Relating to my previous post, though not perfectly able to ensure complete justice when it comes to ensuring every worker receives the fruits of his labor, a society that fully adopted an alternative workplace organization that already exists in the world--cooperatives---would be far closer than what we have now. The adoption of cooperatives is a way that we can work in our current system and bring a taste of real, lasting economic justice. If they were adopted as the primary structure of a business, we would see dramatic reductions in inequality, corporate greed, and over-production to name just a few of the benefits.In their purest form, cooperatives function by the workers themselves voting on which one of them should gain any managerial or administrative position, as well as if prospective workers should join their enterprise. The administrative positions are recallable, and checked by the mass of workers as a whole. Open democracy is implemented for any big-picture decision, and to decide policy, and compensation. Profits are still gained at a level similar to capitalist markets, but the workers themselves are the shareholders in the enterprise with relatively equal shares among them or shares proportional to the amount of labor they perform.
In an economy with widespread cooperatives, markets would remain relatively untouched if not expanded by the increase of money now available to the typical laborer. Businesses would still advertise their wares and fight for consumers’ money in order to make their profits, and any new collection of individuals could open ventures and fight for their share of the market, keeping competition intact.
As mentioned before, cooperative enterprises do exist, and have existed for a very long time. Here’s just a few who are striving for a fair and democratic way to run business.:
Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) is a worker cooperative and licensed home care agency that serves the elderly, chronically ill, or disabled in the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx in New York City. They were founded in 1985 and have over 2,000 staff--serving as a significant driver of employment in the Bronx.
Equal Exchange is a well-known “fair trade” retail distributor that was founded in 1986 out of West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. It is worker owned and democratically controlled, with each worker eligible for leadership positions based on vote. They receive all of their products from farmer cooperatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Weaver Street Market is a North Carolina based grocery store chain that is both worker and consumer owned. This interplay between consumer and worker is designed to structure the business into a vehicle to fulfill community need, not merely to make profit.
If society as a whole was to adopt the cooperative as the dominant mode of production, we would see the lives and well-being of everyday people improve dramatically. Under capitalism, a worker is only another business expense, and like all business expenses, the business owner seeks the most value at the least cost during his purchase. Because of this, the worker’s wages are necessarily limited. His employer will typically only pay him the minimum amount of money he needs to perform his duties at an adequate level, any more and the capitalist is not getting as much value for his purchase. Raises, promotions, and bonuses will come, sure, but they are only an answer to what the worker feels he should receive in compensation for putting time and effort into the company over a long period. They do not come from the generosity of the capitalist, but from the societal expectations relating to long-term workers.
Compare this to the cooperative, where everyone in the enterprise is able to share in the profits of their collective work. Any money made after expenses have been paid would have the option of immediately flowing back into the pockets of the workers, resulting in much higher take-home wages than under our current system.
The bloated barons of industry sitting on boards and making upwards of millions a year would be a thing of the past, sending all that wasted profit back into the enterprise itself to be allocated democratically for growth, rainy-day funds, and take-home money for workers.
The stock market would no longer exist, taking with it much of the fluctuations and instability of our current financial system. Corporations would serve a much wider swath of humanity’s interests since a much wider swath would be leading them, and we would see an increase in corporate stewardship. Overproduction would go down as well, since every rich person with means would not be capable of starting their own enterprise, often offering similar or identical products to that which is already widely available. This would mean less competition in markets, freeing up manpower for tasks and services that are actually needed in society instead of another competing brand of consumer product.
In short, we would see a great amount of good.
There would still be problems, because there will always be problems. However, the cooperative is a lot closer to putting the value created by the worker back in his own pocket--mostly because it actually makes an attempt to.
Ideally, we should fight for an end to the subordination of any worker to any system that denies them the full value of their labor--democratic or otherwise. We should untether men and women from the drudgery of the workplace and give them their own means of production, allowing them to work with the full dignity of choice. This, coupled with the authentic Christian ethic of giving entirely of one's excess wealth, would make so many of the world's ills go away and would be the closest to a Christian culture that we have ever come.
It's something worth striving for.
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