Cooperation, Surplus Appropriation, and the Law's Enjoyment

Diverse economies and alternative spaces: An overview of approaches and practices

“…The second relates to the workers employed in subsidiaries located abroad that are not cooperatives. According to Healy (2011), this is a case of direct exploitation of workers by workerowners. Mondragon has made a commitment to explore ways for the participation of workers in the ownership and management of non-cooperative companies (Mondragon S. Coop, 2015).…”

Value, Cooperatives, and Class Justice

“…As Gibson-Graham (2006) argues, these meso-level institutional agreements provide incentives for each cooperative that differ from those of individual independent cooperatives and provide much of the reason that the Mondragón cooperatives have managed to avoid the problems identified in the early analysis of cooperatives by Webb and Webb (1923) as being fatal to the cooperative structure. As Healy (2011) argues, these agreements represent a decision by the workers to relegate part of their control over surplus-value to an institutional arrangement that then takes on a life of its own and serves to structure and constrain further decisions by the workers. In each case, the workers appropriate the surplusvalue collectively; they are not exploited, yet these further institutions have proved necessary to ensure that, within the framework of a communist class process, class justice is promoted.…”

Rational corporation meets disciplined worker: The (re)production of class subjects in corporate crime law reform

“…This requires augmenting law reform efforts with strategies that help to give workers a meaningful voice in the organisation of production – for workers to take democratic control of the workplace (Wolff 2010). This might include, for instance, moving beyond worker involvement in the IRS to demand worker participation on boards of directors (Michalowski & Kramer 2003), or building upon already-existing worker-owned and -controlled enterprises, such as the various cooperatives and collectives in which workers democratically elect boards of directors from within their own ranks, and in which workers collectively decide on the nature and scope of production (Healy 2011). This does not mean that worker collectives/cooperatives constitute anti-capitalist strategies par excellence (Ruccio 2011).…”