this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Start an employee-owned socialist company and get to it! It's been done before, somewhat successfully. So get on it!
Sadly you often need a lot of capital, a resource available largely to the wealthy.
Details matter, but there are low capital businesses. Ice cream and pizza shops as examples.
Also, this is a website with a lot of tech professionals. You can get together a few fellow professionals and set up a coop. Law offices are kinda like that with partners being owners. You can follow the partner model which is very bougieoise or you can include even your cleaning staff as coowners. It’s not like starting a factory
I have been thinking of doing exactly this. Super intimidating though.
I keep getting hung up on which step to do first. Get customers, contracts for customers, advertising, or processes.
Try talking to small business incubators. They don’t need to know you’re planning to create a worker owned coop.
And remember, if you take on business debts in the beginning, so long as they’re well documented it’s ok to charge all that to the company as loans to you. I would gladly join a coop that pays its debts to its members
I’d probably need at least half a million to start a business in my industry (early childhood education).
A daycare, or something else?
We need more daycares, so I encourage you to challenge the idea of it costing so much up front.
Kinda a disparaging name for the industry, but close enough.
There’s a lot of things you’re required to have in my country to open one, for obvious safety and education reasons. Add to that exorbitant prices on renting a suitable site.
I apologize. It was not my aim to insult.
Nah it’s okay, many people unfortunately still call it that.
Yeah that’s fair. I work in industrial settings so I’m in a similar boat. Historically when my folks obtain the means of production force is involved. You probably shouldn’t do that one either.
Isn't the "company" part of what you mentioned still playing the game?
Capitalism isn't "organizations involved in work" or even the idea of trading goods and services for others or currency.
Capitalism is the idea that there's people who own the land, buildings, machines, and materials, hire labour, and pay them as little as they can convince them to work for while taking profit for just being the boss of that stuff.
Ok I agree with that definition, but the suggestion that you were making, at least how I interpreted it, was to start a socialist company to try and be successful within that same exploitative system which I think sort of misses the point of what I was trying to say.
You can't not participate in capitalism from day 1. You start a company (or call it whatever), then someone else does the same. You trade with them. You build.
Unless you have an island with no government where you'd like to start fresh?
Expanded/extended mutual aid networks amidst non-profit/not-for-profit companies and worker coops might be really interesting. This reminds me to dig around some more for any histories on attempts of this nature to identify what issues emerged to try to address them.
One Free Community is full of like minded people doing a bit of this
https://discord.com/invite/wCpKpQjq
Exactly. And you can help fund fellow socialist companies. Sure maybe you’re a coop with low startup expenses, but if you put aside cash to help fund a factory that’s either part of your coop or a sibling coop that’s helping spread worker ownership
It wasn't my suggestion. And personally, I only think it would work at a small scale. If it gains momentum that makes some capitalists nervous, they'll come down hard on it with the power of the state. And even before it gets to that point, other companies won't likely play nice with you. You wouldn't just be a competitor in their market, you'd be a competitor to their way of life.
If you start a company, you don't have to maintain controlling ownership of it. You can also separate the proceeds from the decision making process. You can define a different manager/managee relationship where the managers aren't mini dictators that just tell others what to do and make more money than any of them. You can allow employees to have more (or full!) control over their own schedules. It's a bunch of partnerships working for mutual benefit instead of subordinates working for your benefit for the lowest you think you can pay them.