What To Think About Cooperatives

Strengthening the Cooperative Community by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D., draws on his 50 years of experience in researching, developing, teaching and writing about what makes cooperative businesses succeed or fail, and how to make co-ops an even more dynamic force for positive change that benefits people and the environment in the 21st century. The book first presents an historical review that derives lessons from a variety of cooperative sectors including insurance companies that emerged around 1700; grocery, financial and agricultural co-ops that originated in the 1800s; and electricity, employee-owned and social service co-ops that began in the 20th century. The book then focuses on examples of, and lessons from, Nadeau's 50 years of experience as a researcher and developer of dozens of cooperative projects in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.The third section of the book describes six "building blocks" of cooperative development that have proven to be key factors in creating successful co-ops and a thriving International co-op community with an estimated 1 billion members.The final section presents opportunities for cooperative development in the 21st century that have the potential to generate jobs and services for hundreds of millions of new co-op members and employees.The latter two sections of the book make 16 specific, practical recommendations for strengthening the cooperative community in the current decade.

Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the global popular protests of 2011, more people have begun to wonder and speculate: what’s next for civilization? The economic, social, and political status quo seems unsustainable, but what can emerge to take its place? In this book, a historian examines the past and present to argue that the seeds of a more humane society are already being planted, on local and international scales. Whether they will bear fruit depends, ultimately, on grassroots initiative. Focusing on the new worker cooperative movement in the West, this study not only contains the first systematic discussion of the solidarity economy in the light of Marxist theory; it also introduces a major revision of Marxism that both updates it for the twenty-first century and illuminates our historical moment. It includes an analysis of the history of cooperatives in the U.S., showing where they went wrong and how we can correct their past mistakes. It has a case-study of the successful new worker-owned business New Era Windows in Chicago, which has been celebrated internationally for its defiance of conventional paradigms. And it shows a way out of the age-old conflict between Marxism and anarchism, arguing that both are more relevant now than they have ever been. Which is to say: a gradualist “revolution” is, for the first time, within the realm of possibility.