Super Man

Bernard over at Ztangi Press has sent me a link to the local press coverage of the Conference of the Federation of Worker Co-operatives taking place in Berkeley California. I couldn't help the title having read the report in the Berkeley "Daily Planet", of the Conference taking place in the "Clark Kerr" Center!

Worker co-ops Descend On Berkeley The report at the above link gives a lot of information, including details of the link up between the United Steel Workers Union, which is the biggest union in the US, and the Mondragon Co-ops to build

'a partnership “towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada." A workshop led by several labor and co-op leaders will explore this growing partnership between worker cooperatives and unions as a strategy to create jobs. It will focus on how labor unions and support groups are creating successful unionized worker-owned co-ops, providing workers more control of their work and increasing union membership. A new type of “worker owner” union membership is being developed, to complement the usual collective bargaining type of membership, providing worker-owned companies with resources, and offering unions new members. Gary Holloway of the USW will give an update on the USW-Mondragon project, and others will report on projects in Oregon, Oklahoma and Maryland, followed by a discussion of ways that working people can gain control of local economic development.'

As the article begins by saying,

"A shadow is hanging over America, the shadow of a wrecked economic system. Tens of millions of unemployed remain despondent about ever finding a job again, an entire young generation despairing of any hope for a good life, while corporate market pundits pontificate that our system creates the best of all societies, and no alternative is possible. A nationwide group gathering in Berkeley this coming weekend is putting the lie to the pundits.

The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), is holding its biannual conference at the Clark Kerr Center at UC August 6-8, riding an exhilarating wave of a movement that has swelled to worldwide importance over the past decade."

In every past Long Wave upswing, workers have pushed forwards with new ideas, sometimes ideas that seem new because they have been long forgotten, and throw up new forms of organisation, and new leaders. It is typical that the organisations and leaders of the previous upswing - in this case those that arose in the 1950's - 70's upswing - who have become stale, and attached to the ideas they grew up with, not only fail to recognise the change, but are resistant to it. So it is today, with the old, stale, statist leaders and organisations of the Left. Instead of being able to lead the class forward they are an impediment to it. They are like the military Generals always fighting the last war, and clinging to the weapons and tactics of the past.

They greatest resource the Revolution posesses, as Marx and Engels recognised is the inventiveness of the working class itself.