Sustainable co-ops

New Internationalist, August, 2004 by John Jopling Glenbeigh

Hurrah for the return of the co-op! But why are they so successful, as your informative and inspiring June issue (NI 368) shows, not least in a competitive market place? It is not just that co-operation is superior to competition--both have their place in successful systems. The contrast is not with competition but with capitalism. Co-ops work well because they are owned by their members. Capitalist corporations, where the enterprise is owned by the shareholders, are intrinsically inefficient. Capitalism can only survive with the support it is currently receiving from a vast hierarchy of state institutions, volumes of legislation and regulation and extremely expensive financial, legal and accountancy services--and even then it is grossly inefficient. Capitalism is the engine of the global growth economy which is proving such a disaster throughout the world, from every point of view except (perhaps) that of the shareholder. Co-ops thrive because they are based on natural systems, with the doers enjoying maximum autonomy and the people in the office supporting them. It is this basic feature of co-ops, rather than the principles of co-operation as such, that makes them key to humans living sustainably on the planet.

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John Jopling Glenbeigh Co Kerry, Ireland

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