Biggest Secret in the World Economy: Cooperatives employ more people than multinational companies

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:



Biggest Secret in the World Economy
Cooperatives employ more people than multinational companies

By David Bollier



[font size="1"]People's Food Co-op, Ann Arbor, MI[/font]


While a great many commons seek to develop alternatives to conventional businesses – and even to bypass markets altogether – the struggle to democratize capital should not be lost in the shuffle. Popular ownership of capital assets and business enterprises is still a great strategy for building the commons and advancing the public good. Fortunately, there’s a growing enthusiasm for this approach.

One of the most eloquent advocates for socially friendly forms of capital ownership – the French call it the “social economy” – is Gar Alperovitz, a historian and political economist at the University of Maryland and a founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Alperovitz’s 2005 book, America Beyond Capitalism, was recently re-issued, presumably because it speaks to the political moment. How can we make economic progress when banks and large corporations are simply looking out for themselves? How can we reduce wealth inequality when government is captured by corporations and the affluent?

Alperovitz showcases the history and great potential of co-ops, worker-owned companies, and urban land trusts. He notes the constructive role that is played by municipal utilities, state-owned banks and state-chartered trusts such as the Alaska Permanent Fund. There are also dozens of cases in which states use their investment dollars to help communities, use government procurement to help worker-owned businesses, and provide venture capital to startups.

These alternatives to traditional capitalist models are actually flourishing, Alperovitz notes: “We may be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing. Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/biggest-secret-world-economy

[socialist_n_TN]

1. Even as fundamentalist Bolsheviki as I am........

I do like this model, ESPECIALLY for smaller concerns. I'm still skeptical of the model on "general welfare" goods and service industries (food, clothing, shelter, health care, etc), but if one of these worker owned co-ops grew into a major industry and STILL provided the services required in a non-exploitative manner, I'd definitely want to look at it.

The problem with "government owned" businesses in a capitalist system is that they ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE. They're representative of the owners. When the owners own the government, they also, by proxy, own the businesses that the government owns. That's why we need to change GOVERNMENT along with the economic model. And of course, changing both the political and the economic will change the social. And they'll actually they'll all change each other.

You can't have socialism with a capitalist government model.