Bob Dylan (reading lyrics) (28:38)

Oh, where have you been my blue eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on side of 12 Misty Mountains. I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highways have stepped in the middle of seven side forests. I've been out in front of a dozen dead Oceans. I've been 10,000 miles on the miles of a graveyard. And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain. You're gonna fall. Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.

Richard Wolff (30:05)

Welcome back, friends, to the second half of this edition of Economic update. Well, as you know, on this program I speak fairly often about worker cooperatives, worker self directed enterprises, the whole notion that there has always been and there is now an alternative to a capitalist way of organizing the stores, the factories and the offices where we produce the goods and services that our lives depend on. Capitalism is a historical system. It was born, it evolves, and like every system before it, it will pass away. We are now living through a time when capitalism isn't working well for the vast majority of people. And that's a kind way of putting it, as you saw in the first half of today's program. But worker cooperatives and cooperatives of all sorts have been around a long time and I thought it would be useful to have someone talk to us about that history and about its relevance to where we are today. The history of efforts to organize production in a non capitalist way by people self consciously intending to do exactly that. So I have as my guest and I'm very, very pleased to welcome Dario Azzellini. Dario, come a little closer. Good, that's fine.

Dario Azzellini (31:30)

Hi. Thank you.

Richard Wolff (31:31)

And let me tell you all who Dario is and what he has done. Dario is an assistant professor of sociology at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. He is the author of multiple books. I'm going to give you a couple of the titles, Communes and Workers control in building 21st century socialism from Below. He is the co editor of a book, Ours To Master and to Worker Control from the Commune to the Present with Manny Ness, a New York City professor and someone who works on this subject as well. And he's also the author of a collection, he's an editor rather of a collection of pieces called An Alternative Labor Worker Control and Workplace Democracy, published in 2015. He is also a research fellow at the Murphy Institute for Labor Studies, which is part of the City University, New York. And finally, Azzolini is also a founding member of the multilingual website www. Workerscontrol.net where you can find out more if the things we discuss prove to be interesting. All right, Dario, let's get underway. As I said in the introduction, workers control. Workers co ops are getting more and more interest around the world. There are many reasons for that. The Mondragon Corporation in Spain has been on a kind of missionary activity, letting itself be known around the world, teaching courses. Emilia Romagna in Italy is a place where worker co ops are a major part of the local economy and people have begun to learn about that and they're everywhere. Tell us a little bit about how old this idea is and what the history that you can tell us about might suggest to us today.

Dario Azzellini (33:38)

First of all, thanks for being here. I'm happy to be here with you. Rick. Well, I mean, if we say what are cooperatives? Well, cooperatives are working cooperatively instead of working under one command and just hierarchically. So if we take that, that as cooperatives, cooperatives are obviously much older than any hierarchical work because it used to be the normal form to work together, to either work individually or you work together with others, but not under a command. Even like, even if we look back at these dark medieval times, people had freedom at work. They had to pay something, the craftsmen and farmers from what they built, they grew or whatever, but they had control of their work, they had control of their workday. And I think that's the moment when you have control of your work. Work can be an expression of yourself. It can't be that anymore if you're a wage worker, because then you're under workers command. So the idea that is behind the cooperative is the oldest idea that exists regard working. We can even look in Engels describes in a work of 1847 that as one of the consequence of the crisis in 1842 or something, he observed that there is one factory he knows, for example, where the entrepreneur had to give up. But the workers took over the factory and then hired later the entrepreneur as co worker to come back to come back and make the books. So we see that it's in a very old history. And throughout the history like of the past 150 years, we see that workers not only in cooperatives, but really taking over production sites has happened under any system we can imagine in revolutions, in socialist revolutions, but also in nationalist revolutions and anti colonial uprisings. People took always their workplaces and put them to work under control, to the benefit of the workers and the communities. It happened even in the Eastern bloc, against the official communism or socialism, where people say, well, we're not. We're not working, we're not controlling our work. So it happened in Poland, it happened everywhere. And it's happening right now in this crisis since 2008, around the world, strongly in Latin America, but even now in Europe, that workers occupy their workplaces and take them over.

Richard Wolff (36:00)

And can you give us. I don't mean to interrupt, but I think our listeners and our viewers give us a few examples, perhaps where you have either been or that, you know, would help us.

Dario Azzellini (36:12)

Well, let's take Viome. Viome is a former factory for chemical building construction materials in Thessaloniki, Greece. It was closed. The owner that had various factories, VMA was highly viable, but he had other factories. He just moved the money and then he stole the money and he went bankrupt. Like it often happens, the workers occupied the factory.

Richard Wolff (36:37)

And how many workers are we talking about?

Dario Azzellini (36:39)

We're talking there about 27 workers. They occupied the factories and started then thinking about their health, producing organic cleaners in the same, very same factory. They are now exporting olive oil soap to Austria and Germany. They're selling these organic cleaners. And the nice thing is that they wanted to do something organic to support local organic farmers, etc. They use the ingredients to have a healthy environment where you work. Because obviously if you work in a chemical construction material factory, it's not as healthy as producing organic cleaners. But they also thought about how can we give this benefit to the consumers, to the people. So what they do is that they started eliminating all dealers in between and start selling at markets and to a distribution that they have, so that the organic cleaners they sell are available for any normal person because they don't cost more than the chemical cleaners you get in the grocery store. And these are 27 people living with it. But we have, all in all, since the first occupations, around 2,000 in Argentina, where this modality became like something visible and new. We have now about 360 occupied workers controlled and formerly occupied factories in Argentina about.

Richard Wolff (38:04)

Tell us a little bit about that.

Dario Azzellini (38:05)

Yes, this is in Argentina. It's about 20,000 people working in these.

Richard Wolff (38:10)

In these. 360, yes.

Dario Azzellini (38:12)

And it's from print shop to ceramic factories, to ironworks, to restaurants, hotels, anything you can imagine can be managed by workers. Why not? I mean, they know what to do. If there's the old joke that always says a factory without a bus can work perfectly, but a bus without workers Can't.

Richard Wolff (38:34)

So they've run these 360 enterprises as worker co ops.

Dario Azzellini (38:39)

As worker co ops. That's the modality they get. But they go a few steps further because co op legislation in many cases just asks you to have one or two meetings a year. They meet regularly every week. They discuss everything on the shop floor among the workers, build committees and etc. We have during the.

Richard Wolff (38:59)

So that's what you mean, for example, when you talk about enterprise democracy or worker democracy. This regular decision making of all the people involved.

Dario Azzellini (39:10)

I think that's the important thing. The important thing is that all people involved should decide on the shop, should have the possibility to decide on the shop floor. Obviously you don't spend the whole week discussing, they have times, etc. But it's also, I think many times it's the weird idea of people that never worked in the factory that think that workers would spend their time debating if they decide on these things. Everyone that worked in a factory knows exactly that workers know how to work, know how to organize work, and will not spend the whole week debating to.

Richard Wolff (39:39)

Decide things since the enterprise would disappear, then.

Dario Azzellini (39:43)

Yes. So in. And we have to. During this recent, most contemporary crisis, apart from many new occupations in Argentina and also like there are 100 in Brazil and 100 in Venezuela and in Uruguay about three. But during the contemporary crisis, the phenomena started in Europe. We have now at least two factories in Greece, two factories in Italy, two factories in France, one or two in Tunisia, two in Egypt. So let's say the Mediterranean Basin has been like the new spot for the.

Richard Wolff (40:21)

Wave of these events.

Dario Azzellini (40:23)

There is also a second wave that we can see at the same time. These ones are really like, okay, they challenge the capital and takeover. But we have also a massive wave of forming co ops. Co ops. Just starting them anew, starting a new co ops. I mean, that's why I ended up at the Murphy Institute, because they've been observing that there is this high interest in this wave of forming small community cooperatives that provide either community services or something, but that are not devoted to whatever capitalist commodity chains, but to the needs of the people. And there is like, it can be cafes or it can be a little shop or it can be a transport cooperative or whatever, cleaners cooperatives, etc. All these things that came up since Occupy Wall street in a massive way. So the idea is now to see how to create some support, academic support, master degree and other kind of courses to support these community and workers ownership.

Richard Wolff (41:25)

Courses to teach people how to do this.

Dario Azzellini (41:28)

Yes, yes, to teach them or to support them, because maybe on some aspects they might know more than the academics if they're in their community actively. So this is the second element we can see now. And it's something that I think that on one hand people figure out that the capitalist economy is not going to solve their problems. And on the other hand, many of these people work somewhere where they don't agree anymore with the kind how the work is organized and structured.

Richard Wolff (42:02)

The top down the hierarchy.

Dario Azzellini (42:04)

Top down the hierarchy. So many people, even if they earn a bit less. But it's such a relief not to work in a command structure where it's such a relief for many people that even earning a little bit less, it's worth doing if you don't have to be, you know, if you don't have anxiety the whole time, if you don't have someone controlling you. And the experience shows that it's also usually you figure out ways to work much better. Because obviously if I'm a worker and I'm a wage worker, I won't tell my boss how the whole work process can be even better or faster because he's not going to pay me more, give me time off after I told him. So I'm going to keep that a secret. But if I work in a cooperative, I'm going to talk about these systems and introduce them with the others.

Richard Wolff (42:56)

Tell me, is it your view, and if it is, could you tell us a little bit about it? That worker co ops represent a new kind of socialism, a socialism from below. What is the relationship between worker co ops as you understand them and as you help build them? On the one hand, and whatever we want to make sense of the word socialism these days.

Dario Azzellini (43:23)

If we look at Marx wrote, when he wrote about the Paris Commune, he at the end noticed that they were all organizing cooperatives and said, that's the real communism. A nationwide network of cooperatives that are doing business with each other and are connected to each other. And I think yes, I mean, obviously it's a bit more than that, but I think yes, it's a kind of social, in a sense that. I mean, the capitalist system is based in the first place on stealing the surplus value. So stealing the difference between what is worth and what I get. So if I eliminate that, it's a basic pillar of capitalist logic that I eliminated. So I think that the idea that if you work in corporates that are, I think they have to be connected, not just like workers control, but they have to be connected to communities so that communities and workers can decide what do we need, how do we produce that, who's going to work there, etc. But then obviously this network is socialism. Yeah, it's like the equality on work. The equality. That doesn't mean all have to do the same. No, if you look in these occupied factories and corporates and etc. I saw some places in Venezuela where, for example, the workers decided, okay, the workers that didn't finish the secondary school work only six hours a day. So they have the chance to finish the secondary school. Or it's obviously no problem if you have to take care of your sick child and you just go away, you will have other workers working for you and no one will tell you you get something off your pay or something. So we see that it's a totally different form of relating. It's a different form of. It produces different values. What do we produce suddenly when the workers have the chance to discuss it? Suddenly the question of health. Work is important. Well, and it is, obviously, but it's not among the questions you can decide usually as a worker. That's why many intellectual think workers don't care about the health or the chemicals or whatever on work. No, it's not true that they don't. It's that they don't have any chance to have a say on that. But the moment they have, they do.

Richard Wolff (45:46)

Okay, all right, let me turn to another question that I get often when I talk about it. Given the virtues that you've just listed for us of worker co ops, why don't we have more of them? What is it about at least the last two or three hundred years that makes them relatively scarce, relatively small? That is relative to the capitalist sector. How do you account for that?

Dario Azzellini (46:15)

It's obviously a problem if you're acting in an economy that is based on expansion and growth and etc. And that's not the logic of the corporate. So they will always grow slower than a capitalist enterprise. They don't exploit people, they don't have slave labor, they don't take it away from you to put it in a financial market or whatever. So they will always grow slower once they are successful. They're often co opted or bought out or whatever by big companies. So I think it's a. That's a problem about individual ownership. I'm against models of cooperatives that have individual ownership. I think it should be always a collective ownership. And you're an owner as long as you work there. And if you don't anymore, you're not anymore. So that's among the reasons. But they have been attacked simply by capitalism. In many, capitalism sometimes puts now also the cooperatives at use for the capitalist logic. But in other words, Kempset still attacks them because they give an example of a different way to work. And once you know that it's possible to work differently, you don't want to go back into the factory with the hierarchy or where you have to.

Richard Wolff (47:29)

Would it then follow that you think that given that capitalism is now widely criticized, widely challenged, particularly since the crisis of 2008 hit, has this created the space for worker co ops to emerge as an important alternative? Do you sense that going on?

Dario Azzellini (47:51)

Definitely. I mean, I sense that definitely. The problem is that I sense that from both sides, in the sense that many workers, many people are founding cooperatives because they want a different way to work and to live. But I also sense that the capitalists found out that they might build fake cooperatives or co op cooperatives to put them to their own business. Let me tell you that in Italy, for example, most of the detention centers for migrants are formerly cooperatives run by the mafia. So they also found out. So I think we have to really, there is now also this optimistic view and energy to build cooperatives. But I think we have to be very alert about the values we also transport. It's not just about that. Only the workers control it. And that's the only. It's not about changing one owner with 10 owners and then it's a cooperative. There's a whole set of values and ideas about how to work, how to fit in your community and et cetera, that goes with the cooperatives.

Richard Wolff (48:59)

I think this would be very interesting. Tell us a little bit about those values. What if I can put it this way, and correct me if I'm not doing it right, it sounds to me like you're concerned not only about the workers collectively and democratically running the enterprise, but that the same group of workers relate in some cooperative and democratic way with the communities, the residential communities that they impact and that they interact in and where they live.

Dario Azzellini (49:28)

Yes, that's. I think that's important and that's important. And I think it's something we should stress, especially now in times of crisis. We'll be seeing probably many enterprises, companies closing down in the next years. So the question is, and I give you the second example from Greece, is wood factory. Like wood, they cut woods and produce different wood things. It has been closed down. The workers were kicked out. The owner said, well, there's no market anymore. We can't export or whatever, the market broke, the workers occupied the thing and started producing what the communities all around need, like benches for the towns, the tables for the local markets in the different towns, etc. And there again they are, I think, some 30 workers and they make a living out of it. So we see that we shouldn't leave it to the entrepreneur to decide if a company is worth running or not. But it should be the workers and the communities. And I'm sure for many companies that have been closed down here, and especially like in more rural areas, like wood companies or mills or whatever, I'm sure that the workers in the communities would have a use for it if they just take it over and just do it.

Richard Wolff (50:46)

I also wonder how you react to the following. Suppose there were a significant worker co op sector of the American economy. In other words, the very things you're describing happen and happen on a growing scale. So now we're in some future point. Let's hope it's not too far in the future where there's a significant worker co op sector. Would it be the case in your mind that the worker co ops could go to the broader public and say, just as you were once convinced to pay a few extra pennies for a pound of coffee to know that it was fair traded, that something had been done to give the conditions of work of the farmers who grew the coffee a decent life, that your purchase of coffee contributed to, that people would buy, even if it was a few pennies more a pound, the fair traded coffee rather than the commercial usual coffee, Would it be the same that we could expect, that people who believed in democracy, therefore in democracy at the workplace, might similarly buy or give preference to the products of worker co ops compared to capitalist enterprises and thereby enable them to grow?

Dario Azzellini (52:05)

Definitely. I think even in some cases it doesn't even have to be more expensive. I mean, you eliminate all the in between traders, you don't have managers, you pay 20 times as much, you don't have to take a 15% benefit out of this company. So that's the astonishing thing. Like in France, it's two factories. One is producing organic teas, herb teas and teas. They're working. They're now coordinating with a cooperative in Vietnam and importing also tea. And the other one is producing organic yogurt and ice cream. And both have their main thing on the local and regional markets where people know them and people buy this stuff because they know. I mean, wouldn't you buy this stuff if you know it's a company and you saved the workers and family's life in your hometown.

Richard Wolff (52:51)

You would.

Dario Azzellini (52:51)

And so everyone would. So that's why I think that this connection to community is very important. And the ones the cooperatives and workers recuperated factories that survive on a long term are the ones that are inserted in communities and movements and start building networks. So I think that one, obviously one very important thing is trying to build commodity chains where you all along try to have the cooperative so that you don't have to deal as less as possible with capitalist enterprises that have a different logic.

Richard Wolff (53:24)

And that each worker co op in a sense produces for another co op and is itself helping to buy products from another co op. So it becomes mondragon a little bit built itself up over time by having the different co ops help each other literally in daily functioning.

Dario Azzellini (53:46)

Yeah, let's make an example. I mean, you can connect with cooperatives. Local farmers bring the vegetables into the city. Then you have a cooperative cooking with these vegetables. And you have a different cooperative that is distributing in the takeout food, for example. You know, that wouldn't be a problem. In fact, in Argentina now, where there is this bigger amount of these kind of recuperated factories and cooperatives and etc. It's about 20% of the business they make is with other recuperated factories. Among all these 360. And another 3 or 4% is with cooperatives out of solidarity and social economy. So we see they have already like around 20 something percent of the whole business they do is with business structures that don't follow strictly a capitalist logic.

Richard Wolff (54:41)

So tell me, since we're coming to the end of our time, why have you, as a sociology professor, as a person interested in labor, labor history, why did you come explain to us to worker co ops as something particularly important to you?

Dario Azzellini (55:02)

I think that since the political system responds to the economic system, we have to change the the economic system. We have to change the economic base we're in. I mean, I'm not saying that it's unilateral, we just on one side or whatever. But I think that taking control of the own labor is important in so many ways. It's not only important because workers know better than the capitalists how to work and how to produce. It's important because it creates different values. It's important because it will be a work and a labor and a production that's serves the people and not the interests of the big business and the big industries. It's important because it changes people, because it's a totally different thing if you don't have just to respond to command but suddenly can discuss and decide and you and I think that's what we need and the capitalist system is destroying not only people and families and countries, but the whole world. So I think what we need is an economic system that is based on the self determination and self management of people and communities.

Richard Wolff (56:17)

Dario, wonderful.

Dario Azzellini (56:19)

Thank you very much.

Richard Wolff (56:19)

I appreciate your sharing your insights with us and I'm very glad that there are people like Dario who join the many now working on worker co ops to build them and to make them part of the lives of people, to transform the lives of people in just the way Dario laid out. Once again, the website that you might want to visit that he works on is www.workerscontrol.net. we've come to the end of our program. I want to remind you again that the most important thing that we ask of you is to partner with us, to use our two websites, rdwolf.com and democracyatwork.info to communicate with us, to sponsor us, to help with getting us on the radio, to set up visits. We want to thank our partner, truthout.org, that remarkable independent source of news and information that we urge you to make use of. They've been a valued partner for a long time and we are always looking for more partners. I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Gonna be my time, my time, babe.

Dario Azzellini (57:36)

They ain't gonna change.

Richard Wolff (57:46)

Things gonna change. Yes, it is. Sam. Sa.