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Cooperatives over Corporations
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Dan Clore
Feb 27, 2012, 1:15:43 AM2/27/12
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/22-4#.T0d87hF_ZJw.facebook
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by Creators.com
Cooperatives Over Corporations
by Jim Hightower
We're being told by today's High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that
everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves
around one dazzling star: the corporation.
This heavenly institution, the HPCW explain, has such financial and
political mass that it is the optimal force for organizing and directing
our society's economic affairs, including the terms of employment and
production. While other forces are in play (workers, consumers, the
environment, communities and so forth), they are subordinate to the
superior gravitational pull of the corporate order. Profits, executive
equanimity and a healthy Wall Street pulse rate are naturally the
economy's foremost concerns.
How nice. For the wealthy few. Not nice for the rest of us, though.
We're presently seeing the effect of this enthronement of self-serving
corporate elites. Millions of Americans are out of work, underemployed
and tumbling from the middle class down toward poverty. Yet excessively
paid and pampered CEOs (recently rebranded as "job creators" by fawning
GOP politicians) are idly sitting on some $2 trillion in cash, refusing
to put that enormous pile of money to work on job creation.
The Powers That Be keep us tethered to this unjust system of plutocratic
rule only by constantly ballyhooing it as a divine perpetual wealth
machine that showers manna on America. Any tampering with the
hierarchical control of the finely tuned machinery of trickle-down
corporate capitalism, they warn, will cause a collapse and crush
American prosperity.
Ha! Prosperity for whom? The corporate order itself has come crashing
down on the prosperity of America's workaday majority — and the people
are no longer fooled about the system's "divinity." From the Wisconsin
rebellion to the outing of the Koch brothers' efforts to impose their
plutocratic regime on us, from the Occupy movement to the spreading
grassroots campaign to get corporate cash out of our elections, we
commoners have finally peeked behind the curtain to see the fraud being
perpetrated by the wizards of wealth inequality.
Yet, tightly clutching their wealth, the wizards retort that the only
alternative is the hellish horror of government control, screeching
"socialist" at all critics to scare off any real change.
But wait. The choices for our country's rising forces of economic and
political democracy are not limited to corporate or government control.
There's another, much better way of organizing America's economic
strength: The Cooperative Way.
Cooperatives can (and do) provide a deeply democratic, locally
controlled, highly productive, efficient percolate up capitalism.
Co-ops are wholly in step with the values, character, spirit and history
of the American people.
While socialism has been cast by the corporatists as a destroyer of our
sainted free-enterprise system, the cooperative approach is not an -ism
at all, but a democratic structure that literally frees the enterprise
of the great majority of Americans — which is why the co-op movement is
fast spreading throughout our country.
While it's rarely mentioned by the conventional media, completely
missing in the political discourse, not considered by economic planners
and chambers of commerce and not known by most of the public, there are
30,000 cooperatives in America (with 73,000 places of business). A 2009
survey by the University of Wisconsin's Center for Cooperatives
(www.uwcc.wisc.edu) found that these energetic enterprises have 130
million members, registering $653 billion in sales and employing more
than 2 million people.
There are several types of co-ops, including those owned by workers
(there are 11,000 of these, with 13 million worker-owners). Also, there
are cooperatives owned by consumers, producers, local businesses,
artists and communities, as well as hybrids of those categories. They
function in every sector of our economy — manufacturing, health care,
transportation, banking, farming and food, media, massage, child care,
funeral services, interpreting and translating services, advertising,
home building, high tech, engineering, energy ... and even a strip club
in San Francisco.
Co-op businesses do everything that a corporation can do, but with a
democratic structure, an equitable sharing of income and a commitment to
the common good of the community and future generations.
You might be surprised to learn that such national brand names as ACE
Hardware, Best Western Hotels, Organic Valley, REI and True Value
Hardware are organized as co-ops, rather than as corporations. The
strength of the movement, however, is in the limitless number of local
cooperatives flowering all across the country. From Union Cab of Madison
(http://www.unioncab.com/ ) to KOOP Radio in Austin
(http://www.koop.org/ ), from Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland
(http://www.evergreencoop.com ) to Circle Pines Center in Michigan
(http://www.circlepinescenter.org ), citizen co-ops are highly prized
for their unique personalities, human scale, democratic values and
community focus.
Cooperatives are a big, structural reform that ordinary Americans can
implement right where they live, giving small groups a pragmatic and
effective way to push back against the arrogance and avarice of the
centralized, hierarchical corporate model. Not only do co-ops work
economically, they also make people important again, offering real
democratic participation and putting some "unity" back in "community."
Jim Hightower
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the
book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow,
Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on
behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/22-4#.T0d87hF_ZJw.facebook
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by Creators.com
Cooperatives Over Corporations
by Jim Hightower
We're being told by today's High Priests of Conventional Wisdom that
everyone and everything in our economic cosmos necessarily revolves
around one dazzling star: the corporation.
This heavenly institution, the HPCW explain, has such financial and
political mass that it is the optimal force for organizing and directing
our society's economic affairs, including the terms of employment and
production. While other forces are in play (workers, consumers, the
environment, communities and so forth), they are subordinate to the
superior gravitational pull of the corporate order. Profits, executive
equanimity and a healthy Wall Street pulse rate are naturally the
economy's foremost concerns.
How nice. For the wealthy few. Not nice for the rest of us, though.
We're presently seeing the effect of this enthronement of self-serving
corporate elites. Millions of Americans are out of work, underemployed
and tumbling from the middle class down toward poverty. Yet excessively
paid and pampered CEOs (recently rebranded as "job creators" by fawning
GOP politicians) are idly sitting on some $2 trillion in cash, refusing
to put that enormous pile of money to work on job creation.
The Powers That Be keep us tethered to this unjust system of plutocratic
rule only by constantly ballyhooing it as a divine perpetual wealth
machine that showers manna on America. Any tampering with the
hierarchical control of the finely tuned machinery of trickle-down
corporate capitalism, they warn, will cause a collapse and crush
American prosperity.
Ha! Prosperity for whom? The corporate order itself has come crashing
down on the prosperity of America's workaday majority — and the people
are no longer fooled about the system's "divinity." From the Wisconsin
rebellion to the outing of the Koch brothers' efforts to impose their
plutocratic regime on us, from the Occupy movement to the spreading
grassroots campaign to get corporate cash out of our elections, we
commoners have finally peeked behind the curtain to see the fraud being
perpetrated by the wizards of wealth inequality.
Yet, tightly clutching their wealth, the wizards retort that the only
alternative is the hellish horror of government control, screeching
"socialist" at all critics to scare off any real change.
But wait. The choices for our country's rising forces of economic and
political democracy are not limited to corporate or government control.
There's another, much better way of organizing America's economic
strength: The Cooperative Way.
Cooperatives can (and do) provide a deeply democratic, locally
controlled, highly productive, efficient percolate up capitalism.
Co-ops are wholly in step with the values, character, spirit and history
of the American people.
While socialism has been cast by the corporatists as a destroyer of our
sainted free-enterprise system, the cooperative approach is not an -ism
at all, but a democratic structure that literally frees the enterprise
of the great majority of Americans — which is why the co-op movement is
fast spreading throughout our country.
While it's rarely mentioned by the conventional media, completely
missing in the political discourse, not considered by economic planners
and chambers of commerce and not known by most of the public, there are
30,000 cooperatives in America (with 73,000 places of business). A 2009
survey by the University of Wisconsin's Center for Cooperatives
(www.uwcc.wisc.edu) found that these energetic enterprises have 130
million members, registering $653 billion in sales and employing more
than 2 million people.
There are several types of co-ops, including those owned by workers
(there are 11,000 of these, with 13 million worker-owners). Also, there
are cooperatives owned by consumers, producers, local businesses,
artists and communities, as well as hybrids of those categories. They
function in every sector of our economy — manufacturing, health care,
transportation, banking, farming and food, media, massage, child care,
funeral services, interpreting and translating services, advertising,
home building, high tech, engineering, energy ... and even a strip club
in San Francisco.
Co-op businesses do everything that a corporation can do, but with a
democratic structure, an equitable sharing of income and a commitment to
the common good of the community and future generations.
You might be surprised to learn that such national brand names as ACE
Hardware, Best Western Hotels, Organic Valley, REI and True Value
Hardware are organized as co-ops, rather than as corporations. The
strength of the movement, however, is in the limitless number of local
cooperatives flowering all across the country. From Union Cab of Madison
(http://www.unioncab.com/ ) to KOOP Radio in Austin
(http://www.koop.org/ ), from Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland
(http://www.evergreencoop.com ) to Circle Pines Center in Michigan
(http://www.circlepinescenter.org ), citizen co-ops are highly prized
for their unique personalities, human scale, democratic values and
community focus.
Cooperatives are a big, structural reform that ordinary Americans can
implement right where they live, giving small groups a pragmatic and
effective way to push back against the arrogance and avarice of the
centralized, hierarchical corporate model. Not only do co-ops work
economically, they also make people important again, offering real
democratic participation and putting some "unity" back in "community."
Jim Hightower
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the
book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow,
Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on
behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_
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