Today small businesses enjoy more and more esteem and prestige. Economists and social scientists, politicians and sociologists have begun actively to emphasise their achievements, their potential, their problems and promise. Today small businesses are usually defined in terms of one or more of the following: number of employees, total capital assets, profits, and annual turnover.
In my estimation the first measure has more in its favour than the others; but all the definitions require some explanation. To be classed as a small business not only should an enterprise employ fewer than 100 persons but it should also be independently owned - it should not be part of another business. It should be independently managed - small businessmen should be free to run their own business as they wish.
Manufacturing is scarcely distiguishable from other forms of production in the earliest stages of its development. It could be considered simply as an enlarged workshop of the type found in the medieval period. And it seems to be obvious that the relative mix of capital and labour is highly variable. There can be instances when the proprietors' income is:
Thus we arrive at a class of petty producers which might be considered to consist of different groupings that share one common feature: their small-scale ownership of capital. With the development of the capitalist mode of production the lower strata of the middle class seemed to sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their capital did not reach the scale on which modern industry could be carried on. Small firms and enterprises seemed to be washed away by large capitalist companies, syndicates and cartels.
New large capitalist enterprises - monopolies - appeared, and not only the polarisation of the population became noticeable but also the polarisation of capital. Thus, after a time, the conditions of profitability could be re-established and the cycle could continue anew after an economic crisis or a period of stagnation, but with an inherent contradiction. Greater centralisation of capital, and greater concentration of enterprises, increased the rate of exploitation in society and this process resulted in enormous polarisation of people and capital. In many places the historical evidence is that the fall of the profit rate, the centralisation and concentration of industrial capital, and the periods of crises of over-production and the bankruptcies of some companies and firms were all to some extent happening, as the Marxist model suggested.
One of the first theoreticians who `dared' to dispute the model was Edward Bernstein in his famous work Evolutionary Socialism. It should be mentioned here that Bernstein himself worked in the Marxist tradition and criticised Marx using Marxist categories and a Marxist approach. Nevertheless he pointed out that Marx quite often used the social and economic facts in such a way that the results of different social conflicts appeared much stronger and more abrupt than they were in reality. He also proposed that when a statement does not agree with the reality it is not necessarily because something false has been said, but because what has been said is incomplete. Bernstein discovered and showed with numerous examples that the increase of social wealth was not accompanied by a diminishing number of capitalist magnates but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees (1961).
The more modern and up-to-date a branch of production becomes, the more speculation ceases to play a decisive part either in theory or in practice. The conditions and constant movements of the market are then more precisely predicted and are taken into consideration more cautiously and attentively, and with a greater degree of certainty. But all certainties are seen to be relative because of competition and increasing technical development, which exclude absolute control over the market. It seems that, the richer the country, the more developed is its credit organisation, which creates the possibility of continuing the production process with borrowed capital and, in this way, avoiding bankruptcy even during times of severe crisis.
Although the capitalist mode of production is dominant in modern society the existence of large-scale capitalist enterprises at the present stage of monopoly capitalism does not preclude the persistance of small-business capital units which are able to find and occupy specialised niches in the market, and which may be flexible enough to survive periods of recession. Even Lenin, who claimed himself to be a pure Marxist, emphasised the persistence of the petty bourgeoisie and of petty production, which ensures the continuous formation of middle classes strata: "In every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out of small production. A number of new middle strata are inevitably brought into existence again and again" (1964).
What is then lacking in contemporary Marxist accounts? The answer is the empirical analysis of the ways in which this reproduction now takes place (see Scase, in Giddens 1982). But today it is rather difficult to argue the fact that the sphere of small economy is widely spread in the modern world. Small firms are still important in such traditional industries as cotton, wool, hosiery and footwear; in the consumer goods trade with low costs and high labour content; and in the production of goods with a strong element of fashion and specialisation, like furniture or clothing (Boswell 1973: 17). Labour intensive small firms tend to be flexible in their productive techniques so that changes in demand can be swiftly met with low capital outlay. Whereas small manufacturers account for only 16 per cent of total output, the contribution of small enterprises rises to 29 per cent in the motor trades and 73 per cent in hotel and catering (see Bolton Report). If we have a look at the economic situation in the USA, clearly the small business is a vital force in the economy: more than 88 per cent of the nations' 16 million businesses are so small as to have fewer than 10 employees (the total includes professional firms, franchises, small farms, etc.). Further evidence of the vitality of small business is the fact that it employs roughly half of the nation's work force (U.S. Govt. Report 1984: 12). It is evident now that even though the possibilities for actors to become small proprietors are less than during earlier stages of capitalism, they are certainly greater than many Marxists assumed.
The 20th century is coming to an end and no forecasts - even highly sophisticated ones - can reflect the whole variety of the up-to-date socio-economic development. Nowadays the small business sector is dispersed everywhere in the world. The number of small firms and enterprises has a tendency to increase and the proportion of businesses which are small is quite stable. It does not mean, however, that the economic success or profitability of a new small firm or company is somehow guaranteed and the development of a small business in a `big' economy is without difficulty.
So what are the positive sides of small business? Why is it so attractive? Why do people want to start up? Firstly, in many industries small business can respond more quickly and at less cost to the quickening rate of change in the market, in service requirements, processes and fashions than big business. Secondly, small business is more attractive to talented, individualistic, skilled professional men and women. Historically entrepreneurship has enabled members of ethnic, religious and other minority groups to overcome disadvantage or achieve personal - or in some cases group - success (Royal Commission Report 1975). The philosophy of small business is that it gives an opportunity to active people for personal benefit and independence. In running their own business individuals work as they choose, subscribing to their own sets of values and `doing their own thing'. In general, I agree that entrepreneurship offers the promise of greater self-fulfillment through more complete use of individual skills and talents (Curran et al. 1986). Hence small businesses are often more creative and resourceful because individual business people try to be innovative in every possible economic situation. They could if it is necessary:
In fact, it seems possible to say that major inventions are as likely to come from either small businesses or individuals, as from big businesses or state laboratories. Moreover, a study made by The National Science Foundation found that small businesses produce 24 times as many inventions for each research dollar as many of the biggest businesses (U.S. Government Report 1979: 42). In my estimation the very size of big businesses could to some extent discourage innovations. It does not suppress innovation but it is often difficult for big enterprise to put new inventions or innovations straight into production because they are better or cheaper than existing products. They must wait until the advantages of new technology or products are so great that the changeover can be made without a steep rise in price.
But, of course, the modern economy depends on small businesses for much more than inventions and innovations. On the one hand, small business employs millions of men and women. On the other, it sells most of the products made by large-scale manufactures to consumers. It also provides those manufactures with essential services, and supplies the latter with the raw materials they need. Some of the products and services that small business supplies more cheaply are those that demand close personal contact with customers (for example small pubs and restaurants in rural areas or far from large cities), and those that meet each customer's unique requirements. It was a commonly held view that big business created most new jobs. But following the results of the research conducted by the Institute of Technology in Massachusetts we can show that small businesses with 20 or fewer employees created 66 per cent of all new jobs as an average figure throughout the world. In New England alone such businesses created 99 per cent of all new jobs (Birch 1979: 8). These results are striking, especially as they are based on data files of 5.6 million businesses.
Everything described so far has been on the so-called positive side of small business, but of course there are negative sides as well. Evidently many small businesses die in their infancy. On average in Britain, for instance, only one in five can survive. In fact it is much easier for people to go into business themselves than to find employees with whom they could do so with successfully. Business-owners often recognise that they lack the ability to manage both employees and other financial matters, or simply administrative work. No law stops people from choosing themselves as a boss or entering business in a variety of ways. But if one has freedom of opportunity it means not only the freedom to gain success but also the freedom to fail. I agree that the main resons many newborn businesses die are because of managerial failure. The principal causes of failure are:
These four categories include 92% of failures and add up to poor management. But from another point of view the ease of entry might be judged as the main reason and `bad' management is merely an effect. The very failure is not always pure failure in economic terms: many people go out of business without declaring bankruptcy; others are closed because their owners reach retirement age; others shut down because their owners are bored and so on. But nevertheless not all those who start up become successful, and thus to start up means to have a certain bravery, courage and talent; it means being a real risk-taker. Certainly it is safer, on the one hand, to work in state enterprise or in a large company, but on the other hand those who start up have strong needs in terms of self-fulfillment and opportunities for independent judgements. Employment somehow inhibits any rapid career and personal growth; whereas small firms or organisations are more likely to give self-satisfaction.
Thus it is obvious that no severe conditions of the modern market economy could stop enthusiasts from starting up and from seeking gain and success. In my estimation the future looks bright for small business everywhere. It will probably hold its strong position in the economy, partly because of its constant ability to generate new ideas, new special products, new services for the benefit of customers; partly because of its ability to create new jobs, and partly because of a rising individualism in modern society in general and among the younger generation in particular. One can see that nowadays small business plays a very important role in the modern economy. This `role' was played throughout the history of mankind and played successfully; but at a certain stage of socio-economic development, small business as a unitary category came to an end. Up-to-date small business has been developing within the capitalist system of production but a new approach to collective labour has been formulated as the answer to the increase in injustice and inequality arising out of the capitalist mode of production and principles of distribution of surplus-value: the criteria of cooperative labour.
If one compares the original basic principles of the first cooperatives and the laws of small capitalist enterprises and companies it can be seen that ideological motives of brotherhood and mutual assistance played the major role in the organisational structure of cooperatives in 18th and 19th centuries. A cooperative is a group of workers labouring together who follow certain ideological principles. I would like to point out that the cooperative movement, and indeed the idea of cooperation itself, appeared some time ago as an alternative to the increasing capitalist mode of production with its severe laws of the market and competition. Cooperative workers simply ranged from those who wished to be able to exert enough control to create or preserve jobs for themselves, through to those who had plans for clothes, food, services, etc.
A worker cooperative is usually defined as a business owned and controlled by the people who work in it (Mellor et al. 1988: x). And here lies the main difference between conventional business where ownership rests with those who have invested capital, and where control lies with those same share holders or their nominated managers, and original cooperatives where the opposite is the case.
In 18th century Europe, a widespread cooperative movement was the proof of the possibility of survival for small and medium-scale economic organisations and, more than that, to compete successfully with large companies and new born monopolies. Robert Owen first provided the philosophy which inspired the development of the cooperative movement. Owen claimed that the psychological characteristics of all human beings are created for them by the natural and social conditions of life and not by themselves. He stated that a competitive capitalist environment was not able to produce happy and truly moral people. For Owen the solution lay in establishing small villages or communities which organised their own agriculture and industry based on principles of cooperation rather than competition. Thus Fourie, Owen, and Smith (to some extent) - the most famous ideologists of cooperation, and of cooperative principles of production and consumption - tried to do their best to encourage people to join cooperatives, in order to spread the high moral ideas of the cooperative movement.
There is much debate as to whether cooperatives are more or less productive than small businesses on the one hand, and conventional firms and enterprises on the other. One strongly held opinion is that they cannot match the level of efficiency of firms organised in response to market forces. Theoreticians claim that the main aim of cooperatives is to maximise the income of each worker-owner, in other words, maximising the income per worker rather than profitability. The basic assumption is that for members of cooperatives, wages are not a cost but a reward - they are considered to be in business to earn income for themselves (Vanek 1970).
But in practice things are not as simple as this. Several types of cooperatives may offer `equality participation' - a share of ownership on a financial basis - so that single workers can have capital stakes in their own cooperative as well as interest-earning loans. And of course if members of cooperatives have their personal capital stakes and can benefit personally from the total profit of their cooperatives, they are likely to improve their long-term commitment. Sometimes faced with the increase in demand because of the high quality of their goods or services, workers would prefer to share the benefits among themselves by raising prices rather than risk more and more of their own capital or expansion and thus taking on more workers.
In my estimation it is best to regard the cooperative movement as a constantly developing process, adapting always to changes in the capitalist market; cooperatives are seen to behave differently under different economic circumstances rather than along predetermined lines. More than that, it is possible to speak about cooperatives as small business firms and companies, but certainly with some divergencies. If we do not take into account the number of workers, we could say that some cooperatives are mostly like simple capitalist firms and enterprises where workers (or employees) have little commitment to the introduction of democratic methods of control. In this case pure cooperative principles are secondary to the values of benefit, profit and efficiency. Other cooperatives show more commitment to cooperative principles although their commitment could be hindered by the lack of skills or abilities to generate sufficient income, not only to expand, but even to survive.
But there is another type of cooperative, where ideological principles of cooperation (probably derived from Fourie and Owen) are an end in themselves (Stirling et al. 1987). Sometimes members of those cooperatives are associated with conditions of employment below the average level. Members of such cooperatives are eager to keep the commitment to cooperative principles of the past, even at the expense of profitability. From this point of view we can hardly call them true businessmen in modern terms.
Thus the development of cooperation to date has brought with it a wide variety of cooperative forms. The growth of worker cooperatives is also dependent on the degree of support that is provided either within the cooperative movement itself or from state founded support organisations. The socio-economic environment in which cooperatives appear, plays a great role in their further development; it has a profound influence on the type of cooperative - its ideological orientation, the degree of devotion to the original principles of the cooperative movement, and its chances for success. Hence cooperation cannot be separated from the economic and political climate within which it begins to function.
If we begin to speak about the cooperative movement in the Soviet economy today, we see that only the name `cooperative' remains and that the cooperative sector plays a very odd role in the Soviet-type economy. It is developing now on the one hand without any devotion and faithfulness to the original cooperative principles, and on the other hand without any rights and social guarantees, as if it was simply the restoration of capitalist relations and means of production on the basis of private property.
Up until 1985 there was a rather peculiar situation from the economic point of view in the Soviet Union. Those people who wanted to work hard and consequently to earn high wages were not allowed to have more than one workplace. It became the general approach of the state that individual benefits, high salaries, and even a small piece of personal luck were considered not to be `socialist' enough and to some extent this has led to the present crisis. There was no efficient use of imported equipment, no individual or family forms of work, and an almost indifferent and heartless attitude to work; so now as a result we have an enormous gap between supply and demand and high inflation. To change attitudes to collective and individual forms of work means to change the whole political and economic system and, without the latter change, nothing radical, in my estimation, can be done. Democratisation of economic relations, extending the rights of local enterprises, development of worker self-management, launching of economic competitiveness, reconstruction of centralised control over all production and consumption,- all these things are in urgent need, the only aim being the resolution of serious economic problems.
The Soviet-type economy has one very characteristic feature: there is an old tradition of party and state institutions interfering in almost all operational and technological processes. Thousands of enterprises were real loss-makers but they existed at the expense of the state, i.e. of the whole population of the country. To improve the economic output of those enterprises means to give certain rights to their administrations, to those who are responsible for the economic results. Directors and their assistants should be able to have a right to make independent decisions, to spend independently any income remaining after the cost of inputs has been covered and financial obligations to the state fulfilled. All these reforms could be done only with the replacement of bureaucratic and party methods of management and control by economic ones. Only in this way will the structure and volume of output match the content of social needs more closely. In that market relations were artificially restricted, the shadow economy with its various forms of market relations, developed. (There are striking examples of the shadow economy in Uzbekistan, black market dispositions in the capitals of Soviet republics, and in the western parts of the USSR).
When the Law on Cooperation was adopted in the Soviet Union various ways and opportunities for individual, family and small-cooperative business activities appeared. The work of the latter was especially encouraged. People employed in the state sector recieved the chance to work in the cooperative sphere and to have a so-called second occupation. Cooperatives became legal entities, registered at the local council and with certain rights. They could obtain equipment from state enterprises that had been written off as obsolete and then repair and improve it. People got the chance to be occupied solely in the cooperative sphere of the economy. Many skilled and highly qualified workers left state enterprises and institutions and tried to implement their work experience in this cooperative sphere. As a result many new cooperatives managed to produce very valuable goods `out of nothing'. In fact, the development of small-scale forms of production increases labour participation, makes better use of equipment and other inputs, improves quality of work and personal labour attitudes, as well as work satisfaction and self-fulfillment by people using their creative potential.
There are probably two very important aims that should be achieved as the result of socio-economic changes in the USSR. Firstly, the efficiency of production and full satisfaction of public needs. Secondly, democratisation in political and economic spheres and the real possibility for everyone to reveal their potential through work. However it is difficult to argue with the statement that and radical and positive transformation either of policy or the economy is impossible without causing new troubles and problems.
After 1985 it was not easy to predict how the cooperative movement in the Soviet Union would develop. Since the adoption of the Law on Cooperation dozens of new laws, instructions, and restrictions have appeared in the Soviet legislation. It has become a more and more complicated task for cooperative members to keep up with these juridical changes. Each particular practical situation needs deep knowledge of all these laws and instructions, otherwise if a cooperative breaks any law or restriction it can be prosecuted and even closed officially by the district council committee. Thus, the profession of solicitor or lawyer is very valuable now as well as that of financial manager or `market' researcher. More than that, sometimes unnecessary and truly burdensome control over cooperatives is held by various state authorities, organisations, party committees, etc. Their interference disturbs the normal rhythm of the production process and demoralises workers in cooperatives.
Despite the great number of directives and laws, members of cooperatives have no confidence in their business future. According to results achieved by local research of Moscow cooperatives only 30 per cent of respondents consider that the cooperative movement will have definite further development and state ideological support; 45 per cent see a real possibility of the closure of the cooperative sector by state authorities; 10 per cent consider that cooperation is only a short-term support for the state economy and after the situation in the state sector improves there will be no need for cooperation.
Another survey revealed a very interesting fact, that cooperative members are much more afraid of District Council Committees and party organisations than of racketeers (Isvestija 5th March 1990: 6). It could be said that state organisations are providing cooperatives with some kind of support but in practice the cooperative movement is opposed. One of the most frequent reasons for this opposition is the state's consideration that members of cooperatives earn too much money. It seems that state bureaucracy is afraid of high incomes in one sector of the population because of a so-called `increase of social inequality'. It soon became an almost common public view that cooperatives demand excessively high prices. Cooperative workers are often called speculators, exploiters, thieves and even `bourgeois elements'. Only a small part of Soviet intellectuals are among the few groups backing the new businesses. They understand that the only way to improve personal attitudes to work is to encourage the release of individuals' creative potential.
In the Soviet Union the state appointed apparatus is all-powerful, which is why all kinds of non-state activities have a permanent uphill battle to hold state organisations to their contracts. This task is of enormous difficulty because if a cooperative fails to fulfil a job for a state organisation or enterprise it is easy for that enterprise to take legal action, but it is almost impossible for a cooperative to get a judgement that a state client should pay up. But regardless of all those difficulties, in 1987 there were 13.9 thousand cooperatives with a production volume of nearly 350 million rbls; in 1988 the number of cooperatives was 77.5 thousand with a production volume near 6.1 milliard rbls; and in 1989 - 210 thousand cooperatives produced goods and services worth more than 41 milliard rbls. More than 5 million people work in the cooperative sector now (Isvestija 5th March 1990: 5).
Nevertheless, the market in the Soviet Union is empty of goods and still there is no competition either between specialised cooperatives or between cooperatives and state enterprises. One kind of monopoly - the state monopoly of the means of production, on raw materials, on distribution of funds, etc. - was in several cases replaced by another monopoly - the monopoly of specialised cooperatives with a single activity. For example, if in one district there are two or three shoe-producing cooperatives then without a doubt no more would appear because the local market has been already split between the existing enterprises. There are no conditions for competition because of constant, severe, hard state control over raw materials, buildings, equipment, etc. Hence, there are no visible possibilities for reducing prices for goods and services. The results of a sociological investigation made by the Moscow Institute of Labour show that more than 52 per cent of respondents from different regions of the Soviet Union stated that cooperative prices for goods and services are `too high to be accepted'; 16 per cent - prices are just `high'; and only 19 per cent - `acceptable'.
The contacts of various cooperatives with different western firms and companies are highly limited even up to now. Many European and American companies are fairly uncertain about the future of economic relations with the Soviet cooperative sector because of lack of any political, economic, and social guarantees, and because social instability is a permanent menace to its total closure. In Moscow for example, many tax privileges for cooperative-producers on consumer goods that were openly announced do not work because the list of those goods must be adopted by a meeting of the local district Council Committee and none of those meetings have been held yet (Kommersant 1990 8:6).
When Soviet-type cooperation first appeared it was considered only as an economic force in society but now a wide movement to increase the political power of cooperative units has begun. Those units, I think, are really valuable because they lead to the increase of self-determination and self-governemental priciples of political and economic behaviour. Thus, in February 1990 at the conference of the United Cooperatives of the Soviet Union the decision to organise a political party of cooperative members was made - the so-called `Party of Free Labour' (Kommersant 5:5). Cooperative members are to some extent Soviet-type businessmen and step by step they are becoming that political force which could deepen the democratic changes in our country. In order to make the Soviet-type cooperative system really influential - to turn it into a proper economically organised system of firms and enterprises - it is necessary to get rid of all kinds of state pressure. All new progressive economic ideas and innovations desperately need political support which has not yet appeared. Only after some radical political reforms will visible economic changes ensue.
Good results of the cooperative mode of production could be achieved in cases where the cooperative as a single, self-determined enterprise obtains total juridical and economic independence, and it conducts planning and labour process itself without any restrictions from `above'. Cooperative members are more interested in the results of their work than workers at state enterprises (material and moral rewards are essentially higher in the cooperative sector); that is the reason for a greater sense of responsibility. In fact, the average number of missed working-days per year in the cooperative sector is 3.8 despite the higher intensity of labour (this figure is half the average for the whole country). However, the fact that conditions of labour in the cooperative sector are not always satisfactory should be admitted. Nearly 20 per cent of cooperative members consider those conditions to be worse than they should be.
Another loss with cooperative labour is the constant shortage of spare time, time for leisure activities, for proper relaxation. Sometimes cooperative members work more than 12 hours a day and it is, therefore, very difficult to continue personal cultural and intellectual development under such circumstances. But nevertheless among members of cooperatives there are more than 46 per cent of people with high education, i.e. they graduated from institutes and universities; more than 2.5 per cent have scientific degrees of candidates and doctors of science. One can see that the cooperative movement in Moscow has accumulated a large number of intellectual, talented and highly educated individuals with great potential for creativity.
I would like to note that proper market relations cannot exist without a culture of labour. The market demands true responsibility, honesty, accuracy and punctuality. A market system based on oral (or written) agreements and contracts makes businessmen fair, otherwise they can become very unpleasant people to deal with. In my estimation, in the Soviet Union we have no proper cultural labour traditions, or traditions of market economic behaviour. Hence, many cooperative members complain of various difficulties that make the development of their business almost impossible:
The economic situation was reasonably stable in our country for a long time, despite all its negative aspects. Workers had nothing to worry about, and could do nothing at their workplaces: girls could chatter all day long, go shopping, knit, etc. - everybody was paid regardless of their personal input. Hence, restructuring and rapid socio-economic development damages this stability, i.e. workers interests in not having to do the same volume of work with a smaller workforce; the extension of enterprises' administrative power to regulate the size of workplaces without being obliged to find jobs for workers made redundant; the growth of the rate of technological process related to a decrease in the number of unskilled workers; and the inevitable closure and liquidation of loss-making enterprises, etc.
It should also be noted that with the legal introduction of cooperatives and self-employment a whole number of other problems caused by reconstruction of the economy have been revealed. This includes the enormous increase in differentiation of incomes and consumption between social groups; certain growth of inflationary tendencies; and social violence towards those who became able to earn more money than others by better use of personal skills. Social conflicts in the modern economic and political situation seem to be inevitable. Because of all the existing difficulties many peoples' efforts became directed towards earning as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before getting out of business; and this could be the main reason for common public dissatisfaction with the development of the cooperative sector in the Soviet Union. But it is obvious, in my estimation that problems of cooperation (in our country cooperation has very little in common with the original cooperative principles of brotherhood and friendship) are inseparable from the economic and political problems of society. It is also impossible to solve any economic problems of the Soviet-type system without radical political changes and changes in attitudes to privatisation of the means of production.
In my opinion Soviet cooperation has no future under the conditions of its present existence and without any social guarantees. But at the same time rapid implementation of the market system in the Soviet-type economy is impossible as well because of the absence of a general culture of labour and democratic traditions, and the common negative attitude of the population to the cooperative movement in the USSR. The way out of this deep economic crisis is not so simple, it will take a long period of time, high concentration of people's efforts and aid from the West will probably be essential.
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