some points about worker coops: 1) bankers don't like to finance worker-owned firms (for which the availability of credit is crucial), though they become more willing to lend to the extent that such firms act like capitalist ones.
2) competition with capitalist firms in product markets also tends to drive worker-owned firms under -- or drive them to emulate capitalist ones. Though a lot of data suggests that worker-owned firms produce more of their products per hour of labor than do capitalist ones producing the same product, the latter often have advantages due to diversification (producing several things), having marketing networks, and greater access to credit. Old-fashioned economies of scale also help larger factories or workplaces, which become hard to run democratically, as worker-owned firms are supposed to be. 3) a worker-owned firm can be like a college fraternity or a craft union, paying no attention to (or even looking down on) outsiders, excluding non-members from employment (or hiring them as non-members with fewer privileges and lower wages). This kind of organization may also dump costs (pollution) on others and the natural environment. Though democracy is great for those who can vote, those who are excluded often don't feel the same way. Just as with capitalist firms (under a successful system of social democracy), worker-owned firms need a much larger social system of regulation. I can see worker coops as part of a larger socialist system. >In Indiana, the Republican state treasurer, Richard Mourdock, is using state >deposits to lower interest costs to employee-owned companies, a precedent >others states could easily follow. < in a time when state governments are cutting back like crazy due to budget woes? -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
