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From Alter.net Richard D. Wolffe writes:
“In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.
MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).
As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker’s salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)”
The ideas of egalitarianism and equality can work and work well within society, Mondragon is but one example of how we could be organizing our society in a more just mode of production.
“Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.
MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.
The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise’s net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.
The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain’s top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.”
We need to see more of this in our business news.
The lack of reflection in North American society reflects in our policies and economic choices. Countries that have experienced the ripsaw of neo-liberal capitalism (essentially the unbalanced “free-market” reforms that we impose on other countries to savage their people and exploit their resources) are contemplating life after the free marketers have been kicked out and those countries must once again reform a nation from the hollow shell left by ‘free-market’ plundering. In this piece from Al-Jazeera we gain an inside look at what happened at the forum and some of the topics discussed.
“I just returned from the sixth International Forum of Philosophy in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where philosophers from four continents were invited to discuss “State, Revolution and the Construction of Hegemony”.The event was inaugurated by the vice-presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, televised by several channels, and on the last day, a prize of $150,000 was awarded to the best book presented within the Libertador Award for Critical Thinking of 2011.”
It is nice to see that somewhere in the world people can speak of the world as it is as opposed to the geo-political bias imposed by living in North America.
“Similar to the World Social Forum of Brazil, both the prize and forum aim to reflect not only upon the social progress that characterises these nations, but also the progress taking place in rest of the world; this is why only thinkers whose position is essentially leftist are invited, that is, those in the service of the weak, marginalised, and oppressed sectors of society.”
Before we jump on the ‘fair and balanced’ objection, let me remind you fair readers that the opposing point of view can be found by simply accessing any major newspaper of record, or any corporate media source.
“Regardless of how effective the conference’s statement is on the governors that read it, what is interesting for us – European academics – is the institutional significance that is given to philosophy in the region. Is there a philosophy conference or forum in the United States or EU where vice-presidents take time to inaugurate a similar event?
Before exploring this relation [between governance and philosophy], it is necessary to remember that most Latin American countries today are governed by socialist governments whose main objective is to elevate from poverty those citizens that were discarded by the neoliberal (and in some cases dictatorial) states that ruled the region in the past. This is why for more than a decade now, such renowned progressive intellectuals as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and many others have been endorsing Chavez, Morales, and other democratically elected presidents for their social programmes and economic independence from the IMF.
It might be nice to learn some of the lessons from these failed neoliberal experiments as the doctrines are still playing in Canada, US and Europe.
“But despite the social progress (since 2003, extreme poverty has been reduced by 72 per cent in Venezuela), ecological initiatives (Morales has been declared the “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the president of the United Nations General Assembly), and economic efficiency (unlike the EU, Latin American economies will grow by 4.7 per cent in 2012) of these governments, a campaign of hatred and disinformation has been taking place throughout our Western media in order to discredit these achievements.
Perhaps, as Oliver Stone pointed out in his brilliant documentary South of the Border, this campaign is a symptom of fear that citizens in the West might also begin to demand similar policies. After all, while in Europe we are cutting social services following the European Central Bank demands, Latin American states are increasing them, just as so many western protesters (“indignados”, Occupy Wall Street, and other courageous movements) demand.”
Ah, the threat of a good example. To the embattled North American Economies a threat worse than Iran, Iraq and the Taliban all rolled into one. The idea that a model focused on people rather than profit can and is working in the world. Fortunately for these Southern Cone countries they are now too big and well organized to be brought down, as Nicaragua was in the 90’s by the US.
“These Latin American countries are not calling philosophers to obtain from them rational justifications or hoping that some of us write propaganda articles for their policies. Rather, they are showing their awareness that history has not ended. I’m referring here to Francis Fukuyama’s famous theory of “the end of history” (“liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government broadly accepted”), which has now been assimilated, if not completely incorporated, by our capitalist culture.
But history in Latin America has neither ended nor started anew. It’s simply proceeding as an alternate to our capitalist logic of economic enrichment, technological 
progress and cultural superiority. The Latin American countries do not aim to dominate others, but simply to evoke those whom Walter Benjamin called the “losers of history”, that is, the ones who have not succeeded within our neoliberal democratic system. These unsuccessful “shareholders” are represented not only by underprivileged citizens, but also by underdeveloped nations and continents. In this condition, philosophy is called upon to think historically – that is, to maintain living history. But how?”
How refreshing to see another point of view being expressed and some of the tenets of neoliberalism thoughtfully challenged. And how do we see our “free press” respond to such a conference? Observe. The silence is deafening. Such an unscrupulous avoidance news is a regular feature of our corporate news media, that exists mostly to feed and reinforce the system that it profits from, and most certainly not to educate its populace.
Let’s hope that people can find out more about alternative points of view and learn about competing narratives so they can more effectively judge the systems that they currently inhabit. The OWS movement is a step in the right direction but need to ground themselves in the historical struggle for citizens rights and power within the state capitalist system. Looking toward Latin America and what people have and are achieving there would be a good start.
The following is an excerpt from John McMurtry’s book Value Wars – The Global Market Versus the Life Economy p. 40 – 41.
The value-set that selects for the destruction of a human society is based on an absolutist first premise that whatever serves its unilateral globalization is good, and whatever obstructs or resists its universal advance is evil. No fact can disturb this presupposition if it is locked into the ruling group-think and remains credible to the collaborating publics. To comprehend the depth of mind-lock and its mass murderous consequences, consider the following sequence of official US policy in Iraq after the war was over. US Defense Intelligence documents silently released years later in 1995 demonstrate that the global market’s first power knowing selected for the consequences of infrastructural bombing, including the disease-killing of hundreds of thousand of children. For example, a US Defense Intelligence document entitled ‘Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities’, January 1991, spells out exactly how postwar sanctions against Iraq were constructed to prevent any public authority from providing clean water to citizens. Extensive technical detail then reports that ‘with no domestic sources of water treatment replacement or chemicals like chlorine’ and ‘no desalinization membranes’ and with water ‘laded with biological pollutants and bacteria’, ‘epidemics of such diseases as cholera. hepatitis, and typhoid’ will occur, but ‘it will probably take six months [of sanctions] before the system is fully degraded’. One is reminded of Adolf Eichmann’s punctilious attention to detail in administrating another and less painful form of mass death implementation.
A second document, ‘Disease Information/Effects of Bombing on Disease’, also dated January 22, 1991, reports: ‘Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks by coalition bombing’, with the ‘most likely diseases during the next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrhial diseases (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis including meningococal (particularly children), cholera’. The third document in the US Defense Intelligence series, ‘Medical Problems in Iraq’ is dated March 15, 1991. It reports that the US-British-enforced sanctions by interdiction of needed civilian water-treatment resources and bombing [Tony Blair’s ‘humanitarian sanctions’, comes to mind here] have succeeded in ensuring that ‘water is [now] less than 5 percent of the original supply… diarrhea is four times above normal levels… Conditions in Baghdad remain favourable for disease outbreaks.’. The fourth document of May 1991 reports: ‘Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps’ and the fifth document in June, ‘Health Conditions in Iraq is still heavily censored, but can be deciphered as reporting observations that ‘almost all medicines were in critically shorty supply’ and ‘Gastroenteritis was killing children… In the south 80% of the deaths were children’
Observe the repeated use of the phrase ‘favorable for disease outbreaks’. It discloses the pathologically inverted value-set regulating official perception and speech. Us and British political and military commands are undoubtedly war criminals under law, and guilty of the gravest crimes against humanity. To conclude that they are also ‘terrorists’ of the most virulent nature in ‘the killing of innocent civilians to achieve political goals’ – the official definition – is a conclusion which reason is constrained to admit. In connecting the fanatic mind-set across its expressions, we see the US state’s systematic operation of projection since September 11th, 2001 revealed with breathtaking clarity.
Documents in question can be found at http://www.gulflink.osd.mil . The first document referenced is here.
There really is no limit to what we’ll do to win. Shame on us.
*Update*: Digesting all of what McMurtry has to say takes a bit. I find that his commentary mostly jives with other authors who write about Empire and its effects on people. It really is disquieting because one has to relive the horror and revulsion experienced when the realization dawns that you are part of the nightmare system that is destroying other people because they believe in different things that we do.
It is not ‘progress’ but quite the opposite, it is like a snake hungrily devouring it’s own tail, we wield the such fearsome capacity to destroy and exploit but with each ‘victory’ we become a little less human and less connected to what we would esteemedly call ‘morality’ or virtue. Replacing our morality is the ethic of consumption and a perverted notion of darwinism in which we somehow deem ourselves the most fit and therefore justified in carrying out or being complicit in the atrocities perpetrated in the name of ‘Freedom and Democracy’.
Only by getting outside the realm of official though and approved notions can one appreciate the monstrous nature of what our oligarchic society has become.
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