Thanks for those insights, Paul. I really do
appreciate them. They do confirm my suspicions about
how the wages system and commodity production, no
matter how nicely controlled, have historically tended
in the direction of re-creating the social relation we
know as Capital and the eventual domination of
corporations and their States--totalitarian forms of
economic and political rule.
IMO, one needs to go in the opposite direction, away
from commodity prodution and the wages system, in
order to get to a classless association of producers
who socially manage the means of
production/consumption for use and need.
Regards,
Mike B)
--- paul phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just to supplement Jim's comments, in Mondragon
> wages were set at
> comparable outside market wages and then profits at
> the end of the year
> were allocated to individual members savings funds
> which would be paid
> out on retirement. The purpose was to build up
> funds for investment in
> expanding the coops without having to rely on the
> commercial money
> market or banking system. All employees were
> required to become members
> except for specialists brought in for short term
> projects (e.g. an
> engineer hired to design a new product or process.)
> Wage differentials
> were regulated with a maximum differential of 3 to 1
> although last I
> heard, they were considering raising this to 6 to 1
> because of the
> difficulty they were having in attracting
> professionals as members as
> the co-ops moved more and more into high tech areas
> and into research
> and development.
>
> In the case of Yugoslavia, wages were set by the
> workers councils,
> usually at levels suggested by the managers. With
> the 1974
> constitutional changes that introduced contractual
> self-management and
> the 1976 Law on Associated Labour, the financing of
> investment was
> abandoned by the state and the independent banks and
> was transfered to
> the enterprises from retained earnings and
> borrowings from their captive
> banks. This led to what became known as the
> 'Yugoslav disease' because
> the workers would distribute all the earnings in the
> form of wages
> leaving nothing for reinvestment. The enterprises
> would then borrow
> from their captive banks which basically printed the
> money with the
> resulting inflation that really was a major factor
> in the collapse of
> the system. This was, of course, illegal under
> Yugoslav law but by then
> the state authority was so dispersed and
> self-management so intrenched
> that little was done to curb it. Horvat claims, and
> I think he is
> right, that the real mistake was to abolish the
> state investment funds.
> It was during the time of the state investment
> funds (the period of
> market socialism) that the rate of economic growth
> and wage growth was
> at its highest.
>
> Nevertheless, the self-management system of setting
> wages did result in
> the most egalitarian distribution of wages in
> Europe, both in the
> capitalist and communist worlds.
>
> Paul P
>
> Devine, James wrote:
>
> >Mike B. writes:
> >
> >
> >>I'm wondering about these pressures to cut costs
> which
> >>
> >>
> >Chomsky refers to. Don't they lead to the big,
> nice
> >co:operative having to try to find cheaper sources
> of
> >material via low wage, usually dictatorial
> political
> >states?<
> >
> >FWIW, David Schweikert's "market socialist" utopia
> of worker-managed co-operatives has two major
> institutions that are aimed at preventing the
> co-ops' profit-maximization from turning into this
> kind of thing:
> >
> >1) a minimum wage, so that profit-max doesn't
> involve co-ops competing via a race to the bottom
> among themselves.
> >
> >[I think there must also be some rule about not
> hiring non-co-op members to do work. But I don't
> remember it.}
> >
> >2) a special tariff on imports from countries that
> don't live up to labor standards. In this case, the
> revenues collected by making these imports more
> expensive to domestic consumers are supposed to be
> returned to the country whose imports are taxed as a
> lump sum (development aid).
> >
> >Jim Devine
> >
> >
> >
> Paul Phillips,
> Senior Scholar,
> Department of Economics,
> University of Manitoba
>
=====
****************************************************************
...the safest course is to do nothing
against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy
life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire
http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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