Richard Wolff's talk on worker coops

I’m going to first point to another argument made by Wolff, and then address the arguments of my opponent. If there were more worker coops, there would be more freedom of choice As it is right now, a vast majority of people have no choice but to purchase things from a capitalist business. In addition, people have no choice but to work for a capitalist business. This is because there are hardly any worker coops in the United States. If there was a worker coop sector of the economy, as Wolff talks about, there would be more choice and more voting power for people. You could vote with your money: if you like capitalist businesses you can shop at those, if you prefer worker coops, you can shop at those. As it is right now, you go to any mall, and everything is a capitalist enterprise. You have basically no choice but to shop at capitalist businesses. Rebuttals to opponent’s arguments I'll put quotes by my opponent in italics and respond accordingly He uses the term capitalism as a catch all for corporatism, crony-capitalism, and state-capitalism, without separating it from free-market capitalism. Capitalism is a broad term so it would include all of those versions of it. Why should those versions of capitalism be separated from capitalism? They are in fact versions of capitalism. Similarly, I would use socialism to refer to all forms of socialism, not just cooperative individualism. If I wanted to refer to cooperative individualism(or laissez-faire capitalism), I would say so. His major issue with capitalism appears to be effects of state influence on markets, with a solution of more state influence to correct prior failures. I don't believe he mentioned anything about state influence on markets or offering a solution of more state influence. I had to look through the video again to double check, and I don't see a single instance where he promoted government intervention, perhaps my opponent can point to the specific time stamp and which video it was. Maybe you're talking about when he referred to the New Deal programs? He didn't exactly say he supported those things, he just talked about how businesses sought a way to roll back those programs. If voters were to watch the video, I'm sure they will see that there is nothing in it that promotes state influence. At most, you might be able to say since he promoted making America aware of the worker coop movement, maybe that would be done by the state through the public education system or something, but he didn't specifically say that either. He didn't offer a specific as to how to make America more aware of it. It could be just as simple as what he is doing in this video: going around the country himself and talking about worker coops. At any rate, this point should be dismissed because he didn't promote these ideas from what I can see. ...but leaves out the disaster of collective ownership at Jamestown Probably because the collective ownership of jamestown had nothing to do with worker coops. He's talking about worker coops after all, and I don't believe Jamestown had those. Just because one collective failed, doesn't mean all types will(and worker coops are different from what Jamestown had). That would be a fallacy. As for the rest of this paragraph, you keep talking about state influence, but again, this wasn't promoted by Richard Wolff. There's something called cooperative individualism. It is an economy in which has worker coops as the primary mode of production. Cooperative individualism is a form of individualism. How is a democracy not individualism? RE: worker coops are doomed for failure Facts are not on my opponent’s side at all for this. You can talk as theoretically all you want, but in the end, it's facts and evidence that matter. Let's look at the survival rate of worker coops and traditional businesses for the first hard five years of being in business: coops survive at a 80% rate, traditional businesses, at a 41% rate[6, pg 8][7]. If any business model is more doomed for failure, it is the traditional, capitalist model according to these statistics. This point is negated. RE: Risk and reward How does cooperative ownership get rid of that system of risk and reward? Is it not a risk for people to come together and put some capital forward for the worker coop, in hopes that they gain more capital from the business(reward)? I would argue risk and reward still exists in worker cooperatives. The risk is just lower because multiple people who are from the class of the majority(the poor and middle classes) are more likely than a single wealthy person to know what people of the middle and poor classes want to purchase. So, a worker coop is more likely to survive likely for this reason. There is still, nonetheless risk in a worker coop. There's a 20% chance of failure in the first 5 years as I discussed, and then the workers would be out of jobs and have lost whatever money they put into the business. RE: attracting talent As I pointed out in the previous round, worker coops are more productive than traditional businesses. It seems the one having trouble of putting talent to use is the traditional business. Point negated RE: property rights All of what my opponent talks about here is conjecture. If they can show an example of a worker coop running into the problem where someone sells their position for money, then this would be a stronger argument. However, the nature of a worker coop would prevent this from happening. People don’t join a worker coop in order to make other people work for them, they join them in order to be more properly compensated for their own work and to have a say over a business. I don’t see what my opponent is talking about happening, and I don’t believe it has ever happened in the centuries worker coops have been around. RE: Entrepreneurs Worker coops don’t get rid of entrepreneurs, it just changes how they work and who they are. An entrepreneur doesn’t need to be a wealthy person or the sole owner of the business. Worker coops can be created by entrepreneurs. It could be created by a group of people who each pitch in for the business. Would you not consider them entrepreneurs, even though they each worked together and contributed a little bit to the business? Additionally, some coops are created by a business owner who realizes it would be a better idea to split ownership of the company with the workers. Some people are selfless like that. Not everyone in the world is selfish and greedy and keep the ownership of the company for themselves. Re: Palatable socialism The democratic control of the means of production is literally what socialism is. It’s not some watered-down form of socialism that is supposed to make socialism look better. See the definition here[8]. I think the reason you see it as some palatable form of socialism is because you’ve grown up in a capitalist country that promotes capitalism, and lies about socialism. America had two freaking red scares in our history after all where anyone who was a socialist or communist was considered a foreign spy and were deported, imprisoned, or killed. You can’t possibly say that a country like this would have the right idea and correct promotion/definition of what socialism is. Of course they will paint socialism as some horrible idea and something that it is not. As Wolff said, many people in America think liberalism, socialism, communism, etc are all just the same thing. In reality, however, anarchists, marxists, liberals, etc have all had a violent history with one another and rarely got along with one another. If you learn about revolutionary catalonia, an anarcho-syndicalist society, who had marxists try to overthrow their government, or how the bolsheviks kicked out the anarcho-communists of the free territory of Ukraine, you’d see that the conclusion is that leftist ideas all differ. We’re not all the same. Re: inequality and moral/immoral means of gaining income Moral income would be from engaging in voluntary exchange. While immoral sources of income would be from theft, coercion, fraud, or special favors from government. And what is voluntary about a system of capitalism where you have no other choice but to work for a capitalist business? Capitalism is immoral for this sole purpose. You literally have no other choice but to work under someone who takes a percentage of the profits that are a result of your own work, or be the one who does that to other workers. Additionally, I would argue that the capitalist way of earning income is theft. I argue a person is entitled to the product of their own labor, this seems to be a reasonable idea that you should have what you work for and what results from your work, no? If that is the case, then a business owner regularly steals from the workers. The growth of a company is a direct result from the work a worker puts into it(thus the company in itself, is partially a product of the workers’ labor), yet they don’t receive joint-ownership of the company even though the company wouldn’t be as large as it is without workers. To keep the workers away from joint-ownership of the company is theft, and almost every business owner partakes in this. Again, you could claim this is “voluntary”- the workers chose to work in conditions where the business remains all under control of the business owner, but again: what other choice is there? They don’t have other options. Additionally, as you said, special favors from the government is an immoral source of income, yet capitalist businesses are bailed out by the government all of the time. It seems for capitalism to exist, some government involvement is necessary. Otherwise you have terrible depressions like that of the great depression, or perhaps a worse crash. Sources: [6]www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/uploads/attachments/co-op_economy_2015.pdf [7] https://en.wikipedia.org... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org...