Monopolies, Competition and Cooperatives
Paul is right that, in the past, worker owned cooperatives suffered due to lack of capital. Its one reason Marx and his associates advocated joining them together within a cooperative federation that could pool profit for accumulation, and have better access to credit. I have set out other ways that could be extended. Paul refers to the example of Mondragon. I have also referred, in the past, to the link-up between the US Steelworkers Union and Mondragon to spread cooperatives across North America, and to develop new trades union models relevant to cooperatives. Many US socialists are now designing strategies around the idea of cooperatives, but Paul actually spends little time discussing this strategy, again reflecting his focus on distribution rather than production.
Indeed, Paul says,
“if you look at a list of the top 300 co-ops in the world, many of them are simply mutual banks that resisted corporate ownership.” (p 276)
But, this is irrelevant. There are tens of thousands of co-ops across the globe. Simply because the top 300 are of that nature cannot be used to write off the rest! Of these tens of thousands, there will be many more that do not conform to the kind of cooperative model we require. Some are retail cooperatives; some are distribution cooperatives, established by individual small or peasant farmers; some are co-ops of fairly rich people living in expensive apartment blocks in New York.
The only relevant aspect we might take from all of these co-ops is that, in a whole range of areas of life, the co-operative form is found to be an effective means of resolving various problems. But, more significantly, as I have set out some years ago, the reality is that co-ops, including worker-owned co-ops, play a much more significant role in economies across the globe than is suggested by Paul's reference to those mutual banks and financial institutions.
As the ICA state,
“Co-operation is not a marginal phenomenon. More than 1,2 billion cooperative members, one in every six people on the planet, are part of any of the 3 million cooperatives in the world! They are strong and healthy: the Top 300 cooperatives and mutuals report a total turnover of 2.1 trillion USD”
The demand that Paul raises, (p 277) for the banning of monopolies is not a new demand. Kautsky raised it, and as Lenin responds, in Imperialism, it is both a naïve and reactionary demand.
Citing Hilferding approvingly, Lenin says,
““It is not the business of the proletariat,” writes Hilferding “to contrast the more progressive capitalist policy with that of the now bygone era of free trade and of hostility towards the state. The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance capital, to imperialism, cannot be free trade, but socialism. The aim of proletarian policy cannot today be the ideal of restoring free competition—which has now become a reactionary ideal—but the complete elimination of competition by the abolition of capitalism.”
And criticising Kautsky, Lenin continues,
“Kautsky broke with Marxism by advocating in the epoch of finance capital a “reactionary ideal”, “peaceful democracy”, “the mere operation of economic factors”, for objectively this ideal drags us back from monopoly to non-monopoly capitalism, and is a reformist swindle...
Let us assume that free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would have developed capitalism and trade more rapidly. But the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly. And monopolies have already arisen—precisely out of free competition! Even if monopolies have now begun to retard progress, it is not an argument in favour of free competition, which has become impossible after it has given rise to monopoly.”
Our aim is to move forward beyond the more mature forms of capital that monopoly represents – and the same is true in relation to the development of larger economic blocs such as the EU v the nation state – not to move backwards to less mature forms! The demand was also raised by Stalinists, in the form of the anti-monopoly alliance, reflecting their cross-class, popular frontist approach of making alliances with the petit-bourgeoisie, and small capitalists.
Why on earth would we want to bin monopolies when those monopolies represent the basic forms of productive organisation we will require for an effective planned and regulated cooperative economy? Moreover, as socialised capital they are progressive relative to that plethora of small private capitalists. Our task is not to bin monopolies, but to create large effective, worker-owned and controlled cooperative monopolies, and to engage in a political struggle for industrial democracy, so that the large corporate monopolies are themselves controlled by their workers and managers, and not by shareholders.
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