Market Power to the People
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9331&page=0
Market power to the people
By Harry Throssell
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
The world-wide co-operative movement is to be reviewed in September
[2009] by the General Assembly of the United Nations, with a request the
UN Secretary-General holds an International Year of Cooperatives.
In preparation Amine Lamrabat of the United Nations Global Alliance for
Information and Communication Technology and Development has produced a
Background Paper on co-operatives.
The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) defines a co-operative as
�An autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their
common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations, through a
jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise�.
The essence is control of production and rewards by the whole body of
owner-workers, although there are local differences in achieving this
goal. These organisations �aggregate the market power of people� who on
their own might achieve little or nothing, inter alia providing ways of
escaping poverty and powerlessness.
World-wide the number of co-ops is increasing, although Australia has
gone against the trend. A Cooperative Society was founded in New South
Wales in 1859 based on the 1840 British �Rochdale model�, but met its
demise in 1986. Credit unions, however, remain alive and well. The
British Cooperative Wholesale Society was established in 1863 and to
this day is the country�s largest co-operative body, with more than 500
food stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets employing 35,000 workers,
extensive funeral and farming interests, the second largest mutual
assurance society with 35 million members, and a rapidly growing bank
with two million customer accounts.
In contrast to Australia, New Zealand is a leading co-op nation. One in
three of its population is in membership, as in Canada, Honduras, and
Norway, compared with one in two in Finland and Singapore, and one in
four in the USA, Malaysia and Germany. In terms of percentage of a
country's Gross Domestic Product attributable to co-operatives, the
proportion is highest in Kenya at 45 per cent, in New Zealand 22 per
cent. Worldwide the sector has some 800 million members in more than 100
countries.
The ICA sets out seven co-operative principles: voluntary and open
membership; democratic member control; member economic participation;
autonomy and independence; education, training and information;
co-operation among co-operatives; concern for community.
Lamrabat: �As the world today faces unstable financial systems,
increased insecurity of food supply, growing inequality, rapid climate
change and increased environmental degradation, it is increasingly
compelling to consider the model co-operatives offer.�
Food
The World Bank estimates food demand will double by 2030 as the world's
population increases. There is thus �an urgent need for developing
countries to increase the output of food, yet, as the World Bank's 2008
World Development Report on Agriculture for Development has shown, the
rural economy has been badly neglected�. Lamrabat encourages farmers to
mobilise into co-operatives to gain better market access.
The number of such farmer bodies is increasing in most developing
countries, with India's 100,000 dairy co-operatives making a significant
contribution to food supply, although they �have yet to reach their full
potential�. Co-ops account for 80 to 99 per cent of milk production in
Norway, New Zealand and USA, 71 per cent of fishery production in Korea,
40 per cent of agriculture in Brazil.
Primary producers - farmers, fishermen and forestry workers - include
some of the world's biggest co-operatives: one in the UK operating 400
markets on behalf of 65 market societies, through which 12,000 producers
sell direct to consumers.
Lamrabat points out these organisations sometimes struggle in developing
countries. A recent study of 450 in Tanzania and Sri Lanka found workers
lacked access to loan finance to help them gain from new technology,
training, and markets beyond their locality. Another challenge was the
low level of participation by women in some agricultural co-ops, but
Lamrabat suggests addressing this problem by creating women-only
organisations.
There were success stories in the fields of sugar and cotton in India,
dairy in India and Bangladesh, coffee in Tanzania and Kenya and in
several countries a more independent credit sector. �Nevertheless, with
market liberalisation in the 1990s and the withdrawal of government
support, many state-sponsored co-operatives could not compete with the
private sector and had to shut down.� However, some have re-formed
independent of government.
Seven per cent of Africans are co-op members, with 554 companies in
Uganda in 1995 growing to 7,500 now, and farmer groups meeting a growing
supermarket demand for fresh fruit and vegetables.
In East Timor, with help from the National Cooperative Business
Association of the USA, a network of 20,000 farmers has been formed,
processing one third of the coffee for export.
But, writes Lamrabat, food is not the whole story. Co-operatives also
account for 25 per cent of savings in Bolivia, 24 per cent of the health
sector in Colombia, 55 per cent of the retail market in Singapore, 36
per cent in Denmark and 14 per cent in Hungary; and for more than 100
million jobs around the world, with dairy organisations in India now
including members of different castes.
Informal sector workers have formed co-ops to assist self-employment
while in rural areas savings and credit unions provide access to banking
services and opportunities for raising incomes. This has an impact on
achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of primary education,
gender equality and reduction in child mortality.
In developed countries these organisations have grown over the past two
centuries largely without government interference. Often first was a
�friendly� or mutual health society that insured people against sickness
and provided basic health care. In countries with a mixed system of
state and private funding, such as France, Germany or the Netherlands,
becoming a member of one of the health mutuals is still the main way for
people to gain access to medical care. In the Pacific Northwest of USA
one co-operative provides health services for 570,000 members, another
in the Mid-West has 630,000 members. In Japan, 120 consumer
co-operatives provide health care for three million members who also
meet in small groups to discuss prevention.
Consumer bodies are the market leaders in Italy, Switzerland, Singapore,
Japan, and are very active in the Scandinavian countries and Atlantic
Canada. In the UK, which has seen fierce competition among consumer
chains, co-operatives are fifth in market share and pre-eminent in the
small supermarket sector. These have a strong record of creating decent
working conditions, fair trade with developing countries, setting
standards for honest labelling, and promoting healthy diet.
Retail groups provide small storekeepers with grocery, hardware and
pharmacy supplies and compete directly against the large multiple
chains. Worker co-operatives, particularly in the Emilia-Romagna region
of Italy and the Basque region of Spain provide shared services such as
banking, technical education and product development. Also emerging are
services for older people and those with disabilities.
Electricity companies work in rural areas ignored by the private sector,
small dairy co-operatives are growing rapidly in Eastern Europe, Latin
America, and Africa to provide raw milk, and there has been a major
resurgence of marketing co-ops in Ethiopia, Zambia and Honduras. In
Ethiopia 400 co-operatives with a total family membership of 2.5 million
are developing educational materials.
In Brazil the biggest medical system in the world has 98,000 doctors
serving 12 million patients, medical networks in India are used for
health education and also in Africa facing the special threat of
HIV-AIDS. In Calcutta 7,000 sex workers, members of the Usha
Multipurpose Cooperative Society, have started a micro-credit scheme
marketing handicrafts and creating a peer education program.
Civil wars and ethnic conflicts can destroy social capital but �there is
evidence that even during conflict co-operatives can survive. In Sri
Lanka and Nepal they have been the only independent organisations
allowed by both sides in the civil war zone�, Lamrabat reports.
In Rwanda, a credit union system was rebuilt by the World Council of
Credit Unions without regard to ethnicity, and now there are 149 CUs
with nearly 400,000 members. Electricity co-operatives in Bangladesh
have a common membership among 28 million users.
Homes
Much of the housing built in Norway and Sweden in the second half of the
20th century was by combined effort. In the USA housing co-ops are
popular among higher income groups and retired people, in New York
27,000 homes abandoned by private landlords were taken over and
renovated for low income people. In Britain, management co-ops have
taken over unpopular council estates, and tenant-owned organisations are
challenging conventional landlords to be more involved in governance.
In an affordable housing project in Canada consisting of apartments,
town houses and freestanding homes, every occupant has a say on
management and elects a board of directors each year from among
themselves. On taking up residence members make a small down-payment but
since the members own the property there is no need for a profit.
Government and other interest-free loans are available, for which the
government requires a quarter of residents be eligible for rental
subsidies. In one case residents' annual incomes ranged from under
$10,000 to more than $100,000, the age-range from the 20s to the
over-60s, with two-parent and single-parent families, and a mix of
ethnic backgrounds.
South America
�In Venezuela�, writes Naomi Klein, �[President Hugo] Chavez has made
the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on
government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with
one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the
country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state
infrastructure - toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics -
handed over to the communities to run. It's a reverse of the logic of
government outsourcing - rather than auctioning off pieces of the state
to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use
the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in
theory, both jobs and more responsive public services�.
Co-op News reported in June 2009 �As Argentines prepared for mid-term
legislative elections in June co-operatives made a surprise appearance
as part of the debate. President Cristina Fern�ndez gave a speech at an
event organized by one of the associations of recovered factories in
which she promised to promote a change in the bankruptcy law so that
workers are the first to be given the opportunity to buy the assets of a
company before it's auctioned off among other creditors. The Argentine
government has carried out an unusual type of rescue in the case of a
large bankrupt paper factory, Papeler�a Massuh by which the company has
continued operations through a trust fund financed by the government and
co-managed by government and worker delegates. Once the fund expires in
2011, the workers will be able to continue operations as a worker
cooperative�.
Co-op News also reported �it is clear that the cooperative model is
increasingly becoming an attractive alternative in the midst of the
recession � brought on by the global crisis�. Argentina�s The Working
World/La Base co-operative made a major shipment of 1,650 pounds of
clothing products to the United States.
In Peru, when the government nationalised tin mines then pulled out,
leaving whole communities with no alternative work, 10,000 miners
created four co-operatives to keep the mines going. A recent figure
showed the country with 15,000 personnel in 200 manufacturing and other
organisations operating as co-operatives.
Money
Financial services are a common form of co-operative, with 49,000 credit
unions serving 177 million members in 96 countries under the umbrella of
the World Council of Credit Unions.
Alphonse Desjardins started credit co-operatives in Quebec, Canada, in
response to the poverty and unemployment he observed at the turn of the
20th century. Working people couldn't borrow money at interest rates
they could afford so Desjardins started a credit union (�caisse�) in
which members pooled their savings and took turns for affordable loans.
The Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins is now a countrywide organisation
with both community and industrial credit unions.
Lamrabat concluded �Cooperatives may not be the solution to the world's
problems, but they are certainly part of the solution. An International
Year of Cooperatives can firm up the international will to strengthen
cooperatives, in so doing help achieve the MDGs and alleviate world crises.�
In his 2009 BBC Reith Lectures Harvard Professor of Government Michael
Sandel emphasised the need in developed countries like USA to return to
a greater �sense of community� and advocated a �politics of the common
good� which would rebuild the infrastructure of civic life rather than
focus on access to private consumption. This would include �public
schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children;
public transportation systems reliable enough to attract commuters from
all walks of life; public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation
centres, libraries and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people
out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of a shared
democratic citizenship�.
The virtues of democratic life - solidarity, trust, civic friendship
are, he said, �like muscles that develop and grow stronger with exercise�.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & 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_
Anarcissie
to a co-op or the co-op movement is to associate
it with a government or collection of governments
like the U.N.
In article <4A98D54A...@columbia-center.org>,
Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9331&page=0
> Market power to the people
> By Harry Throssell
> Wednesday, 26 August 2009
>
> The world-wide co-operative movement is to be reviewed in September
> [2009] by the General Assembly of the United Nations, with a request the
> UN Secretary-General holds an International Year of Cooperatives.
>
> In preparation Amine Lamrabat of the United Nations Global Alliance for
> Information and Communication Technology and Development has produced a
> Background Paper on co-operatives.
>
> The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) defines a co-operative as
> �An autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their
> common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations, through a
> jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise�.
>
> The essence is control of production and rewards by the whole body of
> owner-workers, although there are local differences in achieving this
> goal. These organisations �aggregate the market power of people� who on
> their own might achieve little or nothing, inter alia providing ways of
> escaping poverty and powerlessness.
>
> World-wide the number of co-ops is increasing, although Australia has
> gone against the trend. A Cooperative Society was founded in New South
> Wales in 1859 based on the 1840 British �Rochdale model�, but met its
> demise in 1986. Credit unions, however, remain alive and well. The
> British Cooperative Wholesale Society was established in 1863 and to
> this day is the country�s largest co-operative body, with more than 500
> food stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets employing 35,000 workers,
> extensive funeral and farming interests, the second largest mutual
> assurance society with 35 million members, and a rapidly growing bank
> with two million customer accounts.
>
> In contrast to Australia, New Zealand is a leading co-op nation. One in
> three of its population is in membership, as in Canada, Honduras, and
> Norway, compared with one in two in Finland and Singapore, and one in
> four in the USA, Malaysia and Germany. In terms of percentage of a
> country's Gross Domestic Product attributable to co-operatives, the
> proportion is highest in Kenya at 45 per cent, in New Zealand 22 per
> cent. Worldwide the sector has some 800 million members in more than 100
> countries.
>
> The ICA sets out seven co-operative principles: voluntary and open
> membership; democratic member control; member economic participation;
> autonomy and independence; education, training and information;
> co-operation among co-operatives; concern for community.
>
> Lamrabat: �As the world today faces unstable financial systems,
> increased insecurity of food supply, growing inequality, rapid climate
> change and increased environmental degradation, it is increasingly
> compelling to consider the model co-operatives offer.�
>
> Food
>
> The World Bank estimates food demand will double by 2030 as the world's
> population increases. There is thus �an urgent need for developing
> countries to increase the output of food, yet, as the World Bank's 2008
> World Development Report on Agriculture for Development has shown, the
> rural economy has been badly neglected�. Lamrabat encourages farmers to
> mobilise into co-operatives to gain better market access.
>
> The number of such farmer bodies is increasing in most developing
> countries, with India's 100,000 dairy co-operatives making a significant
> contribution to food supply, although they �have yet to reach their full
> potential�. Co-ops account for 80 to 99 per cent of milk production in
> Norway, New Zealand and USA, 71 per cent of fishery production in Korea,
> 40 per cent of agriculture in Brazil.
>
> Primary producers - farmers, fishermen and forestry workers - include
> some of the world's biggest co-operatives: one in the UK operating 400
> markets on behalf of 65 market societies, through which 12,000 producers
> sell direct to consumers.
>
> Lamrabat points out these organisations sometimes struggle in developing
> countries. A recent study of 450 in Tanzania and Sri Lanka found workers
> lacked access to loan finance to help them gain from new technology,
> training, and markets beyond their locality. Another challenge was the
> low level of participation by women in some agricultural co-ops, but
> Lamrabat suggests addressing this problem by creating women-only
> organisations.
>
> There were success stories in the fields of sugar and cotton in India,
> dairy in India and Bangladesh, coffee in Tanzania and Kenya and in
> several countries a more independent credit sector. �Nevertheless, with
> market liberalisation in the 1990s and the withdrawal of government
> support, many state-sponsored co-operatives could not compete with the
> private sector and had to shut down.� However, some have re-formed
> independent of government.
>
> Seven per cent of Africans are co-op members, with 554 companies in
> Uganda in 1995 growing to 7,500 now, and farmer groups meeting a growing
> supermarket demand for fresh fruit and vegetables.
>
> In East Timor, with help from the National Cooperative Business
> Association of the USA, a network of 20,000 farmers has been formed,
> processing one third of the coffee for export.
>
> But, writes Lamrabat, food is not the whole story. Co-operatives also
> account for 25 per cent of savings in Bolivia, 24 per cent of the health
> sector in Colombia, 55 per cent of the retail market in Singapore, 36
> per cent in Denmark and 14 per cent in Hungary; and for more than 100
> million jobs around the world, with dairy organisations in India now
> including members of different castes.
>
> Informal sector workers have formed co-ops to assist self-employment
> while in rural areas savings and credit unions provide access to banking
> services and opportunities for raising incomes. This has an impact on
> achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals of primary education,
> gender equality and reduction in child mortality.
>
> In developed countries these organisations have grown over the past two
> centuries largely without government interference. Often first was a
> �friendly� or mutual health society that insured people against sickness
> Civil wars and ethnic conflicts can destroy social capital but �there is
> evidence that even during conflict co-operatives can survive. In Sri
> Lanka and Nepal they have been the only independent organisations
> allowed by both sides in the civil war zone�, Lamrabat reports.
>
> In Rwanda, a credit union system was rebuilt by the World Council of
> Credit Unions without regard to ethnicity, and now there are 149 CUs
> with nearly 400,000 members. Electricity co-operatives in Bangladesh
> have a common membership among 28 million users.
>
> Homes
>
> Much of the housing built in Norway and Sweden in the second half of the
> 20th century was by combined effort. In the USA housing co-ops are
> popular among higher income groups and retired people, in New York
> 27,000 homes abandoned by private landlords were taken over and
> renovated for low income people. In Britain, management co-ops have
> taken over unpopular council estates, and tenant-owned organisations are
> challenging conventional landlords to be more involved in governance.
>
> In an affordable housing project in Canada consisting of apartments,
> town houses and freestanding homes, every occupant has a say on
> management and elects a board of directors each year from among
> themselves. On taking up residence members make a small down-payment but
> since the members own the property there is no need for a profit.
> Government and other interest-free loans are available, for which the
> government requires a quarter of residents be eligible for rental
> subsidies. In one case residents' annual incomes ranged from under
> $10,000 to more than $100,000, the age-range from the 20s to the
> over-60s, with two-parent and single-parent families, and a mix of
> ethnic backgrounds.
>
> South America
>
> �In Venezuela�, writes Naomi Klein, �[President Hugo] Chavez has made
> the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on
> government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with
> one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the
> country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state
> infrastructure - toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics -
> handed over to the communities to run. It's a reverse of the logic of
> government outsourcing - rather than auctioning off pieces of the state
> to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use
> the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in
> theory, both jobs and more responsive public services�.
>
> Co-op News reported in June 2009 �As Argentines prepared for mid-term
> legislative elections in June co-operatives made a surprise appearance
> as part of the debate. President Cristina Fern�ndez gave a speech at an
> event organized by one of the associations of recovered factories in
> which she promised to promote a change in the bankruptcy law so that
> workers are the first to be given the opportunity to buy the assets of a
> company before it's auctioned off among other creditors. The Argentine
> government has carried out an unusual type of rescue in the case of a
> large bankrupt paper factory, Papeler�a Massuh by which the company has
> continued operations through a trust fund financed by the government and
> co-managed by government and worker delegates. Once the fund expires in
> 2011, the workers will be able to continue operations as a worker
> cooperative�.
>
> Co-op News also reported �it is clear that the cooperative model is
> increasingly becoming an attractive alternative in the midst of the
> recession � brought on by the global crisis�. Argentina�s The Working
> World/La Base co-operative made a major shipment of 1,650 pounds of
> clothing products to the United States.
>
> In Peru, when the government nationalised tin mines then pulled out,
> leaving whole communities with no alternative work, 10,000 miners
> created four co-operatives to keep the mines going. A recent figure
> showed the country with 15,000 personnel in 200 manufacturing and other
> organisations operating as co-operatives.
>
> Money
>
> Financial services are a common form of co-operative, with 49,000 credit
> unions serving 177 million members in 96 countries under the umbrella of
> the World Council of Credit Unions.
>
> Alphonse Desjardins started credit co-operatives in Quebec, Canada, in
> response to the poverty and unemployment he observed at the turn of the
> 20th century. Working people couldn't borrow money at interest rates
> they could afford so Desjardins started a credit union (�caisse�) in
> which members pooled their savings and took turns for affordable loans.
> The Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins is now a countrywide organisation
> with both community and industrial credit unions.
>
> Lamrabat concluded �Cooperatives may not be the solution to the world's
> problems, but they are certainly part of the solution. An International
> Year of Cooperatives can firm up the international will to strengthen
> cooperatives, in so doing help achieve the MDGs and alleviate world crises.�
>
> In his 2009 BBC Reith Lectures Harvard Professor of Government Michael
> Sandel emphasised the need in developed countries like USA to return to
> a greater �sense of community� and advocated a �politics of the common
> good� which would rebuild the infrastructure of civic life rather than
> focus on access to private consumption. This would include �public
> schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children;
> public transportation systems reliable enough to attract commuters from
> all walks of life; public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation
> centres, libraries and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people
> out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of a shared
> democratic citizenship�.
>
> The virtues of democratic life - solidarity, trust, civic friendship
> are, he said, �like muscles that develop and grow stronger with exercise�.
Dan Clore
> It seems to me that the worst thing you can do to a co-op or the
> co-op movement is to associate it with a government or collection of
> governments like the U.N.
Maybe we need something like a United Non-Governmental Organizations to
replace the UN.
> In article <4A98D54A...@columbia-center.org>, Dan Clore
> <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
>
>> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>>
>> http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9331&page=0 Market
>> power to the people By Harry Throssell Wednesday, 26 August 2009
>>
>> The world-wide co-operative movement is to be reviewed in September
>> [2009] by the General Assembly of the United Nations, with a
>> request the UN Secretary-General holds an International Year of
>> Cooperatives.
>>
>> In preparation Amine Lamrabat of the United Nations Global Alliance
>> for Information and Communication Technology and Development has
>> produced a Background Paper on co-operatives.
>>
>> The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) defines a co-operative
>> as �An autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet
>> their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations,
>> through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise�.
>>
>> The essence is control of production and rewards by the whole body
>> of owner-workers, although there are local differences in achieving
>> this goal. These organisations �aggregate the market power of
>> people� who on their own might achieve little or nothing, inter
>> alia providing ways of escaping poverty and powerlessness.
>>
>> World-wide the number of co-ops is increasing, although Australia
>> has gone against the trend. A Cooperative Society was founded in
>> New South Wales in 1859 based on the 1840 British �Rochdale model�,
>> but met its demise in 1986. Credit unions, however, remain alive
>> and well. The British Cooperative Wholesale Society was established
>> in 1863 and to this day is the country�s largest co-operative body,
>> with more than 500 food stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets
>> employing 35,000 workers, extensive funeral and farming interests,
>> the second largest mutual assurance society with 35 million
>> members, and a rapidly growing bank with two million customer
>> accounts.
>>
>> In contrast to Australia, New Zealand is a leading co-op nation.
>> One in three of its population is in membership, as in Canada,
>> Honduras, and Norway, compared with one in two in Finland and
>> Singapore, and one in four in the USA, Malaysia and Germany. In
>> terms of percentage of a country's Gross Domestic Product
>> attributable to co-operatives, the proportion is highest in Kenya
>> at 45 per cent, in New Zealand 22 per cent. Worldwide the sector
>> has some 800 million members in more than 100 countries.
>>
>> The ICA sets out seven co-operative principles: voluntary and open
>> membership; democratic member control; member economic
>> participation; autonomy and independence; education, training and
>> information; co-operation among co-operatives; concern for
>> community.
>>
>> Lamrabat: �As the world today faces unstable financial systems,
>> increased insecurity of food supply, growing inequality, rapid
>> climate change and increased environmental degradation, it is
>> increasingly compelling to consider the model co-operatives offer.�
>>
>>
>> Food
>>
>> The World Bank estimates food demand will double by 2030 as the
>> world's population increases. There is thus �an urgent need for
>> developing countries to increase the output of food, yet, as the
>> World Bank's 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture for
>> Development has shown, the rural economy has been badly neglected�.
>> Lamrabat encourages farmers to mobilise into co-operatives to gain
>> better market access.
>>
>> The number of such farmer bodies is increasing in most developing
>> countries, with India's 100,000 dairy co-operatives making a
>> significant contribution to food supply, although they �have yet to
>> reach their full potential�. Co-ops account for 80 to 99 per cent
>> of milk production in Norway, New Zealand and USA, 71 per cent of
>> fishery production in Korea, 40 per cent of agriculture in Brazil.
>>
>> Primary producers - farmers, fishermen and forestry workers -
>> include some of the world's biggest co-operatives: one in the UK
>> operating 400 markets on behalf of 65 market societies, through
>> which 12,000 producers sell direct to consumers.
>>
>> Lamrabat points out these organisations sometimes struggle in
>> developing countries. A recent study of 450 in Tanzania and Sri
>> Lanka found workers lacked access to loan finance to help them gain
>> from new technology, training, and markets beyond their locality.
>> Another challenge was the low level of participation by women in
>> some agricultural co-ops, but Lamrabat suggests addressing this
>> problem by creating women-only organisations.
>>
>> There were success stories in the fields of sugar and cotton in
>> India, dairy in India and Bangladesh, coffee in Tanzania and Kenya
>> and in several countries a more independent credit sector.
>> �Nevertheless, with market liberalisation in the 1990s and the
>> withdrawal of government support, many state-sponsored
>> co-operatives could not compete with the private sector and had to
>> shut down.� However, some have re-formed independent of government.
>>
>>
>> Seven per cent of Africans are co-op members, with 554 companies in
>> Uganda in 1995 growing to 7,500 now, and farmer groups meeting a
>> growing supermarket demand for fresh fruit and vegetables.
>>
>> In East Timor, with help from the National Cooperative Business
>> Association of the USA, a network of 20,000 farmers has been
>> formed, processing one third of the coffee for export.
>>
>> But, writes Lamrabat, food is not the whole story. Co-operatives
>> also account for 25 per cent of savings in Bolivia, 24 per cent of
>> the health sector in Colombia, 55 per cent of the retail market in
>> Singapore, 36 per cent in Denmark and 14 per cent in Hungary; and
>> for more than 100 million jobs around the world, with dairy
>> organisations in India now including members of different castes.
>>
>> Informal sector workers have formed co-ops to assist
>> self-employment while in rural areas savings and credit unions
>> provide access to banking services and opportunities for raising
>> incomes. This has an impact on achieving the UN Millennium
>> Development Goals of primary education, gender equality and
>> reduction in child mortality.
>>
>> In developed countries these organisations have grown over the past
>> two centuries largely without government interference. Often first
>> was a �friendly� or mutual health society that insured people
>> �there is evidence that even during conflict co-operatives can
>> survive. In Sri Lanka and Nepal they have been the only independent
>> organisations allowed by both sides in the civil war zone�,
>> �In Venezuela�, writes Naomi Klein, �[President Hugo] Chavez has
>> made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal
>> on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to
>> trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000
>> co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers.
>> Many are pieces of state infrastructure - toll booths, highway
>> maintenance, health clinics - handed over to the communities to
>> run. It's a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing - rather
>> than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and
>> losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are
>> given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both
>> jobs and more responsive public services�.
>>
>> Co-op News reported in June 2009 �As Argentines prepared for
>> mid-term legislative elections in June co-operatives made a
>> surprise appearance as part of the debate. President Cristina
>> Fern�ndez gave a speech at an event organized by one of the
>> associations of recovered factories in which she promised to
>> promote a change in the bankruptcy law so that workers are the
>> first to be given the opportunity to buy the assets of a company
>> before it's auctioned off among other creditors. The Argentine
>> government has carried out an unusual type of rescue in the case of
>> a large bankrupt paper factory, Papeler�a Massuh by which the
>> company has continued operations through a trust fund financed by
>> the government and co-managed by government and worker delegates.
>> Once the fund expires in 2011, the workers will be able to continue
>> operations as a worker cooperative�.
>>
>> Co-op News also reported �it is clear that the cooperative model is
>> increasingly becoming an attractive alternative in the midst of
>> the recession � brought on by the global crisis�. Argentina�s The
>> Working World/La Base co-operative made a major shipment of 1,650
>> pounds of clothing products to the United States.
>>
>> In Peru, when the government nationalised tin mines then pulled
>> out, leaving whole communities with no alternative work, 10,000
>> miners created four co-operatives to keep the mines going. A recent
>> figure showed the country with 15,000 personnel in 200
>> manufacturing and other organisations operating as co-operatives.
>>
>> Money
>>
>> Financial services are a common form of co-operative, with 49,000
>> credit unions serving 177 million members in 96 countries under the
>> umbrella of the World Council of Credit Unions.
>>
>> Alphonse Desjardins started credit co-operatives in Quebec, Canada,
>> in response to the poverty and unemployment he observed at the turn
>> of the 20th century. Working people couldn't borrow money at
>> interest rates they could afford so Desjardins started a credit
>> union (�caisse�) in which members pooled their savings and took
>> turns for affordable loans. The Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins is
>> now a countrywide organisation with both community and industrial
>> credit unions.
>>
>> Lamrabat concluded �Cooperatives may not be the solution to the
>> world's problems, but they are certainly part of the solution. An
>> International Year of Cooperatives can firm up the international
>> will to strengthen cooperatives, in so doing help achieve the MDGs
>> and alleviate world crises.�
>>
>> In his 2009 BBC Reith Lectures Harvard Professor of Government
>> Michael Sandel emphasised the need in developed countries like USA
>> to return to a greater �sense of community� and advocated a
>> �politics of the common good� which would rebuild the
>> infrastructure of civic life rather than focus on access to private
>> consumption. This would include �public schools to which rich and
>> poor alike would want to send their children; public transportation
>> systems reliable enough to attract commuters from all walks of
>> life; public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation
>> centres, libraries and museums that would, ideally at least, draw
>> people out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of
>> a shared democratic citizenship�.
>>
>> The virtues of democratic life - solidarity, trust, civic
>> friendship are, he said, �like muscles that develop and grow
>> stronger with exercise�.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Anarcissie
Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
> Anarcissie wrote:
> > It seems to me that the worst thing you can do to a co-op or the
> > co-op movement is to associate it with a government or collection of
> > governments like the U.N.
>
> Maybe we need something like a United Non-Governmental Organizations to
> replace the UN.
The ICA (the group mentioned as sucking up to the
U.N.) is, in theory, a world-wide association of
cooperatives. But it is strongly tainted with state
influences and relations. Statesmen, of course, have
no interest in cooperatives except insofar as they can
be used to manipulate and control people, and will
quickly ensure their deference to traditional capital
and other ruling-class elements when any conflict
arises, provided they can addict the cooperatives to
government money and privileges.