tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post2685496776308552874..comments2023-10-19T06:19:45.017-07:00Comments on Bethnal Bling: Co-operative Capitalism: A Straw Dog in a Paper KennelSion Whellenshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15136690108746526194noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-4383502929260820102017-07-26T18:30:53.455-07:002017-07-26T18:30:53.455-07:00Your blog is very useful for me.I really like you ... Your blog is very useful for me.I really like you post.Thanks for sharing.<br /> <a href="https://horror-movienew.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">หนังผี</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-84841096597356567422012-05-12T01:33:59.711-07:002012-05-12T01:33:59.711-07:00""Calverts has paid 20 times more to ren...""Calverts has paid 20 times more to rentiers and bankers than it has retained as surpluses, but that slim 5% financed the relative autonomy" This statement illustrates an important point; probably a reason why the Worker Coop sector has never developed beyond being a tiny sector. They mainly exist as isolates and unwitting are organizational egotistic. If the rents, loan repayments plus interest had been payed by primary Worker Coops to secondary democratic commonwealths as some form of financial coop and cooperative land/building trust of which the primary coop was a member/ stakeholder then some of the benefits of the payment of 95% would feedback from the secondary coop to the primary coops and it members. Coops in all shapes and forms are likely to thrive in association with each other and where there is a high density of mutual enterprises. One hopse that coop folk are on the case.<br /><br /> Never mind the triangulation stuff coming from some quarters, if a more radical and traditional aspiration to build a commonwealth of worker and multi stakeholder coops is there then there is the challenge to taking this from the "utopian" into a practical reality. The problems are there and people are in pain; from Merther to Middlebrough. AWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-37393661033044063952012-03-26T12:34:53.788-07:002012-03-26T12:34:53.788-07:00Agree with your first point Graham. A 'straw d...Agree with your first point Graham. A 'straw dog' is a flimsy or irrelevant business idea, asking to be to be knocked down, and that's what I think Co-operative Capitalism is. It's a linking of two ideas on the basis of empty parameters, like a faulty database macro. The trouble is, the connection isn't quite as obviously beside the point as 'Co-operative Pajamas' or 'Co-operative Religion'. But I think people like Hertz genuinely want to save capitalism, so it's not merely presentational. The real questions, as you point out, are about how fit the co-operative principles are as a practical guide to collective action in the face of big changes like the flight of jobs, skills and wealth to China and the 'emerging' capitalist economies; the emergence and contestation of disruptive and potentially revolutionary technologies; resource depletion, intensifying alienation and social atomisation.Sion Whellenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15136690108746526194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-42451719975760625902012-03-23T03:18:32.660-07:002012-03-23T03:18:32.660-07:00For me the debate about whether cooperatives are c...For me the debate about whether cooperatives are capitalist or anti-capitalist is somewhat sterile. Right now we all swim in a capitalist ocean, and while we work to build islands of cooperation, they are necessarily dependent upon the ocean for their existence.<br /><br />The financial/economic crisis, peak oil and climate change (all of which are interlinked) has highlighted some of the key weaknesses of the current dominant model. The people of Greece are seeing the sharp end of that failure right now. The cooperative model offers robust people-centred solutions and is gaining favour from what we can see. In the wake of the crisis, social movements such as Transition, the growth of community renewables and the collaborative economy that Giles mentions are all part of a bigger shift that is discussed in Jeremy Rifkin's "Third Industrial Revolution" that I would encourage you to read. Giles - you should try to get him as a keynote at the Cooperatives United do in the autumn. for me he is bang on the money. "The future is distributed and collaborative"<br /><br />For me Hertz's piece was a useful contribution, in that most can't conceive of a world without capitalism, so in that case it seems fair that we should be presenting a paradigm that says "OK, let's just have a different type of capitalism. We'll call it cooperative capitalism." That's just presentational stuff.<br /><br />The shift towards a network-centric paradigm, facilitated by the internet and global ubiquity of low cost digital tools, takes power from old-school capitalist models and hands it to consumers and communities. It is inevitable, although not without its struggles, the more prominent among them including the current battle over obsolescent copyright law being fought by "Big Media". In Europe the Pirate Party is the fastest growing political group, and much to the chagrin of the old established parties, it has captured the attention and support of the under 25s, the digital natives that live in a Wikinomics world. These are the people that will build the cooperative commonwealth of the future.Grahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13836842616589474593noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-1324219625137421162012-03-22T17:35:00.661-07:002012-03-22T17:35:00.661-07:00Thanks Kate, Giles - I was worried that I should h...Thanks Kate, Giles - I was worried that I should have made the post 5 times longer to explain the view that capitalism depends on co-operation, but co-operation is a social technology that could help us overcome capital. You both get it, and thanks for helping make the point clear. Calverts has paid 20 times more to rentiers and bankers than it has retained as surpluses, but that slim 5% financed the relative autonomy which enabled the members to provide 'decent' jobs. Although anticapitalist attitude was perhaps more crucial.Sion Whellenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15136690108746526194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-59191039356342846912012-03-22T05:41:45.714-07:002012-03-22T05:41:45.714-07:00Absolutely agree, Sion about the important task be...Absolutely agree, Sion about the important task being to make co-operatives more co-operative rather than trying to make capitalism more co-operative. One of the problems in this debate seems to me that people use the term capitalism quite loosely. My dictionary defines it as ‘dominance of private owners of capital and production for profit’ or (probably rather over-) simplifying Marx: Capitalism uses money to make things in order to make money. The co-operative business model is based on people using money to make useful goods & services for people. So promoting the concept of co-operative capitalism is like promoting the latest fox&chicken coop :-) <br />Giles point about whether co-operatives are capitalist, anti-capitalist or a-capitalist I think can be addressed by recognising that the co-operative sector is indeed a broad church – or a continuum where some co-operatives are more co-operative than others. I think the most important task is to explore ways of helping co-ops move along the continuum – so they become more of a challenge to capitalism and can more effectively – as the IYC2012 logo has it – ‘build a better world’.Kate Whittlehttp://www.cooperantics.co.uknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1214879400514384313.post-32704764044730437312012-03-21T16:41:25.264-07:002012-03-21T16:41:25.264-07:00excellent blog Sion and great response to Noreena ...excellent blog Sion and great response to Noreena Hertz's piece. This kind of discussion, and the mainstream interest it generates, is exactly the reason why Co-operatives UK does and should publish these papers and think-pieces.<br /><br />For me ( in a personal, entirely non work) capacity, your response raises two questions.<br /><br />1. There seems to be a new collaborative economy emerging - from pop up shops to the rise of freelancers collaborating, independent businesses like local bookshops coming together to the activism of move your money or Occupy. The question is, is this emerging collaborative economy capitalist or anti capitalist?<br /><br />My feeling is that it's a spectrum - some of it is capitalist, some entirely anti capitalist, most inbetween. But all are very much an example of how people are working together, sharing for mutual benefit more than ever (take www.notonthehighstreet.com for example - a conventional private business that employs 100 people and supports 2,500 small independent creative businesses - it's capitalism, but one that supports good, interesting, meaningful, local work).<br /><br />So maybe your blog highlights the diversity of the new collaborative economy and the fact that it cannot be easily slotted into a category.<br /><br />2. Are co-operatives, as opposed to this collaborative economy, capitalist or anti capitalist? Although co-operatives can be anti capitalist, if they give a vision or strategy for economic and political change alongside their business needs, most don't and in fact compete within a capitalist system against capitalist businesses, often working with and for capital.<br /><br />At best co-operatives seem to be kind 'a-capitalist'. They can create an island within the existing capitalist system that as far as possible is not colonised by capital or its values of individualism and short term private profit. At the same time though, co-operatives do work with and for capital and so are part of that system. perpetuate the capitalist system.<br /><br />So, basically Noreena's paper and your response Sion, raise questions and highlight the fact that the emerging collaborative economy and co-operatives are organisations that operate in the real world and cannot easily categorised into capitalist or anti capitalist ideal types.Giles Simonnoreply@blogger.com