Socialism — one of the greatest Bogeymen in the minds of the American Republic throughout the last century. From newspaper cartoons at the turn of the 20th century, hyping up fears of bearded, bomb-throwing foreign anarchists, to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s spearheading a witch hunt in search of Soviet spies and “fellow travelers” in Washington and Hollywood, to modern depictions of neoliberal former President Barack Obama as some sort of fanatical communist who’s going to put your life in the hands of a sinister “death panel.”
Socialism tends to be depicted as a monstrous “other” intent on destroying the American way of life. What you may not expect, however, is that socialism very much exists within our community, and you might have participated in its success, and even benefited from it, without ever realizing. With three locations and 200 employees, Weaver Street Market is socialism in action.
Weaver Street is a worker cooperative, standing in stark contrast to the traditional capitalist business model. While most stores are owned by a small number of private individuals, whom we might call “capitalists,” worker cooperatives are owned collectively by the workers themselves, functioning as a form of market socialism: workers collectively own and sell locally-sourced and fair-trade produce, baked goods, and more in a market setting.
Weaver Street Market itself is not just owned by its workers, but also by its customers. Weaver Street is owned collectively by 200 workers and 18,000 consumer households and managed by a board of directors made up of workers and consumers. Customers gain access to store discounts, while workers receive a share of the store’s profits and involvement in the store’s decision-making committees, while both are given the ability to vote on and run for the cooperative’s board of directors. Essentially, Weaver Street is an economic democracy.
The advantages of a worker cooperative are numerous when compared to a traditional business model, especially for its workers. For one, it helps fight against the vast disparities in income inequality. In the United States, the average CEO makes three hundred times as much as the average worker.
Worker’s cooperatives are instead directed by democratically elected councils who receive the same pay as usual, meaning that the workers are better compensated for their work and have more of a say in the direction of their business, which has a number of advantages for local economies. Workers in a cooperative aren’t going to vote to send their own jobs overseas, after all.
This model of decision-making doesn’t hurt business longevity either, as worker cooperatives are twice as likely to survive their first year as traditional businesses.
Weaver Street isn’t an isolated example of a successful worker cooperative. For example, the Mondragon Corporation, a federation of worker cooperatives involved in banking, manufacturing, retail and education, is the 10th largest company in all of Spain, employing over 74,000 people.
Suma is a food wholesaler in the United Kingdom that made a 40 million pound revenue in 2015 — and it is only the 49th largest cooperative in the UK. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, the libertarian socialist Zapatistas have managed to organize hundreds of coffee producers into a solidarity network that has vastly improved quality of life in the otherwise poverty-stricken territory, all without government involvement.
