#cooperatives

The Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) is a network of more than 600 interlinked but autonomous cooperatives and projects located in Catalonia, the easternmost region of mainland Spain.

Despite being relatively unheard of, CIC boasts its own currency, legal infrastructure, food pantries, investment bank and more. Even more intriguing, it has the audacious mission of transforming the way we think about the global economy.

Cooperatively building a solarpunk future in Spain

Ne fáradjon! Időt, pénzt, fáradtságot takarít meg

Vásároljon a legközelebbi szövetkezeti szaküzletben

I'll make this one brief, because I mostly just wanna share a different post: My first article for the Coop's blog! (Doing the kind of posting you can put on a resume now. 😎)

It goes over what membership means and hopefully does a good job of outlining uhhh everything? So if you're an Etsy seller or thinking about it or actively looking for an Etsy alternative - or if you simply want to support artisans (you don't have to be a seller to join) - maybeeee take a look at my Coop-approved pitch on why you should be part of a cooperative, and this one in particular?

i replied to a reblog recently and in it i alluded to dissolving the boss/worker dichotomy through worker-owned cooperatives.

i want to clarify that i do not think that model of operation is the solution to capitalism, the wage system, slavery and climate collapse.

a worker-owned cooperative is a nice balm on the wounds of the working class, and has potential for education in the organising sense of the term.

other fellow workers have more eloquent arguments for and against worker cooperatives, so please take this with as much salt as required for your tastes.

under capitalism, any enterprise that seeks to survive must naturally compete within the system. this means reproducing many of the same harms any typical capitalist business would utilise in its day-to-day operations. exploitation is still possible in a worker cooperative. a cooperative must seek profit to survive and therefore must balance expenses, wages, investment back into the business etc. cooperatives must cut costs to match customer expectations, which may necessitate reducing wages, or purchasing goods from disreputable businesses. Western and globally Northern cooperatives can attempt to limit the harm they do, but if they want to remain profitable, they will almost certainly end up taking advantage of the byproducts of colonialism and imperialism within their supply chain. a worker-owned cooperative business must abide by the rules of capitalism to sustain itself, despite its best intentions.

that said, a cooperative can provide workers first-hand experience with direct democracy on the job. if successful and well-organised, the cooperative can use its profits and position as a business to aid the community it serves and support initiatives it believes in. businesses, especially in the US, enjoy much more civil and municipal power than workers/voters, and cooperatives can take advantage of that. cooperative workers enjoy the opportunity to have more control over the means of their lives, on their own terms, and are therefore statistically happier and more contented with their work than typical employees.

Some excerpts:

The secret to success is community. Because the exact path to success is different for each creative indie seller. It all depends on specific aspects of your business, and how they combine with specific aspects of your personality – the things you enjoy and excel at. The only way to find what works for you is to try everything under the sun. Which means quite a few of your experiments will end in failure. A community can offer you the support you need to get back up and try the next thing. A community can reassure you when you’re doubting yourself. A community large enough is guaranteed to have someone around with an answer, when you have a question.

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