Richard Wolff: "Worker Cooperatives: Movements for Social Change and Personal Empowerment" - 1 of 2

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so thank you all for coming and everyone here good I'm also going to talk to you about worker coops and I'm gonna make comments about them not so much from the psychological perspective that Harriet just did but from the economics perspective because that's what I do and that's what I think can be a nice partner in a sense for what Harriet has talked to you about let me begin with a little bit of history which is very important worker coops and by that I mean very clearly a work place an enterprise a factory an office store whatever that is run by all the workers there in a democratic way one worker one vote this is actually something difficult for an American audience to get their heads around so if you have a hard time thinking about it that's not your problem you're nothing wrong with you it's just unusual to imagine that when you got to work you had no rank relative to other people in making all the big decisions that you were part of the decision-making apparatus what that enterprise would produce what method of production it would choose to use machines this kind that kind more machines like all of the technical questions you would be deciding so what to produce how to produce where the production would take place here or there this part of town that part of town in the United States in China where and finally and probably most important you would be part of a democratic debating decision-making operation deciding what to do with the profits that all of you as a collective of workers produced in this business this year a democratic workplace that's what worker co-op means when I use the term it says old as Methuselah 900 years I fire remember the Bible right it's very old there's this is not a new idea this is not something that was invented this year or this century it is very very old if I had more time I talked to you about some of the old experiences the one I like to tell in American audiences is a group of people back in colonial America before we were an independent country a group of people that are still around they're called the shakers some of you have heard about them make fantastic furniture that is still an elegant way of simple way of making furniture the shakers still exist Pittsfield Massachusetts is the base but there are many parts of the United States they organized all production including of that famous furniture as worker coops workers together democratically deciding what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the profits by the way you might be interested the majority of the workers in the shaker workshops were women and the reason they were women is that the shakers had a very interesting concept they were called shakers because one of their religious commitments was to avoid the practice of sex so instead of whatever relief they might have gotten in that form they got together and shook literally that's why they were called shakers they shook believe me if you want odd sexuality that was not that big a deal we're way ahead of them now they shook but they did something else they said to any woman who came to the shaker communities whither with our children that if she explained that she was leaving an abusive relationship a batterer a husband who mistreated her they took her in with her children this was at a time where women like that had absolutely no place to go no one to take them in and so one of the reason that was filled with women it was a place to which women came especially when the word got out that you would be taken care of and your children you'll be fed you'd be housed you'd be closed and you'd be given a job so that's part of American history this worker co-op and if you never heard about the shakers other than they shook instead of had sex or they made beautiful furniture if the part about the worker co-op was left out that should give you a clue about a problem of our educational system it's not a fault of yours how would you know in Europe the two countries that have more worker coops than anywhere else are Spain and Italy but number one Italy for those of you who might be interested you might want to visit one day the area called Emilia Romagna it's a big part of the Italian country it's one of their big regions 40% of the economy of Emilia Romagna is worker coops lots of them they develop because it's an old tradition in that part of the world to organize work that way as a collective the people who organize that years ago took as their rationale the Bible in this case the Roman Catholic Bible or the Roman Catholic interpretation so for those of you who wonder is this something that can be understood justified rationalized in terms of Christian ideology the answer is oh sure plenty of examples in the north of Spain Herod has told you about the Mondragon corporation just a history started by a Roman Catholic priest Father Arizmendi that's why the name of that bakery chain for those of you who don't know here in the San Francisco area is called the Arizmendi bakeries that's named after the priest in Mondragon at little city in the north of Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains that was the name of that priest Father Arizmendi he made a joke as the local parish priest if we all wait for jobs until some capitalist comes into town and offers us a job we will all die of old age and when everybody finished giggling he said look you know it would be smarter we become our own capitalists we become our own boss or in simple English will be a co-op will be not just the worker but the boss too that way we don't have to wait for someone else to come in and be the boss with six workers 1956 he begins and as Harry I told you it's about a hundred thousand now seventh largest corporation in Spain Mondragon cooperative corporation is a family of about one hundred and fifty two hundred co-ops in everything from retail to manufacturing to agriculture you name it they do it they have their own University they have their own research labs their research labs are among the most advanced in the world particularly on electric automobile technology there are two American corporations that are so taken with the quality of the research done by this worker co-op institution that they pay them so that their scientists Americans can work alongside of them in the labs there in Mondragon so I thought you might be interested in the names of the two American corporations that pay them you've heard of them one is called General Motors and the other one is called Microsoft you never heard about American companies paying worker coops for their advanced technology of course not of course you haven't worker coops are old this is not a new idea it's an alternative the worker cost an alternative way to organize your work life you might want to think about that since that's where you spend most of your adult life five out of seven days as an adult you go to work you probably get up prepare for work then you travel to work then you do the work and then you recover from the work so that you can do it again tomorrow I know that made it depressing for some of you but it is a way of understanding that work is a very big part of your life and so you shouldn't be surprised at human beings for a long time have figured out it might be nice to organize the work in a gratifyingly developmental way for the human being since you spend so much time there so people have formed coops as a better way to get that time spent to make it more valuable to themselves for a long time well then why haven't you heard more about it why haven't you heard about the American worker coops they're all over the place and the foreign worker coops well they're good reasons first of all a worker coop makes the alternative a capitalist enterprise look not so good you kind of already know this but let me make sure it's in your head you go to work in a capitalist enterprise somebody else tells you what to do it's sort of like you cross this threshold into the business and all that stuff about democracy participating in the decisions that shape your life all of that is left on the coat hanger with your jacket that's not acceptable inside you don't participate in making the decisions the company decides what you're to work at where your the work with what machinery or the work with what raw materials you going to work your to use your brains and muscle but your to do it in a way you're told to do and then the big moment you're done the day is over it's five o'clock what you poured your creativity into your brains your muscle your energy it stays where you work you go home and for those of you that occasionally take something from work home with you or shortly thereafter visited by people in dark blue uniforms who hurt you to help you remember not to do that in the future I know a few folks are creative and manage it nonetheless but you get the idea what you do you're told to do and what you've produced belongs immediately to somebody else not to you here's the deal at the end of the week you get some money in your hand that's your that's what you get everything else that you've produced belongs to somebody else is it really surprising that human beings have looked at that and said yeah I don't want that is there an alternative it's question that probably occurs to nearly everybody and the question is has someone offered you an answer well if you had a proper history of the way work has been organized you all would not need me at all you already know that worker coops has been an alternative a democratic worker organization of the workplace is very old because people have wanted it needed it yearned for it for a long time it's an alternative to capitalism and therein lies a very important clue we did talk about worker coops in the United States the shakers were proud of the worker coops that their women worked they didn't hide them they didn't worry Gina shittin capitalist them didn't occur them they thought it was a wonderful Christian way to organize production as did many other coops indeed worker coops in America have often been religiously organized some of you know that there are certain kinds of jams and jellies you can buy with names like brother this or sister that or the Trappist monks jams and jellies you know why that is because religious orders organize their productions in worker cooperative mechanisms Wow so what happened why and when did people become nervous shy about talking about this not making the history clear to one another not learning in school about this other way of organizing production a collective democratic doing it together making the workplace dare I say it a community without hierarchy without a boss I've been a professor all my adult life the beginning of all my lectures I used to teach very large classes at the University of Massachusetts where I was a professor and sometimes I had as many as six or seven hundred students in a big auditorium and I would always hand out at the beginning of the semester first day of class a little piece of paper and I would ask them questions so I would know a little bit better who I'm talking to what is your major what part of the country do you come from that kind of thing and then always I asked the question tell me in ten words what you hope will be your situation five years after you graduate economically speaking I always got the same answer overwhelming majority of my students said to me I want to be my own boss I don't want to work for somebody else I always thought that was stunning that was a very powerful comment by these young people on the lives they saw their parents living they didn't want that they wanted to be their own boss when I then informed them that the prospects of getting that outcome were slim to none they were depressed and then I could explain to them why that was I want to be your own boss guess what worker co-op is the best chance you have to ever get near that in a capitalist system so way it is so why didn't we learn all of this this has to do with the Cold War we've had co-ops all along American history but after World War two the co-op movement for very good reasons decided oh oh we got to be very careful now and why was that because it's starting in 1946 and 47 for those of you not familiar with American history let me remind you we had just been in a great depression capitalism wasn't looking real good in the Great Depression because everybody was in trouble you all do remember 1933 the unemployment rate is twenty five percent that's five times worse than it is officially now that was really bad capitalism was held responsible for that because capitalism wasn't looking real good and then we went to war world war two and the big ally of the United States in World War two and it's always stunning to me how many Americans in my audiences don't know what I'm about to tell you the big ally of the United States in the Soviet you in the world war two I just gave it away was the Soviet Union Russia American offices had that famous picture Uncle Sam with the tophat the whole the Uncle Sam arm-in-arm with somebody called uncle Joe Joe was Joseph Stalin and when you bought your postcard you had a smiling Joe Stalin looking down on you so at the end of World War two American businesses were very upset capitalism had a bad name and we were the best friends with huh the Communists can you imagine not only that we had a president who had given the mass of people Social Security unemployment compensation of public jobs program a minimum wage all kinds of things which conservatives and businesses didn't like so they decided to push all it is back undo the New Deal how did you do that you attacked the political coalition that created the New Deal and again for those of you not up on your American history when the economy collapsed in 1929 things changed very quickly in America much more profoundly than they have since 2008 at least so far American workers got angry not at immigrants not at politicians but at the capitalist system so here's what they did they joined unions by the millions was the greatest organizing Drive in American history unions never achieved that before they never achieved it since the CIO was the name of the organization that put it all together and they did that together with two big socialist parties my apologies of this trouble some of you are I know the American history you had left all of this out and a big communist party that worked with the CIO producing an enormous pressure from below and they went to see the president who had to see them because they represented 50 million people and they said to the president you got to do something for us because if you don't we won't vote for you anymore and you won't be president and then the Socialists and communists piped up oh it's worse than that mr. president we're gonna make a revolution here like in Russia and Roosevelt was a good politician he knew they weren't bluffing he went back to the rich and the powerful of whom he was a part and he said I just had this meeting and these people is what they told me and my advice to you big business folks my friends my neighbors is to give me the money to take care of them because if you don't you're not gonna have any money to give anybody anyway so you don't know much to lose half of them were convinced the other half never were the descendants of the half who were not convinced the Koch brothers the people who were convinced that was the Alliance that was enough for Roosevelt to create social security in the middle of depression unemployment compensation the passed the minimum wage and to create 15 million public jobs building things like I don't know the Golden Gate Bridge among other things Wow so after World War two all of this had to be pushed back and the way you did that was to destroy that coalition of communists socialists and unions and how do you destroy a coalition you pick on the weakest link and the weakest link was the Communist Party and what you did is you went to work and you said you know those communists who will helped organize the unions that's not really what they were doing they were agents of a foreign power oh that's scary and you got rid of them you put them in jail you deported them you did all the things check it out in your history if you have some time and as soon as you were done with the commies you went after the Socialists and you explain to the American people something many of them still believe that a socialist is just like a communist except this spell it differently by the way when I go to Europe I talk to people about socialist and communist everybody in the audience understands the difference here in the United States I explained socialist government everybody thinks it's a synonym at first I used to think that people are stupid they're not stupid that's a part of our education we would we taught our people that today most Americans that I encounter in my classes my students think that socialist communist marxist anarchist thought the same some of the mad liberal and Muslim as all the same they're bad people we even have fairly important candidates who pretty much say that so it's popular well in that moment in that spirit American worker co-op said oh we who believe in organizing the workplace as a cooperative we could be called communists socialists Radek and so the American co-operative movement consciously unconsciously made a decision the decision I understand I probably would have made it myself we've got to somehow take this co-op idea and hide it minimize it a co-op then should become a kind of nice and cuddly sort of thing that nice people particularly little towns do when they get together to grow organic turnips or nice religious people a little odd but you know they're religious if they do they they like to be nice to one another it became something marginal to society threatening anybody not an alternative take captain oh no just a nice little corner of a perfectly okay capitalist system something that wasn't all that important didn't involve all that many people nothing for you to be taught about nothing for you to think about nothing for you to worry about nothing it's barely even there which puts me in the awkward position of having to tell you of course it's a ver it's been there for thousands of years we now have to bring back into American culture and civilization an awareness of an alternative to the capitalist economic system that was always there in order for us to say what to say nowadays 2016 we've got a capitalism that really isn't working real well and therefore it's more urgent than ever to look at what the alternatives might be to which we might look as a way forward let me drive that point home as I worked towards the conclusion the capitalism we live in this system and organized so that every enterprise is a dictatorship and every is no other way to say this even though that may upset you just for a moment a tiny group of people make all the decisions these people are called major shareholders and the board of directors so let's be sure we all understand what I just said shareholders you most of you know that most of America's corporations but on all of the big large ones our share owning companies they're companies that have shares that you can buy on the stock market and thereby you become an owner of the company to the degree that you own shares you may not know that 1% of the share owners all 75% of the shares in economics we refer to share ownership as being highly concentrated that's a vague term Occupy Wall Street refers to the 1% that's a precise term that gets it right on the nose 1% are the major shareholders why are they important because the people who make all the decisions in a corporation or the Board of Directors in most corporations that's 15 to 20 people individuals just like you and I in this room who decides who's on the board of directors the shareholders once a year in every corporation the shareholders have a vote they decide who is on the board of directors who will be those 15 people all any of you have to do to be on the board of directors of Apple Incorporated is to get the shareholders to vote for you then you're on if they vote for you you're on if they don't you're not how does it work you get one vote for every share so if you're very wealthy and you have a million shares you get a million votes if alternatively your grandmother who unfortunately died last year left you eleven shares as her bequest you have eleven votes if you were so unfortunate as to have no votes of no shares of Apple then that's how many votes you get none one percent of the people have seventy-five percent of the votes you understand a tiny group of people picked the Board of Directors those 15 people here the decisions they make what your company produces how it goes about it where the production occurs and what is done with the profits there's the root of our capitalist economic system how it organized at the workplace the vast majority of people are hired by the Board of Directors in any corporation they're the bosses you're not they make all the decisions you don't that's not a democracy that's an autocracy that's a dictatorship if not of one person then of a very small number they make all the decisions Wow that might not be so bad if it worked out for you you
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Channel: Democracy At Work
Views: 25,656
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Keywords: Richard Wolff, democracy, work, labor, economy, economics, inequality, justice, worker coops, cooperatives, capitalism, economic justice, economic democracy
Id: urCy3UOGgx8
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Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)
Published: Sun Nov 06 2016
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