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The swedish Coop food store chain is my favourite example of a depressed organisation. In theory a democratic organisation with 3 million members, in practise run by and for upper management. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
The difference is that the authoritarian BS is designed to benefit a tiny section of the population. That's why it's not only BS, it's inconsistent and the "rules" change on demand. If corporate welfare benefits banks, then banks get to pretend that corporate welfare is the most economically sound in the whole history of political economics.
If someone else benefits, then suddenly it's a travesty, an outrage, a disaster waiting to happen, a moral hazard (that last one is particularly entertaining) and so on.
The so-called "left" we've had for the last couple of decades, which is really the centre right, is willing to put aside its fervently held egalitarian principles and agree with the muggings, for purely pragmatic reasons.
A real left would support co-ops because co-ops happen to be a consistent and effective way to run an economy - they run stably, they're democratic, they don't explode, and they're good at supporting economic participation - also known as "jobs."
Unfortunately we haven't had anyone with these views in power since the 60s. And they weren't allowed to do a lot when they were in power.
Basically if a democratic left was ever allowed near national policy, it would make a point of kicking the bums out. And that has never been allowed to happen.
The whole point of UKUncut, spanishrevolution, the action in Greece and Africa - and doubtless more to come - is that people have seen through the shell game now, and they're no longer content to be bullied and lied to by people with the morals of a petty thief and the pompousness of a petty lord.
But of course Gintis argument is that this is pious nonsense. That as much as some of us would like coops to be a real alternative to capitalist firms, they seem to not work so often and also to be easily captured by a management group - as the Comrade from Sweden's example makes clear. Perhaps there is no "real left" because we don't actually have a credible alternative to offer and all the angry signifying can't close the gap.
BTW: there is a very interesting US example of http://newstreaming.com/about/src-companies/
Waitrose, Gore-Tex, and various Euro co-ops haven't been "captured by various management groups."
And they're certainly more economically effective than corporate welfare queens like Boeing.
But do please keep waving your concern trolling around in the vain hope that it's going to persuade someone.
If nothing else, It's a useful education in how not to do rhetoric successfully.
The same 5 examples over and over.
Where's your proof that ¨all co-ops become managementised?¨
You have none. You pulled that ¨fact¨ out of your ass, stated it as reality, and hoped no one would notice you were bullshitting.
Is it harder to start and run a co-op than a corporation? Undoubtedly. Co-ops are unserious and don't follow the proper capitalist respect for class hierarchy, so banks and VCs are inherently biased against them.
But that's a damning and flameworthy indictment of the uselessness of banking, not of co-ops as a viable business model.
I'm sure capitalism is shaking in fear at the continued existence of an upmarket grocery store co-op, though, so I await the revolution ASAP.
Whether the product is up-market grocery sales, bicycles, or off-shore wind, the point is the same - the co-op model can work in spite of a hostile environment, and will work even more successfully in a supportive one.
Since your primary point is that "the left has no alternatives" you have no credibility on this. The left does have alternative narratives, and has done for decades.
What the left has lacked is the political muscle and media air cover to put those alternatives into practice against power structures that use violence, lies, intimidation, infiltration, propaganda, and noobs posting on message boards to make their points for them.
The last time the left had that muscle to change the culture we had state pensions, state healthcare, massive investment, and the welfare state.
On the next iteration we'll have more of the same, and sustainable participatory finance and business as well.
The fact that the so-called centrists are going to have to be elbowed out of the way to make that possible is an unfortunate but temporary inconvenience.
You couldn't elbow a centered package of organic Hampshire lambchops aside.
No, you won't, because you're only here to concern troll, and undermine the idea of the left as a viable and valid political movement.
You have no solutions, no proposals, no constructive criticism, no new ideas, no facts, no insights, and no innovation to offer - only misdirection, huffing and puffing, and clumsy rhetoric.
So - good luck with that.
Go find someone else to bully about the right way to speak, I'm not in the market.
This suggests that he is refighting the last war rather than fighting the next. Being good at extensive, material intensive growth is not going to be as handy a trait to have over the next fifty years.
And indeed, the "markets" that most of the very poorest low income nations need are not the "license for corporations to run amok" so-called "markets", but rather well regulated local food markets in agrarian producing areas, supported by grower cooperatives to maintain local roads to the markets and run credit unions and government job guarantee health clinics, schools, and agricultural proving fields and extension. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
I'm not particularly persuaded by his second point, but the 1st and 3rd are strong and the 3rd does bolster the 2cd.
The counter to these, which is something I find really absent from most economics, is that the dominant form of economic organization in the world, the big corporation, is a grotesque monstrosity. Galbraith seems to have thought about this some, but Gintis does not seem to understand how these bureaucratic firms operate.
Instead of asking why co-ops are a rarity, ask why commercial corporations are so ubiquitous, and an environment of normal headlong quarter on quarter economic growth with stagnation and downturn a relative rarity is clearly part of that ~ the idea that the same advantages apply in a condition of growth primarily occuring in technological efficiency waves and so growth being less common than stability is just an untested speculation. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
... the entire historical period in which they became ubiquitous has a common feature that is unlike all the periods before that when they were not, and which we know is a temporary feature which will not be true for most of the rest of this century.
Whether that is a coincidence or a dependence is something that will be put to the test. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
And what I'm taking from Gintis is not that the current mode of economic organization is secure, but that the easy answers "progressives" have come up with may not be all that adequate. I could have read that passage from Klein and just nodded last year, and now I'm wondering whether it really has any substance.
Here's a good counter-argument. http://www.iese.edu/en/files/6_40628.pdf
... is an awfully easy critique.
And much of the changes to what corporations "can do" are not changes in the organization or intrinsic capacities of corporations, but rather a matter of regaining permission to do things that at one time had been revoked, up to and including the one time revoked but increasingly regained right of hire and operate a private army. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
These companies don't look like 1850s manchester textile companies.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
I have no idea why 1850's Manchester textile companies would be considered state of the art for 1850's corporate development, when so much of the development of the corporate form and the separation of formal ownership and executive control is occurring in the railroadification of the US. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
right vs left is clearly a political dimension, with the ambiguity cleared up when its made clear what political arena and what time period in that political arena we are talking about. "left economics", as "right economics", is economics in service of the political requirements of the left coalition as opposed to economics in service of the political requirements of the right coalition.
progressive is vis a vis conservative or traditionalist, with the ambiguities being judged as progress against what criteria and progress of what, so "progressive economics" is a double entendre at least, possibly a treble entendre, with one reading "progress in understanding the material provisioning of society", and a second reading "economics that is useful to those who consider themselves political progressives" (with multiple criteria possible for political progress meaning that the second meaning could easily be two or three partly contradictory meanings).
And of course, liberal vis a vis authoritarian is ambiguous in terms of who is being liberated from what authority, so that those who are freeing commercial corporations to exercise power over citizens can imagine themselves as "liberating" the owners of the corporation from state authority, even as the citizens being oppressed by corporate power may themselves wish to be liberated from corporate authority.
Near as I can tell without investing more effort than was available to me today, Gintis is not meaning "progressive economics" in the sense of progress in the discipline of economics away from an uncritical application of a traditional toolkit under a traditional unit of analysis toward being a science of the material provisioning of society, but is meaning the much easier "progressive economics" in the sense that it is a synonym for "left economics", which is a falling off a log analysis, since placing a social science at the service of the immediate political ends of some political faction implies that there will be less there than meets the eye.
My comment was just an arch reminder that reading "progressive economics" as being synonymous with "left economics" implies that what Herb is aiming at is the intrinsically easier target. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Oh, of course, that would be Gintis's argument; but it wouldn't be yours, would it? You'd disagree with Gintis, wouldn't you?
It's just that you sound so much like you're a tout for Gintis--especially when you seem to align yourself in "implying" that you subscribe to a view which has it that " as much as some of us would like coops to be a real alternative to capitalist firms, they seem to not work so often and also to be easily captured by a management group - as the Comrade from Sweden's example makes clear. Perhaps there is no "real left" because we don't actually have a credible alternative to offer and all the angry signifying can't close the gap.
I have a different theory. There is a "real left," and you are dedicated to its character assassination. By my theory, you consistently employ dishonest techniques which include shilling for dishonest arguments against real left-wing opinion (pretending to mildly criticize them). You cite as worthy of our time and attention those who declare themselves so, so sorry that "we can't do better than Krugman," and who allow as how it's such a gosh darn shame that co-ops just don't really work. In fact, co-ops work fine when they're allowed to. You, however, aren't interested in their having a reputation for effectiveness. You're dedicated to, in your puny way here, trying to discredit what is an emintently creditable idea.
You don't approve of Krugman or Stiglitz or Naomi Klein. They're just not something-or-other enough for you; and yet, they're at once the best of the lot and the best of a heart-breakingly small lot. There should be more like them and it would help significantly if there were. But, instead of championing all that is worthy about their work, you denigrate everything about them and meanwhile after damning them with faint praise, you tout the likes of Gintis here, with faint damning.
As character-references for leftist opinion go, I'd rather take my chances with Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly than with you.
May every passing innocent reader who chances here beware of taking you as an actual advocate of left-wing principles.
You specialize in diversionary sterile arguments, time-wasting nonsense, fatuous representations of respectable views which are actually worthwhile--as this thread so well shows. You're a spoiler, pissing in the village well and then complaining about a shortage of potable water. "In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
Most what they did accomplish in ways of building movements that were controlled by those working in them, was accomplished while in a harsh opposition role. I think the need and desire to build organisations went away as they began to see state power as the main mean, held by party elite for the benefits of party elite.
Maybe soc-dems and commies were both wrong. The important thing is not wheter state power is conquered by elections or by force, but that state power forms the parties into being another owner instead of a mean to get power of the means of production into the hands of the proletariat.
So what then? Maybe back to the 19th century also-rans anarchists and utopian socialist. Maybe study why some co-ops does not get captured and combine with new organisational models such as those Chris pushes.
But it appears to be a Gordian knot. If the state is conquered by socialists, it eats the socialists. And if the state is not conquered by socialists, it also tends to eat the socialists (back in the 1930ies, when Coop was better functioning and dangerous, they had a thick file at the security service). Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
That was partly the legacy of Marx, for whom the "means of production" were industrial.
There are signs it's starting to ease, and there's a hint of a tendency towards diversification and more free and organic forms of participation.
What's missing on the left at the moment - at least in the UK - is the usual need to move beyond oppositional theatre (e.g. UKUncut) towards demanding seats at the policy table for all issues, not just single-issue campaigns.
That may be starting to happen in Spain. We'll see.
That was partly the legacy of Marx Engels, for whom the "means of production" were industrial.
FIFY.
(I'm increasingly convinced that what most Marxians represent as Marx's views are as much an unkind caricature as what most Liberals present Adam Smith's views to be.)
And when most workers were industrial workers, it's not totally surprising that (say) the Soviets and the Maoists) turned him into a kind of angry patron of worker-deified industrial revolution.
If there's a lacuna in Marx, it's exactly that absence of realistic post-industrial alternatives.
There's not a lot of nature in Marx. There are people, and there are machines and resources, but he knew nothing about eco-systems or symbiotic embedding, so they're not included as original Marxist concepts.
Of course, no free market propaganda mill pays to get large numbers of cheap copies of Theory of Moral Sentiment reprinted. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Liberty Press, Indianapolis, 1976 & 1984
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith
isbn: 0865970122 "In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
The problem was the number grinding mill attached, where despite 1/2 University appointments, they had full votes in the department. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
..utopian socialist.
Who were these? F.Engels called "utopians" those who demanded reforms. Who had beliefs in mixed economy. He himself wanted total capitulation of markets without having not what so ever clue, how capital is allocated in the "dream" society.
Who was the utopian? Old leftist double speak and still no one in the left wants to be an "utopian." They are a hopeless case.
My thoughts mainly went to the attemtps at communities to realise an alternative outside the realm of state power. But there is probably a lot more that has been downplayed by later socialists when the soc-dem/commie split became the major focal point. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
But Gintis remarks make me think that we have the same thing on the left: a ideological artificial flavor which involves some BS about coops to disguise the fact that the exact same mixed economy view is being sold.
"A mixed economy dominated by large firms, which are in turn controlled by power groups internal to those firms" is, however, a fairly big tent.
There is a substantial difference, to take one example, between a political economy in which organised labour is one of the internal power groups controlling the large firm and a political economy in which that control is reserved for upper management. There is even a significant difference between the political economy in which control is reserved for upper management and one where middle management is included. And there is a very important difference between a political economy that is dominated by industrial firms, a political economy dominated by extractive firms and a political economy dominated by financial firms.
Different policies promote different sectors of the economy, and different power structures within the large, powerful business firm. And it is in my view a perfectly legitimate leftist objective to favour industry over finance (and manufacturing over extractive industry), engineers over MBAs and line workers and middle management over executives when making the rules for which firms grow large and which groups dominate the large firms.
So claiming that left and right are fundamentally identical because both subscribe to a "mixed economy" is not wholly unlike claiming that French and English are fundamentally the same, because both are Indo-European languages. The premise is true, but the conclusion does not follow.
There is a substantial difference, to take one example, between a political economy in which organised labour is one of the internal power groups controlling the large firm and a political economy in which that control is reserved for upper management.
Mills in the 1950s describes an American power system in which organized labor had been tightly integrated in a subsidiary role. One does not need to be an orthodox marxist to see that the operation of a worldwide system of capitalism is a strong current, not easily diverted.
But if our exchange over the last few days has done nothing else, it has at least motivated me to dig a bit deeper in DB and SG, since they seem to be running their own foreign policy.
Whether the organization is a co-op or corporation is de minimis. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
In a capitalist corporation, executives are selected because they're already members of the executive class, not because they have proven management skills. (In fact, failing to have management skills is no handicap to a management career.)
But at - say - Waitrose - staff regularly participate in store management. There are open discussions about issues, and sometimes about strategy. If senior staff are out of line, there's instant feedback.
Apart from that then yes, there's no difference at all.
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