Co-opted, absorbed, or destroyed by Capitalism?

[Graham]

Hi @nick
Whilst it is of course true that some co-ops and similar organisations get co-opted/absorbed it is not inevitable. The problem and the solution, in my view, lies in the underpinning vales and principles and how they are implemented and nurtured within the organisation. In the vast majority of co-operatives and similar orgs that I’ve come across, the understanding and application of the seven co-operative principles is almost always under-developed, even ignored. Even in cases where the principles are applied, it is very often the case that they are not applied holistically, and this leads to the downfall that you talk about. I’m thinking in particular about the 5th, 6th and 7th principles (education & information, co-operation amongst co-operatives, and care/concern for community).

This said, co-operation, when boiled right down to it’s barest essentials, is in my view apolitical. Within a left context co-operatives can be incredibly powerful vehicles for social and economic transformation. Within a right of centre context co-operation can be a really effective organising principle (I’m thinking of some of the big ag co-ops, enterprises like Ace Hardware, insurance mutuals, etc. By any measure these orgs are not left wing).

If your goal is building a post-capitalist economy then co-ops – or perhaps more accurately co-operation – can be a really valuable tool. The co-operative model is highly flexible: it can survive and thrive in a capitalist economy as we know, and it can also work in a post-capitalist setting. At the end of the day it’s about the people involved, their paradigm, and how the principles and values are understood and applied.

A lot of co-ops alone is not a game changer. When they are underpinned by effective education, and work together (principle 6) then we can begin to see some traction. It’s also worth remembering that I think co-operatives should seek to have broad appeal if they are going to realise economic power.

[nick (Nick Sellen)]

Wow, so much to say! Thanks for engaging

@chris

The Radical Routes Aims & Principles address this to some degree

During my first visit to a housing co-op 9 years I wrote a guest entry for the radical routes newsletter - although since that trip I haven’t encountered radical routes so much other than a few visits to housing co-ops. Perhaps because I’ve spent a bunch of time outside the UK. I met @leedscath on that trip, would be interested to hear her input on this thread and how/what radical roots looks like in relation to this

@merefield

In my career I’ve met a lot of very well paid software engineers. I don’t think any of them felt hard done-by by capitalism! In fact, their tax bills seem to fund half the country I live in.

…

I’m personally not involved in co-ops for any political purpose, to me it’s just an extremely sensible way of working in a group of highly expert colleagues.

This seems like a very narrow version of the even just the basic co-op vision, no? As @Graham mentions later, what about the 5th, 6th, and 7th co-op principles?

@LeoSammallahti

I would argue that there are examples of coops pretty much “winning the game”.

It depends what the game is I think, if the game is just creating co-ops for everything then that’s not the game I’m in it to play. I like the vision where co-ops are an important part of a bigger whole, but it’s the bigger whole that is more interesting to me. What is the bigger whole for you?

@LeoSammallahti

In my view virtuous cycle of accumulating gradual improvements is the most sustainable way for meaningful and substantial progress.

The discussion is often turned towards a dichotomy between “small incremental steps” and “big radical changes”. Reform vs revolution. But I’m probably more interested in finding out what is the vision beyond the strategy first. What are we actually trying to make? I’m sure actual strategies are not so easily split into two big abstract categories.

I think I had/have a lot of frustration in this area, the more an idea/approach excites and animates me, the more people say it needs to toned down and made realistic/incremental. I’m down with that as part of a strategy, but not as a vision.

@LeoSammallahti

So what would it look like in practice for a local credit union to act more politically and challenge capitalism better? Would it have to reduce the tangible, individual economic benefits it offers to its members and instead focus more of its resources on supporting political movements?

I can’t answer you specifically (I have no idea really what is going on in a local credit union… ), but maybe a good step is just connecting with other local groups and find out what their needs are. I have great faith in peoples interest and willingness to help and support the specific people around them. I guess it’s co-op principle 7?

More abstractly I find it an interesting point about the relationship of the part vs the whole. Each part is always embedded in a whole (credit unions, or anything else, can’t exist in isolation, we are all part of some ecosystem), but which whole? Which ecosystem? The whole (or other parts) might provide more guidance on how the part can support it better.

@Graham

In the vast majority of co-operatives and similar orgs that I’ve come across, the understanding and application of the seven co-operative principles is almost always under-developed, even ignored.

…

At the end of the day it’s about the people involved, their paradigm, and how the principles and values are understood and applied.

I think it’s this bit I want to hear a bit more about. The co-op model itself doesn’t really specify clearly enough to directly act on, and as you said @Graham, the model can thrive in capitalist or post-capitalist settings.

Co-operation Jackson have extended the basic co-op principles from 7 to 13, including a Social Transformation, and is a bit more specific for the context of that project.

I’ve also enjoyed reading how the Guerilla Media Collective have extended the basic co-op principles into the DisCO model which integrates 4 facets:

• The Commons and P2P;
• Open Cooperativism;
• Open Value Networks; and
• Feminist Economics

And they have their own 7 principles that I think make a lot of sense in 2020.

So, pulling out a few concepts from those two things: social transformation, commoning, active federation, care work, transnational… do these things animate you? Or are they some radical fringe that is unclear how to act on? Irrelevant? Something else?

(I would love to hear more input from people with a bit more practical/direct experience of these new ways than me, I’m mostly coming from the “middle class white guy sitting in a hammock getting excited reading books and articles” perspective - well, I had enough experience of being professional software developer building things for whoever has the money, but done with that)

[merefield (Robert)]

@nick

This seems like a very narrow version of the even just the basic co-op vision, no? As @Graham mentions later, what about the 5th, 6th, and 7th co-op principles?

As it happens we have a tiny capital footprint. If at all. If we become seriously successful I guess our brand might achieve some market value for the balance sheet, but that’s a long way away if ever.

We don’t pay salaries, we work on a freelance only basis. We don’t have any equipment or premises.

We don’t take a financial contribution from new members, there is no need as we don’t have significant capital value (yet). It’s early days though. We base onboarding on criteria that focuses on open source contribution.

We have established the principle of democratic control but have yet to fully legally incorporate that. It’s work in progress.

[Sion (Sion Whellens)]

I sympathise with what you’re saying. It’s not about the quantity of co-ops, and co-ops are not ‘the answer’. As a worker co-op organiser, my guiding lights are something like:

• Most co-ops are not revolutionary, but the revolution will be co-operative - which is why both co-ops and independent political organisation are necessary.
• Playing footsie with electoral parties and the state is a waste of energy, and at worst a trap - but we have to act in defence of cooperatives from time to time and that means engaging.
• Fifth Object of the Rochdale Pioneers: “As soon as practicable, the Society shall proceed to arrange the powers of production, distribution, education and government, or in other words, to establish a self-supporting home colony of united interests, or assist other societies in establishing such colonies”. An uncompromising statement of autonomous working class intent - from 1844.
• Co-ops contain ‘prefigurative’ elements of future non-capitalist arrangements - but not their end form.
• Worker coops help develop the individual and collective self-confidence and self-management skills we will need to overturn the present arrangements and institute new ones.
• Worker co-ops are more relevant the more they are networked within and across industries, within and across working class communities (locally and internationally), and involved in socially useful production.
• Worker co-ops (direct worker intervention through enterprises) are only one form of worker cooperation. Most of the time, workers cooperate with each other to reproduce the shitty system they live under - and also they cooperate against it. Strikes, occupations, petitions, stay-homes, collective sabotage and go-slows are complementary forms of worker cooperation.
• Much of the good work done by cooperatives during the COVID crisis is the kind of free labour that capitalists love and will gladly co-opt. Capitalism depends on such cooperation. If it can get the working class to resource and socially guarantee its own reproduction, it will do everything to support that effort. Yet, they still do owe us a living and indeed a life - so the question is, what forms of organisation and approach we can develop that allow us both to meet our day-to-day needs, and satisfy our desire for a different world, that are not easily digested - or in fact give the present social system a life-threatening stomach ache? Workers taking over the food system and critical production centres. Developing tools and infrastructure that make tech a weapon in the hands of the working class.

I’m a financial supporter of Cooperation Jackson, and am working with Cooperation Town, let me know what you’d like to know!

[nolski (Mike Nolan)]

Thanks for the post and lively discussion here. The BSA has done a lot of really great work over the past couple of years, and I think they bring a great argument as to how leftist workers organizations such as co-ops and unions fall short when standing up to the powers of capitalism.

I think that this exact thread here is an excellent example of the shortcoming of co-ops. Worker co-ops can most definitely exist in a capitalist economy but will always be inherently disadvantaged to powers with a significant amount of centralized wealth. The fact that many co-ops consider themselves “apolitical” (which I strongly disagree with) naturally lessens the struggle against those who they seek to liberate themselves from.

As the BSA alludes to in their tweet chain, cooperatives are great tools to build dual power. While it can be argued that cooperatives are not necessarily socialist, they begin to remove the owner’s ability to steal the labour of their employees. Cooperatives are a way to build dual power. However, if a cooperative is uninterested in participating in this larger struggle in a vain effort to remain apolitical, I would imagine that as an example of a cooperative being “co-opted” by capitalism.

[Graham]

I’ve been working in and with stuff around co-operation since about 1986. What I’ve learned in that time is that co-operation is a process, not a structure or a place. By practicing co-operation we change ourselves and the people we co-operate with. Given that we are talking about a process, a journey if you like, then it is fair to assume that other people are engaged in different parts of that journey, and will therefore have a different view of the world and indeed of the journey itself.

Seeking to impose an overt political mission or vision on what is essentially a bottom-up mutual self-help process will almost by definition exclude or alienate a large chunk of your constituency, and you become immediately a niche interest.

For me the beauty of the co-operative model is its elegance, its subtlety, its ability to be appear both totally conventional and deeply radical at one and the same time. Through this it is possible to engage much more broadly, right across the spectrum of society, and bring people together on that journey, through the process of co-operation. Of course, co-operatives are not perfect, but they can be very powerful tools for social transformation, as the folks at Co-operation Jackson so eloquently explain.

I’ve yet to come across a better approach. I’m not convinced that they are inherently disadvantaged in a capitalist economy. I am convinced that far too few people have a really solid understanding of how to do co-operation, and therefore lots of co-operatives tend be CINOs (Co-ops In Name Only). Effective education is key (P5), effective federation is critical (P6). The political vision then becomes an emergent property of the process of co-operation as those engaged in the process educate themselves and each other.

What’s the BSA?

[decentral1se]

Cooperation can’t be apolitical when society is organised for competition.

[nolski (Mike Nolan)]

@Graham

What’s the BSA?

Black Socialists in America (the author of OP’s tweet)

@Graham

Seeking to impose an overt political mission or vision on what is essentially a bottom-up mutual self-help process will almost by definition exclude or alienate a large chunk of your constituency, and you become immediately a niche interest.

I would argue that choosing to side with capitalist liberalism isn’t being any more inclusive than choosing to side with a socialist alternative. I would also argue if your constituency would feel alienated by a deliberate struggle to return ownership to workers than participating in co-operatives either isn’t right for them, or they have not been adequately educated as to what co-ops are for and why they are good.

@Graham

I’m not convinced that they are inherently disadvantaged in a capitalist economy. I am convinced that far too few people have a really solid understanding of how to do co-operation

I think the lack (or suppression) of education, as well as the lack of competitive co-operative organizations in the global market, show that they are disadvantaged under capitalism.

[nmeyne (Nick Meyne)]

Great thread, thanks all! I agree that co-ops are disadvantaged and tend to be co-opted under capitalism, which can easily extract value from communities: market intermediaries are adept at ‘arbitrage’. I guess there is a possibility of an enlightened ‘entrepreneurial state’ in some countries/jurisdictions, but it’s blocked in many others, and I’m impatient. Coexistence and struggle is inevitable, and the odds are stacked against many enlightened co-operators by a highly concentrated ‘big digital’ industry that has benefited many of us, including me in the past. I feel digital’s brief history has seen surveillance, gambling, porn, mis-selling of digital hardware shiny toys, data science in political ‘nudge’, global tax avoidance through transfer pricing and many more, like fake news, hate speech. Of course set against that is digital in education, art, culture, tax and welfare, health, communication and ‘connectedness’: all great advances for all those in the world fortunate to have access to them. I feel that ‘big digital’ has enough of a debt to repay and that platform co-operativism, for both workers and customers is an efficient means to do that globally and ethically. It’s also a matter of timing: using the power of digital platforms to ride on the critical events of social change. Why should we leave it to the marketing departments of digital corporates to exploit the ‘zeitgeist’ and boost their profits even further in the crisis? Maybe we can allow ourselves to organise, as Z the OP from BSA suggests.

[yasu (Yasuaki Kudo)]

I think this interview is relevant to the discussion here

Access Humboldt Emily Kawano

[nick (Nick Sellen)]

@Graham

Seeking to impose an overt political mission or vision on what is essentially a bottom-up mutual self-help process will almost by definition exclude or alienate a large chunk of your constituency, and you become immediately a niche interest.

It seems possible to view a bottom-up mutual self-help process as an overt political mission or vision, no?

… or maybe it’s the overt bit that throws it off? Over time I felt that doing conventional and obvious nice things (e.g. helping the people around you with their needs) can actually be directly connected to a wider and very radical politics, and that it doesn’t need to be overtly about the bigger political/social/economic vision at the level of each individual act.

But I think the individual act never exists in total isolation of it’s “containing philosophy”, and that’s perhaps where the possibility for being co-opted comes in: currently it feels like the individual act is tolerated to the extent that it doesn’t challenge the system.

And thus co-ops end up in the state they’re in now, their individual success inversely proportional to how much they challenge the wider system rather than by how much they embody the collaborative/co-operative ideals (I personally, am not very excited to have co-op clones of what seem more fundamentally capitalist things - e.g. takeaway food deliveries).

The “state of the co-op movement today” is obviously highly debatable, and we have @LeoSammallahti to give us the more optimistic assessment

@Graham

I am convinced that far too few people have a really solid understanding of how to do co-operation, and therefore lots of co-operatives tend be CINOs (Co-ops In Name Only)

If I understand you correctly, the premise is that if people really did co-ops properly as per the 7 principles, then all the good stuff will emerge? If so, I agree that would be a great step forward.

I guess the 7 principles are one version of the bigger whole I’m talking about. I think principles need to be under constant evolution, and some of these extended/adapted versions I linked to above are useful additions to include more stuff we’ve found out about since…

For the CINOs, I wonder if their guiding framework really is the 7 principles? … if the framework is not explicit and alive, probably some kind of implicit framework is in play, defaulting back to what is possible or tolerated in our default bigger whole (capitalism).

[merefield (Robert)]

Guys, quick question, (and perhaps something for a distinct Topic), here goes:

Is this group a business support forum or a forum for would-be Marxist revolutionaries?

Is the goal here to further the strength of cooperative businesses or to overthrow capitalism?

I thought it was the former initially but am now having my doubts.

If it’s the latter I will leave you guys in peace and not return here.

I am quite frankly sick to the back teeth of hearing Left-wing propaganda on social media and the news and the last thing I need is to be confronted with it at work.

Am I the only one who feels that way?

[nolski (Mike Nolan)]

I’m not going to pretend I’m not a socialist here. Regardless, I don’t think the parties I’m a part of really matter in this discussion.

@merefield

Is this group a business support forum or a forum for would-be Marxist revolutionaries?

It’s a forum dedicated to supporting cooperatives. I think we all agree on that.

@merefield

Is the goal here to further the strength of cooperative businesses or to overthrow capitalism?

I don’t see how these are mutually exclusive.

Look. Cooperatives are a method of workers organizing where they can actually have ownership over their labor. I think we can all agree upon that. Where you draw the line on something being “political” or “propaganda” is something you determine. I’ve heard people complain about unions striking at their work for bringing politics into their work and making them feel guilty for crossing the picket line. I’ve had people complain to me about suggesting using a Code of Conduct because it was “politicising” software development.

If this is one of those communities that wants to ban politics (whatever that means) I’m happy to show myself out. I’m certainly not a moderator here and frankly, I’m new here so maybe I just misunderstood. I’m here trying to build a cooperative and learn from those who have more experience than I do but I don’t think that’s worth having to keep my mouth shut whenever the topic of empowering workers comes up.

[Kayleigh (Kayleigh_Outlandish)]

Helloooo, I have been following this thread because I was really interested by Nick’s initial question, and I think the question around politics has brought a lot up.

This is a public-facing forum for CoTech, we wanted to have a place where we could have conversations online and keep it open to the rest of the world. If you’re not sure what CoTech is, we’re a network of digital co-ops from all over the UK. You can read our manifesto here.

In terms of these questions:

Is this group a business support forum or a forum for would-be Marxist revolutionaries?

Is the goal here to further the strength of cooperative businesses or to overthrow capitalism?

It all depends on who you speak to in the network. Some of us are more political than others, some of the co-ops are more political than others.

One of the good things about this forum is that there is space for all of us who are here, so no need to show yourself out unless you would like to go - that’s entirely up to you.

[chris (Chris Croome)]

These three pages are probably the best reference documents for what this forum is about:

About « CoTech « Cooperative Technologists

Manifesto « CoTech « Cooperative Technologists

Join « CoTech « Cooperative Technologists

I’d like to see @merefield’s co-op, Pavilion joining CoTech — we are not a politically homogeneous group but I think we all try to get on and work together in a productive way, the best we can, while politely disagreeing or tolerating our political differences where necessary.

[kawaiipunk (KawaiiPunk - Autonomic Co-operative)]

Hi folks, Marxist revolutionary here. Just checking in to say I am here to overthrow capitalism

uWu

[jonathan]

“companies [capitalist] that do not (…) give their workers control of their businesses (…) your days are numbered” it says in our manifesto: Manifesto « CoTech « Cooperative Technologists - I’m with @kawaiipunk

[alanpeart]

You’re not the only one that feels that way Robert. Rather than engage with ideas like “overthrow capitalism” I stay silent. I would have continued to do so but felt bad that you might think you were alone in this.

I think this is the worst possible thing that could happen to the co-operative movement. But so it goes.

[Graham]

As I understand this forum it’s a space for mutual support among cooperatives and cooperators with a technological bent. As far as I’m aware we don’t discriminate against people based on their political views.

[Graham]

@nick

It seems possible to view a bottom-up mutual self-help process as an overt political mission or vision , no?

It is, totally radical. I guess I was writing about big ‘P’ political when maybe you were thinking in terms of small ‘p’ political? This is what I was trying to get at. You’ve done a better job, for which I thank you.

The individual act is only individual when it is committed as such. As part of the cooperative the act becomes collective, and is therefore more powerful, and perhaps less tolerated as it is more likely to present as a challenge.

I think we need to differentiate between large consumer co-ops and small worker co-ops. They are qualitatively worlds apart despite sharing some similarities. Many large co-ops have been captured by their management, and so have been neutered as vehicles for social transformation. It’s not a malicious act, it just happened, and where the co-owners are less closely engaged in the operation, as is the case with a consumer co-op, it’s easily done, if not almost inevitable. Meanwhile many small worker co-ops are quite the opposite. Size matters. The bigger the organisation the less able it is to be properly owned and democratically controlled by its members. It demands highly skilled technical experts (accountants, lawyers, etc.) to run it effectively. These people take control. The organisation becomes very risk averse. Look at the board of directors of any building society for examples. This why I’m a strong advocate of the replicate-and-federate model of scaling co-op businesses.

I’m personally fine with the 7 principles, but other approaches (I’m thinking permaculture, sociocracy, etc.) clearly work for other people and I’m not precious on that front, and as you say what’s important is that we keep these ideas front of mind and keep asking questions.