Hi folks, Marxist revolutionary here. Just checking in to say I am here to overthrow capitalism 
uWu
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“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 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I get the sense that this thread is quite alienating for @merefield and @alanpeart - but I appreciate that you both participated. I’m actually wondering if there are some differences in things like definitions of words (e.g. it’s not always clear what capitalism means for different people), but this becomes quite hard to discuss online.
I would actually love to understand your perspectives in more detail, and perhaps a more connecting approach is a voice/video call - would either/both of you (@merefield / @alanpeart) be up for a call with me? My main aim would be to understand your perspective well enough that I can express it in a way that you fully agree with. I have no intention to try and persuade you of anything - I think you have enough sense of my perspective from this thread already ;).
I totally exist in a bubble (I guess like everyone?) and love finding scenarios in which I can take a peek out, although it can be exhausting.
If you’re interested, reply on here, or in a private message!
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Hi Nick, thanks I appreciate it. I’m not very good at expressing my perspective and try to avoid debates. But then if I don’t say anything, what good am I to the world, I suppose?
I took a while to think about it and I think I see co-operativism (or whatever it is that we call it) as a set of game rules with a chance to be more efficient and successful in different situations, providing better outcomes for workers in some situations.
The “movement” then should be judged on the success or failure of its rulesets in a competitive environment. Unsuccessful models and rules can be improved, etc. This requires free competition, experiment and reflection. I like the attempts to design better models and software and rules to provide better outcomes while not getting destroyed in the free market.
I think when we react to failures by concluding that the system in which we are competing is unfair and should be changed or dismantled, we have taken on ideology and moved away from effective systems thinking. Not that systemic problems don’t exist - but a systemic problem is the result of a systemic flaw that can then be exploited by better modelling (improving co-operation).
In other words, if co-operation and the co-operative model is good, then it should outcompete other models, even in a rigged system. If it is not good, and can’t be improved, then we shouldn’t react to that by concluding that the whole system should be broken up, and joining political movements that are looking for that.
You can argue that we don’t have a proper free market due to central banking and the destruction of our money - and I think it’s a very valid argument. I just don’t agree with 1) smashing it all up, or 2) taking full state control of it all. I believe that technology, not politics, will find us a way out of our dilemma, and that in the meantime the co-operative movement - particularly tech co-operatives - might be better off avoiding tying themselves too closely to any political movement. I mean, obviously we all have politics and politics affects everything, but we are also professionals who should avoid alienating large swathes of our potential clients and listeners.
I hope this doesn’t lose me any friends. Thanks.
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I suspect that everyone here would agree with that, but perhaps I’m wrong…
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I disagree with that :). Although I think “state control” is a pretty vague term. For instance, soviet democracy is pretty significantly different than what we see in most western states. I think the idea of every workplace, community, etc. electing a delegate to represent them in their society is much closer to cooperative ideals than having a gilded ruling class consisting of 80% Oxbridge educated nobles.
Either way, I appreciate Alan for taking part here. I certainly don’t think these sorts of disagreements prevent us from being friends
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There is much more that binds us together here than picking through the specific differences of our left-wing politics.
Let’s focus on co-operation, on picking big fights with our enemies rather than small fights with our friends 
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Thanks for the insightful comments on this thread
I agree, and (now) realise there are others in the CoTech/members/forum with more nuanced opinions on capitalism. But we could discuss endlessly, (probably best done face to face and preferably over a few pints!)
I won’t add more after this afterthought …
I know where I stand but if, say, for the sake of argument there were Christians or Muslims in this network/discussion, I’d be happy to work and discuss with them, even knowing that their ‘ultimate’ motivation is maybe ‘building the kingdom of God’/‘the Umma’/etc. that shouldn’t be a problem per se.
It’s well proven that within human co-operation all forms of diversity helps, including diverse opinions, (short of actual racism, etc.), and it’s more interesting …
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Indeed, capitalism is only too ready to co-opt and absorb the value of the free and good work, sweat equity, etc that co-ops create. This is very obvious from the way co-op and community responses have been valorised under the COVID regime. Unfortunately the co-op movement, while being keen to trumpet its good work (wait till you see Co-ops UK’s Co-ops Fortnight messaging) appears to have absolutely no idea about retaining/capturing that value and using it to build an alternative economic base. It would require, at least, an alternative political (small p as per @Graham’s comment) vision. The Rochdale Pioneers had one, but it went missing somewhere.
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I was in the ‘Platform Cooperativism’ course online meeting just last week and heard that in America, over 70% of both the left and the right agree that employees should own their workplaces. This also coincides with what I heard when I visited Mondragon worker coop in 2016. I heard their members have diverse political leanings.
I heard from lobbyists in Japan behind the recently submitted draft worker cooperatives act bill, that almost all of them pushing for legislation are (very) left leaning, they only targeted the ruling right-wing party from the get-go. The end-result? The bill was supported by all political parties.
I also agree with what have been hearing recently - our main political ‘divide’ is changing from the old Left vs Right to Democracy vs Authoritarianism. Worker coops are for Democracy and the old guard Capitalism is Authoritarian.
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And not just humans too of course, diversity is a key part of the resilience of all ecosystems 
Or put another similar way, Partnership vs Domination (as per Riane Eisler stuff)
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Josef Davies-Coate Thank you for suggesting Riane Eisler. I didn’t know about her but I what she says makes sense!
I hope this won’t be putting off too many people but here’s a possibly related clip from the world of “new age” 
The change needs to take place from within, otherwise we will have just created a rebranded version of the same thing.
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