Abstract
In Transforming Capitalism Through Cooperative Practices, Catherine Mulder employs what she calls New Marxian Class Analysis (NMCA) to six case studies that represent different aspects of worker cooperatives or Worker Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs). NMCA gets to the root of worker exploitation by focusing centrally on the surplus; who produces it, how it is distributed, and who controls its distribution. NMCA offers a corrective to standard Marxist analysis that focuses only on ownership and profit.
Mulder’s case studies reveal in-depth knowledge on the intricacies of each cooperative. She adds fascinating anecdotes, including the fact that the London Symphony Orchestra was originally booked on the Titanic, but passed this up for a gig on the HMS Baltic two weeks earlier! Mulder has interesting stories to tell about the discovery of cooperatives, such as The Lusty Lady, which she first learned about while teaching a course on Labor and Film in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her writing is remarkably clear and she makes complex histories and theory accessible, without sacrificing the sophistication of her analysis.
Each case represents the principles of WSDEs to varying degrees. The Cuban farm, Organopónico Vivero Alamar, most closely resembles a worker cooperative as exemplified by NMCA. This case also illustrates the central error Mulder finds in standard Marxist analysis. The workers at Organopónico Vivero Alamar do not own the land, but they decide what they will produce, how they will distribute what they produce, and what to do with the surplus they create. Workers make all decisions about their working conditions; and therefore, are not exploited even though they do not own the land.
If Organopónico Vivero Alamar represents the case that is most like a WSDE, the Green Bay Packers represents the case that works the least like one. This organization is owned by the shareholders, yet these owners do not exploit the workers. Once again, we see the limits of focusing on ownership as the sole determinant of capitalistic enterprises. The shareholders buy stock in the Packers, not for profit, but for voting power. While the owners have no class position, the Green Bay Packers represent a capitalist rather than cooperative entity. Shareholders vote in board members but have no control over them. It is the Board that appropriates and distributes the surplus. Interestingly, Mulder concludes that the workers are exploited even while the owners (i.e., shareholders) do not directly exploit them. Here, Mulder offers an insightful analysis of the language used to describe the exploited workers in the Green Bay Packers. Mulder argues that calling adults “players” minimizes their role as workers. Also, the commodity they produce is called a “game.” While they receive high salaries, coaches and players are producing a surplus over which they have no control.
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) represents a middle ground between Organopónico Vivero Alamar and The Green Bay Packers. According to Mulder’s New Marxian Class Analysis, the LSO strays from pure WSDEs in its handling of deputies and conductors. Deputies are hired by the musicians to deal with non-creative tasks. Mulder likens the position of deputies to a “prolonged audition.” Many of them become members of the LSO and are content in their positions for this reason. Conductors are considered exploited workers within the parameters of NMCA. On this note, Mulder includes a direct quote from Marx, where he explicitly names conductors as surplus producing workers. Yet, conductors are not included in the decision-making process of the LSO and musicians can hire and fire them based on their performance. Mulder ultimately finds these caveats forgivable, at least for the time being, given the high salaries and prestige conductors enjoy. As it stands, the LSO has created fairer working conditions, good salaries, secured its place in the market, and has a system of training young musicians to carry on its cooperative practices.
New Era Windows and Lusty Lady both illustrate the unique challenges WSDEs face in the United States. New Era gained a bit of notoriety, when Michael Moore covered this cooperative in his film, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” The workers bought the factory in 2012 after the business was closed and they were all fired. They were kept afloat largely through loans from Working World, an Bronx-based organization that helps finance cooperatives. Even as New Era continued to struggle and could not pay back the loans, Working World lent the workers more money to keep them going. New Era is also part of the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), which did not require New Era to pay dues until workers were able to do so. New Era does not have a Board of Directors, CEO, or CFO making higher salaries than the workers. Because they do not have to account for these high salaries, they can keep their prices competitive. While financing continues to be a struggle, the workers persist, often without a paycheck, because they believe in the cooperative model. As Mulder points out, in a capitalistic system, workers have only their labor power to leverage and most banks do not accept this as tangible collateral. This was even more of a problem for The Lusty Lady.
Frustrated with exploitative working conditions, the women of Lusty Lady fought a movement for unionization and won, negotiating their first collective bargaining agreement in the late 1990s. This was no easy feat given that few unions were keen on representing sex workers. However, Mulder shows that union organization, may have led to the Lusty’s lack of success relative to other cooperatives. The National Labor Relations Board prohibits management from unionizing. Their narrow definition of management excluded the cooperative structure of the Lusty. However, the Lusty was also done in by their landlord, who continually raised rents, because he was in business with their competitor. He was never charged for this illegal practice. Mulder also noted that bias against sex workers prevented them from receiving the same kind of public support cooperatives, such as New Era Windows received.
The final case Mulder examined was the Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union. This entity makes micro loans to small businesses and favors cooperatives. However, Mulder characterizes it as “altruistic” rather than cooperative. It has wage-earning workers, who have little voice in how the credit union operates. Thus, Mulder deems the credit union a capitalistic institution, even though it is not focused on profit.
Mulder’s book offers us one of the few in-depth studies of worker cooperatives existing around the world. She does not just analyze the case studies, she offers a list of changes that would aid the creation of more cooperatives and help sustain the ones already in operation. Her book offers a new approach to analyzing worker exploitation and raises a number of fascinating questions. One question I have concerns how cooperatives directly deal with racism and sexism. Marxist analysis is typically criticized for subsuming racism and sexism to the primary phenomenon of class exploitation. Mulder does argue that discrimination would be less likely in cooperatives given their transparency and democratic processes, but what if there is racism embedded in the democratic process itself? In my own research, I find that internal organization culture and external racist ideology affect how organizations address controversial issues, even in consensus-based, progressive groups (Beeman 2015; 2012). This can especially be a concern for cooperatives like LSO, where hopeful deputies, willing to accept their subsumed class positions for a chance at becoming a future member, can remain silent on controversial issues. Transparency in salaries may not be enough. Salaries are public data in academia, and yet, discrimination still occurs; not just in salaries but in tenure and promotion decisions. Cooperatives may limit discrimination, but without conscious and explicit attention to racism and sexism, it cannot be eliminated.
Nevertheless, this is a remarkable work that makes contributions to our understanding of Marxist theory, its application to capitalism, and alternatives to capitalism. This book would work wonderfully across many disciplines in undergraduate and graduate classes to teach students about the complexities of Marxist thought, all the while offering real-world case studies of how cooperatives work. Mulder shows us that “even creative types who more than likely did not take very many finance courses in college can be and are successful in running their own enterprises. The idea that there must be visionary CEOS who have made their own financial investment in the enterprise, and that capitalism is the most efficient and desirable enterprise structure, is quite simply bunk” (45).