Name the socialist who believe in the idea of cooperative.
Answers
Answer:
Clarifying what Karl Marx thought of the role of cooperatives is useful, not to receive the “correct” answer to what that role will be, but to help think through what alternatives answers might be and how they might color today’s expectations of the cooperative movement. If one sees a non-capitalist or socialist organization of society as ultimately desirable, then how should we answer the following questions in the present day:
Are co-ops in production, worker-owned enterprises, desirable experimental improvements to the organization of production over standard capitalist practices, in the direction of immediate social welfare?
Are such co-ops in production also little islands of a different future, models of socialism within a capitalist society?
Are they beachheads of socialism, politically practical steps along the road to bringing forth such a possible alternative society?
Will they ultimately also be the foundations of such a society, if it develops?
All in all, what is their importance, their role, in daily struggles?
The answer suggested here to the first three questions is: Yes. Co-ops today are experiments whose potential is not yet exhausted, certainly improvements over most existing capitalist arrangements which have perhaps portents for the future, but which have limitations that must be recognized. The first four questions do not present mutually exclusive alternatives, in the sense that they could, but do not necessarily, provoke fundamental questions about the desirability of further change. They show that workers can run factories themselves, democracy in the workplace is possible, and capitalists are not necessary for the organization of production.
Answer:
Clarifying what Karl Marx thought of the role of cooperatives is useful, not to receive the “correct” answer to what that role will be, but to help think through what alternatives answers might be and how they might color today’s expectations of the cooperative movement. If one sees a non-capitalist or socialist organization of society as ultimately desirable, then how should we answer the following questions in the present day