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Why don't communist movements focus on creating and nurturing employee owned businesses? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Yondoza@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.

It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.

So my main questions are:

Are organizations focusing on this and I just don't know about it?
If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?

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[-] TechLich@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

If a worker co-op based society erased it's competition and formed a monopoly co-op run for the benefit of workers, is that not just a communist managed economy at that point with the monopoly playing the role of the state before erasing itself?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 day ago

To even get there in the first place requires making several nearly impossible leaps. If such a thing could happen, it may be able to form something like that, but given that it would be a profit-driven firm it's more likely that it would lose its cooperative character without a proletarian state over it to enforce that. More than likely, it would go the same way the Owenites went, moderate success at first before fizzling out and failing to overcome the Capitalist system.

[-] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 1 points 4 hours ago

Owenites?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours ago

Pre-Marx Socialists following Robert Owen. Owen was a Utopian, ie a "model builder." He believed that it was the task of great thinkers to create a perfect society in their heads, and bring it about in reality. This is the wrong approach, which Marx and Engels spent a good amount of time countering.

this post was submitted on 17 May 2025

202 points (95.1% liked)

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