Organizing for Ownership: Worker Co-Ops and Revolutionary Unionism

Worker Cooperatives have been an abstract model, to say the least. Fitting between an impasse of both petit-bourgeois small business ownership and a somewhat overrated part-time job. However, there’s generally a push to integrate worker-owned enterprises into the fold, to bring them to the table as a vague end goal of any labor organizing journey. Mondragon exemplifies that without proper connection to any organized power, these worker-run enterprises will have nothing to do but go to the state. Mondragon both fall into the cultural and economic problems that are outside of its immediate structure, patriarchy, professionalism, product sourcing and even method of extraction can all be criticized here.The state then integrates and degrades the worker's power within those enterprises. With this, Mondragon and others like it need an external support that does not fall into the trappings of capitalist culture. The solution then lies in us, as worker-organizers in revolutionary unions, acting as the better alternative for worker-owned enterprises, a reciprocal relationship to maintain workers' control of these production points.

This essay will outline the working theory behind the latter point of my claim. To show that with the right collection of dual power, we can effectively establish control points over the means of production, being our workplaces, and maintain them against the state. This ‘Dual Power’, borrowing in large part from Lenin’s observation of Dual Power in the Petrograd Soviet, will be outlined as what Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the DSA defines as:

“[The] strategy that builds liberated spaces and creates institutions grounded in direct democracy. Together these spaces and institutions expand into the ever widening formation of a new world “in the shell of the old.” As the movement grows more powerful, it can engage in ever larger confrontations with the ruling class—and ultimately a contest for legitimacy against the institutions of capitalist society”

While this is not without risk of intervention it is to be noted this can be done from pre-existing enterprises that must organize so that the workers control the shop, or creating a new shop where there workers control it from its origin. In all cases, however, there must first be established control over the productive structures of the workplace by the workers. Without this crucial step, these workplaces will continue to have the vested class interest of the employer and thus the vested class interest of the bourgeoisie. So concluding its revolutionary potential into that of counter-revolutionary.

The meaning of connecting and networking these enterprises is to build the economic and material ends of dual power. Without the tools of production within our network of dual power we lack the ability to supply and maintain our material needs as workers. Many efforts neglect the seizure of material production as something to be considered after the organized base has effectively dominated over the old system. I would argue in contrast to this that to maintain ourselves, our base, and our political influence parallel to capital, we need both examples of how our workplaces can be operated differently as well as proof of functionality in the modern day. We must be pouring resources into creating and supporting these models of production rather than leaving them isolated to the market. On the other hand, these models of production need to be able to be used for the proletariat at large too, and support the dual power efforts. Through this, we can truly build a sustainable long-term organizing goal in labor.

This all lies in a similar reflection to the Workers Councils or Workers Soviets of the early 20th century. While many of them had an array of different conditions, part of their overall failure can be attributed to a lack of any supporting structure around them. While many workers at the time did have materially occurring sectors of mutual aid among their communities, it was still disconnected from a larger strategic network. We see this in many of the original Soviets of Russia and Ukraine, ‘Soviet’ being a popular word for the workers councils of the early 20th century, as well as the very sporadic nature of the Irish Soviets during the revolutionary period of the Irish War of Independence in 1919. Other such examples can include the workers councils of the failed German Revolution, even ones that had held on much later than the initial push of 1918 like in the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Many of the councils were very spontaneous and, while having a great deal of support, lacked the experience and infrastructure to keep themselves going past the spontaneity of the Revolutions involving them. In a sense, this had put the cart before the horse in that these councils and Soviets were not connected and thus fell into the hands of the state/capital.

So then the question remains how do we go about organizing in this way? Much of the labor organizing of the Global North; namely in the US and Canada, in the past hundred or so years has been tailored around labor peace, keeping a stalemate between workers and management. Labor peace being this manufactured stalemate employed by many unions. Even in unions like the Industrial Workers of the World, much of our organizing has not included what lies beyond a constant state of class antagonism towards the capital owners. Solidarity unionism or otherwise we do not address a revolutionary strategy or framework. So to propose one, it is imperative that organizations with the capacity for radical rank-and-file organizing cooperatize and connect workplaces to worker-led networks and movements. In this way can we retain labor power and a semblance of control over productive forces. To note that revolutionary times come when the power of the state and capital are truly contested. So to contest said power effectively is to act as a transformative force as opposed to an agitative.

To act as an agitative force is to react to material circumstances while choosing to contest their legitimacy, doing so through the act of obstruction of its function. Here lies the problem with the labor strategy as it currently has stood since the 1910s. It functions only to agitate and not allow for transformation, and in the revolutionary framework, transformation is key to realizing a new society.

If workers seize a farm it is functionally a capitalist farm, in every aspect of design, yield, supply, and relation, it is still designed to function within a capitalist framework. The corn only grows because there is a surplus of produced manure that supplies the farm at a rate so that the capitalist can sell the corn and buy the manure while maintaining maximum profit. Not to mention that much of the physical space is designed to obstruct workers and exploit them, isolating them both from yield and each other. To seize this and allow it to function as it was, is to ask the workers to create a roundtable and decide who will do the drudge work for the day. Instead as a transformative force, we take the farm and alter it, physically, and structurally, with supply yield and relation in mind.

Through this method can we transform it into a place of production reliant on worker control, thus creating a need for that reality. Without a workers' movement, networks of proletarians forming similar reliance on each other and these newly transformed common places of production will crumble. Alternatively a worker's movement, no matter the size, will not survive or grow without something to claim ownership of and the power to contest the influence of the state and capital. So it comes to dual effort in the movement, one where we must seize the means of production while also maintaining them till a final struggle breaks out. While that begins the hard theory behind this concept, another aspect more strategically to consider is how these transformative co-ops would function in relation to a worker's movement. While that can be another essay, I believe in this I lay the groundwork for how we should be creating these dual power conditions.

Worker Cooperatives and Revolutionary Unionism

Much like modern worker cooperatives are divorced from a revolutionary workers movement, so too are many of the modern unions. Functionally trade unionists do agitate for official state authorized demands in the form of the “contract”; functionally the unions themselves are not built to move beyond that contract. Labor peace is much preferred in these institutions than to overturn the capitalist order, as many of the officers and labor leaders are given their funding and livelihoods to maintain that order. So we can see that the very structure and intention of the union gives way for the level to which the union is able to organize labor. In short, like the cooperatives, if our unions are not connected to the revolutionary struggle they will ally themselves with the state. As we can see this ends up being a double edged sword of worker organization broadly, worker co-op or union shop we must sway them into a revolutionary framework.

This idea of the revolutionary union can be found both in the modern day and throughout history; The CNT, Revolutionary Shop Stewards, FAUD, USI, LAB, FORA, but for our purposes we will be discussing the role of the Industrial Workers of the World in this form of organization. There were a great many factions both then and now in the IWW, the debate over syndicalism and the role of the union in the workers movement differs greatly. My purpose here is not to confront this in full but to rather propose what can be done in the modern day based on our current US labor movement. With that said, the legacy and structures left by the early wobblies have obviously left a major mark on the institutional structures of the IWW. Preventing in part, the complete abolition of its revolutionary potential and assimilation into the greater trade unionist gaggle. However over time, because of the great many ways it was suppressed by the US and other state favored actors (AFL most notably), much of the momentum and membership died off. Leaving us now with a slowly re-emerging IWW, that is starting again from ideological scratch.

Many of the systems and structures of the IWW were built with the intention of the ideological principles of the time. The early wobblies structuring the organization to fit the material condition and knowledge to be had in their time. Things like the NLRB and the Taft-Hartley Act did not exist during the creation or primary implementation of these ideas. While we have adapted somewhat to them, it is much like how Mondragon and other cooperatives adapted to their changing conditions, without a connection to the modern workers movement, it quickly swayed into the state zeitgeist. Wage agreements and direct action are no longer a means to an end, but rather the end goal. What we educate on is simply to constantly agitate be it through a contract or a collective letter of demands to the boss. Our end goal and our ideology is nothing but to exist under whatever conditions may exist, much like the isolated cooperatives.

Becoming the Workers Movement

Much like the conditions of the early wobblies we are surrounded by discontent of the working class without much of a workers movement to build that discontent into revolutionary momentum. The solution now however is the solution of before and as always. To build the ideology of today into what moves that discontent into action. In the labor movement we see only a standstill that ebbs and flows between favorable and unfavorable to the worker, the agitation and action being there but used not to create but rather maintain. In worker cooperatives we see the creation of a new without the agitation or action required to expand and revolutionize these resources into dual power. So we must combine these two aspects of labor into one strategy, an ideology of creation and agitation.

Our means of seizing power is to build dual power, contesting the state, through the ownership of the means of production and further the cultivation of its societal necessity. This ownership talked about can only come through seizure of capital through organized labor, and having it be maintained not through labor peace, but through the cooperativisation of these workplaces. Through this can we make an alternative political and economic bloc that would develop into dual power. With our intention to overturn capitalism and to break down its structures, when we organize these workplaces into cooperatives we would be developing not only worker-owned productive forces, but a culture of reliance upon the workers movement, thus creating its strength.

Cultivating the societal necessity of our systems as opposed to the systems of capital is how we cultivate political and social power. If workers are at the base of this structure we create then by extension, under the yolk of capital will find it more and more favorable to join the workers movement when it has something perennial to offer. Something not only consistent but that puts them and their intersectional working class needs at the forefront. This also should be built as a means to resolve differences and matters of hierarchy among the working class. If we are building a matter of organization that necessitates cooperation and free association, then those contradictions will have to be resolved.

This idea being much more condensed here is not for lack of better elaboration but more to illustrate what the long term strategy should entail. However at the crux of this point is that we must organize labor in a way that they seize capital, operate it through this cooperative model, and use its resources and structures to aggressively expand and develop the workers movement into a revolutionary force. If we do not then the IWW and at large the revolutionary labor movement of the past is doomed to suffer into not only obscurity but to fail the working class at large. This is how we resolve this cycle of constant agitation and strife in labor, and this is how we win.

Who are the Angry Education Workers?

This is a project to gather a community of revolutionary education workers who want a socialist education system. We want to become a platform for educators of all backgrounds and job roles to share workers’ inquiries, stories of collective action, labor strategy, theoretical reflection, and art.

Work in education? Get involved!

Whether you’re interested in joining the project, or just submitting something you want to get in front of an audience, get in touch! Check our post history to get a sense of what we are looking for, but we are open minded to all sorts of submissions.

Reach out to angryeducationworkers@protonmail.com or over any of our social media. You can also contact us on the signal by reaching out to proletarianpedagogue.82.

If you don’t have the capacity to get involved, we encourage you to share our work with other educators—especially your coworkers. For our readers who don’t work in education, please send our creations to any education workers you know.

Support Our Work

All our public work is freely available with no paywalls, and always will be. But if you want to help our collective cover the costs of hosting webpages, creating agitprop, and finding research materials, then please consider signing up for a paid subscription or donate to us on Ko-fi if you don’t want to give money to substack. With enough support, we can begin sharing the funds among collective members for them to use on various projects and pay others for any work they do for us—such as translating or printing materials.