From: yogani99_@yahoo.com   
      
   Welcome to another edition of PROUT Gems.   
      
   The conservative economists will tell you that there are no alternatives to   
   capitalism.  But they fail to look at co-operatives and blindly mistake them   
   for communes in the Soviet era.  They are wrong. Co-operatives would have to   
   be the most efficient    
   and effective vehicle for economic enterprise.  Why because of the safeguards   
   of worker-shareholder control, the desire to benefit consumers and to seek   
   only a rational profit rather than profits driven by greed ... and many other   
   reasons.  There can    
   only be an efficient market through co-operative structures.  For over 200   
   years capitalism has not solved any problems about poverty or the like.  200   
   hundreds years or more it has had - it is an insult to humanity.  Time for   
   alternatives = cooperatives,   
    decentralised economy, economic decentralisation.  Let us examine them.   
      
   --   
      
   Cooperative Economics: An Interview with Jaroslav Vanek interviewed by Albert   
   Perkins   
      
   Albert Perkins: Professor Vanek, how did you first develop your ideas on   
   economy?   
      
   Jaroslav Vanek: I had four major influences. First, I experienced the evils of   
   communism when I was a refugee in Czechoslovakia from Stalinism, and later,   
   when I came to the West, I also experienced the evils of western capitalism.   
   Then, in between, I    
   was fortunate enough to spend time with my late brother who did extensive work   
   for the I.L.O. (International Labor Organisation) and wrote the first book   
   about the workers' councils in Yugoslavia. I learned many of my basic ideas   
   from him. He was a    
   sociologist and I was an economist, and I was able to transpose his ideas into   
   my field. Third, was the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Pope John 23rd went   
   a long way toward suggesting the desirability of economic democracy. Finally,   
   I was influenced by    
   Dubceck's model of social democracy. It could have been more successful than   
   the Yugoslavian experiment, but for the Soviet tanks. I have had several   
   interests in my life, including the area I call economic democracy. Economic   
   democracy is a    
   transposition of the idea of political democracy. It implies that economic   
   life is governed by people who are involved in that economic life. Capitalism   
   is based on property rights, and democracy on personal rights. Perhaps the   
   most important aspect of    
   capitalism, its objective function, is to maximise profit. If you look at it   
   more carefully, profit is revenue minus labor costs and other costs. This   
   means then human beings enter the defining objective function of the system   
   with a negative sign.  By    
   contrast, economic democracy has an objective function where people are on the   
   positive side of the equation. The idea is to maximise the welfare of the   
   people participating. This is an enormous difference, and I'm convinced that   
   the tragic difficulties    
   of our culture -- ecological devastation, starvation, etc - can be traced to   
   this negative side But capitalism could be cured slowly if we developed   
   economic democracy. One of the main reasons why the western world is so   
   schizophrenic is th   
   t we have political democracy and economic autocracy.   
      
   AP: What would such a system look like?   
      
   JV: The system should be a market system, not ruled from a central ministry,   
   but by the rules of supply and demand This is the only true market economy.    
   The capitalist economy is not a true market economy because in western   
   capitalism, as in Soviet    
   state capitalism, there is a tendency towards monopoly. Economic democracy   
   tends toward a competitive market. The system is composed of households,   
   enterprises, government, and so on. The main distinguishing characteristics   
   are in the area of production.    
   Productive enterprises are small republics. Everyone who works is a member and   
   the enterprise is run democratically and directors are elected democratically   
   and the bourse stockholders have no control.   
      
   AP: Do you see all firms run cooperatively?   
      
   JV: There are many possibilities. In Mondragon you have cooperatives developed   
   from the Rochdale principles, characterised by democratic management. And the   
   Yugoslav firms, although poorly designed, were democratically run and   
   semi-cooperative. In an    
   article to the Russian Academy of Sciences concerning Khabarovsk, I argued   
   that during the transition period they should have democratic, but not   
   necessarily cooperative enterprises. These could be associations of workers in   
   a democratic firm who would    
   lease the assets of the factory from the state. The American ESOP co-op   
   provides a good model. By insisting on co-ops we narrow things down   
   unnecessarily. The idea of economic democracy is broader than just co-ops.   
   Visualize two sets of loops. One set is    
   co-ops and one set workers' participation. Where they intersect on the co-op   
   side we could have housing, credit, etc. On the other side we can have   
   participation as simple as suggestion boxes. There are workers coops where the   
   owners make $2000 a week    
   while the workers make $200. I wouldn't call that economic democracy.   
      
   AP: Why aren't co-ops working in the West?   
      
   JV: If you go to a bank and ask for a loan to start a co-op, they will throw   
   you out. Co-ops in the West are a bit like sea water fish in a freshwater   
   pond. The capitalist world in the last 200 years has evolved its own   
   institutions, instruments,    
   political frameworks, etc. There is no guarantee that another species could   
   function if it had to depend on the same institutions. In capitalism, the   
   power is embedded in the shares of common stock, a voting share. This has no   
   meaning in economic    
   democracy. Economic democracy needs its own institutions for one simple   
   reason. Workers are not rich. Let's face it, most working people in the world   
   today are either poor or unemployed. They do not have the necessary capital to   
   finance democratic    
   enterprises. Hence, we need some instruments and institutions which make this   
   possible. Why? Because we know that once democratic firms are organized, or   
   even if they have all the elements of democratic principles, they work far   
   better than capitalist    
   enterprises.   
      
   AP: Tell us why'?   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)