Posted on October 2, 2013 by bibbyoncooperatives Tagged CapitalismCooperativesEthical Consumer	Comments1 Comment on So tell us: Is there a coop alternative to capitalism?
So tell us: Is there a coop alternative to capitalism?
A good idea has emerged from the cooperatively run magazine Ethical Consumer. Last year, to mark the UN International Year of Cooperatives, the people there launched a competition inviting contributions on the theme Is there a cooperative alternative to capitalism? There is something delightfully old-fashioned about the idea of an essay competition, but this one seems to have done the trick in attracting some worthwhile entries.
The best responses have now been brought together in a book, given the title People Over Capital . The book is published in conjunction with New Internationalist (another cooperatively run business, incidentally).
The interrogative phrasing of the original essay question has been replaced with the more confident subtitle for the book: The co-operative alternative to capitalism. But in some ways I think we still need that question mark. The essays here are interesting (inevitably some more interesting than others), but overall there remains a sense that the contributors are still finding it tough to grapple with both the theoretical and practical challenges of moving towards an alternative, more cooperative, economic system. I find it hard to disagree with Cliff Mills when he writes: “The biggest boost to co-operative and mutual fortunes has been caused by events outside the movement, namely the financial crises since 2007…But in spite of all this, we still cannot argue today that there is a co-operative alternative to capitalism. Notwithstanding the collapse of confidence and damage to the reputation of traditional capitalism on the one hand and the revival in the fortunes of co-operative and mutual businesses on the other in truth not much has changed. Co-operative ideas seem to have been unable to seize the moment”.
Well, nobody said building an alternative to capitalism would be easy, not even Marx. Some interesting ideas in this book include the ‘cooperative’ implications of the open source IT movement (Nic Wistreich), the contradiction of non-accountable for-profit corporations being cultivated within liberal democracies (Adam Fisher), and the limitations of cooperatives necessarily forced to survive within capitalism (Chris Tomlinson).
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