Capitalism, also, has always had, like feudalism, moments when it
broke down. When, for whatever complex of reasons,
people didn't connect to each other as employer and employee,
which is the core relationship of capitalism,
just like lord and serf was the core relationship of feudalism.
Let me give you just a few examples.
The Shakers, that religious community in early United States.
They didn't relate to one another as employer and employee
You know how they related? In the way we
nowadays call worker co-ops. All the people in a Shaker village got
together and decided (one person, one vote) how to produce,
what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, what to do with the
fruits of their labor. No employer / employee [relationship].
That was a socialist experiment, if you like, going beyond capitalism.
But the conditions weren't right for that to spread.
It spread a little, but it couldn't become the dominant system.
Let me give you another example, more modern:
The Mondragon corporation in Spain. A catholic priest in 1956 starts a co-op,
no employer/ employee. "We are our own bosses here" said
Father [José María Arizmendiarrieta] in that area, in Mondragon, a little city
in the north of Spain. And here we are in 2020 and the Mondragon corporation is
one of the 10 biggest corporations in Spain. It's a family of a couple
hundred worker co-ops, where there are no employers over there
and employees. The workers are their own bosses. Wow.
That is a non-capitalist experiment that has been able to grow and last,
well, 70 years. Remarkable. Here's another one: the province of
Emilia-Romagna in Italy, around the city of Bologna in
the north of Italy, 40% of that region is worker co-ops.
People have refused, huge numbers, to be in an employer/ employee
relationship. They want worker co-ops.
And that's what they have. And they have
coexisted there for decades with capitalist enterprises
that still have the old employer / employee relationship
at their core. They've been able to exist and grow, so there going beyond
capitalism is an experiment. And then there's the Soviet Union and China.
They tried. And Vietnam and Cuba. They tried.
Very interesting, all these experiments. Some worked, some didn't,
just like the experiments going beyond feudalism. Some worked some didn't.
It took time for the conditions to ripen so that there could be a general
transition. So, no one should imagine that because, for example,
the Soviet Union fell apart after 70 years - That's an experiment that taught the
lesson something about how they tried to go beyond capitalism didn't
work out. And we have to learn from that. And what we have learned is
that the focus on power in the state can be too much.
And that if the state has too much power, that's a problem. That's an important
lesson from the experiment that happened there.
And it is an experiment that's been learned by many,
which is one of the reasons why today looking at the experiments that have
happened so far, there is a growing disinclination to
think about the next system in terms of what the government does,
and more of an interest in saying "No, the hint, the clue to how transition happens
now is to go after the core relationship." That what really sealed the fate of
feudalism, was the decision and the commitment of millions of people
that they thought that the employer / employee relationship
was more productive, was better for most people
than what lord and serf had been.
The great father of modern capitalism, intellectually, Adam Smith,
that's what he said. That's what he wrote:
"Capitalism is a more productive system than feudalism."
So what's beginning to happen is a recognition that what has to change,
what has to be learned from the successful but also the failed
experiments in transition, is to focus more on the core relationship.
That what has to happen is you put aside
the employer / employee relationship just as earlier people put aside
the lord / serf, or, if you like, the master / slave [relationship].
Put those aside. The new breakthrough, the new system
the better way to live and work, would be if you democratize the enterprise.