The Cooperative Movement is on the Rise

Think pipelines!

However, like Earle, she did not think that this was going to happen in our lifetime. “On the other hand … I think we’ve created a system where people just think they have to keep working harder and harder to make more and more money so that they can buy more things. I’m not sure we’re close to breaking that cycle. I’d like to say ‘yes,’ but I don’t think so. I do think more people are looking for alternatives, but not on a massive scale. Also look at what’s being taught at schools and universities – the dominant capitalist and individualistic model … so how do you break that?”
She was kind of right, and it depressed me a little bit to think so. But I disagreed with her opinion that it was not on a massive scale yet. It is precisely what movements like Occupy are trying to do, I thought. Perhaps the advent and proliferation of cooperatives is a mission that the Occupy movement could adopt as a way to put forth not only a protest against the current system, but also a specific proposition of what the adopted alternative should be.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE (POLITICAL), THAT IS THE QUESTION

The important thing to remember about the cooperative movement is that it is a post-partisan movement, able to stand on its own without having to take sides on the political spectrum. Members of cooperatives range from leftists to rightists. However, wherever the movement is aligned with the Left, its main objective will be to retain its sovereignty and adherence to the International Cooperative Principles.

In many places in Latin America and Europe, such as in Emilia-Romagna, for instance, left-wing parties have already embraced the cooperative movement, “with reason and understandably, and in ways that I hope continue to happen,” said Earle.

The world has already held the First and Second Latin American Conferences on Recovered Companies in 2005 and 2009, respectively. The conferences were held in Caracas, Venezuela – socialist ground under President Hugo Chavez, who addressed them both, declaring that “recovered factories are…an alternative to capitalism and the antithesis to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)”. He also pledged a $5 million rotating fund to each country and promised to provide raw materials in exchange for hiring Venezuelan workers. There were over 200 workers from countries including Canada, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey and Iraq, as well as leading activists from many companies like Mitsubishi, Vivex, etc., and leading trade unionists.

The point of the conferences was to establish an international network of cooperatives, particularly in Latin America, to support each other financially and otherwise, and also to establish the difference between Worker Cooperatives and Nationalized Factories Under worker Control. The former implies that although it is under worker control, the establishment will continue to operate based on Free-Market Rules, while the latter implies that the factory belongs not only to the workers but to society at large, and the management is therefore made with social interests at heart, usually by members that belong to Leftist Parties.

And “while there certainly are co-ops that are more political and radical in addition to having strong business,” Earle told me, “there are others that aren’t so political and that are more about having community-based businesses where everyone has a chance to be owners and have certain amount of democratic input, and there isn’t necessarily a whole lot more political stuff that is injected into that.”

Lipp also didn’t think that as a political entity, cooperatives had much clout.

“Political parties will pick up causes if they see that there’s an advantage to them as far as getting elected…But there’s a huge lack of understanding of what co-ops do,” she explained. “I think in rural communities they certainly understand them, but most Canadians live in cities and I think a lot of them don’t have a clue about cooperatives … So I can’t see them being politicized at this point.”

CONCLUSIONS: LET THE MOVEMENT GROW

Cooperatives are a solution to the abusive and out-of-touch corporate pyramid that places a few at the top and the majority at the very bottom. The signs that people want a different economic system are becoming clearer every day, especially when the streets are flooded with the Occupy Movements across the United States and the world; in Canada, where students are protesting tuition hikes and satellite Occupy movements have also come together; in the Middle East, where people are revolting against tyrants and economic oppression; in Europe, where more and more people take to the streets to protest austerity measures and job lay-offs; in Latin America, where a new 21st Century Socialism is sweeping the continent, keeping none of the repressive USSR methods and focusing instead on providing better standards of living for the poor majority.

Yes, change is in the air– even in the United States, the powerhouse of traditional capitalism.

“We just recently went to the U.S. Cooperative Conference in Boston,” Earle told me. “And it had the feel of something that is trending upward,” especially with more than 400 attendants, a huge percentage of which, Corcoran who was also there told me, “had found the movement through Occupy!” Additionally, the International Year of Cooperatives declared by the UN will definitely “support that upward trend,” said Earle.

There will be another conference held in Hamilton in November.

And remember, as Earle said, “the cooperative movement is a lot more developed than it gets credit for…there are some really interesting larger cooperative support organizations out there. They tend to be beneath the surface so that perhaps you don’t really notice they’re there, although they’re right under your noses.”

But that’s changing.