Are credit unions or consumer, producer & platform co-ops socialist?

[u/ohnoverbaldiarrhoea]

Wouldn't the workers be alienated from decision-making and/or their dividend of profit?

I was just reading this post https://www.reddit.com/r/cooperatives/comments/1hbzw49/could_there_be_a_society_where_the_only_form_of/ and wondering whether market socialism would or should allow non-worker co-ops given the potential alienation of labour.

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[u/FaceShanker]

market socialism would or should allow non-worker co-ops given the potential alienation of labour

The big issue of the market is the competition, its a system of winners and losers. Thats expensive (cleaning up the losses) and needs heavy monitoring to ensure the winners don't turn into Oligarchs.

Logistically speaking, smaller orgs are a bit better suited to co-ops while larger more disconnected orgs would likely have some difficulties coordinating, However thats more of a motive for a government (working on behalf of the workers) run business which still avoids the alienation of the labor (aka surplus goes into Your government, the one that works for you)

Are credit unions or consumer, producer & platform co-ops socialist?

Properly speaking, their a nice effort and a good fit for socialism, but by themselves no.

These could all be done by people that just want to pay their bills and survive.

Being socialist is based off an effort to change the world, not just pay the bills.

Socialist co-ops should have a lot of community and political activism, acting as a foundation for a larger socialist effort (aka working to change the world). A three part effort - Party, Community and Co-ops - has a lot of potential synergy in how each part can support the others.

[u/ibluminatus → u/FaceShanker]

Exactly they are survival programs that can teach people some aspect of socialism but similar to unions they can lead to situations without class consciousness where people just improve their conditions and accept everything else. They must be grounded in a political basis of the understanding also that capitalist firms will not like them cutting into their income. Even if they are allowed to exist the grounding on ending capitalism has to be there. Without it this just leads to social democracy. A kinder, softer, gentler capitalism and imperialism for anyone who doesn't live in that country.