It is interesting how many astute observations one finds in e.g. Marx that are then used in a 180-degree turn to prove the opposite. Here's one, summarized by Kevin, where Marx correctly noted that cooperatives generally don't work very well in a market setting. There is a huge
literature on this, which typically finds that there are rather significant inefficiencies due to poor leadership and/or ambiguous goal-setting. Cooperatives work when they're limited to asset-sharing, e.g. where farmers pool their capital to share a grain elevator. But when the
coop becomes more of a business in itself, it struggles. Very often, these problems can be dealt with by instituting professional management, which then makes the coop into something resembling a corporation--but with problems due to the membership (rather than share ownership)
structure. Marx observes this already in the mid-1800s, but then, as per Kevin, asserts that this form of organizing will work after the system of capitalism is abolished. Similarly about the manufacture, which, Marx observed, utilizes a higher intensity of specialization
internally than is possible through decentralized market exchange. (I rely on this observation in my own book, The Problem of Production.) A greater degree of division of labor means higher productivity and, thus, ability to pay wages that are higher than the profits these
workers would earn on their own in the market place. While there were plenty of protections of manufactures in place, which distorted the market process, we can see the truth in this historically: people left their starvation existence on farms for better lives in the cities
as workers in the large factories. While much of the early work on Industrialization and the urbanization that took place focused on the terrible working conditions of factory workers, which Marx of course observed too, recent work has nuanced our understanding of what actually
happened. Life as a factory worker was terrible. But it was often a better (read: less terrible) option than staying on the farm, where poor productivity led to starvation. There were no perfect options, so dismissing both lives as possibilities is not a serious approach; we have
see the world for what it was. Identifying what made their options so bad is a separate but important issue (one that I address in my other book, The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized). Nevertheless, Marx takes the observation of specialization within factories, which Adam
Smith noted but didn't do much with, and instead of recognizing the economic impact on the non-privileged (possible income and cheap products) he takes another 180-turn and claims exploitation (his intended conclusion for Capital). From a scholarly point of view, these 'turns'
are both unreasonable and without basis. You can only follow this line of argumentation if you have already swallowed whole the class consciousness and ideology assertion that Marx relies on and, to be fair, *must* use in order to get to the preferred conclusion. While we can
discuss the minutiae of Marx's theorizing, what I wanted to do is raise the question of where we might be today had Marx used these astute observations to explain the world logically and rationally instead of inserting 180-degree turns based on pure ideology. Imagine that world.
