On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > But seeing these things as an alternative to capitalism is just absurd.
Why is it absurd? They are an alternative to capitalism. I don't know the specifics of Kiwi's structure or financial picture, but a co-op that has "big losses" is going to have to cut people, or cut hours, or do something. If you have some idea of what they should do instead of this you should voice it. Of course, corporations don't wait for big losses, or even small losses, or even lack of profit to cut people. As mainstream Marxist theory says, and as economic data shows, not only a lack of profit but a dip below a general expected rate of profit results in layoffs. So the threshold for co-op layoffs is much lower. "Even if it was the most democratic institution in the world, it could not operate as a benign oasis in a toxic wasteland. Capitalism forces firms to be profitable. If they are not profitable, management takes action to make them more profitable, including slashing wages or laying workers off. The only way to eliminate these practices is to eliminate the profit motive, something that Moore is reluctant to advocate." Capitalism may force firms to be profitable, but it does not force co-ops to be profitable. Why does a co-op need to be profitable? I volunteered at a co-op for years and we never made a profit, any chalk up on what we sold went to paying things like rent. Even more serious co-ops need not make a profit. Of course you might be using the term profitable as a simile to "in the black", but that is a little confusing, and is not the Webster's definition of profitable. Profitable means surplus. Things like the Park Slope food co-op are an existing testament to the hegemony which says things like the Park Slope food co-op, or Mondragon, or whatever, can't exist. I can't think of a country which had a major left revolution where co-ops did not exist either before or during the movement. Changing the relations of production seems to be the central point of it all if the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. I would think having some half-baked examples of different methods of existing relations of production would be necessary. Even physicists don't sit in ivory towers theorizing all the time, they build Large Hadron Colliders and smash atoms together. Co-ops can surely exist as benign oases in the toxic wasteland. Of course some ultra-left hit man as Julio put it can find some problem in almost any alternative which would exist under capitalism. Of course co-ops by themselves will not put an end to capitalism and the superstructure and whatnot. But they are a living testament to an alternative relation of production as much as any kolkhoz. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
