons that capitalist countries bomb and Destroy other countries that try to go socialist is because if you had too many workers figuring out that they don't need capitalists in order to have production and markets, the game would be over.
That's why when the workers actually gained independence in Russia back in 1917, the first thing the United States did is get together with other imperialist countries, Japan, Canada, France. They got together with those countries and sent troops into Russia to crush the workers. The Japanese didn't leave Russian soil until 1922.
Anyway, all Richard Wolff is doing is pointing out that cooperatives are a very good strategy for freeing people from their states of dependency. That way, when you do all the work, you can actually get all of the money. That's what he means by full value of one flavour. You get someone to do the work for you, shoveling the driveway, and you give them only $50, then obviously they're not getting the full value of their labour. You get $50 merely from owning the shovel. Your profit is dependant upon that worker being desperate enough to do your work for only half the money.
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@chrisw9534 , yes, I already explained that workers have to take their own risks when it comes to starting a business. Of course they do. And of course if you have no problem being just an employee making money for someone else, taking their orders, then that's a good thing.
But of course you don't have to start your own cooperative. If your opportunity presents itself, you can join an existing cooperative. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be making $70,000 a year for putting bread in the bag then creating $100,000 a year for apple or Amazon while getting paid a little more than minimum wage. Me, I prefer to get 100% of the money if I'm doing 100% of the work.
But yeah, Richard Wolff is just simply explaining to people that if they want to be their own boss, if they want to get 100% of the wealth that their labour produces, if they want to have equal voting power compared to not having any voting power at all, then they either have to start their own business as an individual or collectively. That's it. Again, if you want those things. There's lots of people working at capitals companies that are making a six-figure income. So yeah, they're not going to be interested in working at a cooperative. A Cooperative people get paid according to their contribution. That's why you very rarely see the ratio being greater than 7 to 1. That's because regardless of Education, regardless of talent, regardless of how much a person might be a workaholic, in most situations it's not possible for a person to work 7 times harder than someone else. It's not possible for them to be more than seven times more productive.
You see, socialism is more natural because only get the wealth that they produced with their labour. And there's a natural feeling limit to how much wealth you can convert your labour into. Obviously it's not really possible for a person to earn a billion dollars. Even if you could save $200,000 a year, if you could convert that much of your labour energy into well, it would still take you no less than five thousand years to accumulate 1 billion dollars. You see, that's why people should only be entitled to the wealth that they work for. Basically, the labour theory of ownership. But capitalism defies natural laws and limitations. There's no limit to the amount of other people's labour energy that you can capitalize on. That's why we have a situation where to eat riches people now have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the earth population! The two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. Their poverty, their low wages are what's responsible for do you know he's having so much money. The economic pie can only be so big. And with each passing year a greater percentage of that pie is going to the owners of capital rather than those who work for a living. That's why most people can no longer afford a family on a single income.
Capitalist countries destroy socialist countries because if the workers were ever to become independent, then there wouldn't be anyone to do the work for the capitalists. You would have to shovel your own driveway. There would be no desperate people that you could get to do all of the work while you give them a portion of the money.
That's why the United States trained so many death squads which are used in South America. We managed to achieve the 8-hour day and the 5-day work week over here. The American ruling class has made it really clear that there's no way in hell that they're going to allow other countries to achieve the same thing. And they're certainly not going to allow them to achieve socialism. We can do it over here because we don't have to worry about the United States bombing themselves. All they can do is pay people like Gene Epstein in order to manipulate people. That's why the United States number one when it comes to spending money on propaganda just like their number one when it comes to spending money on the military.
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@chrisw9534 , like I already said, of course people can open up a business under capitalism. Everyone knows that. There were businesses and private property under feudalism, slave societies, Etc.
Your statement doesn't make any sense when you say if that's all it is, did it already exists under capitalism. What exactly you're trying to say? Are you trying to say that if the Cooperative sector gets to a certain size that Richard Wolff is then going to somehow get those individuals to overthrow the government or something? Worker cooperatives decentralise power. They make communities and workers more independent. Independent people are harder to control. Not easier to control. What you're saying simply does not make any sense at all. Richard Wolff never asked you to vote for someone. He's not asking you to give dictatorial powers to someone. He's not asking you to support any form of hierarchical system. He's not asking you to vote for him. So why are you projecting? Why do you keep making blind assumptions when you have no basis for your assumptions at all? Your behaviour is very odd and what you're saying doesn't make any sense.
And yes, for the millionth time, the type of socialism Richard Wolff is talking about Collective worker ownership. That is a fact. Direct Collective worker ownership is a form of Socialism. That is also a fact. I'm not giving you my opinion. Why do I need to keep repeating myself? There's two hundred years worth of literature for you to read.
I'm going to explain this to you again. A capitalist economy is when you have most of the GDP coming from privately-owned companies. If most of the GDP is coming from worker-owned companies, then you'll have a socialist economy.
Worker cooperatives are the perfect example help socialism. Which is direct worker ownership where the workers are doing their own work. I already gave you several definitions from textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopedias. Socialism can either be State ownership or Collective ownership. Do you understand?
Now do you actually have anything relevant at all in regards to the argument? Are socialist companies better for workers and communities? Do they provide more equality, freedom and prosperity for workers and communities? Yes. They do. Do you have a counter argument? Are you going to just keep talking how about conspiracy theories? Richard wolf must be planning some kind of communist takeover with the government. Yeah, how is he going to do that by making communities and workers more independent by expanding The Cooperative sector? If you're going to come up with a crazy conspiracy theory, you at least have to have some evidence, some basis for your wild assumptions. My advice to you that if one day Richard will suggest that you vote for someone, don't do it. If one day he tries to convince you to remove checks and balances from the government and give dictatorial powers to someone, don't do it. It's simple. There's no need to speculate about what he might be planning in the future. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but when you talk like that you sound just like Fox News and Alex Jones. It's silly.
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@chrisw9534 , and again, you work as an employee you do not get the full value of your labour. The only way workers can get the full value of their labour is if they owned the tools that they're using. I don't know why that's so difficult for you to understand?
If you shovel driveways for $100 and you do the work yourself, you get the full $100. However, if you pay someone to do the work for you, then you cannot pay them the full $100 for each driveway. If you did, there would be no profit for you. The person you're paying is doing all of the work but not getting all of the money.
Likewise, when you work as an employee at a capitalist company, you have to produce more than what you get paid for. So that is why so many workers prefer socialized workplaces. They get paid the full value of their labour. Do you understand?
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts. I really don't know what to tell you if you can't understand what Richard Wolff is saying. You think he's crazy? You think after 3 quarters of a century teaching economics he doesn't know what he's talking about? You think he has these very basic principles wrong? You think you know more than he does? Oh no, you think there's some kind of conspiracy where if he gets his way and people actually form more Cooperative, that's going to allow him to somehow take over the world.
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@chrisw9534 , why do you keep talking about running away? My God you certainly are one per Sumptuous individual. You make assumptions about me, what I'm doing, what I'm thinking, you make assumptions about Richard Wolff, what he's planning, conspiracies, Etc.
Of course when you shovel the driveway you have expenses. Why would you State something so ridiculous? It doesn't matter whether a company is privately owned or collectively owned. Obviously profits come after expenses. You think worker-owned companies don't have overhead? What are you talkin about?
Again, if you pay someone else to do the work for you, you cannot give them the full $100. If you did there wouldn't be any profit. Can you understand? That's why so many workers are trying to achieve socialism. They don't want to do all of the work unless they get all of the money. They don't want to do all work shoveling the driveway while you get 50% of the money because you own the shovel. Do you understand? Now do you have an argument or not? Because so far you haven't made any arguments and you're not making any sense. Thing over and over again there's nothing stopping you from buying a shovel, that is not an argument. That does not negate the fact of why people want to own their own shovel. You're very good at constantly jumping from one non-argument to another. One non sequitur after another.
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@chrisw9534 , sometimes you need a Visionary like Steve Jobs at the top of the pyramid to give direction. Okay, so what? Steve Jobs can do whatever he wants with his company. It's his company. Like why is he can arrange the furniture in his home anyway that he wants to. It's his home and his furniture. If worker-owned companies can't do as well as Microsoft, or Apple, well then, I guess they'll just have to cope. Want to have an argument and a debate about Steve Jobs's company is going to be bigger, better and stronger than any worker cooperative? Yeah, maybe. But who cares? What does that have to do with anything? If the Cooperative sector increases, that's going to create more for workers. That means wages go up. If most of the market is dominated by capitalist corporations, that drives wages down work because workers have to compete with labor-saving technology.
You think if every worker had the option of getting the full value of their labour they would actually work for capitalist company such as Walmart or Amazon? Yeah sure, people love doing more work for less money, less control, where they have to follow orders and be under constant threat of being fired or demotion. Employers have a lot of power over their employees. That's why unionization and employment laws are so important. Most employers don't have any trouble using their power in order to exploit the environment and workers.
Again, you have so many workers that prefer socialism because don't want to be wage slaves. They don't want to work in a dictatorship and they don't want to lose many years of their life making money for other people. Just like with the driveway analogy, people like Donald Trump love living in a world where they can just get other people to do all the work for them so they can spend all of their time living. The person who asked to work extra hours in order to makeup for capitalist profit and people like Donald Trump, they get to live fewer hours. So yeah, that should really anger you. You should be really disgusted by parasitism.
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@chrisw9534 , let me give you another example. Socialized housing. If you're living in a private apartment building, having to pay a landlord, every extra dollar that goes to him is one less dollar you have for yourself. It's also one less dollar you'll have to spend into the economy. And that's causing a serious problem from an economic standpoint. But anyway, when you own the house collectively, just like when you own the company collectively, then you're paying for things at cost. You're no longer paying for your landlord's lifestyle. You're just paying for the cost of the materials that went into building the home. You pay for the labour that constructed your home. Then you pay for the maintenance. Etc. You're getting the full value of your labour because you're at cost. No one is profiting off of your labour. Now just like with worker cooperatives make it easier for people to start their own private businesses, when you have Cooperative housing, when you're paying at cost, money that would normally be going to your landlord, you can now use that toward purchasing your own home. That's why socialism is good for workers and bad for parasites.
So that's the difference between capitalism and socialism. socialism is for workers. Socialism is about working for a living and keeping what you work for. Capitalism is about owning for a living and accumulating wealth without working. Socialism is a natural system of organization. The only thing natural about capitalism is the aspect of its parasitism.
So again, when you work as an employee, it is impossible for you to get the full value of your labour because if you did, there would be no profit for the owner. This is what Richard Wolff is explaining. If you're happy being exploited or you need a structured environment where someone tells you what to do and how to do it, then maybe you might prefer capitalism. There were many house slaves at preferred slavery to going back to Africa. So, each to their own. But at least now I hope you understand why so many people prefer socialism over capitalism. Richard Wolff is pointing out that cooperatives are a good strategy and increase your chances of being able to extricate yourself from your slavery / exploitation. He's not suggesting that you go steal someone else's toothbrush, he's talking about collectively getting together with people so you can get your own toothbrushes. If you own your own toothbrush, that you don't have to worry about renting one from a capitalist. 😃
Can you imagine what the world would be like if you could purchase products such as toothpaste, toilet paper, blood tests, park your car at the hospital, without having to pay extortion fees to a capitalist owner? Can you imagine what find a world we would have if labor-saving technology actually benefited the worker rather than the owner of capital? We will all have very high standards of living will probably only needing to work about 3 hours per week. But unfortunately, just like with a lot of house slaves, so many can't actually see the box that they're in. It's like the Matrix movie. The walls are invisible. All you have to do is think a little bit. Do you really think a person needs to work 40 hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and this day in age, just to be able to afford clothing, food and a little wooden box to live in? No. Of course not. Capitalism is a human livestock management system. Labor-saving technology allows you to produce more milk like a dairy cow. The milk belongs to the farmer. That's why the two richest people have as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population and soon we'll have as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population. Under capitalism you were nothing more than human livestock. Do you understand?
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@chrisw9534 , and of course I understand that when you live in an apartment building you don't have to pay for the maintenance, the taxes, Etc. I already explained that? What you don't seem to understand is that the landlord doesn't actually pay for those things.
My brother is a landlord. He never worked a day in his life. He received a sizeable sum of money from family which do you use to buy several apartment buildings. Small apartment buildings that don't have any more than 10 units apiece.
He has never worked a day in his life. He has a huge home and lives a fairly lavish lifestyle. Where do you think he gets his money from? Not only do the tenants pay for his lifestyle, the tenants also pay for the cost of the building, all of the taxes, all of the maintenance, Etc. My brother doesn't even do his own accounting. He doesn't even bother doing the managing himself. He pays a manager and an accountant to do the work for him. And of course all of that money comes from the tenants. The tenants paid every single dollar. Do you understand? And that's exactly how capitalist companies work. How can you not understand the argument? And then you say that my shovel example is oversimplify. You say that it's silly. But it would say it's the only way that I can possibly get you to understand the argument. How on God's green earth can you not understand they even though the tenants don't pay for the taxes or maintenance of the building directly, they're still paying absolutely everything directly. What's left over after expenses is pure profit for the landlord. The landlord is living for free. How can you not understand when I'm saying?
And then you're talking about beliefs. Like what I'm saying is some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. No, you simply do not understand very simple math and economics. Everything I said is accurate. Everything that Richard Wolff said is accurate. It's up to you whether or not you want understand it.
And of course the ruling class says because people like you don't understand, that somehow it makes it okay for them to exploit people such as yourself. Kind of like how it's legal for religious people to sell prayer cloths to poor desperate people. That should be illegal. But it's not considered illegal.
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@chrisw9534 , and I've already addressed everything that you said. When the workers own the company, yes, a portion of the wealth that they generate with their labour goes to paying for the initial cost of the company, maybe alone, and the cost of the materials and other operating costs. Taxes, electricity, Insurance, Etc. But they are getting the full value of their labour. There's no outside individual capitalizing or extracting profit from what they're producing. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?
Just like when you own your own home, you have to pay for your taxes, the maintenance, the insurance, your own fridge and stove, excetera. But you're paying at cost. When you live in an apartment, you're still paying for all of those things, but on top of all those things you're also paying the landlord. How else can he live for free? You think that money just materializes out of nowhere? You think the money grows on a magical money tree? No. You have to understand that anytime you have a dollar that goes to someone who didn't work for it, somewhere else who have someone who work for a dollar that they don't get. This is why it's important to be able to understand basic math and economics. The landlord doesn't get his money from the tooth fairy. Dude, you have a lot of studying to do.
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@chrisw9534 , dude, you actually think in your apartment the stove is free? You think the taxes are free? No, your rent covers all of that. But on top of you paying for everything in the apartment and the maintenance and the taxes, on top of all that you're also paying for the landlord's lifestyle! You are getting ripped off. You were being exploited. It's the same thing when you work as an employee at a capital company.
Again, my brother doesn't do any work at all. Where do you think he gets the money to replace a stove or call the plumber? Where do you think he gets the money to pay for the taxes on the building? You see, not only are the tenants paying for the taxes on the building they're living in, they're also paying for the taxes on my brother's home. He never paid for his car. His car, his home, all the cost of his children, the gifts he gives his wife, kids boat, his motorcycle, his beach home, his canoe, his snowmobile, the gifts he buys at Christmas, the tenants pay for every single thing. Not him. He doesn't pay for anything.
Like I already explained. Capitalism is about owning for living so that you don't have to work when it comes to accumulating wealth. But dude, if you're happy handing over your paycheck to your landlord, then I'm happy for you. You're happy to hand over your money and I'm sure the landlord is happy to take it.
I have an idea, why don't you come over to my place and create a thousand dollars worth of wealth with your labour? I'll give you $100 for every $1,000 worth of wealth you make for me. And then you can tell me how thankful you are. I'm going to provide you with the tools, I'll provide you with a set of overhauls. Hell, I'll even throw in free lunch. Yeah that's how generous I am. You're going to get a free lunch. 😃 my God. What would capitalist do without people such as yourself? You're the equivalent of a house slave.
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@chrisw9534 , what's the fair-value of Labor? That depends on the amount of work that's being done. All work is not created equal. It depends on the person's speed, skill level, education, how dangerous the job is, how monotonous that job is, ETC. That's why the ratio of income is usually 7 to 1 at Democratic companies when it comes to income. Very rarely will you see someone making seven times more than the bottom individual because there's a limit to how much wealth you can convert your labour into regardless of your education, speed, skill, Etc.
What you need to understand is that all wealth comes from mixing labour with capital. When someone takes out more than they contribute, it has to come at the expense of someone else. We have trillions of dollars that are flowing to people that don't work. There are billionaires making thousands of dollars per second from their Capital Holdings. Workers have to pay for that. Every time you buy toilet paper, every time you take out a loan, every time you buy shoelaces, that's extra money that you have to pay. That adds up to years off of your life.
My brother gets to live for free. Those extra paychecks that workers have to give him could have been used to pay for their own mortgage. So my brother gets to spend extra time living while those workers have to lose time off of their lives because they've got to make up for what my brother is extracting.
And that is what capitalism is all about. That is capitalism. Extracting wealth from other people's labour. Again, merely selling product of your labour is not capitalism. The only way you can get the full value of your labour is if you own your own home. If you own your own company or tools. If you pay someone to do the job for you, you cannot give them all of the money that their labour produces. If you gave them all the money that their labour produced after expenses, you would have no profit. Profit is what you get when you don't work. Earnings are what you get when you do work.
But hey, it doesn't matter. If you're happy being an employee or paying a landlord, if you think you are getting a free stove or free taxes from it, then I'm happy for you. If you think Richard Wolff is crazy or a liar, well who cares. As long as you're happy. 😃
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@chrisw9534 , why did I mention the hundred dollars without mentioning expenses? Because I wanted to keep it really really really really simple. And I shouldn't have mention expenses. Everyone has expenses, it doesn't matter if the company is socialist or capitalist. So it is a 100-percent moot point. If you're shoveling the driveway and get $100 after expenses, and then you decide to get someone to do the job for you, obviously you cannot pay them $100. The math is the exact same. I shouldn't even need to take the time to explain that. Again, if you own your own home, or if utilizing social housing, you are paying at cost. All things created equal, that would save you about $500 per month. That's $500 that wouldn't be going to my brother. That's why people like my brother don't like socialism. That's why they don't want social housing. Likewise, the enclosure movement drove people into a state of dependency. Now they have to keep people in the state of dependency. Otherwise the capitalists will have to shovel their own driveways. They won't be able to pay someone like you to do it for them at pennies-on-the-dollar.
You really think that it's necessary for people to work 40 hours a week just to be able to afford a little wooden box, food and clothing? Dude, if you have to work 40 hours a week, you are a slave. You honestly didn't know that you're a Slave? You actually thought you were free? You didn't know that capitalism is literally slavery? Under this system you're either human livestock, being milked, or you're farmer, doing the milking.
You remind me of someone straight out of the Matrix movie. In complete denial about being in The Matrix. 😃
But my brother is just a little capitalist. You have the big capitalist like Donald Trump. They buy up apartment buildings, hotels, railroads, Labs were people get their blood tested, and that is why you have to work 40 hours a week. That is why there's so much debt. That's why most people will be in debt for their entire lives and have to work until the day they die. Most of your labour energy goes into the capitalists pocket when you work for them. And then they get back most of the money that they gave you when you're forced to pay rent and buy toilet paper. 😃
I can't believe that you actually thought you didn't have to pay taxes or plumbers or appliances when you live in apartment. Yeah, you're still paying for all of those things. Honestly, it's really frightening that I even have to explain any of this to you. If you don't understand what Richard Wolff is saying, you're probably better off not knowing anyway. I feel like I'm telling a deeply religious person that God doesn't exist. I can be very dangerous depending on how much of your identity and sense of self-worth is tied to the delusion.
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@unieboy5 , they allow labour to exist! LOL what statement.
yes, the working class is dependant upon the capitalist class because they were put in a state of dependency by force. How can you not understand this? That's why workers are trying to achieve socialism. So they can become independent again. Capitalists need workers. Workers should not need capitalists.
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages."
– Hazard Circular, 186
And there's no such thing as free market capitalism. The more Capital you have the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. Without regulations and progressive taxation, the Apex would quickly become bloated and the foundation suck dry. Capitalism is more of a religion than an economic system. Technically speaking, it's an anti economic system. People should only be entitled to the wealthy work for. Living off of other people's labour is immoral and disgusting.
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@bradhenderson7100 , okay, so you understand then that under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society which allows them to get most of the wealth produced by labor? That's why we have a situation where the richest 1%, now has almost as much wealth as a Poor's 91% of the American population. The two richest people, all by themselves, have almost as much wealth as a poorest half of the American population. And the eight richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population.
Not only do those small minority of capitalists get most of the wealth produced by labor, they also get to make most of the decisions in regards to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, how much workers get paid, etc. That's why most things are made in China and why there's so many people that actually have to work 3 weeks out of four just to cover their rent! It's like working 3 weeks for free. Your landlord gets to spend those paychecks on his lifestyle.
However, when workers own their own means of production, they get to make the rules and they get the wealth. And that's better for the economy because when the workers get the wealth they have more to spend. That creates more demand.
However, capitalism is not conducive to free markets or thriving economies because the goal is to maximize profit by paying workers as little as possible and getting them to produce as much as possible. That violates one of the central goals of Economics which is to achieve equilibrium. More successful a capitalist company is, the less purchasing power workers have!. That's why there's so much debt!. You have to constantly be boring more and more from the future. Now there's no longer enough hard currency to cover all of the debt. That's why we now have to print money into existence.
So I'm glad you understand the argument.
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@statistdestroyer , tell me again how two people trading with one another is a form of wealth creation. 😀 I'm still not clear on that. So if someone trades a dollar for a dollar, somehow that creates wealth?
Question: How do you create wealth without work?
Statist Destroyer (aka James Adams):
There are many ways to create wealth without labour.
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
None of those are examples of wealth creation. you moron. 😀
Let's look at some of your other asinine comments:
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
Yes they are. The less workers get paid the more profits go to the owners. You claim to have a master's degree in accounting. Then you should know in economics 101 you learn that profits are extracted from the four main factors of production which are: land, labour, capital and Entrepreneurship.
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor" because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Dude, the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population While most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. The 8 richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the Earth's population while 80% of the 7 billion people on the planet subsist on $10 a day or less. Yeah, capitalism causes massive inequality. This is another example of you not being able to differentiate between facts and assertions.
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not 'cause massive inequality' either. Factually socialist economies are less equal than their more capitalist counterparts. You're not entitled to your own set of facts just because you're a propagandist."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism does not cause depression or any inequality."
Of course capitalism causes depression. Everyone knows that capitalism is extremely unstable. Economic downturn lead to depression, suicide, increases in substance abuse, mental disorders, Etc.
USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people.
~ (Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005 Jun;62(6):617-27.)
Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime.
~
cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact_sheet
The ‘Merva-Fowles’ study, done at the University of Utah in the 1990s, found powerful connections between unemployment and crime. They based their research on 30 major metropolitan areas with a total population of over 80 million.
A 1% rise in unemployment resulted in:
a 6.7% increase in Homicides;
a 3.4 % increase in violent crimes;
a 2.4 % increase in property crime.
During the period from 1990 to 1992, this translated into:
1459 additional Homicides;
62,607 additional violent crimes;
223,500 additional property crimes.
▪ James Adams:
" your debunked "index" doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility.
You don't understand how social Mobility is calculated.
~ Global Social Mobility Index - the World Economic Forum
▪ James Adams:
" I have definitely study the topics of socialism more than you have."
▪ James Adams:
"of course a free market requires capitalism. Capitalism is not at all antithetical to free markets."
You don't understand that markets predate capitalism by thousands of years or that markets have never been free under capitalism.
▪ James Adams:
"there's nothing wrong with absolute capitalism"
What is that even supposed to mean? There's nothing wrong with pure, unregulated capitalism? No, of course corporations don't need to be regulated because they never endanger workers, exploit workers, poison the environment, produce dangerous products, would never exploit child labour.
▪ James Adams:
"You can only have a free market under capitalism."
Wow! 😃
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not right-wing, dumbass. The fascists used collectivism. State ownership. That is socialism by definition. Quit spamming when you can't even get basic definitions right."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalist companies never extract wealth from labour. Quit lying about it."
Cites Koch brother-funded 'Foundation for Economic Education'! aka 'FEE'
▪ James Adams:
"fascism is not a right-wing ideology. It's on the left!"
▪ James Adams:
"Joe Biden is not right wing! He's a leftist! He is center-left!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system of organizations. Socialism is top-down."
▪ James Adams:
"under capitalism workers always get paid the full value of their labour."
▪ James Adams:
"workers are never exploited under capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
" feudalism is not an oligarchy, because it's not defined by that word!" (this is a direct quote.)
This is the only quote that isn't verbatim:
"feudalism doesn't fall under the oligarchy category. They had a caste system."
There was simply too much nonsense for me copy it all. But the context is correct. You claimed that feudalism does not fall under the category of an oligarchy. 😀
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That's the exact same thing that white people used to say about black people in the days of the Antebellum South. Well guess what, you'd be very surprised what people are capable of when they have access to education and opportunity.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@Potalot , that's simply not true.
markets are not unique to capitalism. You don't need capitalism in order to have a market, have production, have people selling and trading with one another. I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas from.
Keep in mind that merely selling the product of your labour is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables and sell them in the market, that's not capitalism. If you write a book and you sell it in the market, that's not capitalism. Capitalism is about acquiring capital for the purpose of extracting wealth from labour. Extracting wealth from employees, rents, usage fees, Etc. if you have a company that is owned by the workers and the workers are doing their own work, that is not capitalism.
You don't need capitalism in order to have a thriving market economy.
Markets are a mode of distribution. Capitalism is a mode of production. the capitalist mode of production is privately owned and utilizes wage labour for-profit.
If we were to switch over to the Socialist mode of production tomorrow, the goods and services would still be sold in the market. The only difference is the workers would actually be able to keep all of the well that their labour produces rather than have it go to shareholders or some capitalist owner.
Capitalism is literally economic feudalism. Socialism is economic democracy. Thinking that you need capitalism in order for workers to own their own company is tantamount to thinking that you need slavery in order to manufacture cotton.
Also keep in mind that a socialist economy would simply be one where most of the GDP is coming from worker-owned Enterprises rather than private Enterprises. so of course we don't need to have a capitalist economy. There are regions in Europe where already 44% of the GDP comes from worker cooperatives.
Under capitalism most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. Therefore they get most of the wealth produced by Labour and they get to make most of the decisions when it comes to what is produced, how things are produced, where things are produced, excetera. That's why the two richest people now have more wealth in the poorest half of the American population and within the next 10 years will probably have more wealth in the poorest half of the Earth's population. this is why just about everything is manufactured in China. sure, the billionaire spend hundreds of Millions of dollars annually trying to convince people that their system is necessary. That's why they pay people like Margaret Thatcher to say that there's no alternative.
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Actually, statistically speaking, worker cooperatives are a lot more efficient and productive than capitalist companies. There's tons of studies on the subject. Also, workers are statistically happier, more enthusiastic, more creative, take less sick days, there's less incidence of suicide, drug abuse, Etc. And most importantly, workers get to keep most of the money that their labour produces. And they own the product of their labour. App a capitalist company, someone else owns the product of your labour and gets most of the money your labour produces.
And what do you mean employee-owned companies are totally welcome in a free market? Yeah, things are sold in a market. It doesn't matter if capitalism is the mode of production, feudalism, or socialism. Capitalism is a mode of production. Markets are emotive distribution. So even if we switched over to Pure socialism tomorrow, everything would still be sold in the market. 😀 markets are not unique to capitalism. Markets existed before capitalism, and they will exist long after capitalism is gone. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
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@ExPwner , timestamps is laughing his ass off because Patrick thought Hillary Clinton was a socialist. But you know what's really funny? You thinking that fascism is a left-wing ideology in the Hitler was a socialist! You even think Biden is a socialist. 😀 yep, you're definitely mr. Perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
" I am very intelligent. I have a master's degree in accounting."
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is not a two class system! Many workers own stock, dumass!"
▪ James Adams:
"capitalism is a bottom-up system because the economy is not centrally planned."
▪ James Adams:
"service-sector jobs that replaced industrial jobs (lost as a consequence of NAFTA) are actually higher-paying and better for workers"
▪ James Adams:
" the social Mobility index doesn't measure social Mobility. Health, education, technology access.... all completely irrelevant in actual measurement of social Mobility."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ James Adams:
"Business is not robbing the poor. The state is."
▪ James Adams:
"Amazon workers are not getting low wages either, dumbass."
▪ James Adams:
"profits are not extracted from labour."
▪ James Adams:
"Imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism."
▪ James Adams:
"There is no theft of labor value. Workers always get paid the "full value of their labor because that value is what they exchange for (subjective value) not some made up nonsense. Ponder that for a while."
▪ James Adams:
" capitalism does not cause extreme inequality. And you have no evidence that it does!"
Yeah, there's no extreme difference between the poor and the rich. no evidence..😀 not at all! Only that the two richest people have almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the American population. The richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population. Simultaneously, going back at least as far as 2015, 40 million Americans use food stamps in order to get enough to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! No, no extreme inequality there. 😀 you're mr. perspicacity incarnate.
▪ James Adams:
"There is no such thing as worker exploitation because that Marxist nonsense was refuted by Bohm Bawerk.
Get an education!"
▪ Q: How do you create wealth in the economy without labour?
James Adams:
"There are many ways to create wealth without labour:
1. Wealth is in knowledge.
2. Wealth is created through saving time on something.
3. Wealth is created through exchange when one person values the thing they want more than the thing they give up.
4. Apples.
5. Wine."
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Worker-owned companies are actually more efficient and Innovative compared to capitalist Enterprises. Consider Mondragon which has 120,000 employees that own their own bank, high-tech Research Laboratories, University, Hospital, Etc. Then you have other companies such as Ocean Spray or that massive electronics company in China which is owned by the workers. There are regions in Europe or 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned cooperatives. So we know exactly how well they compared to capitalist Enterprises. Workers are happier, more creative, they take less sick days, there's less incidence of substance abuse, suicide, Etc.
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
"The idea that employees can run their own firms might sound unrealistic to some. This study looks at international data on worker-owned and run businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America and compares them with conventional businesses. It also reviews international statistical studies on the firms’ productivity, survival, investment and responsiveness.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
Here is a link to the research data https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/worker_co-op_report.pdf
Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
https://democracycollaborative.org/content/worker-cooperatives-pathways-scale
Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/01/1995_bpeamicro_craig.pdf
Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
https://www.uk.coop/newsroom/new-report-highlights-lessons-worlds-largest-worker-co-op
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/2014/coopsegm/grace.pdf
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
http://reic.uwcc.wisc.edu/sites/all/REIC_FINAL.pdf
1. For example, these assembly line workers make $65,000 a year for putting bread into a bag! https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
2. People feel United and actually look forward to going to work! That makes them more creative and productive. https://youtu.be/oH81zuMf_Co
3. Worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies https://www.thenation.com/article/worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-than-normal-companies/
4. More resilience, productivity, and equality. https://lindsayadvocate.ca/worker-cooperatives-a-path-to-equality/
5. Democratic workplaces are far superior to capitalist corporations!
https://cooperativesfirst.com/blog/2017/09/11/2017911how-co-operatives-are-better-than-corporations/
6. People have more money, people are happier, people are more productive and more creative, and they feel more connected to their communities and environment. https://youtu.be/em9YQzDTReo
7. The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2016/07/05/the-italian-place-where-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-are-members/
8. pandemic crash shows worker cooperatives are more resilient than traditional businesses. Worker co-ops are a more sustainable form of business, sharing benefits in the good times and burdens in the hard times.
https://truthout.org/articles/pandemic-crash-shows-worker-co-ops-are-more-resilient-than-traditional-business/
9. Cooperatives power almost 60% of the United States land mass https://www.electric.coop/electric-cooperative-fact-sheet/
10. "The 29,284 cooperative firms operating in the US generate over 2 million jobs and create more than $74 billion in wages annually according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, with support from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. They represent 1% of USA Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and account for more than $654 billion in revenue. These cooperative businesses contribute with $133.5 billion in income and $3 trillion in assets, and provide products and services across the country in every sector of the economy."
"US cooperatives’ contribution to the national and local economies can be measured in both financial and non financial ways. They keep profits local, pay local taxes to help support community services, take part in community improvement programs and provide services for a large numbrer of people in the country regardless of their income levels or geographic location."
Key points to highlight about American cooperatives:
• There are 120 million cooperative members.
• 92 million U.S. consumers are member owners of, and receive all or part of their financial services from the nation’s nearly 8,200 credit unions.
• More than 900 electric cooperatives deliver electricity in the United States to 42 million people in 47 states. That equates to 12 percent of the nation’s population.
• In the United States, more than 1.2 million families of all income levels live in homes owned and operated through cooperative associations.
• Farmer co-ops provide over 250,000 jobs, with a total payroll in excess of $8 billion.
• More than 50 million Americans are served by insurance companies owned by or closely affiliated with cooperatives.
• More than 20 cooperatives have annual sales in excess of $1 billion, including well known names like Land O’ Lakes, Inc., Cabot Creamery, Ocean Spray and ACE Hardware.
US data on Cooperatives
• 29,284 cooperative firms
•654 billion plus in revenue.
• $133.5 billion in income.
• $3 trillion in assets.
• 2 million plus jobs.
• 120 million members.
https://www.aciamericas.coop/Economic-impact-of-the-United
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@BrianGochnauer , the thing is if most of the GDP came from worker-owned companies, there wouldn't be any economic downturns. Capitalism is responsible for economic downturns.
The problem is that under capitalism workers do not get paid the full value of their labour. And that violates one of the most basic principles of economics. A central goal of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. But capitalism is in direct opposition to that principle. Capitalism is about maximizing profit. Production output is maximized while wages are kept as low as possible. As production costs approaches 0, profits are maximized. But then you end up with a situation where workers can't actually afford the very goods and services that they're producing. If 75% of the wealth is going to the owners of capital, then the workers are obviously only going to be able to afford 25% of what they produce. Where does the other 75% of the purchasing power come from? Debt! That's why interest rates are so low, that's why they're now entertaining the idea of negative interest rates. That's why we're still working a 40-hour work week.
Capitalism is economic feudalism. It is a religion. Why would anyone in their right mind we still following a religion in the 20th century? It's just purely idiotic. we need an economic system that is based on science, a democratic economic system. Capitalism is economic feudalism.
the only reason that people still accept capitalism and wage slavery today is because the billionaire spend hundreds of millions of dollars of our money on Pro capitalist propaganda that appeals to the simple-minded morons.
you see, the ruling class came to realize that the more you try to use Force to control people, the more people resist. capitalism is a modern form of slavery. You have to make the slaves compete with one another, make them actually feel grateful for the Privileges that they get in their captivity.
Capitalist propaganda since 1945:
• Part 1: http://youtu.be/EIk6-4KosE0
• Part 2: http://youtu.be/QY8i4JXdpxs
• Part 3: http://youtu.be/fUOqrxrrY0k
• Part 4: http://youtu.be/ZQuPMRnInoY
• Part 5: http://youtu.be/ao0P7_P22BM
• Part 6: http://youtu.be/3433t89k4LY
now if you want to research the science behind the development of modern propaganda, along with who was behind it and where the money came from, I would recommend watching this documentary
"The history and development of social engineering in the 20th century" http://metanoia-films.org/human-resources/
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@BrianGochnauer , my argument is not based on Theory or Academia. That's why I gave you a huge ton of hard empirical data. I'm talking about basic facts. Markets and production are not unique to capitalism. We do not need capitalism in order to have a business, have markets, have production, have people selling and trading with one another. Merely selling the product of your labour is not capitalism. If you grow vegetables in your garden and sell them in the market, that is not capitalism. If you write a book and you sell it in the market, that is not capitalism. Capitalism is the economic system of parasites. It is the idea that you can own for a living rather than actually having to do what you work. It is insane to have a system which allows a handful of people to basically own most of the capital, factories and resources on the entire planet while everyone else has to pay rent in usage fees. If you want to play Monopoly, get the board game. Organizing a society that way it's just pure insanity. of course the billionaire spend hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda try to convince people that insanity is actually best for them. Yeah, well guess what? It's not. the argument reiterated from a different perspective: https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
"The school, church, TV, & press are used to foster the ideology of the ruling class & indoctrinate the worker into accepting their system as the most natural permanent form of society." -- Rob Sewell
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@BrianGochnauer ,There are 3 main types of socialism. One deals with regulation, progressive taxation, price controls, social programs, minimum wage, consumer safety standards, Labour laws, Etc. without these regulations capitalism would collapse. this type of socialism is prominent in Canada, the United States, Etc. in Europe they refer to it as a social democracy. In the USA they refer to it as Democratic socialism. The exact same thing, different label.
Another type of socialism is when the government owns businesses and factories. SOEs. state-owned Enterprises. these are public
Some people refer to it as state capitalism because the state is in control of the capital instead of private owners.
In advanced capitalist countries many SOEs have been privatized under neoliberalism. But many still operate successfully (in diverse Industries including manufacturing, Communications, Transportation, utilities, and resources), accounting for up to 5% of total GDP in some OCED countries. Examples of successful wholly or partially -owned SOEs include Volkswagen (Germany), State Oil (Norway), EDF group (France), and Metsahalltus (Finland). In many developing and former communist countries (including China, Brazil, Russia and Vietnam) SOEs are much more important.
the third type of socialism is when the workers directly own their own Factory or business. They are running it like a community, which is where the word communism comes from. the workers are doing their own work. They're not capitalizing on other people's labour. They are selling the product of their own labour, not the product of someone else's labour. here are two examples of socially owned companies in the United States https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
and then you have communism. Communism is not State ownership. Russia and China never claimed to be communist. they have Communist governments. China has the goal of achieving socialism by 2050. And then eventually communism. in order for communism to occur there can no longer be a state, monetary system or class.
If we increase the number of democratic workplaces, that will make it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. that's because you'll have more members of the community with greater purchasing power. People will be buying more beer, pizza, trips to the bowling alley, Etc.
Traditional socialism / anarchism is simply about workers collectively owning and controlling their own company or factory democratically.
Worker cooperatives keep wealth and control with the community and workers. They make them less dependant upon billionaire corporations and government when it comes to jobs in consumer goods. Therefore, they are more conducive to a free market in Thrive me economy. When workers have more money, they spend more. That makes it easier for other people to start their own small businesses. However, when purchasing power is eroded, which capitalism does because capitalist corporations want to maximize profits by reducing production cost, then the economy contracts because there's inadequate purchasing power to cover the goods and services in circulation.
for example, here are two socially owned companies in the United States. A robotics company and a bread factory. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
Almost 60% of the USA is powered by these type of workplaces. here is an electrical worker explaining what it's like to work in such an environment. States.
https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
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