This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work
with another response to an Ask Prof Wolff question from our Patreon community.
In this case, I'm responding to a question sent in
by Tyler Dilno, and I hope I am pronouncing your name correctly.
The question is, how can we connect worker self-directed enterprises, worker co-ops in short,
together
to begin to be able to wield real political power to confront the existing capitalist class
structure and its power in a way that can challenge and move us beyond the dead ends of capitalism. And he further asks
whether it is the case that
there's a way to connect
worker co-ops on the one hand to broad social movements for progressive social change as well.
My answer is, on the one hand, simple and, on the other hand, a bit complex.
The simple answer is yes. I think that can be done.
And I think it will be done --
probably not as quickly as I would hope,
but I think slowly, painfully,
hesitantly, it is being done. And let me explain.
The only way for worker co-ops to grow in the United States -- those that exist, and
new ones that are being formed all the time --
is if they have a friendly,
supportive, encouraging
social
context.
The reason I'm convinced of that is simply because every other system has required that.
Capitalism, the capitalist enterprises, have over, say, the last three centuries,
wherever in the world
capitalism has
arrived, have been very determined and very
good at
reorganizing government,
reorganizing culture, to be supportive of the functioning, the reproduction, and the growth of
capitalistically organized
enterprises. They have changed the law. They have changed common sense. They have changed the government.
They've changed what was necessary
to serve their growth. And my expectation is that worker co-ops will do the same.
When capitalist enterprises did that, they bumped up
against resistance. The old feudal system in Europe, the old slave system in the American South,
operated as obstacles to the growth and expansion of capitalist enterprises. And
eventually, in Europe, that made for revolution. And in the United States, it made, for example, for civil war.
Worker co-ops may or may not replicate that history,
but the part that they will for sure replicate is the need to develop a political
strategy to change the government, the laws, and a cultural strategy to change ways of thinking
that will support,
enhance, and
underscore the validity of the growth of worker co-ops as a form of
producing goods and services. I
am persuaded that sooner or later worker co-ops will understand that and
make a new political party, or
build a close relationship with an existing
political party produced by some other groups,
in order to achieve that contextual change, to get the supportive laws
government,
etc. I believe worker co-ops will
articulate, through the
spokesmen and -women that they develop, the common sense as to why this is a democratic,
attractive, efficient way of organizing goods and services, and
remarkably superior to the capitalist way in a whole host of
dimensions.
So I think a political party as an ally, as a close
collaborator of worker co-ops is in the cards, is going to happen. I also think such a
political party
will be the link between social movements of all sorts and
worker co-ops
Because the party will articulate this basic idea:
Having worker co-ops, rather than profit-driven, capitalist enterprises, is a
better bet for the social movements achieving their objectives
than not allied with
worker co-ops, going with the capitalist system,
which has been so resistant, so hostile, so
unaccommodative,
that these social movements
exist in the first place. So I think it will be a good deal that can be made:
Worker co-ops need the support of social movements to get the context within which
they can grow, and
social movements need the alliance with worker co-ops to build mass popular support
for their objectives as social
movements. In other words, each side can help the other. And the
transition will help them both. And by transition I mean a
transition beyond the capitalist system,
its way of hierarchically and
undemocratically
organizing enterprises and
its
reorganization of government, law, culture, and so on
toward the objective of reproducing capitalism. To say the same thing in a summary way:
Worker co-ops now need to
understand that, like
capitalists before them, they are a project of social transformation,
and that they will have to build the political and the
cultural alliances,
mechanisms,
associations, that they will need to become the next,
better,
alternative, economic system, much as the
capitalists did before them. This is Richard Wolff with another Ask Prof Wolff
comment, response, for our Patreon community.