“Those guys remain as high on Hayek as they ever were”

That’s because Co-ops have never been “left-wing” in the first place. Co-operative structures lend themselves to both capitalism and socialism.

Not really.
Co-ops are about sharing profits even to the weakest in the group (which is the basis of social democracy) whereas capitalism, in it’s purest form follows the view of neo Darwinism “Survival of the fittest” and maximum profit to the top dog capitalist

‘capitalism, in it’s purest form follows the view of neo Darwinism “Survival of the fittest” and maximum profit to the top dog capitalist’

Not the kind of capitalism I am in the habit of supporting, nor anyone I know. So I think that strikes me as a bit of a straw man. Co-ops are one structure amongst many that can flourish in a free market, and I mean a really free market, not the weird hybrid of social democracy and corporate capitalism we have right now.

Not that I have much confidence this is going to happen under a Tory government, but just imagine if the Tories actually did end up decentralising power to workers through these schemes and it really did re-balance power in favour of workers and consumers rather than the middle men in Whitehall and the City. What would you guys all do? Become Conservative?

Re: 2

You could cause a lot of arguments with sweeping definitions like that. You make it sound like the point of a Co-op is to reward the members who don’t co-operate. Capitalism describes nothing more than property ownership, without reference to markets.

I’ve never understood whu co-ops are associated with the left, most professional firms (accountants, lawyers etc) are LLPs, which are essentially co-ops, but few would associate a partner in a law firm them with socialism. The fact is they are an extremely efficient way to run a business.

Dave,

Should “competitive tendering” really be on your list of bad things? I know internal markets are often not worth the trouble, divisive incentive structures certainly sound bad, but do you really prefer non-competitive tender awards?

Good grief, this isn’t the SU debating society! Try to relate comments to the actual environment in which these proposed co-ops will find themselves.

The context of the proposed workers’ co-operatives is a market managed for the biggest corporations. Any small co-op will have to resist the inevitable carpetbaggers and hostile takeovers. Tory policy can be simply divided in two: Defence of Privilege and Divide the Oiks (for profit, preferably).

Tory proposes something that lefties agree with. Then suddenly eastasia has ALWAYS been at war with Oceana.

Feeble, tribal politics.

Not the kind of capitalism I am in the habit of supporting, nor anyone I know. So I think that strikes me as a bit of a straw man.
Isn’t the whole point of capitalism is the competitive winner takes all.
As for this idea of peoples capitalism, it has been tried and if you are a believer in capitalism it goes against the grain.
In the eighties we were all going to be share owning capitalists. What happened everybody made a quick buck and now utilities are now owned by foreign corporations
In a FREE market you compete to put the other guy out of business not to help him in work and share cooperatively.
Read any book on sales. You must be very simple minded to think that big fish will always out sell little fish.
Take book sales, between small book owners and say Tescos. Tesco have won by reducing the price of books, even waterstones went out of business because they couldn’t compete. That is capitalism. Read your Adam Smith.

Sorry not to think

Waterstones is still in business. You’re thinking of Borders

In the end these structures will sell up to more bigger more organised fish. That is the way of the world. The worker will then become subservient to another big player.
Where I do agree with Nick (are you Nick Cohen) is that capitalism will overcome social democracy.
What will happen is that we will live in world that believes in the trickle down affect or we depend on big corporations for everything

Sorry your right, it is borders.
It is just my local waterstones has just closed down.

And are you able to buy as wide or wider a choice of books at as reasoanble a price as you ever were, whether at a bookstore, a supermarket, or Amazon?

Er, yes.

Phew – thank goodness for the free market.

‘Take book sales, between small book owners and say Tescos. Tesco have won by reducing the price of books, even waterstones went out of business because they couldn’t compete. That is capitalism. Read your Adam Smith.’

More books are being sold than ever before at cheaper prices than ever before. That is the free market outcome. The means are via co-operation and competition, in fact it is a competition TO co-operate. The person or company with the most to offer other people or companies is the one that is going to profit the most. So in fact, even a simple trade is one form of co-operation.

Tesco, for example, has to deal with thousands of suppliers and contractors in order to bring its goods and services to the consumer. It has to be an excellent co-operator within different sectors or else it loses out.

The opposite of co-operation is coercion, the state’s means of getting things done. In cases of forced exchanges, usually one party is losing and one party is gaining (sometimes both lose). Otherwise, the force would be unnecessary. There are exceptions to this general rule of course, such as collective action problems but they are rarely solved well by force either.

‘In the end these structures will sell up to more bigger more organised fish. That is the way of the world. The worker will then become subservient to another big player.
Where I do agree with Nick (are you Nick Cohen) is that capitalism will overcome social democracy.
What will happen is that we will live in world that believes in the trickle down affect or we depend on big corporations for everything’

Well the question is, if corporations will naturally grow and become more powerful, why is it that they need the state do so many things for them (like take on liabilities or give them subsidies to operate). Why is it the big players that benefit the most from a fiat currency system, for example? Why do they need such ridiculous patent laws? Perhaps if you just tried NOT helping the big players, they wouldn’t get so big in the first place.

Re: 5

Co-ops are associated with the left because they are companies owned equitably by employees, where no one person has ultimate power over another. It empowers people at the bottom of the food chain, which historically brings it into close alignment with the left agenda.

Capitalism has no problem co-existing with this, but trickle-down economists and objectivists (both mostly right thing) would assert that members would be unproductive and impoverished, and widespread adoption would lead to ruin.

Capitalism really has nothing to do with it, it’s more down to whether you believe in rugged individualism.

Re: 9

Adam Smith was a free market theorist. He didn’t write about capitalism, he wrote about individualism.

Capitalism is property ownership. It has nothing to do with markets, and nothing to do with how many owners there are. It’s a constitutional principle that remains untouched by the dismal science.

Nick your Nirvana reminds me of those wonderful Oliver Postgate cartoons. There is Evans the Newsagents and Jones the newsagent. In your world they would cooperate and not try to put each out of business. I reality Jones would try to out compete Evans and one would eventually go out of business. Evans would then work for Jones. End of the coop back to the employer / worker relationship. The driving force behind capitalism is not rugged individualism but competition.
I keep saying read Adam Smith , the father of modern capitalism.He believed self-interested competition in the free market,would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services.

By the way Nick are you Nick Cohen

re: 1

there is some truth in that statement, however for what it is worth, reports to come out of Demos (Reinventing the firm), ResPublica (The Ownership State), The Innovation Unit blah blah blah – they all say it is an alternative to either state- or market-isation. The problem (both identified by labour MP’s – not solved by them, importantly) is how best to keep markets out of this very marketcentric theory (Cruddas on his review of Reeve’s The Liberal Republic) and how can the state fund something that, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with the state (Tessa Jowell’s speech on mutualism).

I know there are problems from the get go – as much as the Tories have shifted ideology, they are not small c yet – no way, nor anywhere near red tories, green tories, fucking rainbow-coloured, what ev’s. But have Labour pinpointed that problem? My concern is that they are worried, and not vindicated by the fact that civic-led public services is on the agenda for the next govt. whoe’er they be. What Labour need to do is win on ideas. Why did Philip Blond seem to trump Sunder Katwala on an issue that is closer to the latters home, than the former (if we are counting party colours here – I know Blond’s whole thing)? I’d like to see a bloody fat document by the Fabian Society, not ripping up The Ownership State, but reminding everyone that this issue is ours for a reason – we know how to do it etc. I’ll even write it for them for free. There!

Oxford dictionarycapitalism

• noun an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Gwynn would you please complain to them

That is not the point in the end Tescos will win, small business will be gobbled up by the large corporations that is the natural order.
Ford the ultimate capitalist believed in that strongly.
By the way you haven’t answerd the question are you Nick Cohen.

OK boys and girls what about the French farmers coops.

Re: 22

I notice it doesn’t mention the invisible hand of the market, and ‘owners’ is definitely plural. This correlates rather precisely with my previous comment.

@ 19 or………….Evans and Jones form a price fixing cartel and prevent the price of milk and papers falling below the level at which they can both make a satisfactory return, knowing that to do so is in neither of their long term interests.

The illusion of choice and competition is maintained and the public pay an inflated price which is unaffected by genuine competition. Economists call this “price stickiness”

One of the best arguments for a “free market” is that we’ve never really had one.

Why do they need such ridiculous patent laws? Perhaps if you just tried NOT helping the big players, they wouldn’t get so big in the first place.
Explain in the total laisez faire US of the 19C, why did large corporatioons grow at an exponential rate.

16. Nick

.’ Perhaps if you just tried NOT helping the big players, they wouldn’t get so big in the first place. ‘

Well the the experience in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century was that large dominant players grew without any help from government. For example, steel, oil and railroads etc. They indulged in appalling practices requiring the action of the state through antitrust laws to curtail their market power. Moreover, the internet experience has witnessed the growth of one dominant player dwarfing all others in each sector. State favouritism can cause large firms to become dominant but it is disingenuous to suggest that is always the cause. Without state action cartels, price gouging, predatory pricing and tying would be even more widespread. I am very much a believer in the free market but let’s not pretend everyone would play by textbook rules if only the government would get out of the way.

Re: 27

Patent laws protect all individuals and companies equally. Hundreds of SMEs in the UK are reliant on IP protection for their livelihood.

The problem, in my mind, in claiming that this is in any way a necessarily ‘left’ policy is simply what these co-operatives mean.

Co-operatives are supported by socialists because, quite simply, they represent the collectivisation of capital. While this can lead to imperfections, it’s still better than a system in which individuals or small groups have the levers of power. The problem on an ideological level with the Conservative scheme is that it’s not targeted at this.

What the Conservatives are doing with their proposals is granting power over non-profit-based services to co-operatives, and indeed they are making them profit-based by doing so (the most horrible part of the proposal is the one about giving savings back to employees). They do not represent any collectivisation and indeed are more akin to privatisation.

There’s also the problem on a non-ideological level that competition in a non-profit market is often not a good thing, because it necessitates turning that market into one based on profit. The principle of the internal market is in no way a sound one.

Hell, I’ll go further than that: this is worse even than the general proposal of an internal market, because it turns these organisations into profit-based mechanisms. I’d be a bit uneasy about a NHS-style proposal, but this is just ludicrous.

The Conservative talk of “transfer of power” is as misleading in this case as it is in their talk of “giving power back to parents” in education. The point is that setting up the formal capability for these groups to take control of workplaces/schools will mostly not result in any-one actually taking up this purely hypothetical right, because it involves far more investment of time and other resources (not to mention collective action) than people in these groups possess. Secondly, of any individuals who do take up this right, all will be overwhelmingly privileged and the most (social, cultural, economic) capital rich members of these groups (thus if having any effect at all, exacerbating the social disadvantage for the benefit of the best off).

The second aspect of this is that talk of “giving power to parents/workers” is generally followed by “and other private groups, charities, businesses.” So the nominal idea of “power to parents” 99% of the time entails, more power to businesses. Cf. the Conservative arguments for privatisation creating a “shareholders democracy,” where in practise, big business interests and the relatively wealthy had both more economical capital to take advantage of this venture and other advantages (such as being relatively more educated, aware and and less irrationally risk averse) allowing them to benefit at the expense of the worse off (who just paid higher water bills). Arguably even buy to let shows much the same trend, with a substantial number of council houses being passed on for meagre gains, only to quickly end up in the hands of those with the means to be property speculators.

Dave,

“The economies of scale and low cost finance available to large public sector organisations will also be lost.”

Why would this be the case? Collective bargaining by different co-ops is a recognised way of doing things – e.g. the various local chains work together to make deals with suppliers.

Evans and Jones form a price fixing cartel and prevent the price of milk and papers falling below the level at which they can both make a satisfactory return, knowing that to do so is in neither of their long term interests.
So cartels and monopolies are the bedrock of peoples capitalism.

Co-operatives are supported by socialists because, quite simply, they represent the collectivisation of capital. While this can lead to imperfections, it’s still better than a system in which individuals or small groups have the levers of power. The problem on an ideological level with the Conservative scheme is that it’s not targeted at this.

I completely agree

“Explain in the total laisez faire US of the 19C, why did large corporatioons grow at an exponential rate.”

Tariffs, transport subsidies e.g. government roads, government land purchases, patents.

See chapter 5 here: http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html

“Well the the experience in the US during the late 19th and early 20th century was that large dominant players grew without any help from government.”

See my response above re 19th century. As for early 20th century, big business was very supportive of the so-called progressive legislation introduced at the turn of the century in America by Teddy Roosevelt. Why? Because it had the effect of putting their smaller competitors out of business. The meat packing industry is a classic example. Prior to the “progressive era” the profitability of large firms was decreasing due to efficient competition from smaller rivals. See Gabriel Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism, written not by a right-wing libertarian but a New Left Marxist.

Golden Gordon,

“So cartels and monopolies are the bedrock of peoples capitalism.”

No – corporate capitalism. Try to distinguish between pure capitalism (where you have a choice of providers and markets, and all information necessary to make the comparison (wow, doesn’t the internet make that easier) and the bastardised system whereby large corporations can control production and market. Often hand-in-hand with government (do phrases like exclusivisity and preferred bidder mean anything to you; central purchasing perhaps)?

I think people’s capitalism would be something like pure communism really – only the means of supply would be different. Indeed, I am not sure Engels (not Marx) wouldn’t have seen that as the better bet.

Re: 36

As above, ‘pure capitalism’ is not the same as ‘free, perfect markets’, and neither can any form of capitalism be reconciled with ‘pure communism’ as they are polar opposite conditions.

This doesn’t affect your argument obviously, it’s just hard to follow.

Marx was a big fan of free markets, funnily enough.

‘Marx was a big fan of free markets, funnily enough.’

And Engles was a fine capitalist.

So many above are agreed that we want free markets in which mutual organisations can flourish but that we don’t want monopoly corporatism.

But to have free markets the government needs to intervene much more strongly to regulate the markets with competition legislation. We don’t need a ‘choice’ between six banks, we need a choice of six hundred.

The problem is the politicians have already sold out to the monopolist corporations.

To some extent, you have to admire the political gall and chicanery of the Tories: when new labour appropriated Tory clothing to gain swing voters, they then went the whole hog,wore those clothes and became Tories, with their neo-loberal privatising shtick.
The Tories are appropriating Old Labour clothing in a similar fashion, but with no intent to wear the damn garments for more than a couple of months. It does mean though, like two self-obsessed party girls, both simply can’t bear to be seen in the same outfit as anyone else, and by getting in first, New Con have denied New Lab the spotlight for their new frock (and it is new to them, having not just turfed out their Old Lab clothes but burned ‘em).
It’s a crafty use of all of the voguish bit from the (rather good) New Economics Foundation paper by Boyle and Harris, but gliding over the bit about market-based approaches failing, just as New lab skip past the bit about the disaster of the Third Way, managerialism and its top-down target culture).
Do the Tories mean it? Nah, it’s canny Trojan horse for them? Would New labour mean it? Nah, don’t be daft in that regard either. Would a genuinely Leftist party back co-production in public services and greater localisms. Perhaps.

Dave Osler,

I suspect you are right about everything, except the bit about Hayek, which i am not so sure on.

Corporations control the establishment Left too though. The Labour party has been working toward ‘marketisation’ in the public services the last 12 years.

Adam the Libertarian

If you want to know how modern capitalism works, Joseph Schumpeter is your man. How anyone can seriously believe that a work written in the late 18th century, based on the prevailing social and economic conditions, can be used as a blueprint for the 21st century, must be barmy.
GG@2 Capitalism does not follow Darwinism or neo-Darwinism, the process of industrialisation started some 100 years earlier than Darwin. The ‘survival of the fittest’ became tagged on to capitalism mainly to justify the imperialism which began around 1880, when UK markets started to decline. This was in stark contrast to the notion of the free-market (eg free entry and exit)

Re: 40

Indeed, the last twelve years have been ‘vote red, get blue”.

“But to have free markets the government needs to intervene much more strongly to regulate the markets with competition legislation”

Alternative the government should remove all the props it gives to big business. Let’s see how well corporations fare without state funding of the transport network, regulations that cripple small businesses, regulations governing unions, state R&D funding and various other privileges documented here: http://members.tripod.com/kevin_carson/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Chapter3.pdf

Alternative the government should remove all the props it gives to big business.

Agreed.

Unfortunately neither my solution nor yours is likely to happen. The only possibility is that the population begin to understand that big business and big government is not in their interests.

I’m not holding my breath.

Re: 43

Such proposals would have a rather high baby/bathwater ratio. I’d rather not cut essential transport and research budgets just to stick it to the man.

45. There is no such thing as essential public funded research. Even the OECD has admitted (quietly) that there is no evidence of improving R&D through public investment: http://www.oecd.org/dac/ictcd/docs/otherdocs/OtherOECD_eco_growth.pdf (It simply crowds out private investment)

Transport is much more complicated. It would certainly look a lot different than it is today if it had been entirely privately funded. There might well be more reliance on local networks than on global trade for example (not necessarily a bad thing if we are thinking in mutualist terms). On the other hand, it was the private sector that built and managed roads in the past, and then rail (before it was nationalised). Perhaps they could manage it again.

If there was no government sponsored funding of R&D, the private sector would understandably be heavily biased towards immediate commercialisation possibilities. Blue-sky ideas for new technologies that cannot immediately be commercialised would struggle for financing. Research in the social sciences would not be an attractive proposition for the private sector. All research is worth learning just to expand human knowledge no matter whether it has a commercial application or not.

47. Thats true in theory but wrong in practice. Some of the most high level and abstract scientific knowledge has been developed privately. It has surprising applications even if people don’t see it at first. First mover advantages means that blue-skies development is a good strategy for large for-profit companies that aren’t necessarily expecting to see a short-term pay off. One of the most useful statistical techniques now even used in sociology was developed semi-randomly in a laboratory owned by Guiness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%27s_t-test

And I personally trust insurance valuations and corporate market research as much more likely to offer truthful information about people’s behaviour and risk factors than something coming out of formal social science. It is because money rides on that sort of research being right now and then.

Also, if you think expanding human knowledge is a good thing in and of itself (which I am more than happy to agree with), there is nothing to stop you clubbing together with lots of other people to support scientific causes. You don’t need the state’s permission or coercion to do that. Just get your wallet out. With lower taxes and a smaller state, you would have more opportunity to do so. If you don’t want to do so voluntarily, then I don’t think you actually hold it to be ‘worth’ quite as much as you might claim in a discussion.

[47]

It was the private sector that built and managed roads in the past, and then rail (before it was nationalised). Perhaps they could manage it again.

And perhaps they couldn’t. Gladstone passed a law allowing for the nationalisation of the railways if needs be (and he was a Tory at the time). Both the development of the railway network and fit-for-purpose roads required government regulation and subsidy.

So will these co-ops performing the tasks currently performed by government departments, and local and health authorities. In other words, there will – at least initially, and I suspect in the long term, be more bureaucracy, not less.

It is also worth remembering that, at the first opportunity they were given, the members of the Automobile Association voted to demutualise and sell it to British Gas (no, the commercial logic escapes me, too) for the grand sum of £240 each. I am sure this fact has not escaped the notice of the Tory leadership.

I trust insurance valuations and corporate market research as much more likely to offer truthful information about people’s behaviour and risk factors than something coming out of formal social science. It is because money rides on that sort of research being right now and then.”
Why in the 1950′s Cigarette companies actually fed out information that smoking was good for you and backed it up by using company doctors.
Also Nick , I assume by you silence on the issue , you are Nick Cohen
But to have free markets the government needs to intervene much more strongly to regulate the markets with competition legislation. We don’t need a ‘choice’ between six banks, we need a choice of six hundred.
But are you not arguing for the complete elimination of government and the state. So who will do It ?
If anyone here believes that there is going to be this free market utopia of small business’s working together without any large companies controlling the market, then you are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Man’s nature is greed and the innate need to have more than his neighbour is stronger than hunger, that is why Gordon Gecko was right and why communism went down the pan.
Do you think Richard Branson thought to himself well I have two record shops, no more because of my collective capitalist responsibility. No he went onto build a huge corporation which brought up smaller record shops. That will happen without or with governement.
To think it will not. OHHHHHHHH .

Re: 45

The OECD is chiefly concerned with economic growth, which is not how you measure the value of public research.

Re: 47

Your one example is a developed statistical tool with direct industrial application, not “high level and abstract scientific knowledge”. You’re saying that because private enterprise will fund industrial research that happens to have a social application, therefore the state shouldn’t fund social research that might have an industrial application. Which is a fallacy, plain and simple. It’s also over a hundred years old and totally irrelevant, but let’s not split hairs!

If you have some concrete examples of company-funded, peer-reviewed and journal-published research that wouldn’t be likely to result in a patentable invention, then dig them out for us to see.

Also do you think the reason why governments give large companies benefits is so they set up in their countries. So people can be employed and create wealth.
It is called living in the real world not the keyboard bubble.

Dave Ostler – I too have the same fears about whether newly liberated co-ops will then just start losing tenders and going under. Was there anything in the Tory’s announcement that backed up this fear that the new co-ops will not have a sole charter to the service-delivery anymore? I must admit if there was I didn’t see it – but I sometimes start to go blank after reading Tory policy reports.

“One of the best arguments for a “free market” is that we’ve never really had one.”

Then logically you can’t use any real life working models to illustrate how one works in practice. Meaning what you advocate has never been tried before, and is hence utopian.

@ 54 (myself!). My apologies Dave Ostler – this is a direct quote from the Tory site –

After their contract period, the co-operative enterprises will need to bid to renew the contract, so would be open to competitive pressure, like any other social enterprise working for government. (http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/02/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/powertopublicsectorworkers.ashx)

So within 6 years of a Tory takeover sections of the NHS and other public organisations would be up for tender.

@55

you can’t use any real life working models to illustrate how one works in practice. Meaning what you advocate has never been tried before, and is hence utopian.

Eh? So the only theories people are allowed to advocate are things that have already been tried (and presumably found wanting)? Peculiar. Try telling the Sufragettes that back in the day…

51
Man’s nature is greed and the innate need to have more than his neighbour is stronger than his hunger’ – the capitalist thought police have really got you mate,
Do you really believe that during the famine in Ethopia the population were more concerned about piling-up more than their neighbours than satisfying their hunger?The only innate force, with regard to economic activity, is to survive, whatever type of economic organization happens to exist at the time. From hunter/gatherers, communal production or private ownership. I suggest you put down your ‘Wealth of Nations’ and find your nearest Waterstones and order a copy of ‘Capitalism in the Postwar Period’ (Schumpeter) and perhaps brush-up on Darwin

@ 49

‘And I personally trust insurance valuations and corporate market research as much more likely to offer truthful information about people’s behaviour and risk factors than something coming out of formal social science. It is because money rides on that sort of research being right now and then.’

Market research maybe one thing, but any market research done by a company that has ‘truth’ in it will be kept firmly under lock and key soas competition doesn’t get it.

If you see research published by a company you can be very, very sure that the questions asked, interpretation of results and design of the text have all be tailored specifically to say what was decided in a project meeting when the research was first commissioned.

Of course all science can never be fully free of personal slants and prejudice – but actual science done is much nearer to being value-free than any company-commissioned research will ever, ever be.

@ 58

I’m not convinced 51 was saying man’s inate greed is a good thing.

It’s well known that in famine is rarely caused by a shortage of food. Its caused by a shortage of access to food. The richest and the powerful get the food. And in most cases sell the food on. In the Irish potatoe famine there were still enough potatoes grown to be able to very comforatble feed every man, woman and child in Ireland. Trouble was, the British/Irish land owners were making a mint selling those potatoes to other markets – they wouldn’t give up their sales just for some floppy-wristed-lefty-liberal notion like keeping people alive.

If you have enough food for what people will sell plus whats needed to feed people you’re alright. When you don’t have enough its always the people getting fed part that falls first not the selling for profit.

#57

No, not saying you can’t advocate something that has never been tried before, but that you do need to be aware of the fact that is what you are doing. Particularly when advocating whole scale radical changes of the economic system, which don’t have a particularly good historical record.

Matt Munro @26:

A relatively rare moment of absolute agreement, at least as regards Britain since 1066. As a medievalist by training I couldn’t understand in the early to mid 90s why everyone seemed to think we were living in a free market economy. It was almost as if they’d bought the government propaganda to that effect.

Planeshift @55:

Nonsense. It’s not that humanity has never had free markets: it’s just that we, late- and post-medieval Europe, haven’t. The introduction of essentially theocratic, imperial kingship during the 8th-11th centuries changed models of law and land ownership so radically that one man in seven of working age was outlawed [1] for living somewhere inconvenient to a capital accumulator of real estate. Since then, there’s been nothing even remotely resembling a free market.

Confederate Iceland on the other hand… And there’s many examples from outside Europe of genuinely free-market economics happening on a scale which today would be considered local, and is therefore largely unconsidered: but which to the people involved constituted a global condition.

[1] Trials of Trailbaston. This figure was calculated for the “Robin Hode” period, circa 1315-1340. It took nearly two hundred years for the civil service to evolve, around the Knights of the Exchequer, a record-keeping and collecting system [2] that allowed them to systematically enforce the new paradigm of land ownership. The Trailbaston Assizes were the savage instrument of the new world order. “Everywhere the walls spring up at their command”.

[2] The Great Rolls of the Pipe, complete for every year from 1132 to the present day, with some fragments dating from earlier.

Why not try it , it may work.Of course people may decide it is not worth remaining a member of a public sector union. The fear of the decline in the memebership numbers of the publc sector unions and the money they give to the Labour Party may be a great worry to some people.

@ 63 It’s a good idea to give people employed by services a greater say in the services and indeed ownership of those services. If we could give it a go and see if it works fair enough – but its the consequences later that scare people.

The problem is that the new Co-Op will get a contract to run the service – public sector contracts are rarly more than 5 years. After that the contract is renuewed by competitive tender.

The Conservatives are hamming up that if the Co-Op performs well, they will be well placed to succeed in that tender. However, we are still then faced if they don’t perform with the contract being taken completly into the private sector – NOT returned to the public sector.

Plus – even if the Co-Op does perform – what happens if they perform well but another private company tenders and puts forward a cheaper alternative while promising to deliver more? Then, even with the Co-Op performing well we still see the contract lost to the private sector.

We should be looking at employee involvement in service-delivery, and more effective employee reward not ownership – ownership is just opening the door to privatisation.

I thought that the best argument for free markets was efficiency of resource allocation?

I’ve clearly been reading the wrong stuff.

‘If you have some concrete examples of company-funded, peer-reviewed and journal-published research that wouldn’t be likely to result in a patentable invention, then dig them out for us to see.’

Well there is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs

But you are really going to have read this to get the full story: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Science-Profits-Terence-Kealey/dp/0434008249

Re: 66

Amazon blocked at work, I’ll make a note to check that link later though. I should point out though that Semiconductor companies, in common with Pharma and Biochem companies, will usually submit their breakthroughs to journals immediately after filing patent applications. Bell is no different.

Re: 66 again

Not only that, there’s a link that damages (but not strongly) your argument on that same wiki page. http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080820/full/454927a.html

Discuss, I guess?

The failure of one lab after decades of success (in an increasingly hostile and thoroughly state regulated sector) is not an indictment of private scientific research. And sure, you get some practical and patentable stuff out of this sort of research. But that doesn’t mean that the research isn’t at the forefront of fundamental scientific questions. The division between scientific progress and technological innovation is not as definite as is often assumed.

69
“And sure, you get some practical and patentable stuff out of this sort of research”
And who exacly provides these patents in a free-market system?

However, we are still then faced if they don’t perform with the contract being taken completly into the private sector – NOT returned to the public sector.

So the danger is that the service will not be provided by a public sector organisation, if a private sector organisation can provide that service more cheaply?

This is why I don’t think that the Left is serious about cutting costs.

See my response above re 19th century. As for early 20th century, big business was very supportive of the so-called progressive legislation introduced at the turn of the century in America by Teddy Roosevelt. Why? Because it had the effect of putting their smaller competitors out of business. The meat packing industry is a classic example. Prior to the “progressive era” the profitability of large firms was decreasing due to efficient competition from smaller rivals. See Gabriel Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism, written not by a right-wing libertarian but a New Left Marxist.
We talking about the unbridled capitlaism in the late 18C and early 19C there were no progressive movements attached to them.
There is no evidence for that statement . How do explain the ,massive growths in the wealth of those firms.
A perfect example is the expansion of large ranches and the decrease of small homesteaders in the west . Big capitalists eating up small ones.
Also this is just one man s point of view. A Marxist who is in the Spiked mould.(Trot to libertarian right)
Also are you saying that their should of been no progressive moves in the early 20th C . The poor of course were getting a sound deal before the legislation by people like Churchill. They were happy with their plight. The reason the legilslation was brought in was to stem the threat of revolution not to placate big boy capitalists
I’m not convinced 51 was saying man’s inate greed is a good thing.
I wasn’t.
In the end do we want to return to unbridled capitalism.
Read Francis Wheen’s wonderful book on Marx, read the conditions of the working classes by Engels. I didn’t agree with their solutions, as a social democrat but surely we don’t want to return to the days of the workhouse
Surely the best societies are where the state, private enterprise and coops work together.
Remember the public utilities we all use to own are now owned by large foriegn corporations.

Sorry.
I reality my beliefs are dying. Social democracy is as dead as the dodo.In the nest 10 years we will have no NHS or state education or welfare state. Many of you will cheer.
The world belongs to the NIcks (it is Nick Cohen) libertarian right ideology, or the religious fanatic or in the case of the mid west both.
One thing though which is never mentioned by the libertarian right, is what about defence spending. Who pays for that ?.

We should be looking at employee involvement in service-delivery, and more effective employee reward not ownership – ownership is just opening the door to privatisation.
Spot on.

Also wasn’t this the type of capitalism of the mid 17C
There independent textile workers were gobbled up by the mechanised big textile owners.

I’d be more minded to have faith in the Cuntservatives proposals if they suggested, say, turning Tesco or ASDA into worker’s co-ops (as indeed was the case with the latter at its inception), rather than the faux-’empowerment’ of letting the middle class huddle together around their nice schools’n'hospitals.

Gordon,

“One thing though which is never mentioned by the libertarian right, is what about defence spending. Who pays for that ?”

The state (in most interpretations), as defence is meant to be one of those functions best conducted by the state. As is street lighting apparently, which could make for entertaing election manifestos.

J. Alfred,

Why would turning Tesco or ASDA into a co-op help anyone, as they are private companies and therefore not in the state’s power to do with as it will? What you’ve basically said is that you will believe the Conservative (note spelling – less offensive to Conservative party members/females depending on your taste) proposals if they show they are socialists.

Incidentally, one thing with that line of criticism that always gets me. It is always designed to defend the ‘poorest’, but you do not explain why you think these people will also not want to huddle round nice schools and hospitals. It as if you think the poor cannot help themselves and depend on the likes of you to protect them.

@77

What you’ve basically said is that you will believe the Conservative (note spelling – less offensive to Conservative party members/females depending on your taste) proposals if they show they are socialists.

Glad we’re singing from the same hymn sheet

But yes, I think that giving some of the power back to the employees rather than faceless corporate speculators would do some good. As for Gov not interfering in private companies, I refer m’lud to HBOS, Northern Rock etc etc.

and

It is always designed to defend the ‘poorest’, but you do not explain why you think these people will also not want to huddle round nice schools and hospitals.

Of course they will. But if/when a good comp/hospital turns “co-op” what’s to stop effectively choosing their intake? Hence it’s a divisive measure.

and this

depend on the likes of you to protect them.

made me chuckle. Not sure what you mean by the likes of [me], I’m off to sign-on tomorrow..!

Here’s what’s really going on.
Gandhi Speaks! :: Uncooperative Quangos