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In reply to the discussion: Chicago Factory Occupiers Form Worker Cooperative [View all]Igel
(35,300 posts)They raising money to be able to go into business.
They hope to be up and running, per the OP, in 2-3 months. We should check back in 3-4 months instead of assuming that it's up and running successfully.
Some coops work well. Some die a quick and painless death. Some work but things aren't much better--or much worse--than before. Often what happens is that faced with the same nasty choices their employers were faced with they voluntarily do what they'd have rejected doing if asked or told.
Once on an academic committee we students demanded a vote that counted. The chair said we were fools. We could be as polemical and rebellious as we wanted. We had a right to speak and could advocate irresponsibility. Once we had the right to have an actual say in how things went, we'd bear responsibility. Then we couldn't say others screwed up. We'd have to say that we took steps to screw things up.
We got the vote. And the next meeting one guy spoke as he had before. He was asked what would happen under various scenarios, and was quickly backed into a corner: He was supporting something that would probably hurt a lot of students if any of a dozen assumptions were wrong. He voted safely, to hurt a few students now. Nothing kills a revolution like the wielding of power: Wield it responsibly, and the revolution's goals are truncated; wield it irresponsibly, and things usually spin out of control.