Rick Kelo
Rick Kelo, a Chicago area tax recruiter and social thinker, notes that Socialism is not an economy made up of cooperatives, despite what many Socialists claim. Many Socialists love to use the example of the large Mondragon co-op as what they’re advocating. Except Mondragon is not a socialist economy. It is an individual company in a capitalist economy.
Co-ops already exist freely in every capitalist economy on earth, notes Rick Kelo, yet they’re only a tiny minority of firms because workers don’t seem to prefer them. The exact group Socialists claim they’re helping (workers) don’t actually even like what the Socialists are peddling.
Beyond that, though, Socialism is not co-ops. It is the use of violence to forcibly outlaw every other form of economic organization except for the co-op. Without violence, Richard Kelo notes, to prevent peaceful cooperation Socialism cannot exist. An economy free from central planning, where people can organize under any form, will look like America’s today: very few co-ops and a very large proportion of other forms of organization.
