Did He Say It Was Anti-Market?

Did He Say It Was Anti-Market? · Analysis, Patrick Carroll and Walter Block

Gabriel Sims-Fewer has opened a café in Toronto. He has called it "anti-capitalist". Someone on FEE, Patrick Carroll, considers there is an irony:

The irony here is, of course, hard to miss. Here we have an entrepreneur starting a business, presumably with the intention of turning a profit, all in the name of sticking it to capitalism?

The irony gets worse, actually, because this is also a classic example of the great capitalist mantra that “the market always provides.” You want cars? The market will provide. You want fake wrestling? The market will provide. You want explicitly anti-market cafes? Yep, the market provides that too, apparently. So, far from highlighting capitalism’s defects, this enterprise is actually serving to highlight its strengths.

Let me highlight one sentence:

You want explicitly anti-market cafes?

Quotes being from:
FEE : New “Anti-Capitalist” Cafe in Toronto Perfectly Demonstrates Why Capitalism Is Awesome
Monday, April 25, 2022 | Patrick Carroll
https://fee.org/articles/new-anti-capitalist-cafe-in-toronto-perfectly-demonstrates-why-capitalism-is-awesome/

With an under title : "The irony here is hard to miss." I have included in above two of the three "irony" occurrences below that. Let's start with the second "irony" from above.

You want explicitly anti-market cafes? Yep, the market provides that too, apparently.

Now, let's go to the article with Gabriel Sims-Fewer in it.

This new café in Toronto is proudly anti-capitalist
Filipe Dimas, Posted 9 days ago (23.IV.2022)
https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/04/toronto-anarchist-cafe/

I found overall five "anti-" in the article. They were usually only "anti-capitalist". Here is an exception:

The Anarchist Cafe has opened up at 190 Jarvis St. and strives to be a worker-owned, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial cafe, shop, and radical community space on stolen land.

Now, I saw "anti-capitalist" and I also saw "anti-colonial" - but I saw no "anti-market" - for an explicitly anti-market cafe that's such an omission, isn't it?

Now, I'll give you a little update on the third occurrence of irony in FEE:

Irony aside, the question that looms over this budding venture is whether it will actually work. Of course, it’s hard to say at this stage, but there’s an indication it may run into problems.

While equal salaries for everyone and democratic management may sound nice, there’s an important question we need to ask. If it’s such a good idea, why aren’t other companies doing it? Presumably there’s a reason this isn’t already a mainstream business model.

Irony can't be set aside at this point.

If it’s such a good idea, why aren’t other companies doing it?

This was one of the objections to Capitalism, from the Guilds, wasn't it?

But even more. Take a look at the kind of company Mr Carroll is thinking of. Volvo isn't owned by the workers.

Volvo Personvagnar Aktiebolag eller Volvo Car Group är en svensk biltillverkare tillika Sveriges största bolag om man ser till omsättning. Majoritetsägare i bolaget är kinesiska Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, och minoritetsägare är svenska Första AP-fonden, AMF och Folksam.

Can we get an equally succinct statement in English, from wiki? No, actually not:

On 28 October 2009, Ford confirmed that, after considering several offers, the preferred buyer of Volvo Cars was Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the parent of Chinese motor manufacturer Geely Automobile.

The English version omits the fact that Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is only majority owner, while minority owners are Swedish socialist things, like pension funds.

But it doesn't omit this important information, namely Number of employees : 41,000 (2021). Good luck managing a company with 41k employees with no hierarchy in decision making. Good luck getting hierarchy in 41k people without different wages, some who command others being paid more. This would by the way have been the same in the Soviet Union - the better paid ones in higher command were called nomenklatura, I think, and some of them are now oligarchs.

Take another one, also not owned by the workers:

Danone est une multinationale alimentaire française dont le siège social est à Paris. L’entreprise est cotée sur Euronext à la Bourse de Paris, où elle est incluse dans l’indice boursier CAC 40.

Elle est issue de la fusion, en 1973 entre d'une part, le groupe français Gervais Danone, lui-même constitué par la fusion en 1967 de l'entreprise Danone, fondée par Isaac Carasso en 1919 à Barcelone, en Catalogne et de Gervais et d'autre part, le groupe français Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (connu sous le sigle BSN), issu de la fusion en 1966 de l'entreprise de glaces Boussois et de la verrerie Souchon-Neuvesel. En 1994, il a été décidé de donner au groupe ainsi formé en 1973, le nom de sa marque de produits frais : Danone. La firme dirigée par Antoine Riboud était alors le numéro un français de l'agro-alimentaire et le troisième groupe européen dans ce secteur.

Can we get it in English? No, the fusions upon fusions involved in the modern multinational are omitted. However, we do get:

Danone S.A. ... is a multinational food-products corporation based in Paris and founded in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of the company's products are branded Dannon in the United States.

As of 2018, Danone sold products in 120 markets, and had sales in 2018 of €24.65 billion. In the first half of 2018, 29% of sales came from specialized nutritional preparations, 19% came from branded bottled water, and 52% came from dairy and plant-based products.

And the number of employees are ... 102,449 (as per 2019). I kind of bet, if Danone S.A. as well as Volvo (in the latter's case, supposing Chinese Communist Capitalism would admit it even) made no effort of splitting up, they would be stuck with a tiny bit too many employees to run the companies and in Danone's case subcompanies democratically as to leadership and with egalitarian wages.

Now, how about a certain café in Toronto? Do we get any number of employees? Yes, we do! Back to the post by Filipe Dimas:

With over a decade of experience working with specialty coffee, Sims-Fewer quit his job of over six years and opened a cafe of his very own where himself and others could feel more honest and free.

Currently, he's the only employee but hopes to grow the business into a worker-owned and operated co-op where every single person (himself included) is paid the same with all operational business decisions being made by consensus-based democracy free of managers or institutional hierarchy.

Did you get it? Currently he is the only employee! How confusing it must be to have as many as ... just one ... employees to take decisions together! Without a hierarchy, that is. And when it's two or three including Sims-Fewer, it would be a horrible nightmare, fully comparable to applying this to Danone S.A. or to Volvo Cars ... or perhaps not.

Yugoslavia with nominal Communism in economics and Sweden with "mixed market" do have some experience of small companies run by the employees = co-owners. In fact, the two main supermarket chains, the more socialist one is (or was when I was young) consumer owned, and the more capitalist one is (or was when I was young) a co-op of shop-keepers. Co-ops actually do work.

Några av de allra tidigaste kooperativen var producentkooperativ. De första startade under 1820-, 1830-, 1840- och 1850-talen i bland annat England, Danmark och Sverige. Ofta var det lantbrukare som gick samman för att kunna finansiera byggandet av till exempel ett mejeri eller för att kunna förbättra sina förhandlingspositioner i förhållande till livsmedelsgrossister. Arla, Kungsörnen, Lantmännen, Milko, Norrmejerier, Saltå Kvarn och Skånemejerier är några av de mest kända exemplen på producentkooperativ i Sverige. I vinproducerande länder är det vanligt att vin produceras av vinkooperativ. Även bryggerier, slakterier och bagerier förekommer i producentkooperativ form.

Here I will actually not give a parallel to the English wiki, I will translate. Some of the very earliest cooperatives were producer cooperatives. The first ones started 1820's to 1850's in, among other countries, England, Denmark and Sweden. Often enough farmers went together to finance the building of for instance a dairy or to improve their positions of negotiation against wholesalers in food. Some of the best known producer cooperatives in Sweden are Arla, Kungsörnen, Lantmännen, Milko, Norrmejerier, Saltå Kvarn and Skånemejerier. In wine producing countries, it is usual that wine is produced by wine cooperatives, while breweries, butcheries anad bakeries also exist in cooperative form.

Now let's look at the companies.

Arla, In the 1880s, dairy farmers in Sweden and Denmark formed small cooperatives to invest in common dairy production facilities. The first cooperative dairy was established in Sweden at Stora Arla Gård in Västmanland in 1881 under the name of Arla Mejeriförening, and the first Danish cooperative dairy was established in Hjedding, outside Ølgod, Southern Jutland in 1882. ... By the end of the 20th century, Arla had a 65% market share in Sweden.

When I went to a boarding school in the Stockholm area, I came to know Arla - a second time over. When I visited grandparents in Södertelge as a small child, I was arguably too small to note what company the milk and thick milk was from, I couldn't read yet.

Kungsörnen is a Swedish manufacturer of food. It was founded in 1929 in Skåne. The company began by manufacturing flour. The company is owned by Lantmännen. The company's headquarters is a pasta factory located in Järna, just outside Stockholm.

I think they also make table salt and yeast. When I competed with my baker, for own purposes, I favoured Kungsörnen. Wait, for salt I may have confused it with "Falksalt" because the falcon, like the eagle, is a noble bird of prey.

Lantmännen (Swedish for "the farmers") is a Swedish agricultural cooperative. Owned by 19,000 Swedish farmers,[2] they have 10,000 employees, operations in over 20 countries and an annual turnover of SEK 45 billion (approximately EUR 4.5 billion).

It seems they still very much are a cooperative : more owners - 19,000 - than employees (10,000).

Milko was a cooperative based in Östersund, Sweden and was Sweden's largest native producer of dairy products. .... In 2011, Milko merged with Arla.

Founded 1991, merged with Arla 2011. Yeah, if Gabriel Sims-Fewer overexpands, he could be in trouble twenty years from now ...

Norrmejerier was formed in 1971 when the Västerbottens Södra Mejeriförening, Skellefteortens mejeriförening and Lappmarkens mejeriförening were combined. Norrbottens läns producentförening was incorporated in 1992. Norrmejerier is the sole producer of Västerbotten cheese.

The Swedish wiki also tells me, in 2014, it was a real cooperative : more than 500 employees were perhaps outnumbered by 533 owners. We'll take the last item, and Skånemejerier, here, while we are on milk.

Skånemejerier, based in Skåne County, is a Swedish cooperative and Sweden's largest producers of dairy products after Arla Foods[1] and Milko. Founded in 2010,[citation needed] the company's products include milk, cream, yoghurt, soured milk, soured cream, cheese, and crème fraiche. Skånemejerier is a subsidiary of the multinational dairy products corporation Lactalis.

I think the idea of "2010" (citation really is needed!) comes from its present format, getting bought by Lactalis. Or even of the sell out of the daughter company Proviva to Danone. The Swedish wiki tells me something else about its actual foundation as a cooperative:

Skånemejerier grundades 1964 genom en fusion av olika mindre lokala mejerier. De samgående mejeriförbunden var Nordvästra Skånes mejeriförbund, Nordöstra Skånes mejeriförbund, Sydvästra Skånes mejeriförbund och Österlenmejerier. Från förbunden övertog man glassfabrikerna Åhus Glass i Åhus och GeGe-Glass i Kyrkheddinge, men de såldes 1966 till Glace-Bolaget.

Resumé : the four quarters of Scania each had their dairy cooperatives, and they merged to Skånemejerier in 1964. Two ice cream factories were taken over from the earlier cooperatives, and then sold in 1966 to the Glace-Bolaget which is now part of Unilever. And as said, Skånemejerier themselves were sold to Lactalis in 2012.

Saltå Kvarn är ett svenskt ekologiskt matföretag som ligger i Järna, Sörmland. Ända sedan starten 1964 har Saltå Kvarn endast erbjudit ekologiska produkter utan tillsatser som förädlats med fokus på att bevara smak och näringsämnen.

I think you got it that it started in 1964 - it's strictly ecological, no additions, preserve taste and nutrients, and while it lasts more than my own life so far, it's not at all very international. However, it is also no longer a fully cooperative thing:

Saltå Kvarn ägs av Steneken Holding AB (som i sin tur ägs av Vidarstiftelsen) och ytterligare nio stiftelser.

It's owned by ten non-profit foundations. So, if Gabriel Sims-Fewer and his future co-owners and co-employees can't make it, on their own, they can hope to get bought up by a non-profit foundation, or two, or three or ten ...

No, he did not say the café was anti-market. He said it was anti-capitalist (he prefers Norrmejerier over Lactalis, I presume) and anti-colonial (he presumably thinks a coffee grower in Ethiopia or wherever it may be should be treated as a business partner in "the first world" and either buys via or is his own Max Havelaar). And given the good prospects expected for cooperatives, he will presumably have less problems serving his café than Patrick Carroll making believable and accurate articles.

And, back to the first irony - does Gabriel Sims-Fewer want to make a profit? Or does he simply want to make a living? A certain margin will pay for your work, a certain further margin will constitute a profit in the capitalist sense. Most people go without that further margin, by being employees, and foregoing it will arguably help Gabriel Sims-Fewer to serve the coffee at decent prices. Apart from the fact that a café is not just a seller of coffee-beans, either solid or brewed, but also a place where people meet and Toronto largely has a market for, not an anti-market, but an anti-capitalist-hierarchies and -complications café among these. I presume.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Athanasius*
2.V.2022

* Alexandriae natalis sancti Athanasii, ejusdem urbis Episcopi, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, sanctitate et doctrina clarissimi; in cujus persecutionem universus fere Orbis conjuraverat. Ipse tamen catholicam fidem, a tempore Constantini usque ad Valentem, adversus Imperatores ac Praesides et innumeros Episcopos Arianos strenue propugnavit; a quibus plurimas perpessus insidias, profugus toto Orbe actus est, nec ullus ei tutus ad latendum supererat locus. Tandem, ad suam Ecclesiam reversus, illic, post multos agones multasque patientiae coronas, quadragesimo sexto sui sacerdotii anno migravit ad Dominum, tempore Valentiniani et Valentis Imperatorum.