Asklemmy

Hey OP, there is a reply from a user from lemmygrad.ml which you cannot see as sh.itjust.works has defederated from 'grad. Check out the post on lemmy.ml to see it.

The idea for a lot of communist ideologists is we don't need these hyper competitive corporations. The end goal isn't "higher GDP" (or more salary), it's "better quality of life". I think most unions are like that.

Read Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, especially the section on Owenism.

It's really hard to generalize about leftist groups. The communists that feel this way have formed co-ops, or are cooperating with anarchists to do something like syndicalism (focused on unionizing existing businesses).

But the methods to start and grow businesses in a capitalist country inherently rely on acting like a capitalist. Getting loans requires a business plan that makes profit, acquiring facilities and other businesses requires capital. Local co-ops exist because they can attract members and customers that value their co-opness, but it's very hard to scale that up to compete at a regional level. It's not impossible, but it's hard to view it as an engine for vast change.

Communists that focus on voting are delusional (in my opinion) but like all reformists they view the existing government as the mechanism to make widespread change.

I think worker cooperatives are sometimes bashed too much but worker cooperatives are fundamentally a lower petty-bourgeois form of organizing. Cooperatives can only be an ally to the movement of the proletariat and not a driving force. That said, they might have minor use.

I have been thinking about how to sublate the lower petty-bourgeoisie into the movement of the proletariat. I think it would be cool for a bunch of workers in a worker's state to make a worker cooperative as a startup, make it big and then sell the cooperative off to the worker's state. As long as the land and the banks are owned by the state anyway, the worker cooperative would be financed and largely owned by the people indirectly anyhow.

But in terms of pre-revolution, worker cooperatives may help educate the workers who are part of it, and cooperatives can help ease the transition of class suicide for petty-bourgeois and labor aristocracy class traitors.

There's a bit of a trouble for educating the workers compared to unions due to the class situation and nature of ownership. But I think it would be less harmful for a small business owner to create a cooperative than to go out of business during an economic bust and with unexpected declassing become a reactionary blaming their debt on minorities.

I think the trouble is where to focus the limited time and effort of the communists. It's not that cooperatives are bad necessarily, it's just that it's more helpful and important to focus elsewhere.

I do think some communists get weird about strata other than the proles proper such as the reserve pool of labor, lower petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. The foundation of the communist movement should be the proletariat but these other strata are not inherent enemies. There's not a fundamental antagonism of exploiter and exploited here.

I suspect a big part is tax and investment law.

A bunch of poors (like me!) who band together won't have much capital to buy inventory or equipment. I doubt banks and investors would lend to the bunch of poors, since they have a non-standard decision making structure.

That's gonna make it hella hard to get started.

In terms of communism, as dreamt up by Marx and Engels, you can only turn a completely capitalist economy into a communist one. This has never been achieved, shortcuts have been taken. All communist states in existence have either turned authoritarian or to dust. So in my view, there aren't many communist movements left in the world. They may use the word but either M&E wouldn't like them or they don't really have a lot of support behind them. No support, no money. Capitalists have a lot of money. People with a lot of money tend to have the ear of their leaders. If an investor is interested it'll be real hard to go for an employee-owned model (excluding models with free publicly traded shares). If investors are not interested, the business may be failing and employee ownership is the last hurrah before the end. Capitalism tends to come up on top.

You’re proposing socialism.

Communism wants central authority.

1. There are efforts to build emoloyee owned businesses around the world
2. The system is pitted towards accumulation through antisocial behavior which is absent in democratic companies, hence they're disadvantaged
3. Communists and anarchists are revolutuonists, not reformists. The reason is that reform makes the inherently cruel system easier to bear and abolishment less likely.
4. Some want to go the reformist route to try if it is actually achievable
5. Most importantly and very evident in the US: 100 yrs of reform can be rolled back in one day. We're seeing that reform is pointless.

Join the IWW.