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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • In the one example with the grocery co-op: I can assure you, few if any, of the people involved with the co-op were Marxist-Leninists, let alone comfortable with Marxism or the ‘S’ word. So that was kind of a critical flaw in any Marxist-Leninist theory in practice.

    A lot of people practice forms of community action without having any sort of class consciousness. A wealthy philanthropist can offer a bunch of money with strings attached and people will jump at the promises without second thought and rarely keep up with the follow-through.

    Point I was making nonetheless was these operations tend to exist under seige from competing and profiteering interests. If I remember correctly the grocery co-op was having issues making the skyrocketing rent payments for the commercial lot. That was the problem the money solved: the one created by the landlord.

    So in a sense I was saying ‘the pressures of capital tend to be too great’ than money being tempting or greed from the community.



  • They are run out of business, most simply.

    The operation that does not focus their profits on building further capital and establishing monopoly will fail in the arms race of those that do.

    For example: there are countless community and public efforts establishing childcare and pre-k through pooled resources. They are in direct competition with things like Bezos’ childcare academies. (Personal anecdote: they bought out my kids’ building for public pre-k and evicted them.)

    And a successful co-op will get pressure to be bought out like a start-up. (Often starts as a great way to expand! Then the expansion changes the culture, the new location feels corporate and the original location is later shut down and left vacant. -Also personal anecdotes for a grocery co-op and an employee owned operation I once worked at.)