When I explain surplus value to people, I use the example of a Starbucks. You’re working for $15/hr, selling hundreds of $5 drinks per hour, the surplus value covers the other costs like rent and supplies, but, as most investor-facing documents will lay out, that $15/hr/person is the largest expsense. So, fudging numbers here, you sell 50 drinks at $5 each, that’s $250-15-15 for labor and other costs, so $220/hr getting taken from the workers and sent to the owners.
So, even if a) I’m wildly off with the numbers, which makes perfect sense because I made them up and b) startup capital is hard to come by if you aren’t already rich, the existence of profit from seemingly simple businesses like a standalone coffee shop should be something workers can organize and replicate without much involvement from capital. So, why don’t we? Is it that we all have been propagandaized to want the surplus value for ourselves?
A coffee shop, or any food service business, is kind of a bad example in terms of surplus value/profit calculations. Labour is often the plurality, ie. the largest share, of the costs, but not the majority. For example, place I worked at for a while sat around 25% labour and 23% food cost (% of total revenue). Generally speaking a restaurant making 9% profit is doing really well. Franchise fees, if applicable, may fudge this a little, but surplus value is pretty low either way.
Now for worker co-ops… From my observations it’s really hard to find people who are qualified, who want to buy in, and who have the resources (cash or credit) to buy in. Even a small business isn’t cheap, even when it’s split amongst the staff. Local laws may also hinder the process. In general I think the idea of working for a company, or being the owner outright, is so ingrained in western societies that people often don’t even consider cooperatives. Or, on the flipside, the idea of all the employees owning equal shares is so foreign that most people dismiss the idea out of hand before they have a chance to think about the positives. “Not everyone can be equal in a company: someone started it/put in more work/has to be the leader…” etc. There could also be some selfish resistance from the original owners/founders of the company, as they “put in the hard work so why should others benefit from it” or similar. That should be mitigated by setting up the company as a co-op from the start however.
Oddly enough customer owned co-ops seem to be the somewhat more dominant model of cooperative business. I suppose giving the customers the surplus value is marginally better than giving some idle and absent capitalist the surplus value, but instead of doing that you may as well lower prices or give workers a buy in.
I also wonder how a co-op manages against competition in a capital dominated market, although my thoughts haven’t really gotten past idle wondering on that point.