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Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the global popular protests of 2011, more people have begun to wonder and speculate: what’s next for civilization? The economic, social, and political status quo seems unsustainable, but what can emerge to take its place? In this book, a historian examines the past and present to argue that the seeds of a more humane society are already being planted, on local and international scales. Whether they will bear fruit depends, ultimately, on grassroots initiative. Focusing on the new worker cooperative movement in the West, this study not only contains the first systematic discussion of the solidarity economy in the light of Marxist theory; it also introduces a major revision of Marxism that both updates it for the twenty-first century and illuminates our historical moment. It includes an analysis of the history of cooperatives in the U.S., showing where they went wrong and how we can correct their past mistakes. It has a case-study of the successful new worker-owned business New Era Windows in Chicago, which has been celebrated internationally for its defiance of conventional paradigms. And it shows a way out of the age-old conflict between Marxism and anarchism, arguing that both are more relevant now than they have ever been. Which is to say: a gradualist “revolution” is, for the first time, within the realm of possibility.
In Co-operative Struggles, Denise Kasparian expands the theoretical horizons regarding labour unrest by proposing new categories to make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker co-operativism of the twenty-first century in Argentina.
Building Co-operative Power explores strategies from the Connecticut River Valley as a guide and inspiration for developing a regional co-operative economy based on a vibrant and engaged worker co-op sector. It speaks directly to obstacles and opportunities for making worker co-operatives an increasingly important part of the U.S. economy. The authors relay practical insights on co-op governance, communication, conflict and inter-cooperation. These are highlighted by cautionary tales and sagas of personal transformation.
As the world of work and jobs is more uncertain than ever because of various trends impacting it, including the rise of robotics and the gig economy, Cooperatives and the World of Work furthers the debate on the future of work, sustainable development, and the social and solidarity economy of which cooperatives are a fundamental component. Throughout the book, the authors, who are experts in their respective fields, do not limit themselves to praising the advantages of the cooperative model. Rather, they challenge the narrow understanding of cooperatives as a mere business model and raise debate on the more fundamental role that cooperatives play in responding to social changes and in changing society itself. The book is unique in tracing the historical connection between cooperatives and the world of work since the end of the First World War and the recent shifts and restructuring in enterprise and the workplace. It presents a redefinition of the very concept of work, focusing on organizational innovation. This book is published in recognition of 100 years of the International Labour Organization, and gathers together research from leading experts who were brought together at an event co-hosted by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO).
In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.
Since first published in 2002, After Capitalism has offered students and political activists alike a coherent vision of a viable and desirable alternative to capitalism. David Schweickart calls this system Economic Democracy, a successor-system to capitalism which preserves the efficiency strengths of a market economy while extending democracy to the workplace and to the structures of investment finance. In the second edition, Schweickart recognizes that increased globalization of companies has created greater than ever interdependent economies and the debate about the desirability of entrepreneurship is escalating. The new edition includes a new preface, completely updated data, reorganized chapters, and new sections on the economic instability of capitalism, the current economic crisis, and China. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical research, Schweickart shows how and why this model is efficient, dynamic, and applicable in the world today.
Replete with case studies, Waking the Asian Pacific Cooperative Potential applies a novel theoretical framework to aid in understanding meaningful change in cooperative firms, mutual firms, collectives, and communes, focusing in particular on the underexamined Asia Pacific region. It explores the common, albeit competing, objectives of transformational cooperatives that deliver a range of social benefits and corporative coops where the cooperative exhibits the characteristics of a competitive investor firm. The book provides examples of successful cooperatives in eleven countries across the Asia Pacific and reviews the theoretical framework of cooperatives, including issues pertaining to socio-economic, politico-legal, and domestic and international factors. Waking the Asian Pacific Co-operative Potential provides early-career researchers and graduate students with a systematic resource of cooperatives in the Asia Pacific, highlighting core lessons from case studies regarding the ideal role of cooperatives in a modern economy and on the enabling factors of the role of the state, the market potential for scale-up, the mitigation of poverty, and civil society. - Provides numerous case studies drawn from successful co-operative organizations across the Asia Pacific region - Advances a theoretical framework to help readers access and understand the reasons for co-operative success in the Asia Pacific region - Develops tools for practitioners to establish effective co-operatives and restructure them to optimal goals
The present book is an outcome of a seminar which focused on finding out the possibilities of rethinking socialism in terms of workersâ (TM) socialism vs. state socialism (or more broadly, workersâ (TM) and peasantsâ (TM) socialism vs. state managed socialism) which has been so well analysed by many scholars such as David Lane and Evan Luard. Scholars like Peter Bins, Tony Cliff, and Chris Harman have gone further and shown how the revolution was lost by the workers to state capitalism. However, there have been many instances and cases which have occurred simultaneously all over the world in non-socialist countries wherein workers have shown extraordinary zeal and commitment in forming workersâ (TM) cooperatives free of state support and intervention. Scholars like Robert Oakeshott and Sharit Bhowmik have written and documented this phenomenon extensively. The collapse of the state socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the socialist federation of the USSR stand as a testimony to, and logically confirm the above accounts. The wave of failures of socialist patterns in states like India and welfare states in Western Europe and the USA have illustrated that even their public sector enterprises with loose state control have not succeeded. Hence, the retreat of the state and the moves towards privatization and re-privatization, have been embedded in the liberal paradigm. It is interesting to note that a different kind of phenomenon of production of goods and services by different groups, with reduced control of the state and with the initiative of the workers and peasants and other groups, has been in existence parallel to the above two phenomena. This phenomenon can broadly be called â ~workersâ (TM) cooperatives, â (TM) meaning worker-owned and worker-controlled cooperatives. Naturally, one looks to such phenomena and examines the possibilities of developing it as an alternative to capitalism on the one hand, and state socialism of varied types on the other. The main intention here is to see whether these phenomena of workersâ (TM) cooperatives can be developed into socialist formations with a redefined socialism by reinterpreting and unravelling the broad Marxist, socialist assumptions like self-activity and the self-organisation of workers. It is clear from the different authors of this book that the theoretical framework and empirical experiments suggest an alternative to state-controlled cooperatives and state socialism. This volume extensively covers the conceptual and empirical aspects of workersâ (TM) cooperatives across the globe with explorations of the possibilities of linking workersâ (TM) cooperatives with socialist politics. The book is a fitting contribution to the debates currently going on in search of alternatives to capitalist liberalization and globalization on the one hand, and the failure of different kinds of existing socialisms in the former Soviet Union and different parts of Eastern Europe on the other hand. The book is interdisciplinary in nature and will be useful to scholars, academics, practitioners, and students of political science, governance, development studies, economics, and other trade union and civil society activists.
This Handbook investigates all types of 'member owned' organizations, whether consumer co-operatives, agricultural and producer co-operatives, or worker co-operatives among many others. The chapters reflect the latest academic research and thinking on each topic, as well as reporting the relevant policy debates.