RE: The Biopsychology of Cooperation
Dharmadeva
Understanding Prout
· Welcome
The Biopsychology of Cooperation
The cooperative system is fundamental to the organisation and structure of a Proutist economy. It is an expression of economic democracy in action – cooperative enterprises give workers the right of capital ownership, collective management and all the associated benefits, such as profit sharing. Sarkar, the propounder of Prout, goes further and argues that an egalitarian society is actually not possible without a commitment to the cooperative system. The commitment is not just to an economic order but also to a cooperative ethic and culture. This essay explores cooperation from the ethical, social and cultural perspective. The business enterprise perspective is the subject of another essay in this volume.
Background
Cooperation as a cultural, social and economic movement arose early in the 19th century, and with particular success in Britain. The term movement is used here to indicate that what caught the popular imagination of the day was much more than the consumer/worker cooperative, which at the time was a novel form of business enterprise. The cooperative movement was a social and cultural movement because it advocated better conditions for the working class and better education for their self-improvement. It was also an economic movement in that it “sought to transform the balance of economic power from capital ownership to democratic control by members of an economic enterprise”. The cooperative business model enjoyed early success in the capable hands of one of the movement’s founders, Robert Owen. The philosophy of the movement was promoted by a group of thinkers who were later characterised by Marx and Engels as utopian socialists. Indeed the word socialist was first used in 1827 to describe Owen and his followers.
During the second half of the 19th century, both the theory and the practice of cooperation were ultimately rejected by all the other major strands of social and economic thought of the day. In particular, Engels made a stinging critique of utopian socialism in 1880 which caused those seeking radical social change to turn their attention to Marx and the emerging socialist Left. It could be argued that Marx and Engels effectively killed, for more than a century, any capacity the cooperative movement had to effect radical social change. In addition, the British government made no attempt to encourage cooperatives as a business model. This left the way open for the other currents of 19th century political thought to mature into the three great isms of the 20th century: communism, fascism and liberal capitalism. However, out of the turmoil of the 20th century it has become clear that none of the three contenders was able to produce a stable social order, that is, one which is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. These three characteristics are considered today, quite reasonably, to be the minimum requirements for a successful social order.
After more than a century of neglect, the cooperative movement is beginning to enjoy a renaissance. In fact, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that today worldwide, the cooperative movement has a membership of over 800 million and provides over 100 million jobs. That is 20 percent more than provided by all multinational corporations combined and has been achieved despite vigorous efforts by privately owned corporations to demutualise profitable cooperatives. But it has to be admitted that cooperation as a social and economic ideal is not part of today’s popular consciousness. In an era mesmerised by the sparkle of globalisation and consumer goods, cooperatives appear somehow old fashioned, like the friendly societies to which one’s grand-parents or great grandparents belonged.
Four factors have helped to breathe new life into the cooperative movement: First, the collapse of communism has discredited the Marxist brand of ‘scientific’ socialism and those looking for serious social change are once again evaluating the cooperative movement. Second, the economic woes besetting western capitalist democracies have starkly exposed the defects of the dominant social order to emerge out of the titanic struggles of the 20th century. Third, the British Labour government from 1997 gave much support to what they heralded as the third sector and social enterprise. In many respects it was cooperation rebadged but it did help to broaden our appreciation of cooperation by encompassing not-for-profits and self-help organisations and it also made alternative economic models more visible in the English speaking world. Fourth, much economic and scientific evidence is emerging, some of it from surprising quarters, to suggest that cooperation is not a utopian concept but entirely achievable given any reasonable effort to put it into practice.
The rejection of the cooperative business model by 19th century British capitalists was motivated by a desire to preserve class privilege. And of course the British government was obliged to maintain an increasingly expensive and restless empire – cooperatives are not a good business model for empire builders. The essential criticism made by Marx and Engels, that utopian socialists failed to understand the importance of class struggle and did not have a theoretical analysis to underpin it, was correct. But the argument is no longer compelling because the 20th century has taught us that accepting one (class struggle) does not require rejecting the other (cooperative economics). Prout, for example, embraces both the cooperative economy and a theory of class and class struggle. New evidence is emerging to suggest that, not only is cooperation, as a social and economic ideal, possible in the 21st century, but that it is necessary. One of the objectives of this essay is to present some of that evidence.
The evidence is better appreciated by making comparisons with the other social orders that dominated the 20th century, in particular communism and neoliberal capitalism. The failings of both these systems highlight the importance of cooperation, both as a social ideal and as a business model.
Click below for the full essay....
BiopsychologyOfCooperation_v5.1.pdf
|
