> SA wrote:
>> But it would be harder to get away with ruthless exploitation as a
>> small capitalist firm in the interstices of an economy dominated by
>> non-capitalist firms, in a society no longer dominated by
>> capitalists. No?
>
> Why would it be more difficult?
Well, I tend to think that the dominant forms of production relations in a society tend to leave an imprint on all of that society's social relations. Just as cooperatives in a capitalist society - credit unions, for example - are often marked by capitalist relations, small capitalist proprietorships in a society dominated by non-capitalist production relations would be influenced by non-capitalist norms (not to speak of laws).
> What would be gained by not having such enterprises run as cooperatives?
Actually, there's a large literature on this in the economics of the firm, and its sub-field, the economics of labor-managed firms. As you might guess, most writers in the latter subfield tend to be either strongly in favor or strongly opposed to labor-managed firms - yet both sides largely agree on this point: When entrepreneurs start successful capitalist firms, they are able to appropriate large entrepreneurial rents. That's the main material motive for starting a firm in the first place. But in a cooperative governance structure, entrepreneurial rents are likely to be dissipated - i.e., appropriated by the other workers in the cooperative. So if entrepreneurs were required to adopt a cooperative structure from the start, far fewer firms would be created, especially innovative firms.
SA