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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."

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/

by rootless2 on Sat May 28th, 2011 at 10:59:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
What on earth are you talking about?

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.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat May 28th, 2011 at 11:20:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]
the Left would rule the world.

The same 5 examples over and over.

by rootless2 on Sat May 28th, 2011 at 11:33:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Those examples happen to utterly demolish your point.

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.  

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:52:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
They don't demolish anything. Obviously we all know about examples - Gintis even mentions the hoary example of Mondragon  and clearly, you didn't bother to read before lecturing. And nobody said "all co-ops become managementized" - that's something you made up - or "pulled out of your ass" to use your own phrasing.

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.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:20:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
"Not work so often" would rather imply that they barely work at all - in spite of evidence to the contrary.

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.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:48:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Actually, what it appears "the left" has is an over ample supply of self-righteous vanguard mentality and an even larger store of excuses for failure.

You couldn't elbow a centered package of organic Hampshire lambchops aside.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:59:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
And you'll be posting a diary with detailed proposed solutions of your own soon?

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.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 12:35:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
truly a hapless rejoinder. The left of "fall into line or be denounced as a troll" is history repeating itself, first as authoritarian parties and then as a ridiculous social club.

Go find someone else to bully about the right way to speak, I'm not in the market.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 01:00:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Gintis' argument is, however, drawn on evidence that mostly says that coops are not as good at extensive, material intensive growth as commercial corporations, since that is the dominant form of growth over the past fifty years.

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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:35:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Gintis has three points. The first is that coops are organizations within the market system. We don't seem to be able to think outside markets anymore. The second, which I think is more dubious is the Bowles/Gintis argument that coops tend to be poorly capitalized and thus cannot e.g. invest in R&D or capital intensive new ventures so tend to be hammered by better capitalized non-coops. And the third point, implicit, is that people have been advocating and pushing coops since Robert Owens if not before and yet they remain very much in the unusual oddity class.

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.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:47:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, my point was focused on his #3, since I do not think his #2 is all that persuasive, especially absent #3, and wrt #1, markets are institutions, how they affect power relations depends on how they are allowed to be used.

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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 07:22:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But it seems obvious why commercial corporations are so ubiquitous - they are like armies. What appears to be inefficient brutality is intrinsic to their success. It occurs to me that one of the handicaps of coops is that they are in a lot of ways purer market organizations than corporations. Corporations derive a great deal of power from the class cohesion of managers across multiple industries and even nations.
by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 08:04:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
... obvious, but at one time fiefdoms were ubiquitous and commercial corporations rare or non-existent ...

... 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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 08:38:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, one thing economists don't seem to get is that modern multinational corporations are very different to the industrial corporations of the 1700s or even 1900sin terms of control, sources of capital, organization etc. The ground is shifting under our feet even if it doesn't seem like it. The process of metrics for example, changes white collar work in those companies into something much more akin to being on the line.

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

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:28:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
... of progressives have less substance to them than they first appear to have ...

... 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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 09:56:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
What i had in mind was the emergence of professional management that migrates between companies, and the ability of top management to walk out of the company with vast fortunes not based on any investment of their own, the imposition of systems such as 6Sigma and the measurement of white collar work, the internal financialization of even industrial companies, the shift of stock ownership to mutual funds and other investment vehicles, the deep and ongoing involvement in the political process via professional lobbying and in shaping public culture via marketing

These companies don't look like 1850s manchester textile companies.

by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:21:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
But almost all of that was present in the 1929 radio companies, in only superficially different guises. The one obvious exception being that upper management was tied to their companies, by virtue of being coterminous with the owners.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 10:54:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
if that were the only difference, it would be a big one.
by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 10:24:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The ability of top management to walk out of companies with huge fortunes is no new capacity, but an old capacity regained, combined with the separation of formal ownership and executive control that underlay the 1920's Wall Street stock market boom.

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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 12:20:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Really? I thought it would be obvious why 1850s Manchester textile factories would be brought up in a discussion about left economics.
by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 01:30:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oh, Gintis critiqued left economics as well as progressive economics?

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 04:05:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
maybe you could clear up the difference between "progressive" and "left" for me?  
by rootless2 on Mon May 30th, 2011 at 05:02:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hopefully not, since clearing up the difference requires pretending away the ambiguities in the terms.

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.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue May 31st, 2011 at 02:27:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]
   "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."

    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

by proximity1 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 01:32:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
boring.
by rootless2 on Sun May 29th, 2011 at 02:47:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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