Asklemmy

48130 readers

737 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

203

Why don't communist movements focus on creating and nurturing employee owned businesses? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

183 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.

It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.

So my main questions are:

Are organizations focusing on this and I just don't know about it?
If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Because they cannot compete with the economies of scale, the availability of capital, market power, an exploitable workforce, etc.

It's like asking why you can't win at checkers when your opponent is cheating at 4d chess.

Read: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Well creating an opposibg empire didn't work out so great.

Capitalism is a belief system, you can't beat ideas with guns.

There's not going to be an anti-imperialist empire that successfully ends imperialism.

It exist only because it's population is cajoled into accepting it as the only viable, profitable option.

Concentration of power is the social disease, it creates a "all the eggs in one basket" situation where one bandit can seize control of the whole.

It is a strange paradox that a society built on individual responsibility would be corrupted and usurped by its cooperation mechanism. And that the path to a semblance of decency is to cut down on cooperation to disempower those at the grotesque top.

And then maintain taboos to prevent tge concentrations fromvforming again. BECAUSE they are too profitable and power.

Make CEO a crime, make presidents weak, cut off the heads of kings.