https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/08/26/can-a-worker-owned-restaurant-work/
The point of this article is that maybe there’s a different way to run a restaurant. A way where it isn’t whether you’ve got a dud in charge, but where there’s no one in charge — or, rather, no one person. Where, instead of “taking ownership” of their jobs in the jargony, buzzword sense of it, employees literally take ownership.
Restaurants run on hierarchy, or so I’ve always been told. There’s got to be someone in charge, someone giving orders, in order for the whole thing to run right.... The last person I worked for, one of the most experienced and talented restaurant people I’ve ever met, always said it’s best to run a restaurant as a “benign dictatorship.”
I mean, liberals (and authorities like owners/executives/managers/politicians) will tell you this about literally everything, not just restaurants. So there's no particular reason to believe them, and many millennia of history filled with reasons to not believe them. shrug
I used to frequent a collectively owned bakery in Berkeley. It was lovely, but they put fricken walnuts in almost everything.
I asked my friend who worked there what was up with that... She said "We operate through consensus and a couple people really like walnuts. Discussions of changing the recipes actually get contentious."
Nice read, very reassuring to know it's working nicely and everyone is paid fairly and generously. That probably helps improve staff morale and feelings about their job
I guess it also greatly helps having the divestor be extremely passionate about anarchy in general, since something like this has to be really well planned, explained and executed if the existing workers aren't familiar with it IMO.
It is executed in a capitalistic manner somewhat though, involving buying shares and stuff, but aside from that, it's pretty indisputable that this ownership type is providing a much fairer environment for the workers.
This is cool, but it still operates as in the sphere of capitalism in the end. It still has to accrue capital, invest, and act in many ways the same as a capitalist company. Only difference is the workers share the capital.
Again, it's cool, but it doesn't bring real socialism.
@cyclohexane @quicksand
Capitalism is an economic system under which private individuals own and control businesses, property, and capital—the “means of production.”
Socialism describes a variety of economic systems under which the means of production (capital) are owned equally by everyone in society. It doesn't abolish capital, it abolishes the private ownership of capital, thus abolishing Capitalism.
@cyclohexane @quicksand A worker's co-op, such as a worker-owned restaurant, is like a half-way point of sorts, a kind of highly-localized Socialist enclave/experiment in a Capitalist sea. There are numerous examples of successful worker-own enterprises, and it's totally fair to call them Socialist, at least in their local/internal functions and spirit. But their customers will still function like typical Capitalist consumers buying goods/services because that's still the larger economic system.