The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.
It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.
So my main questions are:
- Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?
- If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?
America chose the route of social security and a mandated minimum wage instead of the state seizing the assets of robber barons and returning them to the communities that were responsible for their success.
You can see today exactly how well that worked out for the working class: minimum wage is below the poverty line and hasn’t been a living wage since the 70s, social security is being undone, and the government regulations that mandated a standard of living for working class Americans have been entirely dismantled.
This is the result of leaving the power within the capitalist class and allowing them to get away with their abuses without punishment: they do it again as soon as they get the chance.