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Conclusion

COOPERATIVES TOdAY ANd THEIR POTENTIAL AS A STRATEGY OF SOCIAL CHANGE The tapestry of US history is woven with the day-to-day strug-

gles of hundreds of millions of ordinary people for better lives. Mu- tual-aid organizations such as cooperatives and unions have always been near the heart of those struggles. Those struggles embody the “the pursuit of happiness” that the Declaration of Independence boldly asserts is our inalienable right. America proudly proclaims that our society aspires to offer a fair and equal opportunity to all in that promised pursuit. Yet, after all these years and all these genera- tions, have we really succeeded in structuring our society to offer a fair and equal opportunity to all?

LOOKING BACKWARd ANd FORWARd Throughout US history, urban wageworkers and small rural

farmers have waged parallel struggles. The two groups have shared common roots, and often worked closely in coalition towards com- mon goals. Both workers and farmers have organized cooperatives to try to solve their economic problems; when the economic sys- tem has stymied them, both have formed political organizations to try to change the rules of the system. Farmers and urban workers, the two parallel tracks of the American working people, have been bridged by their cooperatives. Recurrent uprisings of both workers and farmers have risen in response to economic inequities, and their trajectories have followed the country’s economic cycles.

The differences between the rural and urban populations have always been more apparent than deep. Most of the families in the farm communities of the Midwest and West were formerly urban people from the East, drawn there by the offer of almost-free

Curl, John. For All the People : Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America, PM Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sfsu/detail.action?docID=473728. Created from sfsu on 2020-02-01 14:48:02.

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land. Cooperatives and mutual aid organizations bridged the gulf between farmers and urban workers. The Grange and the Farm- ers’ Alliance worked in close coalition with the Knights of Labor in the Greenback-Labor Party and then the Populist Party. Grangers helped the railroad strikers in 1877; co-op stores joined arms with the unions in the Seattle General Strike of 1919; the self-help UXA aided the San Francisco General Strike of 1934; striking farmers of the American Agriculture Movement brought truckloads of food to striking coal miners in 1978.

Both farmers and urban workers have a long history of coop- eratives. While farmers could be very individualistic, farm commu- nities were usually very cooperative. It was not unusual for individu- alistic farmers to each belong to a half dozen different cooperatives. This was the case because cooperatives do not ask that members submerge individualism into a collectivity but, on the contrary, come together to enhance their lives. The Grange, Farmers’ Alliance, and other farmer organizations had visions of a radically restructured system based on cooperation. The labor movement had similar vi- sions. The cooperative unionism of early workers was abandoned by the American labor movement primarily because it was defeated. After the demise of the Knights of Labor at the end of the 19th century, most union workers believed that they could no longer win practical improvements through worker cooperatives in the face of brutal government and corporate opposition. So most of those still stuck in oppressive jobs moved on to simple trade unionism. Some still looked to new radical forms, such as the syndicalist model of a new society based on industrial unions, the anarchist vision of a stateless society, or the institution of a “workers’ state.” All of these radical movements painted pictures of a future society based on principles of equality and cooperation, which would arise after the oppressive structures were swept away.

Cooperative movements in America have always risen and fallen with the turns of the economic cycle. When money is scarce in hardening economic times, cooperatives have experienced a surge in membership, but the hardest of times have also killed them. Worker cooperatives have also often been formed during economic upturns, when workers can gather enough resources to try to make a go of it. Yet, during periods of general prosperity, people have also tended to explore more individualistic options, and have abandoned coopera- tion and social movements. The self-seeking tendencies in human

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nature have been magnified by the American glorification of the individual and neglect of community.

Nonetheless, in times of crisis the American people have re- peatedly returned to mutual aid, and have called on government for support. The New Deal’s promotion and support of coopera- tives was the fruit of generations of struggle. From the earliest times, cooperators realized that they needed the backing of the powers of government to achieve their larger goals. Although the New Deal’s programs were limited and bureaucratic, although some of their policies actually hurt some cooperatives, and although they backed off under assault from the financial-corporate oligarchy, the New Deal remains a beacon, and demonstrates what a partnership be- tween progressives and government might accomplish.

dOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY? The beginning of this study asked why there are so few work-

er cooperatives. Hopefully, this history has shed some light on the answer.

Worker cooperatives have been marginalized and planned out of our economy. The “free market” is a fiction: all markets and economies are regulated and shaped. The tax laws and the money system offer businesses and corporations—particularly large corpo- rations—numerous economic advantages that they do not offer to worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives almost always begin small and undercapitalized, and involve people with underdeveloped busi- ness skills. Laws posing numerous obstacles to unionization have shaped the American labor market. A majority of nonunion work- places has resulted in a weakened and struggling working population with few resources available to start businesses, even after pooling their resources to launch a cooperative. The economic life of society today is primarily organized on the capitalist wage system. Unem- ployment is structured into the system. In addition, a large num- ber of jobless people are not counted in unemployment statistics, which include by definition only those actively seeking employment. There is also an underground economy whose members are also not included in statistics. The unemployed, the marginally employed, the not-working, as well as dissatisfied employees, all might find jobs in worker cooperatives, if that were an available option. Struggling communities and populations could be rejuvenated and elevated if the economic system facilitated and encouraged the organization of

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cooperatives, and if it made economic resources available to people wanting to organize them.

Many Americans have never known any work outside the wage system, and some even have difficulty conceiving of another way of structuring work, yet the wage system is neither a necessary fact of life nor a fundamental tenet of this country’s history. Wage labor was introduced onto this continent as a form of bonded labor along with indentured servitude for whites and slavery for blacks. Coop- erative and communal work were typical of Native America and of the early settlers. Although most Americans have little experience in cooperative work today, about 40 percent of the population has experience as a member of a cooperative such as a credit union, an electric cooperative, or a parent play group. That may seem like a small thing, but for many people it is their first adult experience with a democratic organization or an alternative system.

IS AMERICA dIFFERENT? Many Americans still like to think that this country is different

from the rest of the world, and since the 1830s have talked about “American exceptionalism.” The United States—with its vast natu- ral resources and experience of genocide, slavery, human exploita- tion, and environmental degradation—has certainly had a unique history. But with globalization, the American people are also learn- ing that we are in the same leaking boat as the rest of the world’s peoples. We are being forced to learn humility, and to work respect- fully with other peoples to make a successful and sustainable world to leave to our descendants.

America is billed as a great experiment in democracy “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” the land of equal op- portunity. Business pundits loudly tout our economic system as the source of America’s wealth and prosperity, making the US the rich- est, most powerful country in the world. They promote the capitalist wage system as if it were a beacon of freedom, proudly displaying it for the world to admire and copy. But the hard truth is that Ameri- ca’s economy is not structured to give everyone a fair and equal op- portunity, but to assure that a small elite always wins. Under its rule, advanced technology enriches primarily those in control. Whatever prosperity working people have is due not to the American capital- ist system, but to America’s position at the top of the world’s food chain, reaping the wealth of the planet, just as ancient Rome’s

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prosperity once came from plundering the then-known world. This wealth is increasingly consolidated by a small corporate elite, and less and less of it is shared with the middle and working classes. The individualistic consumerist lifestyle sponsored by corporate America is today’s version of Rome’s “bread and circuses.” While promot- ing a xenophobic nationalism for the people, the giant corporations themselves have become increasingly multinational, with decreasing responsibility to the people of any country.

In the US and elsewhere, this triumph of corporations has been achieved through their control of the political and economic systems. US laws and international trade agreements favor and sub- sidize corporations over people, and corporate interests wrote the laws making that possible. But this is new only in its global extent. Capitalism has never been democratic, and when unchecked, it has always become monopoly. The very existence of cooperatives chal- lenges corporations and capitalism; corporations have therefore al- ways worked hard to weaken, discredit, and destroy them through waging price wars, enacting legislation that undercuts their viability, labeling them in the media as subversive and a failure, and using numerous other stratagems.

On the other side, the American working people have always taken inspiration from the proclamation of equality and the faith in social revolution expressed in the Declaration of Independence. To American workers in the early period, that meant the possibility of liberation from the wage system through self-employment, coop- eration, public education, and democratic legislation. When bitter experience convinced some generations that the system was not re- formable, some explored the option of revolution.

THE COOPERATIVE SECTOR Economies are usually considered to have three sectors: (1)

the business or private sector, which is privately owned and profit motivated; (2) the public sector which is owned by the government; and (3) the social enterprise sector—often called the social economy— which consists of voluntary, community, and not-for-profit activi- ties organized around shared interests and purposes, distinct from government, family, and for-profit business. This sector is consid- ered part of “civil society.” The social economy is the home of most cooperatives, as their intrinsic characteristics set them apart from private businesses and corporations. A fourth economic sec-

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tor is sometimes is included: “the informal sector,” or “the informal economy.” This includes all economic activity “under the radar,” “underground,” not monitored, taxed, or regulated by any gov- ernment, including marginal survival activities and informal ex- changes among friends and family members.1 Cooperatives can also be found in this informal economy. They flourish in activi- ties performed without any financial exchange and outside of the dominant economic system. Groups of this type include numerous voluntary organizations and associations formed for any purpose, such as musicians’ gatherings, childcare exchanges, neighborhood watches, and small community associations.

Social enterprises besides cooperatives include community- owned enterprises and businesses operated by nonprofit organiza- tions with primarily social objectives, whose surpluses are primarily reinvested for that purpose. Social enterprises today are a vital and growing sector worldwide. Nonprofits have been increasingly ad- vancing their missions through entrepreneurial strategies, trading in goods or services, and helping to organize and support worker and community cooperatives.

The informal sector is part of every economic system, and in many “developing” countries, the informal economy involves a large part of the labor force—up to 60 percent according to some estimates. The International Cooperative Alliance, affiliated with the UN, today urges governments to promote cooperatives to trans- form their informal economies “into legally protected work, fully integrated into mainstream economic life.”2

The growth of worker cooperatives worldwide has followed economic globalization, with their number and extent increasing sig- nificantly in both industrialized and developing countries. This is a reaction of mutual aid of the world’s peoples in face of a deteriorat- ing situation. While not long ago worker cooperatives were viewed internationally as a marginal phenomenon, today they are taken in- creasingly seriously as an important economic force in the world.3

WHY HAVE MANY WORKER COOPERATIVES FAILEd? Numerous worker cooperatives have been organized over the

last 200 years, and most have ultimately failed. Are there flaws in- herent in the concept or structure that make them unworkable? This historical study has tried to answer that question. Individual coop- eratives, like any human organization, ultimately fail. In this, they

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are no different from any individual business. The majority of all new businesses fail in their first year. Standard advice to startups is to not expect a profit for the first two years. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, most work has been increasingly dominated by costly technology, and most cooperatives have almost always begun under-capitalized.

Cooperatives, like any human organization, have a life span during which they usually have to change and develop, as the situ- ation around them changes. Cooperatives are a response to a situa- tion, and the situation is always in flux. Individual cooperatives don’t last forever, since they are formed by people, who also don’t last forever. The cooperatives of each new generation take on new and creative forms, as they are formed to meet new situations and new variations of situations, while consistently facing a heavy opposition from corporate interests and the politicians that serve them. So the lack of eternal longevity of any particular cooperative or any social structure is not an adequate way to judge its value. Cooperatives have sprung up anew in every generation, so the question should not be why individual cooperatives fail, but why American society has failed to structure cooperatives into the system.

People who are looking for a structural panacea for all the world’s problems are barking up an empty tree. Social structures by themselves do not solve social issues. Societies don’t freeze at some ideal moment. All societies have hard times. But there are also always moments when a people can come together and achieve something great. Each new generation creates structures to solve its needs, not mimicking some ideal form, but always in an intensely practical re- lation to the actual situation on the ground. The US has always been a land of enormous potential, and the American people have many times tried to rise up and achieve our potential. Right now our so- cio-economic system appears to me to be driving at breakneck speed toward a dead end. To prevent that crash, many people realize that we have to make a tidal shift in our priorities. That requires an alter- native, an understanding that a better society is in fact possible.

Worker cooperation has always been close to the heart of America. It has been our common past, our heritage, and can be- come our common future.

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CAN WORKER COOPERATIVES SUCCEEd? If the preservation of America’s communities were really a

national value, then the development of community worker coop- eratives would be a national policy. Cooperatives are all about a bal- ance between individual and community interest. But in America, we get a hollow freedom in exchange for a loss of community. The backroom government of America, consisting of all the biggest fi- nanciers, plans the economy with the aim of maximizing corporate profits, and they plan worker cooperatives out of it. There are few fields where many independent worker-run businesses can easily survive, so there are a very limited number of worker cooperatives, leaving the vast majority of people with little choice but to seek em- ployment from a boss or corporation, which is often still wage slav- ery. Meanwhile, unionization has shrunk from over 35 percent 60 years ago to under 14 percent in 2005.

Today, the powers of government promote the system of cor- porate rule, prosperity for an elite, and increasing marginalization for working people and the middle classes. But instead of giving away the world’s natural resources to corporate profiteers, society could use that wealth to promote full employment, prosperous communi- ties, and the empowerment of people at work. The economic system could be changed to one that values the well-being of all people.

A proper role of government is to work to create a level playing field providing fair opportunities in an economic context in which society can prosper. But what is a level playing field in a world of vast economic inequality?

Beneath all the window dressing, the system has failed dis- mally to provide a decent life for vast numbers of Americans or to provide basic services or jobs for people. A social crisis of enormous proportions is deepening. For many, the system is still wage slavery. The corporations still fear worker cooperatives, for the same reasons they have used their power to put them down throughout American history. Yet if America is ever to fulfill its promise, the government must ensure that no one is forced into wage slavery, that everyone has a choice. This would signal that wage slavery would be finally abolished. The goal of promoting worker cooperatives on a national scale should be a core government policy.

Economic regulations do not have to favor corporations. The economic system could make loans available to groups of unem- ployed and underemployed to start worker-owned cooperative busi-

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nesses in every field. Neighborhood and community co-ops could be empowered to do public work and services that benefit their local areas. The nation could promote a bottom-up participatory democracy in the workplace and in communities. Society, through the powers of government, could use our common resources to pro- mote communities and neighborhoods working together and pro- ducing for our common social good, through a system of worker cooperatives and other social enterprises whose purpose would be to promote prosperity in the entire population, to improve the quality of life of all people, to empower people to exercise their inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness, and to realize their creative poten- tials. Some small steps have been taken in the direction of a mass movement for social and economic justice with worker cooperation at its heart, but a long uphill road awaits us.

Although capitalism, competition, and wage slavery run ram- pant on the surface of our country today, history may someday show that the working population was quietly gathering strength beneath the surface for its next challenge. And it may be that old- fashioned traditional American worker cooperation, with its prom- ise of real freedom, may still prove stronger and deeper here than capitalism, and will be the force to ultimately abolish its unique system of wage bondage.

• • •

In what does real power consist? The answer is plain and short—in property... A general and tolerably equal distribu- tion of landed property is the whole basis of national free- dom... An equality of property, with a necessity of alienation constantly operating to destroy combinations of powerful families, is the very soul of a republic. While this continues, the people will inevitably possess both power and freedom; when this is lost, power departs, liberty expires, and a com- monwealth will inevitably assume some other form.4 — Noah Webster, 1787

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our mon- eyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our gov- ernment to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.5 — Thomas Jefferson, 1816

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The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the fam- ily relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and kindreds.6 — Abraham Lincoln, 1864

If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard.7 — Eugene Debs, 1908

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