Archive for January, 2010

Needed: Self-Management and Workplace Democracy

by Editors @ Tuesday, January 26th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Socialism

Participatory Management:

Looking Deeper at the

Mondragon Principles

 

By John McNamara

The next principle from Mondragon is that of Participatory Management. This seems like a no-brainer for worker co-operatives. What is the point of going through all the work of setting up a worker co-op if the workers don’t actually have a say in how the place is run? They would be better off in a unionized Employee Stock Ownership Program.

I’ll get more into this in a second. First, I want to share the language of the principle from Mondragon (translated, as they all are, of course):

“The Mondragon Cooperative Experience believes that the democratic character of the Cooperative is not limited to membership aspects, but that it also implies the progressive development of self-management and consequently of the participation of members in the sphere of business management which, in turn, requires:

a) The development of suitable mechanisms and channels for participation.

b) Freedom of information concerning the development of the basic management variables of the Cooperative.

c) The practice of methods of consultation and negotiation with worker-members and their social representatives in economic, organisational and labour decisions which concern or affect them.

d) The systematic application of social and professional training plans for members.

e) The establishment of internal promotion as the basic means of covering posts with greater professional responsibility.”

(source: The Mondragon Cooperative Experience, by José María Ormaechea, 2000)

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Gramsci and the Need to Learn Strategy in Depth

by Editors @ Wednesday, January 20th, 2010. Filed under Organizing, Socialism

The Relevance of

Gramsci’s Theory

for Today

By Peter Latham

January 3, 2010 -- I first read Gramsci in English over 40 years ago. Moreover, my thesis on Theories of the Labour Movement—a Marxist critique of non-Marxist theories of industrial relations—used Gramsci’s concept of the “organic” working class intellectual to explain twentieth century rank and file movements in the British building industry.[1] This paper is based on the Gramsci section in my forthcoming book on The State and Local Government.[2]

Roger Simon—the co-author with Noreen Branson of The British State published in 1958 at the height of the Cold War when they used the pseudonyms James Harvey and Katherine Hood[3]—subsequently revised his approach to take into account what he saw as Gramsci’s modification of classical Marxism, including Leninism. The latter, according to Simon, saw power as concentrated in the state and under the exclusive control of the capitalist class (or part of it) and took the view that the construction of socialism could only begin after the working class took power—as did Harvey and Hood.[4] Conversely, for Simon, Gramsci’s concept of the integral state—“political society plus civil society, in other words, hegemony protected by the armour of coercion”[5]—implied that the working class could only achieve state power after it had won a substantial measure of hegemony in civil society.[6] Simon still rejected the social-democratic theory of state neutrality: but he also rejected Gramsci’s view that factory councils should replace parliamentary democracy.[7] Hence, as well as the democratisation of parliament, Simon advocated direct democracy in the local community and workplace plus broad alliances based on the left and other social movements.[8]

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High-Speed Rail – Why We Need a Green Industrial Policy

by Editors @ Sunday, January 17th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Green Industry, High Road Economics

 

China's High-Speed-Rail Revolution:

Dedicated lines are the key

to record-breaking speeds.

By Peter Fairley
MIT Technology Review

Jan. 11, 2010 - China has begun operating what is, by several measures, the world's fastest rail line: a dedicated 968-kilometer line linking Wuhan, in the heart of central China, to Guangzhou, on the southeastern coast. In trials, the "WuGuang" line trains (locally built variants of Japan's Shinkansen and Germany's InterCity Express high-speed trains) clocked peak speeds of up to 394 kilometers per hour (or 245 miles per hour). They have also recorded an average speed of 312 kph in nonstop runs four times daily since the WuGuang's December 26 launch, slashing travel time from Wuhan to Guangzhou from 10.5 hours to less than three.

WuGuang's speed blows away the reigning champion: France's TGV, which runs from Lorraine to Champagne and averages 272 kph. It also bests China's first high-speed train, the Beijing-to-Tianjin trains that average 230 kph, as well as Shanghai's magnetically levitated airport shuttle trains that can hit 430 kph but average less than 251 kph.

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Worker Coops and Their Requirements for Capital Within Limits

by Editors @ Tuesday, January 12th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, High Road Economics, Socialism
 
Photo: Punching machine at MCC factory

The Instrumental and

Subordinate Nature of Capital:

Looking Deeper at the

Mondragon Principles

A series on the core principles of
the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain

 

By John McNamara

“We do not aspire to economic development as an end, but as a means.”

–Don José María Arizmendiarrieta, spiritual founder of Mondragon

This Mondragon principle, in practice, operates more closely to the Identity Statement principle of Member Economic Participation. I included it in this side road of the over all series because I believe that Mondragon presents a nuance all too often lost in the co-operative movement and, in the 'silo-ed' environment of the US worker co-operative movement, we often tend to forget the role of capital in our organizations is significantly different from that of our industry and capitalist competitors.

The role of capital in a worker co-operative should be two-fold:

1) ensure the on-going operations of the co-operative

2) allow the co-operative to maintain the highest level of safety and quality of work-life.

Thus, this principle presents the balancing act of worker co-operatives. As the opening quote suggests, if we are just in it for the money, what are we really trying to accomplish? However, DJMA has also said, “Cooperativism without the structural capacity to attract and assimilate capital at the level of the requirements of industrial productivity is but a temporary solution, an invalid formula.”

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China, ‘Clean Coal’ and New Technologies

by Editors @ Thursday, January 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Environment

World's Top Polluter

Emerges as Green

Technology Leader

 

By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- Dec. 15, 2009 - Xu Shisen put down the phone and smiled. That was Canada calling, explained the chief engineer at a coal-fired power plant set among knockoff antique and art shops in a Beijing suburb. A Canadian company is interested in Mr. Xu's advances in bringing down the cost of stripping out greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal.

Engineers led by Mr. Xu are working to unlock one of climate change's thorniest problems: how to burn coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. China's Push for Clean Coal

Mr. Xu is part of a broader effort by China to introduce green technology to the world's fastest-growing industrial economy -- a mission so ambitious it could eventually reshape the business, just as China has done for everything from construction cranes to computers.

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations' efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world's biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

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Overcoming the Rift Between Worker Coops and the Labor Left

by Editors @ Monday, January 4th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Labor Movement

'Sovereignty of Labor:'

A Deeper Look at the

Mondragon Principles

A series on the core principles of

the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain

By John McNamara

http://www.cooperativeconsult.com

The Mondragon principle “Sovereignty of Labor” created departure from the cooperative movement. While the Rochdale Pioneers had good intentions, they abandoned worker cooperation in the 1870’s. The Fabian Socialist moved even further from the ideals of Robert Owen declaring consumerism as the lowest common denominator for human relationships eschewing workers as merely another stakeholder group. Even the French cooperativist Charles Gide turned away from worker associations. Sadly, this act left the labor movement adrift from the cooperative world even as organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Congress of Industrial Organizations developed worldviews akin to the ideal of cooperation.

In the US, as in most of the Capitalist dominated world, the idea of labor being sovereign is almost non-existent. Business schools spend a lot of money teaching future managers how to manage workers—increase their productivity and the companies profits Except in the more enlightened firms, managers treat workers as errant children. Likewise, the dominant culture makes work something to be avoided and champions obstruction as “fighting the man”. People who do work hard tend to be treated as suck-ups and “upwardly mobile”. We mock the Ragged Dick stories in which “by luck and by pluck and good boy may succeed”. We have been conditioned to hate work and to distrust anyone who suggests that we work hard. The wobblies ran a cartoon called Blockhead who ridiculed the “company man”.

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