brique wrote:
> *Anarcissie* <anarcissie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:1186399528.121626.304710@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Aug 5, 2:50 pm, "brique" <briquen...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> Dan Clore <cl...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>> news:5hl2j0F3l64qnU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>> brique wrote:
>>>>> *Anarcissie* <anarcis...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>>>> news:1186116498.790523.234240@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>>>>> On Aug 3, 12:26 am, "brique" <briquen...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>>>>> Dan Clore <cl...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>> "Given the new ground that ROC-NY is trying to cover -- the
> creation
>>>>> of
>>>>>>>> a worker cooperative-type restaurant -- it's hardly surprising
> that
>>>>>>>> there's conflict among the members of the co-op as this very
>>> difficult
>>>>>>>> model begins to take shape," Carroll said. "It's unfortunate that
>>>>>>>> litigation has to be the consequence of these unresolved
> conflicts,
>>>>>>>> because of the promise of what it's about . . . carving out a new
>>>>>>>> definition of who's an employer -- an employer who is an owner
> but
>>>>> also
>>>>>>>> a worker, and there's a little bit of chaos inherent," he said.
>>>>>>> Maybe they should have done a bit of research. In the UK the
>>> Industrial
>>>>>>> Common Owner****p Movement has several decades of experience in
> this
>>>>> field,
>>>>>>> along with model constitutions, rules, etc. all of which have been
> put
>>>>> into
>>>>>>> practice with varying degrees of business success. And if anyone
> is
>>>>> worried
>>>>>>> about such awful socialist liberalism..... the legislation was
> passed
>>>>> under
>>>>>>> Thatchers rule, the sponsoring MP being none other than Norman
>>>>> Tebbit.......
>>>>>> Americans are pretty carefully kept from knowing anything
>>>>>> about anything but traditional authoritarian capitalist business
>>>>>> models by both the schools and the media. You can see this
>>>>>> on Usenet, where over the years dozens of people have
>>>>>> informed me that there are no viable, functioning communes
>>>>>> or coops. That may be changing now that anyone can look
>>>>>> them up on the Internet, but it's changing pretty slowly.
>>>>>> Consequently every cooperative effort starts from square 1,
>>>>>> if not square zero.
>>>>> True, the best way to stop people looking for an alternative is to
> first
>>>>> convince them that none exist....
>>>> And there are two main ways of doing that: (1) simply ignore the
>>>> alternative, as the mainstream media, schools, etc., generally do, so
>>>> that people never hear about it in the first place; (2) misrepresent
> the
>>>> alternative, so that people will believe untrue, negative things
about
>>>> it, and therefore consider it too unattractive to be a real
> alternative
>>>> -- as we see here on Usenet, where efforts to form workers
> cooperatives
>>>> like the above misrepresented as attempts at totalitarian
> state-communism.
>>> My experience of worker-co-ops ( formed under the ICOM rules I
mentioned
>>> above) was that a surprising number of the participants ended up
> behaving
>>> like any 'normal' management structure. Oddly, or perhaps not, this
did
>>> reflect the social background of the group, with those from
middle-class
>>> backgrounds seemingly more willing to adopt labour division and
>>> specialisation, guess who considered themselves best suited to
>>> 'co-ordination' and 'office' duties, whilst those from working class
>>> backgrounds found themselves often ignored when discussing finances,
> future
>>> plans, etc. Also noticable was a fairly strict, and over several
years,
>>> growing, shopfloor/office demarcation, on one occasion enforced by
>>> complaints about 'grubby shoes' messing up the new office carpeting
> leading
>>> to an effective ban on shopfloor workers even entering them.
>>> The regular 'managment meetings' revealed a surprising number of
> stitch-ups,
>>> policies already discussed and decided upon by the 'office' side,
> presented
>>> as pretty much done and dusted to the shopfloor side. This probably
>>> reflected the ease they had in discussing matters and access to the
> relevant
>>> information, etc whilst the shopfloor was so noisy ( it was a
printroom)
>>> lip-reading was the norm for communication.
>>> Far from leading to 'mass-murdering socialist totalitarianism' my view
> was
>>> that the impetus was towards behaving like any run of-the-mill
business,
> it
>>> was just the shareholder structure that was unusual.
>>> Is this inevitable? No, but it did seem to be the 'easiest' course for
> some,
>>> merely adopting the same strategies for workplace advancement and
>>> power-games and applying them in that work environment.
>> Some cooperative organizations go to considerable trouble
>> to elicit input from the whole group of participants. It seems
>> necessary to go out of one's way to avoid the emergence of
>> habitual domination by a minority who happen to be talented
>> that way. I often think of that when people tell me about
>> "democracy".
>>
> That is the theory, for sure. But, same as in 'democracy' your input
depends
> on the data you recieve to make your decision and thus your input. There
> also exists the same tendency amongst some to value certain inputs
higher
> than others whilst paying lip-service to equality. And, not least of
all,
> the tendency to know what is best for others, regardless of their
> 'inputs'......
> As I said, I spoke from my personal experience in two such enterprises.
> Conversations with others who worked in similar ventures here have not
> contradicted that view to any great extent.
I would think that, at a minimum, to prevent this from happening, you
would need (1) some sort of structure in place to prevent it (what works
best would be an empirical matter, and different strategies would
probably work better for different enterprises); and (2) a broad
commitment among the members against it. It doesn't sound like you had
either at the two cooperatives you belonged to.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/1587154838/ref=nosim/thedanclorenecro
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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