Well, here we go again. Welcome to yet another issue of No Boss News (NBN). This newsletter was conceived in 1996 at the Active Resistance Counter-Convention, an anarchist answer to the big Democratic Presidential Shindig in Chicago: Hundreds of activists met for several days to discuss the movement from our current social system toward one in which people organize themselves from the bottom up on an egalitarian basis. Specifically, NBN came out of a discussion group focused upon economic issues such as the formation of co-ops and collective forms of economic structures. In each issue of NBN, a different topic is covered, to provoke a larger discussion leading to greater exchange of information and the growth of the movement toward egalitarian workplaces.
At this point I should also welcome the newcomer, who may already be confused by the above jargon and perhaps put-off by that pesky label "anarchist." I use that term, despite its negative connotations for some, because it is most descriptive of the philosophy of the group of people who first came up with the idea of NBN. Just for the record, anarchists generally are not as interesting as one might think: We work to create new social forms that are independent of what we see as a corrupt and failing political system of centralized control. For example, this newsletter is aimed at changing the ways in which people make a living to a system in which the workers of an enterprise own and control the so-called means of production via a system of decision-making with one vote per member. The current system of gigantic concentrations of wealth and power must be replaced by networks of independent organizations called cooperatives--or collectives--the definition of which is the theme of this issue and the subject of much debate.
What is a Worker-Cooperative? a definition of terms
Salaries in Collectives from A Manual On Working Collectively by Vocations for Social Change (VSC)
The Question of Size a transitional interlude...
Boss? What Boss? Managing Without Hierarchy by Anna Young
Some Observations from East Wind's Parent Community, Twin Oaks by Andrew McLeod
Democracy in the Workplace: Theory and Practice from the Perspective of Communication by George Cheney
Democratic Organization and Management by Paul Bernstein and Lew Bowers
So What? a topic for next issue
No Boss News: What is happening
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