A vision of a cooperative day

A driving force of this blog is my vision of living an entirely cooperative day. I'd like to get all my food, clothes and housing from co-ops. I'd like to read a newspaper written and printed by a cooperative over a cooperative cup of coffee at the cooperative cafe. I'd like to live in a community where the products and services in life are provided by people who have a say in how they do their work, the types of groceries available at their store, the state of their housing, etc. And when we put these things together we'll be doing more than buying things, we'll be building the cooperative economy. I see the work I do and the things I buy best used to cooperate among cooperatives and to create a web of cooperatives of all kinds - worker, producer, consumer, and housing. I can see so clearly how, with a little planning, this cooperative economy will provide a structure that expands and develops cooperatives and educates consumers and potential worker/owners about the cooperative process.

In our region cooperatives already exist making my dream more possible. I can already buy my food at three different food co-ops and many buying clubs in the area, drink a cup of Equal Exchange coffee (roasted and distributed out of West Bridgewater, MA), get my trash and recycling ported, host a website, design a website, assess and install an alternative power system, treat my skin with salves and oils, repair or renovate my home or office, and more. For those of you with a car you can get that worked on, too, by an experienced and easy to understand charging process at Pelham Auto (Just click on the title of this blog for a list of area worker co-ops at the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives website).

There is a thesis among some in the cooperative movement and in worker cooperative movement specifically that once things get to a certain size they don't function as well. Currently we have examples challenging this concept both inside and outside the United States. Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx has over 1,200 member owners the last I heard and have the highest training standards and costs of any other known home care provider in New York. In the Mondragon Cooperative Complex in Spain Fagor (click on the blog title with applesauce to see part of their website), Europe's fifth largest appliance manufacturer with over 8,000 members, is just one of several larger co-ops that make up this cooperative of 84,000 people.

With these examples I don't believe cooperation doesn't work with more than 15 or 50 or 500 people. My theory on why we don't have more larger cooperatives ourselves is in the education and funding of this very different form of business. In my next posts I'm going to write about the resources we have for funding and investing in cooperation. I'm also going to begin featuring a co-op every week to do a little education as well.