Cooperatives
Definition
A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.
The Wikipedia has a very elaborate entry on Cooperatives, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
Values
Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.
Principles behind cooperatives
From http://www.ica.coop/coop/principles.html
The co-operative principles are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.
1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership
Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.
2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control
Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic manner.
3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation
Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.
4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence
Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter to agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.
5th Principle: Education, Training and Information
Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.
6th Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives
Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.
7th Principle: Concern for Community
Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.
Typology
"Cooperative ownership of business enterprises produces financial benefits for member-owners, while building business skills, and providing experience in democratically controlled enterprise. Successful cooperative businesses enhance neighborhood revitalization and stability. Where cooperatives include community residents as member/owners, they create a strong linkage between people and place by helping to ensure that residents are direct stakeholders in and beneficiaries of local business activity.
Worker Cooperatives enable member-owners to obtain financial benefits as shareholders of the business. Worker cooperatives exist in nearly every business sector and include manufacturing and processing companies, health services agencies, restaurants, and other enterprises. Many include residents as member-owners, thereby playing a central role in the community development arena. A notable example is Cooperative Home Care Associates in the South Bronx, a worker cooperative that employs some 550 African-American and Latina women-75% of whom had previously been on public assistance.
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). ESOPs enable employees to own all or part of a company's stock. They range from "democratic" ESOPs that are controlled on the basis of one-member one-vote, to companies that provide their workers with stock options but no voting rights (the latter case does not constitute a cooperative ownership model). ICA Group has been at the forefront of efforts to expand the role of ESOPs as a community development strategy. ICA has assisted groups like the Fifth Avenue CDC in Brooklyn and Manna Inc. in Washington DC, to establish temporary services agencies that will ultimately be transitioned to worker-owned enterprises. Workers come from the neighborhoods where the agencies are located as well as from throughout New York City and Washington DC.
Consumer Cooperatives. Consumer co-ops enable a group to reap economies of scale through their joint purchasing power. They provide products and services to members in a local or regional area and enable members to exercise more leverage with suppliers. Because consumer coops make purchases in bulk, members are often able to save on per unit costs. Consumer cooperatives are organized primarily in the insurance, food, and utilities industries. Rural electric cooperatives operate more than half of the electric distribution lines in the United States and provide electricity for 26 million people.
Community development credit unions (CDCUs) are a type of consumer cooperative that plays an important role in communities in both rural and urban areas. CDCUs are financial institutions that are owned and operated by low-income residents and provide access to credit by recycling member deposits back into the community. Northeast Community Credit Union provides lending products such as mortgages for first-time homebuyers, small business loans, and credit restoration loans to inhabitants of San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood and has 1,200 members.
Producer Cooperatives. Producers, individually, or as a group, own and operate cooperatives that provide members with expanded production, marketing and distribution capacity. Many smaller producers lack the production volume to do direct business with wholesalers and retailers of their products. Producer coops thus enable individual producers to aggregate their products and gain more negotiating power in the market place. This coop model is particularly common in the agricultural and agro-industrial sectors. Another type of producer coop, the craft cooperative, has been particularly effective in helping low-income, low-wealth crafts people bring their products to a wider market." (http://www.policylink.org/EDTK/ROMcoop/)
Discussion
Michel Bauwens, comparing p2p and cooperatives:
"1. P2P is based on cyberspace and therefore it has a global scale and cooperatives are designed for a physical (and therefore inherently more local) production system.
2. P2P belongs to all while cooperatives belong to an specific collective (workers or consumers)
3. P2P produces use value in a commons; while cooperatives run in the marketplace and, because of that, they are geared towards the creation of exchange value.
4. P2P is emerging as a phenomenon supported by online world, are emerging as more productive that other forms of production, while cooperatives have traditionally been marginalized in our capitalist world.
5. P2P is a system where anyone contributes but without any exigency of return and cooperatives are based on reciprocity.
6. They can be complementary in the following way: 1) globa-local Open Design communities create a Commons for the global development of the knowledge; 2) local cooperatives work in the marketplace, using the open designs, and are themselves contributing to it.
7. Cooperatives are a more equity-based approach to working with peer communities, than for-profit institutions, and therefore may be preferable as a format for the marketization of the exchange value that is derived from the P2P-commons"
More Discussion
Blog entries:
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-markets-cooperatives-the-state-and-altruism/2006/03/17
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-and-the-cooperative-movement-2/2006/03/11
- http://artesaniaenred.blogspot.com/2006/03/p2p-cooperatives-and-mondragon.html
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-and-the-cooperative-movement-critical-comments-from-marcus-moltz/2006/02/20
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/cooperative-capitalism-as-an-intermediary-between-the-market-and-peer-production/2006/02/20
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-and-the-cooperative-movement/2006/02/15