The critical problem in the relations of production for worker-owned and managed enterprises is not the exploitation of labor by capital, but processes homologous to free-riding on the collective provision of public goods. Market, constitutional and collegiality barriers fail to attenuate opportunism in such work relations because paradoxes in the logic of rational selfishness lead to contradictory applications for collective action. In order to be effective, symbols as safeguards to opportunism must operate within the actual work itself. One such safeguard, the symbol `help' performed as the willingness of workers to assist one another in their quotidian tasks in order to monitor each other's work performance tacitly, was found in three service sector worker cooperatives in Tokyo in 1993-4.
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