<aside> 💡

AI Summary:

• Cooperative enterprises are a significant economic force, employing over 100,000 people in some regions.
• They offer an alternative to traditional capitalist models, focusing on worker ownership and community wealth distribution.
• Cooperatives can provide stability in economic downturns, with examples like Mondragón maintaining low unemployment rates.
• Multi-stakeholder cooperatives (MSCs) involve various groups in governance, prioritizing equality and social justice.
• New cooperativism emphasizes shared returns and solidarity between stakeholders, moving beyond single-stakeholder models.
• Cooperative models are being applied in diverse sectors, including housing, technology, and social services.
• Global networks and alliances are forming to support and promote cooperative economic models.
• Challenges remain in scaling cooperative models and integrating them into broader economic systems. </aside>

Image source: Summarizing the benefits, scale, impact, and barriers to co-ops

Source: Cooperative Economics—A Community Revitalization Strategy

Source: EdinburghX: Economic Democracy: The Cooperative Alternative online course

Source: “...the corporation as commons: a shared resource whose sustainability depends on the participation of multiple constituencies in its governance (not just shareholders, but employees, core suppliers and customers). The idea of the commons better describes the legal structure of the business enterprise than does the shareholder primacy model: the firm’s various stakeholders have overlapping property claims in relation to its assets, including rights of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation. Furthermore, as in a commons, the right of alienation is not the most salient right in a corporation. Applying to the corporation the property rights and institutional design associated with the commons would help sustain the corporate enterprise and deliver benefits for all of its stakeholders and for society as a whole.”

Source: An excellent hour-long podcast on the collectivization of the economy currently happening in not-for-profit businesses, which are on track to 'out-grow' for-profit capitalism.

Source: An entredonneur is a “concept meaning 'giving to the in between', proposed to balance the concept of Entrepreneur which means 'taking from in between' and has therefore a predatory significance.” It is meant to distinguish between a generative versus an extractive form of ownership.

Source: Green Worker Cooperatives

Source: "In the 1950s Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, the village priest of Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain, inspired the development of a series of cooperatively owned industries to employ youth in his parish. His vision was that, through ownership by the workers, the wealth created by new industries would be distributed to the workers and to the larger community that nourished and supported them... There are now some 102 cooperatives that have grown out of Mondragón, employing over 100,000 people. Combined annual revenues are in the six-billion-euro range, making them, together, the seventh largest business in Spain... At a time when Spain is experiencing 25% general unemployment and 50% youth unemployment, the Mondragón Cooperatives have no unemployment.”

Source: Mondragon University was created in 1997

Source: “Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) Ltd, was formed in 1925 by 14 labourers, inspired by the teachings of Vagbhatananda, one of the greatest socio-religious leaders of the Kerala Renaissance from Malabar. His philosophy of ‘Atmavidya’ gained an organisational form in Atmavidya Sangham in 1917. Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) Ltd. is one of the most trusted brands in Kerala for delivery of projects on time, with quality that can match with international standards. There are occasions, where ULCCS delivered projects less than the estimated amount and gained the confidence from both the public and governments authorities in Kerala. Quality and predictable delivery helped ULCCS to receive major projects from government and non-government agencies. Till now, ULCCS completed more than 7,500 major projects and more than 500 projects are in various stages of execution.”

Source: “Smart enables workers, entrepreneurs and organisations to invoice, to work together with other professionals and to manage a budget on an occasional or a long-term basis. Smart places the worker, bearer of economic and social value, at the centre of its mission so that he/she can acquire social rights and develop his or her professional activities to the fullest. Smart is a cooperative with over 35.000 members Get in touch with one of our teams, operating in over 40 cities across Europe, to take part in the collective entrepreneurship experience, joining forces to bring meaning and solidarity to work.”

Source: P2P Foundation Introduction to Enspiral

Source: P2P Foundation Introduction to Sensorica

Source: Update on Sensorica

Source: P2P Foundation Introduction to Las Indias

Image source: Map of Cooperative Integrals

Source: "One of the most interesting autonomous projects associated with the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) is Calafou, the self-proclaimed 'post-capitalist colony' which settled in 2011 in the ruins of an abandoned industrial village in the Catalan county of l’Anoia, about 65km away from Barcelona. The colony was set up with the participation of several CIC members with the aim of becoming a collectivist model for living and organizing the productive activities of a small local community based on the principles of self-management, ecological sustainability, free culture and technological sovereignty. At the same time, it represents an example of the form that former industrial villages could assume in a post-capitalist era."