What is a Workers' Co-operative? 

Yes! Richard Wolf is my favorite economist. He has helped me better understand the true nature of socialism and Marxist theory. It's not about being owned by a private CEO or by the State, its a worker-owned model of economics.

Borking Borker very true. People hear “Marxism” and picture a totalitarian dictator like Stalin and the Soviet Union. What Wolff teaches, as well as what Marx wrote about in Das Kapital, is far different than that.

Thanks buddy

Wolff is best

Richard Wolff is a Marxist hack, not a real economist.

www.britannica.com/topic/iron-law-of-oligarchy Yes.

The thing about a democracy is that the lazy people will always outnumber the working people. Never underestimate the unbreakable power of laziness.

@@brownbagofpoop6704 oh shit i never knew co ops become dysfunctional due to laziness, do you have a source on that?

pretty sure they earn twice as much as they would hired for a petty capitalist

In Australia & northern Europe have there high exise taxes... so who going to profit more the Government always. Biden want system like us

@@rymiledge893 The worker co-op in this video isn't dysfunctional, but that's partly because it specifically has a long vetting process to address this very issue. A lot of people really aren't very good workers, so a worker co-op typically has this process to gather only productive people onto the team while filtering out anyone who doesn't want to work. Like, it has this process in place to combat the exact problem being mentioned, and that's not the same as the problem itself not existing.

Why?? Is there much money in cooperatives??

@@AlOlexy don’t investors... invest in businesses ?

@@Andy-km1xp the point is for them to end up making way more money than they put in and they always come out as the biggest winners out of that deal if you dont have enough resources to do what you want to do with your business an investor is a necessity but being independent is always a better choice than to be chained to the will of an exterior agent who will take a huge portion of your profits for as long as your business stands

@@AlOlexy workers don't pay investors. You've got this completely backwards. And the average firm isn't paying its CEO hundreds of times the average employee.

@@ExPwner you're correct. Investors are paid by the profits that the workers generate and the average CEO is the one making sure that their bonus is hundreds of times the average employee wage. In worker cooperatives, profit isn't made for the sake of paying investors, its made and used to pay workers, reinvest in the business and for other things like charity or worker benefits. Top wages are often locked in a ratio with bottom wages (e.g., top wage is max 9x the lowest wage) under a cooperative structure

@Ivan Michel vaush's second debate with sargon, where they had a moderator. It was early in the debate he basically saw worker co-ops as "employees taking property from owners" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EZZ7FvaFzbQ.html

@Ivan Michel actually I'm pretty sure that if it was turned from a private business into a worker co-op everyone except the manger, but not likely, would stay and keep things running the same mostly. Workers would now get more money because they own a piece and unless its working place issues, I don't think the average worker will mind any major changes as long as they get paid more. The investors would be screwed over totally and would now have to work instead of just sitting down watching stocks go up and down. I don't agree completely with Vaush but worker cooperations work well when everyone does their part and I'm sure most companies wouldn't want to be bankrupt and just make do and share the profits instead of being forced to find another job and capitalism at the end of the day is just increasing the divide between the rich and poor.

That's not even what he says but okay.

@@tokyojuul9987 'It's okay to steal because the people who get the property would be happy'

@Ivan Michel well first of all the company would just drop it's employees then cause we are disposable humans. besides the point you don't think say, for example wallmart having enough money to pay for nearly half of the countries basic living expenses is excessive? The fact that less then one percent owns more wealth then we'll see in fifty life times and making monopolies out if every aspect of our lives isn't excessive in anyway? You don't think it's kind of cruel that people in some industries wear adult diapers to avoid write ups for bathroom breaks? These companies are nothing without it's employees so why shouldn't there be a joint stake in it? Also seems to be working out for this business.

i want to open a coop someday :D

@Thomas Tomei II Free Market Socialism, Economic Democracy, Syndicalism or Distributism. Im confused actually🤣

@Thomas Tomei II Thanks

That would be cool

No, Worker coops are still capitalist because the workers still own capital, take the risk, and invest in the business, If the business were to go bankrupt, the workers would incure some of the debt, whereas in libertarian socialism, the workers would have a large say and complete control over the means of production but will have taken no risk, owned no capital, or helped create the business, meaning they would not have incurred any debt if the business were to go bankrupt, and when you give this much power to the workers, you will have an extreme decrease in entrepreneurs, because of the lack of reward, control, and benefit of starting a business.

@@williammiller5532 true, still learning a bunch of shit

I think the simplest way to think about the structure would be operational vs. oversight. The board is looking at the bigger picture decisions (oversight) while the operational team through mangers/members are getting the day to day task completed.

nationalize the economy

Franchise own store, the Government screw franchise owner in every country moron . There very high exise taxes in Australia & northern Europe

Yes you should. It is better than being an employee of Mcdonalds'.

@@greenleafyman1028 I have been looking into it and it looks like most fail because they just can't compete. Usually due to incompetent management (which can be hired but then money) or due to insufficient bu-yin from the community (which could be because it was a bad fit to begin with, management/pr, prices, etc.) and the voting just slows everything down. plus, not everyone would be interested in re-investing into the business. So its looking like the model needs some updating.

They're capitalists actually. Each of the employees in a worker's cooperatives are capitalist by definition who work and invest in their capital to make it grow. Most worker's coop are private businesses as it should be.

Yes that is a huge health code violation and if he will not shave the beard off he will have to wear a hair net. Or get fired. Oh wait he would have to be voted out of he co op.

Capitalism can't be done right.

Worker control of the means of production is Socialism.

By the very definition of socialism, this is socialist. It's social ownership.

@Psychiatrysts Anarchism is autistic to say the least. Not only can't it solve it, it has historically shown itself to be a defunct ideology. Sure, it allows "freedom" from an ontologically Liberal standpoint, but this freedom quickly degenerates into an inefficient system which demand centralization of power.

@Psychiatrysts Depends on goal of cooperative. Cooperatives are considered individual immortal entities, they can be like the ones the video, have a goal besides making money (like making the best bread at any cost, or supporting the families of the cooperative's owners), or they can be like the current cooperative agreements between the largest banks of America, thus bypassing monopoly regulations. Anarchism is not going to break up monopolies, it's the pooled collective power that will replace it.

Communism cannot exist under the parameters of capitalism. Communists do not OWN the rights to property, or anything. This is not even socialism. This is what you call a Social Democracy.

@@nissutobor9078 This is by the definition socialist; Socialism is social ownership of business enterprises. Social ownership includes government, communal or worker ownership. Also, Social democracy is where private property and capitalism exist under a welfare state. How ignorant on this topic are you even?

@@nissutobor9078 I disagree. Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production by the working class, which is precisely what worker-owned cooperatives are. They are collective ownership of the means of production by the working class. There are no private owners of recources exploiting the labor of others for their own personal profit, at the detriment and expense of the workers. The workers profit off of their own work for themselves. Everyone at the business has a stake in the success of business, and therefore, eveyone at the business has the right to participate in the decisionmaking process, at a democratic collective. In a society where ALL businesses were worker-owned cooperatives, then that would create economic equality and stability, because the working class IS the consumer class. Wealth circulates endlessly, without being hoarded by greedy capitalists, and every interaction in the market is thus truly voluntary. There is no coercion to work for someone else in order to access the basic necessities of life. Understandably, there are some industries where a profit motive may simply be opposed to the actual goal of the service (such as, for example, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, housing, access to clean water, etc.), and therefore, some industries may be better off in the control of a democratic, decentralized system of government, so that EVERYONE in society has a right to control them, rather than only the workers at a certain business. I fully agree with that. However, giving a STATE (independent from the will of the people) rights over ANYTHING is tyranny. State socialism is oppression. It is exploitation. It is no different than capitalism.

@@leftisttroll2217 I live, work and enjoy the capitalist system. I am not exploited just because you say I am. The beauty of the system we have here in the US is that you are free to join a capitalist enterprise or start your own. You can also choose to start or join a cooperative. It's called individual freedom and liberty.

@@kj475 no.

Capitalism is when the means of production is privately owned. Worker cooperatives are cooperatively owned. It's a bottom-up system. Capitalism is top-down. That's the difference.

I see socialism.

@Ivan Michel Hmmm, I see where you're coming from but I think there's some confusion here. The public v. private dichotomy is acting as a red herring. Public v. private doesn't have anything to do with whether a firm is capitalist or not. What determines capitalism v. socialism is whether the organization is controlled by a single individual or group at the top OR by democratic operation by the workers themselves. It's about who controls the means of production. Capitalism is also not markets. _Market Socialism_ is a thing (in fact, it's what this business is an example of). The Nordic countries have large public sectors alongside extensive private industry. Prevalence of the public sector is, in this way, most accurately described as _Social Democracy_ (NOT _Democratic Socialism_, that's a different thing, contrary to common loose usage of the terms) You can also have _State Capitalism_ (firms run by the state) like China, and (arguably) the Soviet Union. The fact that these are considered Communist or Socialist in popular parlance is largely due to propaganda efforts (on both sides) of the Cold War and its aftermath. *TLDR: Private v. public is not the right framing. The issue is who controls the means of production. Workers = socialist; Capital = capitalist.* _NOTE_: I'll admit that socialism gets used for a lot of different things-even among socialists- which confuses the issue to an insane degree. And there are disputes as to the exact nature of socialist implementation but suffice it to say that the OG reading of the term and the most pertinent and well-established is "worker control of the means of production". Thanks for the opportunity for discussion!

@@ark-L nice explanation

@Ivan Michel lol what? This is the textbook definition of socialism, workers owning the means of production aka the shop/factory/business. Socialism and government ownership are two very different things. Government run services have existed since time immemorial. Socialism is simply when the workers control the business and distribute the profits among themselves and capitalism is when a handful of individuals own it and collect all the profits from someone else's work.

It's more like Socialism; social ownership of business enterprises.

Community with ism. You have community?