WORLD WORLDWIDE (en) anarkismo.net: Cooperatives or class struggle? by Tommy Lawson (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Furthermore, cooperatives should not aim for the state to integrate

workers into management. The essential conquests of the workers will be
the result of the struggle they give in the workplaces, through forms of
direct action that come in direct confrontation with capital. Socialists
who turn to cooperative labor may well be socialists in heart and
intent, but they do not follow a revolutionary strategy. ---- Every now
and then the question of cooperatives arises in the revolutionary
socialist movement. Optimistic positions argue that cooperatives can be
the basis for replacing capitalism with a new economy based on
solidarity and work, where workers are "in control." In fact, these
views argue that cooperatives are a vital part of revolutionary
strategy. These positions have already been formulated in the past,
exist in the present and will be reproduced in the future. However, the
positive features of cooperatives cannot replace the revolutionary
strategy and building of working class power against capitalism.

Debates about the role of cooperatives in revolutionary strategy can be
traced back to the 1850s and the First International, when mutualists
such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the communist Charles Beesley
advocated cooperative economies. They believed that as workers pooled
their own capital and invested it together, cooperatives could slowly
replace individual capitalist enterprises. While they proposed a variety
of plans to make this plan come to fruition, the reality was that
capital could not be adapted to serve the working class. The reformist
positions of the mutualists were challenged by people such as Joseph
Dezac and Eugene Varlain, who understood that capital must be confronted
and overthrown by militant, armed struggle of the working class.

Today in Australia devotees of the co-operative economy refer to
Earthworker. Earthworker manufactures "renewable energy devices and
components" and sees itself as "part of ensuring a just transition for
communities affected by the transition from fossil fuels to renewable
energy..." At least that's true of their initial venture. Earthworker,
which took over a factory that closed after the end of the coal-fired
power industry in Victoria's La Trobe Valley. Earthworker has since
expanded into cleaning services and is open to expanding into new projects.

Earthworker notes that she "believes that social and environmental
exploitation are intertwined and that the problems of climate change,
job insecurity and growing inequality must be tackled simultaneously,
through greater economic ownership from the bottom up." However, the
question must be asked how far "biggest bottom economic ownership" goes
against the giant power of the fossil fuel industry and multinational
corporations. The power of a few workers united in a small business
pales in comparison to the organized labor movement, which is the only
power capital can face. Historically, even when workers pool their
resources and try to create "alternative" economies, they end up either
failing or being forced to adapt to traditional business practices in
order to be competitive.

None of this is meant to denigrate the efforts or the people involved in
a cooperative enterprise like Earthworker. The birth of Earthworker was
an organic response to the loss of jobs and filling a void in the
market. However, sections of the radical left in Australia and their
support for co-operatives must immediately be criticized. In the
Socialists of Victoria's latest programme, the 'Workers and Trade
Unions' section presents a policy which aims to 'introduce measures to
encourage workers' control and worker participation in decision-making
in the workplace...' through legal reforms which ensure that workers
receive management rights, a share of profits, and the added measure of
imposing higher payroll taxes on non-cooperative enterprises. They will
also offer tax relief to co-operatives by encouraging them as a "normal
form of private enterprise". As if the working class benefits from
private enterprise and more competition!1 Market socialism may emerge
from an incomplete or failed attempt at revolution, but it is not
something we should actively strive for.

Such ideas are really irrelevant to today's context of economics and
class struggle. Capitalism has already developed such enormous
productive forces that a future revolution will have to take seriously
the task of abolishing production for exchange value. Commodities
produced for a market still require the worker to be subject to a lack
of rational planning. As a result, they have to "discipline" themselves
by accepting wage reductions and increases in work intensity in order to
maintain a competitive status in the market. Even if these decisions are
made democratically, there is no real overturning of capitalist relations.

As Karl Marx noted in his Critique of the Gotha Programme,
co-operatives, established in the struggle with the takeover of
capitalist enterprises, have "value only in so far as they are the
independent creation of the workers and not protected by either the
government or the bourgeoisie". Thus, the transitional program of a
political party that wants to include workers in the management of the
state and the capitalist economy is not revolutionary. In an 1897
article in the newspaper L'Agitazione, entitled "The experimental
anarchist colonies", Enrico Malatesta also noted the contradiction that
those who live or work in cooperative relations must necessarily
discipline themselves in order to maintain profit, thus providing cheap
labor in the market, which devalues the rest of the proletariat.

Therefore, the question of positive or negative aspects of cooperatives
is moot. Even if the labor of individuals can be slightly transformed by
having a say in the methods and goals of production, the very nature of
cooperatives as commodity-producing institutions makes them a
revolutionary impasse. Even enterprises taken over by the workers during
the struggle and converted into cooperative production face a dead end
if the wider struggle throughout society does not continue to move
forward. Thus, although interrelated, the subjective and objective
conditions of capitalist crisis and socialist consciousness emerge more
from ongoing conflict and class struggle against existing conditions
than from cooperative production.

Two small examples can demonstrate the revolutionary position. During
Italy's Biennio Rosso (Red Biennial), hundreds of thousands of workers
occupied factories in northern Italy. The revolutionary anarchists of
the Italian Anarchist Union (UAI) and the Italian Trade Union Union
(USI) noted that occupied factories in the hands of the workers
themselves did not constitute an inherently revolutionary situation. The
capitalist state must be challenged and overthrown. They argued that
workers must resume production in order to feed everyone. After all,
revolution does not happen overnight. But the Italian workers needed
arms and organization to push the struggle further. Unfortunately they
were let down by other left-wing organizations, which refused to take
the strikes any further or organize, to arm the workers, including the
majority of Marxists.

In 1969 the repressive Uruguayan government enacted labor laws aimed at
crushing militant unionism throughout the meat processing industry. The
large cooperative El Cerro Refrigeration Establishment supported the
reforms while attempting to break the unions. In response, unions
heavily influenced by the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) set up a
camp outside the cooperative, launched industry-wide strikes and
occupied their workplaces. Cooperatives are often presented as a
possible "supplement" to the workers' struggle. But in 1969 in Uruguay
they openly undermined the labor movement. So while El Cerro
Refrigeration undermined labor solidarity, FAU responded through the
Student Workers Organization (ROE), to raise funds, set up barricades,
and fight the police. The ROE was a strategic mass organization used as
a real complement to the class struggle, it mobilized social sectors
outside the trade unions, to help escalate the class struggle. These
tactics were part of a long-term strategy to develop class consciousness
and build confrontation with the state and prepare for the overthrow of
capitalism.

The historically optimistic view that cooperatives could build an
alternative to capitalism or play an important role in the transition is
even more redundant today. Instead, revolutionaries have a
responsibility to develop and commit to strategies suitable for
overthrowing the state and capital. Cooperatives may play a positive
role in communities where capital does not provide the necessary goods,
or they may be created by occupying a capitalist workplace during a
period of intense class struggle. These are perfectly reasonable
situations, but revolutionaries should be with the mass of workers
helping to organize the struggle and promote the class war. Furthermore,
cooperatives should not aim for the state to integrate workers into
management. The essential conquests of the workers will be the result of
the struggle they give in the workplaces, through forms of direct action
that come in direct confrontation with capital. Socialists who turn to
cooperative labor may well be socialists in heart and intent, but they
do not follow a revolutionary strategy.

Notes:

1. This is made more absurd by the policy of a People's Bank, which will
offer interest-free loans to cooperative enterprises. Proudhon, and not
Marx, finally seems to have "won"

Source: Red & Black Notes

https://www.alerta.gr/archives/33311

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32837
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