I'm Not Sure If I Should Be Asking This Here, But Would A Worker-owned Business Be Different From A """small

I'm not sure if I should be asking this here, but would a worker-owned business be different from a """small business"""?

There are no revolutionary business structures. While the bourgeois state remains, worker co-ops, like labor unions, will only ever be making the best of a bad situation.

A proper democratic worker co-op where the workers share ownership and decisions are made collectively is fundamentally different from a privately owned small business, even under capitalism. However, "worker-owned" doesn't always mean this. Limited stock options and employee trusts are often referred to as "employee ownership" despite the business still operating as a private business run by capitalists.

Worker co-ops do offer better wages and working conditions and can raise class consciousness by means of demonstrating how the workplace can be collectively owned and operated by the workers instead of through private capitalist ownership and control, but without the support of a worker's party such co-ops would remain disjointed and vulnerable.

A worker co-op under capitalism is different from a private small business in its class character, but it is not different from a private small business in that it still must take the form of a for-profit business competing with other for-profit businesses within the capitalist marketplace. Without the benefits of a socialist government and economic system, it is limited in its ability to coordinate and cooperate with other workplaces and is often forced to prioritize profitability at the expense of other concerns.

"The active nihilist sees in the unknown future and despair at our current situation, a call to arms. Meaning is found in approaching the void rather than in the false knowledge of what is on the other side of it. —Attentat

We are nihilists regardless of whether we call ourselves by the name, because we have no road out of this. We have only the starlit wilderness... The first act of navigation is to set foot in the wilderness. Only then can we put our hands against the bare earth, feeling for the dim warmth of those fires still smoldering beneath. —“Hic Nihil, Hic Salta! (A Critique of Bartlebyism)”

With every rebellious footstep we take, we are entering an unknowable void. There are no reliable maps of the terrain that our struggles will occupy. No one has a leg up on the question of liberation. So much has been tried and so much has failed, let us finally admit that we don’t know what is “right” or what will “work”. Nobody knows how, why, or if a dominant order will fall. We don’t know if there are enough letterbombs in the world to bring an end to nuclear power, nor do we know if a well-timed mass uprising in Auschwitz would have actually succeeded in shutting down the camp. Despite what anyone tells us, there is no guarantee that the workers of the world are going to rise up, nor any assurances that such a thing would even lead to a desirable situation.

Though we have inherited a great many ideas about how to confront domination, we know that nothing is set in stone. From the shattered tools and bones of our predecessors, we craft our own weapons. Nothing is guaranteed to work, yet we attack regardless. We do so naked, having shed the rags of morality, ideology, and politics that had accumulated over time. We confront this world raw, in all its horrifying glory." - blessed is the flame

Someone, thinking he had the perfect "gotcha" to make me abandon communism, once asked me "if there's no wage incentive, who would clean the toilets? Who would pick up the trash?" and my answer was "me! And probably you too once you actually think about it." Because humanity is now in a position where if we used our technical progress to automate every task that can be automated, and delegate the remainder of labor and responsibilities equitably, the average able-bodied adult would work 10-16 hours a week. If given the choice, I would gladly elect to clean toilets for 10 hours a week with all my needs guaranteed to be met, rather than work 40-80 hours a week at a job that is nominally less gross and still live with financial insecurity. Wouldn't you?