I knew about co-ops, but many of them that I could were largely agricultural or small stores and didn't resonate with my audience, but perhaps I've done them a disservice. I'll look into Mondragon also, thanks!
You gave the sort of answer I have grown to expect from management consultants.
You have a thesis you want to get across. The basic idea - decentralization and industrial democracy - have been around for almost 100 years, counting from the Wobbly Shop. But the type of people who hire management consultants are not those who want to hear about ideas from anarchist trade union. Nor are they the type of people who want to hear about cooperatives. The goal of both are, after all, to reduce the power of the capitalist owners who employ management consultants.
Instead, people prefer to hear more gentle examples, like Semco, which fit into the standard capitalist framework. Then when those are labeled "radical", it's okay to ignore anything which is more radical.
I have found a reference which does an excellent job of characterizing the differences. I quote now from https://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC&pg=PA131&dq=%... :
> Industrial democracy: By analogy with political or state democracy, a description of democratic practices as applied to workplaces. There are two major ways of thinking about this concept. The first involved some liberal conception of representative structures that allow workers to have influence over decision making, responsibility and authority. The extent of such influence can vary substantially, from an employer's 'suggestion scheme' through workplace methods such as 'team-working', up to the various forms of consultation and co-determination exemplified by Kalmar, Semco, or the John Lewis Partnership and the Quality of Working Life movement. Whilst these examples provide illustrations of alternative forms of organizing, they all largely rely on the idea of empowerment as something which management does to workers. In other words, management and owners still have the ultimate sanction, and could withdraw democratic privileges if they wished.
This is the same observation I mentioned earlier - Semler is a capitalist and owns the methods of production. If he wanted to sell Semco, he could. Continuing the quote:
> The more radical way of thinking about industrial democracy would be in terms of worker self-management. In this case a cooperative or an employee share ownership plan (ESOP) would mean that all those working for an organization would have a direct share in its profits and losses. As a result, they would have a clear interest in participating in democratic mechanisms to elect or deselect those who coordinate organizational activities; to dictate strategy; to take profits or reinvest, and so on (see Mondragon; Suma). Both forms of industrial democracy have been credited with increasing the motivation and commitment of workers, as well as increasing productivity and decreasing labour turnover. Whilst advocates of the liberal version might suggest that those were good things to achieve because they can increase shareholder or owner value, for the radicals all these would be secondary to the idea that labour might escape alienation in a Marxist sense. In other words, liberal ideas about job satisfaction are pale reflections of the conception of work as a form of human expression (see Fourier).
I think you can see why I said your proposal is not new, and it's not radical - it fits cleanly inside of the box of traditional capitalism.
The story you pushed happens to be one that makes capitalists content. It changes nothing for them, except to bring in more profit. That's why this is the type of story that gets passed around - rather, more so because Americans identify more with the capitalist owner than the labor class they actually are.
(You suggest that co-ops won't "resonate with [your] audience" - of course not! In your own words, liberal capitalism is all they know about!)
Your addition to it is to add a layer of intellectualism, by suggesting that the command-and-control structure shares many similarities with feudal structures as if that's meaningful. It isn't, because it's identical to the command-and-control structure of non-feudal imperial and absolute monarchism, neither of which require serfdom.
It doesn't seem matter to you that your justification has no historical basis. You regard it as a simplification to get your point across. I regard it as a truthiness, where you think it's okay to get things wrong, because a good story that conveys the aspirations is good enough.
But it's bad scholarship. It does yourself and your listeners a disservice to spread fables as if they were truths. I think you also should ponder why it was you felt your knowledge of the feudal era was correct to use the analogy; perhaps there are other topics you elaborate upon with equally shaky footing?
