I’ve known a few in the U.S., and even worked at one. Maybe people won’t become billionaires doing this, but why wait for a complete overhaul of society to implement more of what are good ideas.
I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools. Wheres the movement to build communities and pool resources around these business models in the US? In short, co-ops are the closest socialist/communist business model that’s actually implemented in the U.S., so why are more leftists not doing this?
Starting a business (that is based on a sound and viable business plan that has even a snowball’s chance of surviving its formative early years) is really REALLY hard. It takes massive amounts of money or debt, the early years promise years of having no income for yourself (or paying yourself below minimum wage), it means a staggering amount of hours you need to put in to keep it going, forgoing vacations and important family events, loss of friendships because you’re having to put all your time and energy into the business without socializing, having to work when you’re incredibly ill, incredible amounts of stress (which increases by 10 times when you have employees that now depend on you for their livelihood) and even if you do everything perfect your business can fail leaving you with nothing for the years that you put into it, and potentially also with tens of thousands or millions of dollars in debt. It means many times being force to make decisions that massively affect other people’s lives (your employees or your customers). It can be versions of the Trolley Problem time and time again.
“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.” source
So ask yourself if you want to go through all of that, and instead of wealth you can live on and support your family with at the end of it, you get simply a “thank you” for building a co-op.
These are great points, and looking at some of the other responses I get the sense that it’s a time and skills issue. So, what exactly do communists and socialists imagine will happen when “workers seize the means of production”?
I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing these ideas, I think at least in the U.S. it might be cool to have a consultancy or non-profit which helps connect such founders and provides them with education, training and startup resources.
Edit oh and some of the other points are that one wouldn’t get rich doing this. So what? I’ve already seen people look down on wealth accumulation, so I think it’s fair to say that the motives for someone who’d start such a business venture are different, which is valid and reasonable.
Secondly, I don’t think market forces will impact such businesses because if you’re creating communities around them, then people will choose what they know and trust.
I admit I’m not a scholar in this area, but my college reading of Marx and Engels they were taking about nation-state levels of “seizing the means of production”. As in, the entire nation’s ability to produce goods, grow and transport food, facilitate communications, etc. Doing so on such a grand scale that the elites/bourgeois would be forced to cede control of the levers of power because society effectively halts with the means of production in the hands of the working class (proletariat).
Marx wasn’t talking about a socialist group starting up a competing grocery store to the entrenched established players in that market space.
There are educational resources for starting non-profits organizations (and I’m assuming co-ops). The real resource any org (for-profit or nonprofit) needs to start up is: large amounts of money. In for-profit ventures (assuming your business plan is respectable) you can get bank loans or outside investors. Both of these groups expect a return on the money they’re giving you to get started up.
With a co-op, I’m guessing the only sources of startup capital are: government grants, philanthropic donations, or a founder that already has amassed their own fortune.
At those really dark times for your business you ask yourself “why the hell am I even doing this?” for most business owners the answer is “so that at some point in the future my life will be much easier”. For a co-op, there has to be a very deeply held belief that what you’re doing is extremely meaningful and your sacrifice will be “worth it” somehow. While those people exist with almost a religious level of obligation to their cause or their community, I think they are extremely rare.
I don’t envy the leadership in a struggling co-op. Running an organization is hard enough at the best times as a single owner. Having to run it by committee when it is crumbling sounds like a painful death.
You may already have your answer. In your first post you said: “I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools.”
What is stopping you from you creating a child-care co-op?
This is naive. Market forces (and other externalities) can have massive impacts on your organization irrespective if you’re a for-profit or co-op. Just think of what COVID did to many organizations. Though nothing change in the business model or service offering, thousands of companies went under because the conditions of the market changed through no fault of the organization owners/leaders.
I don’t know, it seems the whole argument seems to boil down to “there’s not enough time, money or skill”. I guess my question is why do ML theorists think workers can organize enough to run a state when they can’t organize enough to run a business?
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Sorry, in retrospect that was entirely too flippant and answer for a pretty good discussion and question. Deleted.
Yes, I agree, it is very hard. I’ve talked to a lot of founders and was working on getting a company off the ground myself.
The perspective and the idea of a co-op however is completely different from what you describe: to distribute the hardships, the risks and rewards right from the start onto many shoulders. There’s no more “my company, my sacrifices” etc. It’s all we.