6 ms·

The article mentions it, but don’t insist on it. Duralex is now quite a special company: they were a renowned and beloved brand that was heading toward bankrupt

by pjerem 11mo ago

The article mentions it, but don’t insist on it. Duralex is now quite a special company: they were a renowned and beloved brand that was heading toward bankruptcy, until last year when the company was bought by its own workers and turned into a cooperative. Since then, they have stayed afloat, probably thanks mainly to people wanting to support a worker-owned business by buying their glasses, but still, it works. It’s a pretty positive story so far, and I hope they’ll continue to thrive under this new structure.

sigmoid10 11mo ago
There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the first place, because that needs capital and investors who own capital will want shares in return, which goes against the core principle of worker-ownership.
- cess11 11mo ago
  Such companies are more common than you think.
- griffzhowl 11mo ago
  They did survive. There are thousands in Spain and Italy especially. One of the most well-known is the Mondragon Corporation from the Basque country, one of Spain's largest comanies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
  - Cyph0n 11mo ago
    I am particularly interested in coops as a model for a tech startup. How would one go about structuring a new corporation to best ensure it remains a coop?
    - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
      Plenty of worker owned software consultancies in germany, and specially in Hamburg for some reason. From the site of one that I that I used to work for(they are very friendly so you can hit them up if you want some advice on setting up one) > How exactly are you structured? > In our search for a structure that consistently implements the principles of responsible ownership, we came across the veto-share model. First, the principles are enshrined in the company's articles of association. Then, company shares are transferred to a controlling shareholder. This controlling shareholder is granted veto rights, which must be used to prevent any future deviation from the principles. We are delighted to have the Purpose Foundation on board as our controlling shareholder! > We want to offer every (new) team member the long-term prospect of assuming entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner. The criteria for this are already defined in the articles of association. To simplify joining and leaving, we have established dyve Trust eGbR, a partnership that holds 99% of the voting rights in dyve. https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun
      - Cyph0n 11mo ago
        Thanks!
    - lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
      Mondragon is a federation of worker cooperatives. You sound like you might be interested in distributism [0][1][2][3][4]. The author, John Médaille, also spoke at Google [5]. [0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-part-i-john-medaille.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [1] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-ii-political.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [2] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-iii-equity.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [3] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-iv-property.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [4] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-v-practice-of.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc
  - sigmoid10 11mo ago
    Mondragon is often used by people who don't know much about the subject as a counter example, but if you look under the hood, you'll see it doesn't even compare: Less than half the workers own shares and the majority of shares is held by a small circle of executives in the richest branches. That's basically a standard capitalist pig with some socialist lipstick to give pseudo-Marxists an argument in these discussions, when there is none to be had in the first place. In fact Nvidia has a higher percentage of employees owning shares than Mondragon. Would you call that "worker-owned" too? None of this should be surprising either, because anything that truly benefits workers will be at odds with things that benefit the business. In society there are always people who primarily get paid and people who primarily work. Even the real Marx realized that. If you really want to defeat capitalism, then you have to do more than just play pretend.
    - griffzhowl 11mo ago
      > anything that truly benefits workers will be at odds with things that benefit the business. Generally yes, unless the workers own the business.
      - sigmoid10 11mo ago
        In which case the business will have a harder time competing. Not sure why we needed to circle back to that. This is not rocket science. If you believe you can somehow bypass the way the world works and create a socialist utopia using such a trivial approach, you should check if your opinions are based on facts or on dogmatic beliefs. Because the facts are quite clear once you really get into the material.
- KetoManx64 11mo ago
  The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business. Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walmart, Target and the big box stores lobbied the government to stay open because they were "essential" while all the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power. The solution is to stop giving corporations the ability to lobby governments, and stop using the government to control/fund markets. Not to blame it on capitalism.
  - powerclue 11mo ago
    That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim. Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it". Highly recommend this book on the transition in England and France from agrarian and feudal mercantilism into capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism
    - skylurk 11mo ago
      Not sure about the currency vs commodity argument, but I agree with this argument linked article: > Thus it argues that the origin of capitalism lies fundamentally in social property relations rather than in trade and commerce. Capitalism is fundamentally a framework for ownership and property.
    - 11mo ago
- mytailorisrich 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - powerclue 11mo ago
    You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.
    - mytailorisrich 11mo ago
      This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
      - shkkmo 11mo ago
        > but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations. > Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms. That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery. In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs. Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division.
      - anigbrowl 11mo ago
        Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope Nobody is doing that. The article specifically mentions pursuing opportunities in the export market. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. The workers bought out the previous owners, presumably due to frustration with the firm having had 4 near-collapses in the last 20 years under the capitalistic management approach.Your objections seem conditioned rather than considered; did you actually think any of this through, or are just just reacting to concepts that make you uncomfortable while overlooking the facts?
- namlem 11mo ago
  There are many successful co-ops all over the world, including in the US. You just don't hear about them because they don't look much different from corporations from the perspective of the average person.
simlevesque 11mo ago
It's also because almost every french home has one of their glasses and they are good quality. So it's a mix of history, tradition, enjoying good products, the pride you get from your country producing good products.
- throw-the-towel 11mo ago
  And not only homes. I moved to France several months ago, and I keep seeing the Duralex mark in cafes, at my workplace, basically everywhere.
  - anigbrowl 11mo ago
    Sounds like their biggest problem is that the product is so good the domestic market may be saturated. I was pleased to read in the article that they're working to increase exports. I'm a big believer in products that are engineered to last rather than be regularly replaced.
    - smcin 11mo ago
      > Sounds like their biggest problem is that the product is so good the domestic market may be saturated. Sad how rare that is these days. Which other companies does that apply to?
      - sdqali 11mo ago
        Lodge, the American maker of cast-iron cookware is a possibility.
      - deanishe 11mo ago
        Someone asked Rohloff how long their bicycle hub gears last, and the answer was, "We don't know. We've only been making them for 25 years." A lot of German SMEs still work that way, even if their big engineering companies have rather lost their way.
    - thrance 11mo ago

by pjerem 11mo ago

sigmoid10 11mo ago

There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the first place, because that needs capital and investors who own capital will want shares in return, which goes against the core principle of worker-ownership.

cess11 11mo ago
Such companies are more common than you think.
griffzhowl 11mo ago
They did survive. There are thousands in Spain and Italy especially. One of the most well-known is the Mondragon Corporation from the Basque country, one of Spain's largest comanies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
- Cyph0n 11mo ago
  I am particularly interested in coops as a model for a tech startup. How would one go about structuring a new corporation to best ensure it remains a coop?
  - saxenaabhi 11mo ago
    Plenty of worker owned software consultancies in germany, and specially in Hamburg for some reason. From the site of one that I that I used to work for(they are very friendly so you can hit them up if you want some advice on setting up one) > How exactly are you structured? > In our search for a structure that consistently implements the principles of responsible ownership, we came across the veto-share model. First, the principles are enshrined in the company's articles of association. Then, company shares are transferred to a controlling shareholder. This controlling shareholder is granted veto rights, which must be used to prevent any future deviation from the principles. We are delighted to have the Purpose Foundation on board as our controlling shareholder! > We want to offer every (new) team member the long-term prospect of assuming entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner. The criteria for this are already defined in the articles of association. To simplify joining and leaving, we have established dyve Trust eGbR, a partnership that holds 99% of the voting rights in dyve. https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun https://dyve.agency/warum-wir-es-tun
    - Cyph0n 11mo ago
      Thanks!
  - lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
    Mondragon is a federation of worker cooperatives. You sound like you might be interested in distributism [0][1][2][3][4]. The author, John Médaille, also spoke at Google [5]. [0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-part-i-john-medaille.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [1] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-ii-political.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [2] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-iii-equity.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [3] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-iv-property.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [4] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-distributism-v-practice-of.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2010/09/economics-of-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PtStipIsc
- sigmoid10 11mo ago
  Mondragon is often used by people who don't know much about the subject as a counter example, but if you look under the hood, you'll see it doesn't even compare: Less than half the workers own shares and the majority of shares is held by a small circle of executives in the richest branches. That's basically a standard capitalist pig with some socialist lipstick to give pseudo-Marxists an argument in these discussions, when there is none to be had in the first place. In fact Nvidia has a higher percentage of employees owning shares than Mondragon. Would you call that "worker-owned" too? None of this should be surprising either, because anything that truly benefits workers will be at odds with things that benefit the business. In society there are always people who primarily get paid and people who primarily work. Even the real Marx realized that. If you really want to defeat capitalism, then you have to do more than just play pretend.
  - griffzhowl 11mo ago
    > anything that truly benefits workers will be at odds with things that benefit the business. Generally yes, unless the workers own the business.
    - sigmoid10 11mo ago
      In which case the business will have a harder time competing. Not sure why we needed to circle back to that. This is not rocket science. If you believe you can somehow bypass the way the world works and create a socialist utopia using such a trivial approach, you should check if your opinions are based on facts or on dogmatic beliefs. Because the facts are quite clear once you really get into the material.
KetoManx64 11mo ago
The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business. Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walmart, Target and the big box stores lobbied the government to stay open because they were "essential" while all the small businesses got wiped out due to their lack of lobbying power. The solution is to stop giving corporations the ability to lobby governments, and stop using the government to control/fund markets. Not to blame it on capitalism.
- powerclue 11mo ago
  That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim. Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it". Highly recommend this book on the transition in England and France from agrarian and feudal mercantilism into capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism
  - skylurk 11mo ago
    Not sure about the currency vs commodity argument, but I agree with this argument linked article: > Thus it argues that the origin of capitalism lies fundamentally in social property relations rather than in trade and commerce. Capitalism is fundamentally a framework for ownership and property.
  - 11mo ago
mytailorisrich 11mo ago
[flagged]
- powerclue 11mo ago
  You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.
  - mytailorisrich 11mo ago
    This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.
    - shkkmo 11mo ago
      > but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations. > Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms. That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery. In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs. Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division.
    - anigbrowl 11mo ago
      Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope Nobody is doing that. The article specifically mentions pursuing opportunities in the export market. Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself. The workers bought out the previous owners, presumably due to frustration with the firm having had 4 near-collapses in the last 20 years under the capitalistic management approach.Your objections seem conditioned rather than considered; did you actually think any of this through, or are just just reacting to concepts that make you uncomfortable while overlooking the facts?
namlem 11mo ago
There are many successful co-ops all over the world, including in the US. You just don't hear about them because they don't look much different from corporations from the perspective of the average person.

simlevesque 11mo ago

It's also because almost every french home has one of their glasses and they are good quality. So it's a mix of history, tradition, enjoying good products, the pride you get from your country producing good products.

throw-the-towel 11mo ago
And not only homes. I moved to France several months ago, and I keep seeing the Duralex mark in cafes, at my workplace, basically everywhere.
- anigbrowl 11mo ago
  Sounds like their biggest problem is that the product is so good the domestic market may be saturated. I was pleased to read in the article that they're working to increase exports. I'm a big believer in products that are engineered to last rather than be regularly replaced.
  - smcin 11mo ago
    > Sounds like their biggest problem is that the product is so good the domestic market may be saturated. Sad how rare that is these days. Which other companies does that apply to?
    - sdqali 11mo ago
      Lodge, the American maker of cast-iron cookware is a possibility.
    - deanishe 11mo ago
      Someone asked Rohloff how long their bicycle hub gears last, and the answer was, "We don't know. We've only been making them for 25 years." A lot of German SMEs still work that way, even if their big engineering companies have rather lost their way.
  - thrance 11mo ago