Socialism Doesn't Work?

The Fagor bankruptcy happened long ago in the early stages of Mondragon figuring out how to succeed. Since then they have succeeded and grown to operations in about 4 countries, successfully competed with many capitalist businesses, and have formed partnerships with GM and Microsoft to provide scientific training and support and cooperation in Mondragon's labs and elsewhere. Mondragon now has about 90,000 workers in 200 subsidiaries and partner cooperative locations. So I'd say they overcame their early stumbles. The same often happens to capitalist businesses.

You don't know that will happen. Capitalism could certainly conspire to destroy them, but it isn't happening to Mondragon. Maybe that points to a need for a sympathetic government.

How so? Socialism is worker ownership, worker control of businesses. That is a business model. The WSDE model is entirely about business models. I think you may still be stuck on the idea of "socialism is government control and management of industry", which is no longer true.

There's your error! That is not true. If government runs them you have state capitalism.... not socialism.

And how many do you find saying what I have been telling you about socialism? One or two people? None? Due to 80 years of anti-communist, anti-socialist propaganda there is mostly confusion and disinformation "out there". Hard, true facts about the subject are pretty hard to find without a significant amount of searching and familiarization with what's being said and who is saying it.

For these reasons most, by far, of what you read on any forum, dictionary, blog, or political column is going to be very out-of-date information or even outright spin and lies. So I'm not at all surprised that you and most others still believe what you just wrote here.

I started looking into all this about 48 years ago and I've still been learning as the science of socialism continues to advance, but I have found sources that have proven to be highly informed and reliable. In fact I have a meeting with one of these organizations today.

 

This is what the enlightenment was all about .. Classical Liberalism - Social Contract and so on. I have written at length about his in previous threads.

In a nutshell. We currently live in what the founders (and republicanism) refers to as "Tyranny of the Majority".

The founders and enlightenment thinkers started with the premise - no man wants to be ruled over by another. On the other hand Anarchy is not a preferable state either. Societies formed groups - for social reasons but also for protection (strength in numbers). Codes of conduct formed around protection. It does not do one much good to be protected from outsiders if one is not protected within the group (from direct harm murder, rape, theft)

Society then agreed to give some authority power to punish code breakers. That power however, was to be very limited. "only to acts which are injurious to others".

The Declaration of Independence puts individual rights and freedoms "Above" the legitimate authority of Gov't. The Gov't is not supposed to make any law outside its legitimate purview.

The making of law outside this purview requires "Overwhelming" approval from "we the people" as per the social contract.

50+1 is "Tyranny of the Majority" .. every elected official has a simple majority mandate. There is no point in putting individual liberty "Above" the power of Gov't is simple majority (Gov't) can mess with these freedoms.

Rights end where the nose of another begins - Gov't powers also begin at this point.

Overwhelming majority is then at least 2/3rds.

Why is this the bar ? The only reason Gov't was given power to begin with was to punish people for things that society overwhelmingly agreed was bad. How many think murder, rape, theft should not be illegal.

The bar is no different for any other law.

Take Pot vs Heroin for example. Obviously Gov't is acting outside its legitimate authority. Obviously there is no overwhelming majority 66% that think pot should be illegal.

Heroin on the other hand would probably easily meet this threshold.

 

The Fagor bankruptcy happened in 2013 (on October 16 according to the source I cited). Four years is not "a long time ago" (to an adult).

If the Mondragon business model was as great a success as claimed, businesses would be adopting it around the world. It is mentioned their model has been adopted in 4 countries (my sources say there have been more). In Mexico Mondragon operated merely as a Spanish multinational subsidiary (just like Ford or GM).

I disagree with this notion socialism is about business models rather than political systems. I realize the ideology can be applied to business, but the most common and generally applied sense of ideology is in the political ambitus.

This thread adks whether socialism works, perhaps it should ask whether socialism as a business model works. I don't think so, I believe the free market system would need to change for something like Mondragon's system to succeed.

Businesses which succeed to a point where they need to raise capital to continue expansion will seek investors and those with capital to invest demand returns. Unless investors adopt the view that financial returns for their investments should be sacrificed to accomplish the non-financial Mondragon-like goals, this model will fail.

I don't dispute that Mondragon's ideals are desirable, solidarity, a more integrated and cooperative employer-employee relationship, sensitivity for the environment, broader worker support systems, promotion from within the employees and a slew of other Mondragon principles are great ideas, just question how much profit can be sacrificed for these ideals before a business will fail.

Ultimately Mondragon's model can never succeed as long as purely profit-driven models are allowed because they will be outperformed. We see this as investment banks experiment with plans for targeted investment aimed at sustainable development, environmentally sensitive projects, ones that rely on indigenous or local cooperatives, organically grown produce, non-polluting processes, recycled products, fair trade, etc. There are investors, but the majority seek to simply maximize returns. People do appreciate the beneficial value of these non-profitable returns and will invest despite the sacrifice, but most don't.

The easiest analogy is with consumers; at the store you can buy fresher organic vegetables, indigeous fair-trade coffee, hand-made cooperative sandals... side by side, for about 20% less are vegetables and coffee from agribusiness latifunds and sweatshop mass-produced shoes, a relatively well-paid and quite sensitive consumer may opt for the products his conscience suggests, most make their purchases comparing prices. I think the bottom line guides investors even more than consumers.