Cooperative federalism and individualism

sam sanchez
Posts: 451 Joined: 08-09-05
Submitted by sam sanchez on 29 December, 2006 - 00:48.

Hey, I was reading about the cooperative movement, and the split between those who favour consumer co-ops and those who want worker's co-ops. It sparked some ideas for ways we can organise towards anarcho-communism in the here and now, and I wrote a blog entry on it:

http://libcom.org/blog/sam-sanchez/cooperative-federalism-and-individualism-29122006

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

afraser
Posts: 279 Joined: 16-07-05
31 December, 2006 - 00:13

That seems a feasible scheme for moving forward.

As you say there are unanswered questions. Two which I noticed are:

1) To what extent do you envision competition being allowed between different workplaces? That is, would local consumer co-ops be free to source goods and services from different rival workplaces according to, for example, quality or price?

2) And if competition is allowed, would the workplaces retain their surplus earnings for division amongst their workers, or would they have to return any financial surplus to the local consumer co-op that they are a subsidiary of? I would argue that permitting workers to profit personally from a succesful workplace would be an important incentive to efficiency and innovation from them.

Social control over investment is important and could and I think should be generated by rent from workplaces, and also, even more so, from interest payments received from new investment granted to workplaces from out of that fund. In that way the social investment fund can be self sustaining and increase in size, allowing continued expansion of the co-op sector, like Mondragon's banking institution but on a larger scale.

Dundee_United "Paradise is Norway"
Posts: 1004 Joined: 10-04-06 Location: Glasgow
31 December, 2006 - 04:50

I read your post Sam. My questions tho are in a different vein from afraser's however. What I'd like to know is where do you get the money, and where do you get the people, and how do we do this (specifically, not generally, ie the genuine people places, things that are needed). If you don't have the plan unfortunately it's just an idea. I have several co-ops hovering about in my head all the time - what I don't have is a business plan, finance, co-workers, and backers. Go for it!

Jacque
Posts: 97 Joined: 15-02-04
31 December, 2006 - 10:37
Jacque
Posts: 97 Joined: 15-02-04
31 December, 2006 - 11:00
sam sanchez
Posts: 451 Joined: 08-09-05
31 December, 2006 - 12:23
Dundee_United wrote:
I read your post Sam. My questions tho are in a different vein from afraser's however. What I'd like to know is where do you get the money, and where do you get the people, and how do we do this (specifically, not generally, ie the genuine people places, things that are needed). If you don't have the plan unfortunately it's just an idea. I have several co-ops hovering about in my head all the time - what I don't have is a business plan, finance, co-workers, and backers. Go for it!

I don't have a plan really. Neither do I know of any people who are really into the whole co-operative thing. It should be feasible, or at least as feasible as any consumer co-op, and there are some pretty huge ones about. I'll keep it for a rainy day I suppose.