@PeachMcD
Anarchists are not attempting to get to an "ideal form of governance". There is no such thing. No one has the right to govern anybody. What we are doing is creating an ideal society, one piece at a time, from the ground up. The ideal society must, by definition, have an ideal economy. It's called #LibertarianSocialism, i.e., worker self-owned, worker self-managed workplaces, federated in whatever ways they choose.
Libertarian Socialism is already up and running and merely needs to grow. See:
#NoBAWC
#Mondragon
etc.
I myself put in 26 years at Bound Together Anarchist Bookstore Collective, a NoBAWC shop. We didn't have a boss. We didn't need one. We held a meeting once a month to do what a boss would do in a normal shop, i.e., manage the business. It worked fine.
The coop principle is scalable. It ranges from ad hoc neighborhood food purchasing coops to Mondragon, a multi-national, multi billion dollar enterprise.
Decisions should be made by the people they effect. Everybody else should butt out.
We apply the basic principles of anarchism to everything we do, starting with, but in no way limited to, work:
Sharing
Cooperation
Solidarity
Mutual Aid
Direct Action
*****
Here's a true story about one such coop. Perhaps it may inspire you:
In about '73-4 some people in New Haven, Connecticut started a food coop. My communal household was the 12th household to join. One night a week, at three in the morning, one of the households would go to the loading dock and buy wholesale produce when it came in, fresh off the trucks, then take it back to the house and divide it up. We rotated this task. More and more households joined.
Pretty soon we were moving enough food that the living room floors of communal households weren't a big enough sorting space. There were about 1500 of us. We chipped in and rented an unused bodega on the Hill (a ghetto neighborhood), not to do retail, but just to have enough floor and shelf space to sort the food. We also were able to store non perishables there so we could buy that stuff in bigger lots.
We immediately ran into another food coop operating in the neighborhood. It was all Black and based on the basement floors of a network of Black churches, instead of a network of living room floors like we were doing. Other than that, we operated exactly the same. There were about 1500 of them, too. We held one joint meeting and voted unanimously to fuse. Now there was 3,000 of us.
So we rented out this old abandoned supermarket. It might have once been a Kroger. I forget. One of those chains. We cleared one space out for childcare and another for socializing. The rest of the layout stayed the same. It had everything available that a grocery store had. Everything but the meat sold at 2% over cost, which covered the building's overhead. The meat was prorated according to cut because that was the only to make the money work.
The coop was staffed by volunteers, except we also hired a butcher and two part time drivers with the money we saved not having a boss. Then we acquired a grant writer who worked for commission. We spent the grant money on infrastructure. Membership was by household, not individuals. Tight scheduling made sure there was always enough staff on hand. It was never a problem.
The food was excellent. The people were the best ever. It became a sort of community hang out in addition to being the community pantry.
Sometimes political groups held meetings in the socializing area. It was sweet.
Then I moved to California and lost track of the place. Long story, for some other time.
Levka
MikeDunnAuthor