I did see a user on a Reddit communism community arguing in a thread about co-ops vs. communism that while worker co-ops aren’t an alternative to communism, they can very well cause or strengthen support for communism as they provide the proletariat that are still under capitalism a taste of collective ownership of the means of production, and shows them living examples that it can totally work, and so communists shouldn’t denounce it.
What are your thoughts? Anyone know more about the theory behind this or can link to resources? If this is the case, should communists support worker co-ops in capitalist countries?
I take the view that they would begin providing the necessary institutionalisation for more social politics in future; they attack atomisation incessantly pursued in neoliberalism. Even though their collectivisation patterns are somewhat different to that of trade unions, one must not obviate the most pertinent unions have been professional occupations, and not the traditional underrepresented proletariat.
I’d also attribute some of the rejections of others in this post to market based systems, and not capitalism per se… But that’s an intersectionality argument to have another time.