LIVESTREAM: Richard Wolff on acTVism Munich

Hi Mary,

EDIT: for clarification, this response was to the proposal "Democratize the enterprise". I guess I posted it in the wrong thread... oops...

Thanks for proposing this. I think it makes a lot of sense to want to move in that direction, as having a national body that can coordinate State coop bills will eventually be vital.

However, I think strategically we need to be more nuanced. Let me explain...

California has recently amended its laws governing coops with a bill called AB816. In case anyone would like to read more about it, I've attached some presentations from a conference we attended in order to better understand the contents of the bill without having too read too much legalese.

The issue in CA is that while coops are abundant in the SF Bay area, for example, they are scarse in other areas such as LA. This creates uneven demands from people state-wide, and thus insufficient pressure on the legislature to pass any new bills.

My point, ultimately, is that in order to have legislation, we need to have coops that demand it. I think we should spend our efforts on favoring a cultural shift toward cooperatives and cooperativism, rather than attempting to lobby legislature with a power we do not yet have.

The major obstacle is public perception: people don't know a lot about coops, and the little they do know makes them think they are ineffective. But, as we know, they are wrong. Let's build the demand for coops, then the coops themselves and the state laws governing them.

For the above reasons, I choose to disagree with the proposal.

Either way, I've also attached the Cuban law concerning cooperatives. Sorry it's in Spanish; is there anyone who could write Cliff Notes on it?

Thanks!
A.

Thank you for your thorough explanation Andrea--as I was trying to formulate my own argument, I found that you managed to articulate and source what I was already thinking. This is first and foremost a battle of hearts and minds, in my view, and the way to win it is through interaction and activism.

Thank you for the proposal, Mary. Let's revisit this when the movement has matured a bit.

You have a very good point. However, I don't see why we can't do all of the above (Mary's idea and your idea) even though one may seem to be not ready for prime time. I can see how Mary would like start "hitting" the political front as one of a multiple facet approach. Your idea is definitely one facet which needs attention but feel we should get started, however seemingly less significant, on all approaches. From this we can create a methodology and even prove your point statistically which will only serve our purposes and start laying the foundation for what we need to focus on politically.

Reinventing the wheel is not necessary. Coops and stakeholder owned business and limited partnerships exist now and are common.

What is lacking is the awareness of such things. Finding like-minded people to fill all the necessary functions in the enterprise is challenging and requires consensus and chemistry to cooperatively collaborate.

If you can find people who will cooperate and collaborate then you can use that as a unified force to acquire businesses/enterprises or create new ones. The idea of a top-down reform of a business structure when there are hundreds or thousands of employees to suddenly take over the legal, financial/fiduciary responsibilities is not as likely to be successful as forming such an enterprise from the bottom up in the first place.

Democratised enterprise needs to be clearly defined in order to judge it's viability as a concept. Simply all workers to have a voting right in making enterprise/business decisions that are beyond their scope of understanding or ability is an idealism that is not workable.

Administrative hierarchies are necessary. Before I participate in any such ideas or groups I would need to understand what the group considers or intends the end system and enterprise to be vs just talking about it conceptually.

As someone who has extensive business experience as a corporate employee and business owner, I can say that division of duties and responsibilities is essential and expertise and skills are essential.

Joining a team to just take over what exists and expect a democratic process or method of decision making to be viable imho is a tad naive and idealistic. What do you want to achieve? Collaboration and joint ownership? Yes, that is done and doable but a democratic process as a core business process or as an overlay for any general or universal enterprise is not something I would want to be part of. Good luck. :-)

I totally disagree. Technical knowledge is in no way an impediment to making the "important" decisions. The thing you are missing is the worker/owners elect management based on a common understanding of their skills/performance. You will see that all the burning questions are most often based more on things that require no technical expertise and are best answered by those that don't have it - necessity is the mother of invention. See Mondragon. Lastly, management of a coop in no way has to be any different than a standard capitalist company other than who calls the shots. I sense fear in your comment. Where's your courage?

Well said Vic. I'm in your court.

The process, the rules, the management---in short, the details of how each coop participant is to engage is missing in all approaches I have seen as yet from d@w proposals.

I've attempted in the past to steer the discussion over to this side of the challenge before us, but have garnered little support within d@w. Happy to start it up in a sub-group of like-minded enthusiasts.

The greatest thing that any pro coop community can do is to demonstrate it has a viable solution for self governance at the highest levels of initial organizational . Once this is evident then others will come in droves.

The key is technology and a new way to communicate with one another --- where every participant understands and feels they have equal power within the decision-making process. There can be no leader with more power than anyone else. I have a starting-point solution for anyone, who agrees with the approach, to take a look at and begin a comparative analysis to other options with. It's called muxive. Here's a intro article:

https://medium.com/@strugglethru/the-next-big-technological-advancement-14f51e939ee6#.y5o82fe4l

I'm giving muxive to the world for free. Anyone can build it with no obligation to me or anyone else. It's far more important it exists than to profit from.

Mary Douglas, here's where you might consider starting your work forward. "Make everyone feel their voice matters within the coop." For until every unique individual - with wildly different opinions, beliefs, values, etc. feels they are an equal - even "the coop concept" (which BTW is a great one) will not change the present course the world is on. BTW - Welcome Mary!

@marydouglas Thanks!!!

I agree 100%. We cannot wait around for failure. We have to get our feet
wet and now!

Well then you and I will have to agree we disagree and I prefer to work with folks of like mind and understanding. Management decision making is based not only on technical skills but the managerial experience that is a human/personal quality of leadership and as such is itself a skill/trait.

Democracy management I have experienced and do not need academic or some other authors opinion or reference/validation to understand what is involved. Groups who were consensus run were those groups who in my experience were forever arguing and in conflict because those who had no experience or skills did not have the empathic or experiential skill set to be able to consider issues involved due to lack of EXPERIENCE and familiarity.

I am and will be promoting LOCAL "family" networks and "neighborhood" food co-ops and shared community gardens (1st step), which then can be levered into "living facility/housing", via cooperative mutual capital ownership.

Coops that are shareholder membership vs. individual compartmentalized personal capital chunks. That is how I plan to work toward my ideal of a MONEYLESS SOCIETY using shared economics, volunteerism, mutual capital, time banking, and collaboration.

But to think you can just take over an existing enterprise and turn it into a democratic run process and divest existing ownership to make way for a stakeholder owned enterprise is something I have never seen work effectively in my 45 years of business and entrepreneurship.

We both want the same equitable stakeholder shared things but have different paths to achieve it and do not have to be in competition to do so.

You do it your way and some of us will do it our way. People will be able to see each working model/system and decide which one they would like to be part of. This does not need to be a top-down forced equation.

I have participated in many group think efforts since the mid-80s and MY experience for what is the best approach, is to find people of like mind, who have complimentary skill sets and who are of a compatible personal chemistry, to then cooperatively form a group that will work collaboratively together on a common goal/intention, versus try convincing the uninitiated to conform and participate in a top-down reformation of a theoretical structure that does not consider the limits of consensus organisation. Good luck. :-)