Comment by conaclos
2 years ago
The anarchist culture of the 1800s and 1900s in Spain, especially the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist structures [0], is certainly one of the reasons for Mondagon's existence.
2 years ago
The anarchist culture of the 1800s and 1900s in Spain, especially the emergence of anarcho-syndicalist structures [0], is certainly one of the reasons for Mondagon's existence.
>anarcho-syndicalist
I'm sure 99% of people first heard this term in the famous Holy Grail bit. I have never seen it used in the wild. Thanks!
you are overestimating the degree to which your personal social group is typical in the world by probably about a factor of 100
I think you misunderstood. I said if someone has heard the term "anarcho-syndicalist", there is a very high chance it's from the Holy Grial. Not 99% of people in the world are familiar with the term.
10 replies →
Why aren’t there more of these if they work well?
When you start a co-op, just like any other bootstrapped business, you're staking your livelihood, but you're forgoing most of the upside. You also need several other people to agree with you. This screens out most of the risk, which is why they're perceived as working well. This works out great if you're lucky enough to be employed by one, but not great for people who need a job immediately.
That's a good question and it seems like it's difficult to separate from people's ideological ideas about whether they are good or bad.
My hometown in Oregon had a cooperative, Burley, that made bike stuff like trailers and tandems and some clothing. Word was that it was kind of dysfunctional because of how democratic it was even if all the people cared deeply. I think they finally ended up selling out to some outfit who scrapped everything but the trailers.
The paradox of worker-coops is that workers capable of successfully running businesses together are also capable of running businesses independently, so there's no need to form a co-op. It's those incapable of running a business individually or collectively that then form co-ops. Mondragon is the exception, not the rule.
Cooperation is difficult and does not scale well. One selfish person can act selfishly alone. But one cooperative person first needs to find someone else to cooperate with... and the other person also needs to have compatible skills and values... so it is often easier for the cooperative person to just give up, and work to make someone else rich.
And the more difficult project you have, the more extreme this gets. If it is something that most people could do, it is easy for the cooperative people to find each other. It if it something that only one person in a thousand can do, the one-in-a-thousand cooperative person will have a huge problem finding the rest of the team.
Put another way: Singers who aren't good enough to make it on their own form large idol groups (eg: AKB 48) to sell themselves, while those who are become stars on their own or form small bands with others of similar success.
Or to put it another way: Ground meat is great, but the components thereof by themselves are generally regarded as waste.
2 replies →
Considering that I just started one, the reason is, nobody will fund it
Why? Everybody with the money to start it, wants more money or special tax treatment via charity.
I’m actively funding ours myself for 0% return in order to bootstrap the infrastructure we need
Why don't workers unite to democratically manage production? The police, propaganda, wage slavery.
> Why don't workers unite to democratically manage production?
Because the majority of workers are doing the minimum amount of work to get by, because ~50% of workers are below average intelligence, because those with the entrepreneurial skill and/or business management competence necessary to make this happen benefit more from the current system and have less motivation to mess with it.
13 replies →
There have been over 20,000 communes set up in the US. They are not illegal. Pick one and join it. Or set your own up.
34 replies →
A comment below suggests that they have a hard time recruiting engineers, but I believe also experts and talent in general..
There’s then also something deeper about making the trade-off between growth(rate) and stability..
OTOH photographer coops are quite common, here is a famous one https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Magnum_Photos
Does the Basque region produce more engineers than other areas? I'm guessing their issue is more tied to the demographics of the area they are in and less of the compensation side of things. It's far harder to commit to a coop where your contribution is valued thousands of miles away and you don't have the immediate stake in things (e.g. your bar, bakery, barber, etc)
1 reply →
There are a few. There's a tech coop federation in the UK for instance. A big hurdle for efforts like this is access to finance meaning they often have to be bootstrapped.
> Why aren’t there more of these
By historical reasons the Basque country has an special tax regime and economical benefits from the Spanish government. This may have an influence on the outcome. Is easier to win when the other run handicapped, and not so easy to replicate it if we remove that context.
Most people also ignores that this system exists. Out of Euskadi, the name is more associated to the (in)famous band orchestre Mondragon, that was an appropriately anarchical mess, part circus, part rock band.
Be afraid, very afraid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWKHnjWMTNI
There are more of them, but good design "just works" and so goes mostly unnoticed.
Actually, I wonder if there's a word for this effect?
I do not believe it is necessarily about that.
It might be a lack of education (not a value statement). Socialism in Spain was not established at once. It was an effort spanning many decades.
If we would suddenly find ourselves in a medieval kingdom we would certainly need time (and help) to adapt to that system. Likewise, people from that period would need time (and help) to adapt to ours. Regardless of whether it is better.
Note that Mondragon is not a socialist enterprise. It's not obvious to me whether you're saying it is, but I think one of the interesting things about Mondragon is that it's somewhere in between the socialist-capitalist dichotomy. If you came along and said "good news, the state is in charge of all your businesses now" they would not consider their mission accomplished.
3 replies →
Realistically Mondragon is rooted in Catholic social teaching (founded by a priest). Thus it requires someone to be motivated by something other than money. Religion is one of the few things that will be able to inspire such amounts of work while forgoing most economic upside.
Maybe nationalism can do that, but keep in mind that when this was combined with nationalism we got Nazism (Nazism took lots of inspiration from Austrian corporatism which was similarly influenced by Catholic social teaching here). I'm not sure it's either safe or advisable to do this aside from religion
They don’t allow genuine innovation in any shape or form, and that in particular leads to highjacking by bureaucrats and degradation. So they may work in short term (work for some at the price of oppressing the ones who don’t fit well into the collective) - I’m from USSR for example - yet the result is predetermined.
That is flatly false. Worker cooperatives are every bit as innovative as any other form of private corporation. These are owned by workers not a centralized government. There are quite a few of them and you may well have purchased their products with it even realizing it. Two additional examples you may have encountered are Equal Exchange and King Arthur Flour.
There aren't more of them because they have a hell of a time securing financing when most businesses are financed through equity sales which they can't do.
19 replies →
It seems a bit premature to speak so generally about collectivism. It's quite possible that the USSR failed for reasons that do not apply to Mondragon.
Maybe once we've seen a few hundred of these come and go it'll be time for a general theory of their kind.
5 replies →
Mondragon has lasted 68 years and I believe the USSR had lasted 69 years. Why do you think they will fail in the next year? Also given the speed of advancement has increased in the past 30+ years, it seems like they have kept pace a lot better than the USSR (or it's successor Russia)
Or have you worked there and this is first hand?
I don't think the USSR is a great example. The region has been under the thumb of authoritarian dictators for a 1000 years and those who most strongly disagreed with this have for that millennium either left or died leaving behind a nation largely populated by the children of people willing to go along to get along under such a system. Cultures and circumstances leave a mark on a people not least by the process by which survivors are selected.
If anything the current situation stands to worsen that situation with smart young people who might contribute to a better future dying or fleeing.
Probably more influenced by the Falange driving against classic capital and communist analogs. This was setup under Franco's Spain.
But not BY Franco. Note in the article how the government removes social security support from the coops and they have to set up healthcare themselves.
Arizmendiarrieta wasn't a Franco follower at all. He fought with the Republicans and went to jail during the war. After that stopped writing in Basque, as that wasn't seen with good eyes in Franco times.
Frankly, people fight on all sides during wars. 20 years later, life goes on. Franco's government was in favor of co-ops and they flourished under his government.
Work syndicates, cooperatives are absolutely in line with the Falange. Straight out of the 26 points
"We seek redistributing arable land in such a way as to revive family farms and give energetic encouragement to the syndicalization of farm laborers"