Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Moveme... - 1 views
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The contemporary U.S. worker cooperative movement is somewhat ambiguous about its relationship to capitalism.
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While empathizing with those who feel a sense of "inevitability" in the face of today's powerful capitalist economy (and disagreeing with those who see it as generally acceptable), I hold firmly to the perspective that a more just and democratic economy is both necessary and possible.
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Operating as isolated businesses or even as networks of businesses, worker cooperatives have barely a prayer (contrary to what some cooperative activists suggest) of growing to "eclipse" and replace capitalist enterprise simply through successful growth and competition.
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the long term replacement of capitalism--an economy which socializes costs and privatizes benefits--with an economy of democratic cooperation
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n economy is an ecosystem, a cyclical whole that includes processes of creation (the "original production" of natural resources by geological, biological, and energetic forces), production (human transformation of resources into goods and services), exchange, consumption (perhaps more appropriately called "use"), the processing of waste, and the recycling of surplus (sometimes called "investment").
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The worker coop movement must work to build broader alliances, holistic economic and social visions, and contribute to the creation of not only more worker coops, but a transformative social movement capable of changing the culture and economy--the "social ecosystem"--in which worker coops struggle to exist.
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Operating successfully in a capitalist market, worker coops can support movements for social and economic transformation
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Worker cooperatives are a particular--and effective--structure for democratically organizing the production of goods and the provision of services.
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But even a solidarity economy movement cannot succeed without being intimately linked to broader social change work. It is our connections with the work of anti-racism, feminism, queer liberation, environmental justice, ecological sustainablility, immigrant's rights, counter-recruitment and peace advocacy, labor organizing, grassroots community development, and other movements for cultural and insitutional change that will generate the collective power and momentum needed to effect long-term transformation and generate widespread, committed support for worker cooperatives as economic and social-change insitutions.
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Indeed, to create conditions under which their success is increasingly possible, worker cooperatives must work to generate, sustain and support institutions at all other points of the economic cycle.
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the creation of a shared story and through this, the development of long-term solidarity between worker cooperatives and other groups working for democratic, community-based economies such as local currencies, consumer cooperatives, housing coops and intentional communities, economic justice advocacy groups, neighborhood associations, local food system projects and more
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Further examples from the solidarity economy movement outside of the U.S. abound. I delve into some of these more deeply in GEO's recent collaborative issue with Dollars and Sense (see Ethan Miller, "Other Economies Are Possible".)
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it is the work that we as cooperators must embrace if we choose to believe that another economy, and another world, is possible