[lbo-talk] socially irresponsible investment

John Adams jadams01 at sprynet.com
Fri Apr 15 15:08:50 PDT 2005


On Apr 14, 2005, at 8:36 PM, tully wrote:


> Plenty of ways exist to be true to one's political beliefs and work
> around the system. Start a worker-owned business, a co-op, or an
> intentional community.

I've got a good friend back home in Arkansas, David, who makes tofu. When he first moved to Arkansas, back in the early seventies, he began the first of many attempts to form a co-op to own and run the business. Tofu was only a part of it at that time--they did baked goods, trail mixes, preserves and jellies, even opened a cafe in the local co-op warehouse. Thirty years later, he's still making tofu, all by himself and whatever spot labor he needs to hire from time to time. Despite the fact that he's got a salable product and the fact that he's a really good guy to work with, he's never been able to get the business running as a co-op (or the auto repair self-help thing he abandoned earlier).

It was the theory of the late seventies and early eighties that we'd be able to build the new society within the shell of the old, blah blah blah, by building co-ops. Turned out people liked their organically certified food more than they liked their democracy and their worker-controlled businesses.

Anyway, what your post reminded me of was this: Circa 1980, one of my anarchist roommates, Billy, was the bookkeeper for that co-op. One day, a letter in a red envelope arrived, and David opened it. The state of Arkansas wanted their back tax payments for the last few months. David asked Billy when the tax payments had gone.

Billy said, "Why should we give those capitalists any of our wages?" or words to that effect. He'd stopped making the tax payments.

David took over running the books for a while.

John A



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