Book Review of COLLECTIVE COURAGE: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought And Practice – Jessica Gordon Nembhard (Penn State University Press 2014)
“Courage,” Ella Baker said, in 1931, to a phalanx of young African American co-operators gathered in Pittsburgh.
Monthly Review’s February, 2015 issue contains two essays on the cooperative sector. “Neoliberal Co-optation of Leading Co-op Organizations and a Socialist Counter-Politics of Cooperation” by Carl Ratner explores the tepid economics and the conformist politics of these “leading” organizations. The other essay by Peter Marcuse, “Cooperatives On the Path to Socialism?”
An error in an article on cooperatives that appeared on one continent – Europe, last March – only to be transmitted to another – North America, recently (byline dated 22 Feb.), and which by now may have gone around the world a few times and possibly be translated (at least by machine) into several languages.
A picturesque town in the Basque region of Spain has become a Mecca for progressive pilgrims, videographers and journalists. And every few months a glowing report announces that this town, nestled in a lush valley encircled by wooded mountains, holds the future.
The popular slogan “People before Profit” adopted by worker co-operatives begs the question how people, in this case members of worker co-operatives, can trump profit in a profit-driven economy. The predictable response is that the democratic organization of co-operatives, where decisions are guided by the interests of the members and not exclusively by the imperatives of capital, amply validates the truth of the slogan.
Members of worker co-operatives necessarily live schizophrenic lives. On one hand, we must function as owners of small businesses and contend with all the insidious forces of capitalism – the anti-ethic of profits before people. At the same time we are members of an egalitarian corporate entity that most people can’t imagine existing, much less thriving.
This large collection of essays by Colin Ward ( Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader ) – his last publishing effort before he died last year at the age of 84 – affords those who know him only as the author of the ever-popular Anarchy in Action (now in print for almost 40 years!)