Why don't communist movements focus on creating and nurturing employee owned businesses?

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're viewing a single thread.

180 comments

I think communists and socialists and anarchists and broadly leftists do argue for cooperatives and workplace democratisation.
The reason they maybe don't do it enough is because those businesses in our present environment will get beaten by exploitation mostly.
Co-operatives by nature will sacrifice profit for employee conditions because they have more stakeholders (and shareholders) to be accountable to. Lower wages through exploitation will tend to reduce costs and allow the capitalist businesses to drop prices, and outcompete opponents and secure more investment capital due to higher market penetration, which will allow them to invest in their business, incl. Marketing and product development, and outcompete the more fair sustainable business, until they corner the market and can jack up.the prices and bleed consumers dry and push for laws/lack thereof to exploit employees and cut costs further.
- Cooperatives tend to be more stable than traditional firms, but they are both harder to start, and aren't Communist. OP is confusing worker-owned private property with the abolition of Private Property, Communists don't focus on worker cooperatives because cooperatives retain petite bourgeois class relations.
  Rather than creating a society run by and for all collectively, cooperatives are a less exploitative but still competition and profit-driven form of private business. Communists wish to move beyond such a format, even if we side with cooperatives over traditional firms when available.
- I don't agree with this. Shareholders extracting value from a company is arguably more of an 'inefficency' than treating employees fairly. Well treated employees provide a benefit to the company while shareholders purely remove resources.
  I have no data to back up my claim, just logic, so I could very well be wrong.
  
  You got a point there, and there may be a lot of data to prove that point.
  I am part of a housing cooperative ("Wohnungsgenossenschaft" in German), and these cooperatives are noticeably cheaper because they are owned by the members/renters and don't have to generate any profit, just enough excess money to build new homes. The principle is very convincing if you live in it and save loads of money every month. The cooperatives employees aren't overworking themselves, too.
  
  Awesome! Where can I read further about this endeavor?
  
  Look for Wohnungsgenossenschaft or Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft. They are relatively common in Germany and Austria; Vienna is an example where the majority of flats are owned by such cooperatives. In Hamburg roughly 14% of all flats in the city are being provided by cooperatives which has huge advantages for those who get to become members.
  All sources I know are in German language so if you want to read further just go for these texts and translate them into your mother tongue. Maybe start with Wikipedia:
  https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft
  
  Shareholders extracting value from a company is arguably more of an ‘inefficency’ than treating employees fairly.
  Their pals also owns all media and all economists so they will outright lie to everyone about it. Capitalism at this point in development when even capitalist themselves gets alienated from their own capital loses every advantage and usefulness for developing the productive forces.
- I saw it happen with Walmart, Ace Hardware, Pizza Hut, Lowe's/Home Depot. We used to have independent supermarkets too, who set their own prices based on local conditions. I live in an area where the supermarket in a nearby town (it's really a village) often has lower prices on produce and meats. The big national brands cost more, and this store doesn't get bulk discounts like Walmart, HT, and Kroger! The problem is I still have to go a few towns over to get decent coffee because Folgers, Maxwell House and Staryuck isn't it, so when I get a ride, I have to buy extra and freeze it. The local independent store doesn't have as good starting pay or benefits, though, but without their store, many of our older population would be in serious trouble. An elderly man kept me for some time in the meat department of our chain store because he said he was ashamed to be looking at low quality beef at those prices, when he used to farm and hunt his own. Years of farming to feed our country left him with hands that don't work the way they used too. I didn't buy their overpriced products, and felt bad for someone who destroyed their body for people who largely don't even consider that nature gives us her body and blood for us to eat and drink, and from showing, weeding, irrigating, harvesting, processing, packaging, shipping, stocking, dusting, sweeping, waxing, checking, the individuals who suffer and destroy their bodies to get it to the table.
  I was in another independently owned grocery a few towns over by happenstance to pick up a few things while accessible. In less than 15 minutes, because I didn't know where items were and asked, three different employees told me to wait, they'd be right back. I guessed they were asking or making sure. Each returned with the specific item I wanted, to save me steps! Again, every item but one was less expensive than the chains, and I am guessing they can't compete with chain grocery starting pay, either.
  Interestingly enough, the employees do get a small profit sharing incentive.

180 comments