To my eyes, cooperative companies are to capitalism what greener cars are to global warming : we can change how it works inside, but we won’t really solve the problem until we change how we use them.
Nice analogy. Just to be sure, with cooperative companies¨ in the quote you mean a SCOP, not a worker cooperative?
I agree with the OP that everyone worked hard but it sounds like the reward of profits is proportional to the risk taken by those who purchased more stock. I often wondered how does an anarchist work in this situation?
True, they invest more and take more risk. But are investment systems not a capitalistic feature and thus will be rejected by anarchists?
The risk isn’t zero so it’s obviously worth something but making that equitable across all stock holders in an anarchist system seems difficult if not impossible. I’d love to be educated here.
Why even have the principle of stocks? People have a contract at the company. You can calculate the profit sharing based on the ratio of contract hours + salary compared to the total.
Also, one argument in favor of a co-op is that the employees can prevent a buyout by other companies or investors. Why use a company structure that give employees all control for example via a worker cooperative
Yes, I was describing an ESOP (didn´t know the English term). Interesting last paragraph. Another complicating fact is that if the company already has an ESOP, changing that system is really hard.
Society is pretty individualistic (especially in cities). Communal action and investments require people to think not only in their own interest but also in other members of the community. I think that is the biggest mindset shift we first need to accomplish.
Another complicating factor in current society is money. If you motivated people to think about others, investing their own private money in a project like a communal garden which others will also use for free is another thing I think.