I got to thinking about it and since I mentioned my brother here I
thought I would tell you something about him. My brother attended
Marshall University where he majored in psychology. He got interested in
the so-called egalitarian community movement there and as soon as he got
out of college he took off hitchhiking around the continent visiting
communes looking for one to join. I remember that he got especially
interested in one in Canada, but when he got to the border they would
not let him cross. It seems that all he had with him was a large
backpack and no money. They considered him to be indigent and they did
not want indigents to enter their country. But he managed to visit a
number of communes around the United States and finally settled on one
in Missouri called the East Wind Community. That is close to Tecumseh,
Missouri. He did not stay on the commune constantly though. Over the
years he has communicated from the Rainbow family gathering that is
usually held somewhere in the woods around the country and once he
dropped in for a visit because he had been hiking the Appalachian trail
and was in the same general geographic region. I suppose he might be
said to have settled on a hippie commune and it is one of the few hippie
communes that has survived to this day. It has been years now since I
have spoken to my brother and I never did learn the exact organizational
principles of the East Wind Community, but he described it as a farming
commune. Based on the things he told me about what they do there,
though, it seems to be more of an arts and crafts commune. They make
cashew butter and other nut butters there and they also make rope
hammocks among other things. Once when he was home for a visit he
brought one of their hammocks to our mother. I remember that it was hung
between the house and a tree and I tried it out. It was a lot more
comfortable than it looked. I think I may still have that hammock stored
in an outbuilding here. He said that if you see a rope hammock for sale
in a K-Mart or some similar box store it is likely that they made it at
the East Wind Community. Again, I don't really know anything about their
internal organization nor about their organizational principles, but
they do call themselves an egalitarian community and I think they would
likely even call themselves a socialist community. They might even admit
to being utopian socialists. I suppose it would be accurate to call them
a co-op too. But, again, they cannot live in an isolated socialist
bubble insulated from the external economy. Do you think they grow the
cashews or other nuts to make their butters on the premises? No, they
have to order the nuts and other ingredients from somewhere else for a
price in money. They then process the nuts on the premises and sell the
product to distributors for health food stores around the country. After
paying for the nuts and then adding labor to that and selling the
product for a profit you might get an idea why if you shop at a health
food store you will find that the groceries you get there will be really
expensive. Then there are the hammocks. They sell those for a profit
too. So what this egalitarian community turns out to be is something
like an employee owned profit making business. In capitalism the name of
the game is always profit even if certain people want to eschew profit.
They are forced into capitulating to the profit system whether they like
it or not. I am afraid that if you don't want capitalism you have to
work to overthrow capitalism, not isolate yourself from it in a bubble.
It just won't let you.
___
Carl Sagan “Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No,
no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection
for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics,
Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s
done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule
is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.” ― Carl
Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/15/2020 8:42 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender rogerbailey81
for DMARC) wrote:
I have not listened to that podcast, at least not yet. I haven't because of time constraints, but your comment intrigues me enough that I may well make time for it. However, I will say something about cooperatives in general and hope that I am not too contradicted by the podcast. The trouble with cooperatives is that they operate within the capitalist system as a whole and must interact with capitalism and largely depend on capitalism. A cooperative cannot function with a complete internal sustainability. Eventually some kind of supplies have to be bought from the capitalist economy outside the cooperative and that often puts it at the mercy of the external capitalists. In order to get the capital to buy supplies from the capitalists it becomes necessary to sell products to external enterprises and that means trying to get the best price and strive for a profit. In the sense I have just talked about the cooperative is the same as a commune and that is exactly what leads to the degradation of utopian socialist communes. They simply cannot function without making bigger and bigger concessions to the economy outside the commune. Most communes do not operate as insular utopian socialist communes though. In most cases the individuals in the cooperative are employed by capitalist enterprises and may actually be owners of capitalist enterprises even if those enterprises are small shops or home based businesses. That is, the members remain exploited by capitalism or forced to strive for profit. That is, the profit system forces everyone to capitulate to the profit system. The result is that most every cooperative gets coopted. Probably the best known example is the Southern States Cooperative. That one showed itself just at the right time for me once when I was having a conversation with my brother. My brother, incidentally, joined an egalitarian commune in Missouri. When we were having this particular conversation we were in an automobile that I was driving. He was praising cooperatives to me. Just then we drove past a feed store with a big sign advertising the Southern States Cooperative. I said, " you mean like that?" as I pointed to the sign. He said, "That's not a real cooperative." I said, "It used to be." Well it has not been a real cooperative for a long time now. It is a big business that sells farm supplies, but it still retains the name cooperative. They just never got around to changing the name to reflect what it became. And insofar as it still exists at all it got really lucky. Most cooperatives are simply run out of business or bought out and either become part of a big business or are killed by the big business that bought them out. I am afraid that bubbles of socialism don't stand much of a chance as long as the surrounding economy remains unchanged.
___
Carl Sagan “Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/15/2020 2:35 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I've been listening to this podcast for more than two hours and I absolutely loved it. Thanks Carl. I'd be interested to hear what Roger and Maurice think of what Richard Wolff had to say.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2020 12:02 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Fwd: Cooperatives and socialism: Prof Wolff on All Things Co-op
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Democracy at Work <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 16:40:01 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Cooperatives and socialism: Prof Wolff on All Things Co-op
To: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
<https://democracyatwork.info/donate>
Carl --
Professor Wolff recently joined the hosts of All Things Co-op in a special event to talk about cooperatives, Marxist theory, critiques of capitalism, and more.
In this conversation Prof Wolff shared many personal stories, including how his French father’s determination created a Latin class for him to take in his Ohio high school, his experiences in Ivy League schools, and how he became interested in cooperatives <https://youtu.be/XTd9KRtO5yI?t=682>.
Wolff: “I spent 10 years of my life in these Ivy League places and they were constantly telling me economics is price theory and I kept saying that's not why I came here. I'm interested in how it's all arranged, what it does to human beings in society, and how we can change it… I didn't know anything about worker co-ops but the more I studied the more I understood that Marx's idea meant to pose the question, well what then, if not that? I had heard about Yugoslavia, or about Kibbutzim in Israel, or about those hokey little agricultural co-ops that made cheese in Wisconsin or wine in France. Suddenly it all came together. It's an attempt to organize the production process without master/slave, lord/serf or employer/employee. Literally dozens of bits of Marxism that I had known but didn't see how they'd fit together, then fit.”
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTd9KRtO5yI>
He also shared a story of talking to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley <https://youtu.be/XTd9KRtO5yI?t=984>, who had left the large tech companies such as Google and Oracle in order to create their own startups. They shared with Prof Wolff how they were much happier and more creative working with each other, making decisions together.
Wolff: “I said, you know what you're doing? You are acting out Karl Marx's notion of communism. It was hysterical. I wish I had a camera.
I would explain to them, no one ever taught you Marxism. That's why you don't know what you're doing. And I'm here to make you uncomfortable. You walked away from capitalism and you created communism because it makes you happier and makes you more productive... Some of them still write to me."
Prof Wolff explained how he feels it’s critical that cooperatives have political representation, how the US could follow some examples of political movements in the UK that can foster cooperative growth, and how co-ops are a very promising idea when coupled with the argument that we should move on from monarchy-like organizational structures.
<https://youtu.be/XTd9KRtO5yI?t=7320>
Wolff: “When the United States made a revolution, it didn't get rid of King George III and erect King George Washington. We didn't do that because we didn't want that anymore. But why do we allow it to live on [in the workplace]? And the co-op is the answer. The co-op is the alternative. Self-determination of the working man and woman.”
These are just some snapshots of a long conversation that is filled with many other stories and insights. It is our latest piece of work that aims to provide simple and relatable content for a wide audience, and explain how and why we should move beyond capitalism.
Wolff: “It's a fantastic irony, when I talk to socialists and explain why co-ops are relevant they're uncomfortable. When I talk to co-op people and tell them how it's relevant to socialism they're uncomfortable. Because neither of them figured out yet that these things can and should go together. And that, in a sense, is my project.”
In solidarity,
The d@w Team
Democracy at Work
<https://democracyatwork.info/donate>
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Created with NationBuilder - http://nationbuilder.com/ Prof. Richard Wolff is a favorite of mine.
Carl Jarvis
