As it happens this was by necessity what the unemployed workers union I was involved in back in the late 70's, through to the early 90's did, Set up a retail business from scratch, to fund itself. Our ability to fund ourselves from membership dues being a tad limited. ;-) Took a long time to get it pumping out money, since we began with no capital (and all those involved in it were unemployed and had no more than two beans to rub together), plus we had no clue about business and even less knowledge of the retail niche were were competing in.
There are several dangers inherent on the strategy, due to the contradictions involved in operating a co-operative (non-profit) business in a capitalist environment. Obviously failure is one potential problem, if you cannot compete in the market. But success brings its own hazards. One of these is the enterprise needs to guard against capture by people within it who would stand to gain by de-mutualising. There is an epidemic of that these days, non-profit co-operatives and mutual funds converting into private for-profit corporations.
A reliable stream of profits to fund the movement is not even the greatest advantage of having such an economic base though. For the labour movement the most attractive part, and possibly part of the solution to the problem I just mentioned, is the capacity such an economic base has to cushion the casualties of the class war. Union activists are always subject to being effectively black-listed by the employing class. The union movement can only absorb so many such people directly into its paid administrative layers, a big retail co-operative would have much more room.
In a kind of jui-jitsu (turning the enemies strengths against it) the co-operative enterprise would benefit hugely and directly from being able to snap up every highly motivated and radicalised recruit the capitalist system cared to manufacture for it. Each such recruit serving as an object lesson in the advantages of being a union trouble-maker, further weakening the employing class's power to intimidate with the threat of the sack.
Of course a profit stream is not to be sneered at either. But you can't have it both ways, either it is a workers co-operative, autonomous from the union movement which funds it and charged with retaining surplus funds for its own purposes, or it is a subsidiary of the union movement that spawns it. Directing surplus funds, as dividends, to the union HQ which is its owner.
I have sympathy for both visions. But I'm not sure which one Wojtek is suggesting.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
At 11:01 PM -0500 26/12/11, Wojtek S wrote:
>Marv: "But they've never been regarded as a revenue source to fund
>organizing drives, which is what you are proposing. Your proposal is
>based on a faulty assumption."
>
>[WS:] Yes, this is what I suggested, because this is what corporations
>are doing. However you fail to demonstrate why it is based on a
>faulty assumption. You merely revert to explaining why union
>organizing drives at places like Walmart do not deliver results -
>which is not what I was arguing. I was arguing that unions should use
>their money to open a retail chain instead of trying to organize
>people working in one. And I did not imply that such a union owned
>retail chain should be some feel good joint where everyone loves
>everyone and nobody is anybody else's boss, but a profit-making
>business sans anti-labor practices that are typically found in many US
>businesses. They key difference is that proceeds from this business
>would not fund GOP and conservative lobbyists and think tanks but a
>labor or social democratic party and labor or social democratic
>lobbyists and think tanks.
>
>It may be that this idea will turn difficult or impossible to
>implement in practice, but it is at least more plausible than
>delusions about launching a revo in Etats Unis or Europe by mobilizing
>prisoners and other fringe elements. There has not been a successful
>socialist revolution in industrialized democracies even under more
>favorable conditions, so it is pretty certain that there will not be
>one in the foreseeable future. However, there have been effective
>reforms of the existing economic and political institutions that
>considerably improved the living standards and political
>representation of labor. As a matter of fact, EU cooperatives aka
>"social economy" do have a political representation in the European
>Commission
>http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/promoting-entrepreneurship/social-economy/
>so they are not such a miserable failure as you seem to suggest.
>
>Wojtek
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