Introduction

“Where people have selected co-operation as a practical strategy they have done so as an alternative to the retention of unacceptable conditions, on the one hand, or the adoption of acquiescence of undesirable solutions on the other.”
- Dr Gary Lewis, 1992, Australian co-op historian: The Quest for a ‘Middle Way’: Radical and Rochdale Co-Operation in New South Wales, 1859-1996 (pdf): 1989 Ph.D thesis submitted to the Australian National University. (Shared with permission)

Cooperatives (Co-Ops) are a form of corporate organization – residential land or businesses owned and run by and for their members. Whether the members are customers, employees, or residents, they each have an equal say in what the 'business' does and they have a 'mutual' share in earnings. So long as Co-Ops continue to 'democratically' serve their members, they remain 'cooperative'.

Examples of Co-Op 'enterprises' go back hundreds of years:
17c English Levelers and Diggers;
18c Scottish Fenwick Weavers;
19c French-led Fourierism;
20c Spain's Mondragon
and more - 'associations' formed in order to survive and stay healthy by avoiding (and escaping) systemic breakdown across society following from the development of neo-classical economic theorem / neo-liberal / economic rationalism ascendancy. There is a remedy and it has a history worth knowing: Voters and taxpayers need to start thinking about the benefits that follow taxing what the privileged TAKE FROM the community rather than what producers CONTRIBUTE TO the community.

The Co-Operative movement is"The Middle Way"
In short, since our politicians endorse tax avoidance as "good business practice" Co-Ops offer an interm solution. Highly recommended is "Of Labour and Liberty" Distributism in Victoria 1891-1966" (Monash University press, 2017), by the unofficial godfather of the Australia's co-operative movement, former Federal MP and Victorian MP, The Honourable Professor Race Mathews, whose lecture before Melbourne symposium on 'The Future is Co-operative - Making Mutual Enterprises Happen', on 28-29 April, 2016, highlighted the achievements of the Mondragon Corporation, based in the Basque region of Spain, which was founded in the town of Mondragon in April 1956 by an inspired Catholic priest, José María Arizmendiarrieta (1915-1976), along with a group of his students at a technical college he founded!

MONDRAGON is the outcome of a cooperative business project launched in 1956. Its mission is encapsulated in its Corporate Values: intercooperation, grassroots management, corporate social responsibility, innovation, democratic organisation, education and social transformation, among others.
...
Organisationally, MONDRAGON is divided into four areas: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. It currently consists of 95 separate, self-governing cooperatives, around 80,000 people and 14 R&D centres, occupying first place in the Basque business ranking and tenth in Spain. ... It operates throughout the world, with 141 production plants in 37 countries, commercial business in 53, and sales in more than 150.
MONDRAGON is a cooperative association and always has been. This hallmark is one of its strengths and one of the reasons for its success.
Values
- Cooperation: Owners and protagonists.
- Participation: Grassroots management.
- Corporate Social Responsibility: Fair distribution of wealth.
- Innovation: Continuous renewal

How does the Co-Op model contribute to a more dynamically healthy public life in the long term? While Co-Ops address social and economic needs not met by the private profit sector and governments, they are not a substitute for justice in land tenure.

IMAGINE:
Suburban/city blocks without fences: Communal gardens; green technologies; well-designed 'playgrounds' shared by children, disabled people and frail elderly, with facilities for multimedia, art, craft, dance, music, workshops, studio spaces, and a café, etc.

• self-help
  
• self-responsibility
  
• democracy
  
• equality
  
• equity
  
• solidarity

The cooperative movement has come a long way since the 17th century.

With more than a BILLION members around the world, the operating principles behind co-operatives businesses are driven by internationally agreed principles, based on ethical values of honesty, openness, transparency, social responsibility and caring for others.

– International statistics here.
– Co-Operatives and Mutuals Around the World

Since 2002, .Coop (dotCoop) has been reserved for cooperatives.
For more information visit www.coop.

• International Co-operative Alliance
• Australian Co-operative Links
• Business Council of Cooperatives and Mutuals (Australia)
• National Cooperative Business Association (USA)
• National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (USA)
• Co-operatives (UK)

Book Review by Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Take Back the Economy:
An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities (2013)
An accessible guide to demystifying the economy and creating a more just and sustainable world
by J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, & Stephen Healy

Take Back the Economy dismantles the idea that the economy is separate from us and best comprehended by experts, demonstrating that the economy is the outcome of the decisions and efforts we make every day. Full of exercises and inspiring examples from around the world, it shows how people can implement small-scale changes in their own lives to create ethical economies. 

Take Back the Economy is the single most farsighted and practical work enlightening us on the path to a steady transition toward a genuine postcapitalist world. It is based on the presupposition that reorienting the economy means much more than the control of production—it means reinventing ourselves, our communities, and our world in profound ways. Out of this act of ‘reframing’ there emerges a novel understanding of work, enterprise, market, property, even finance. In this wonderful new work in the tradition of Gibson-Graham, students, activists, movements, and communities will find a toolkit for ethical and effective action any time, any place. >>> more

The ‘Uberisation’ of work is driving people to co-operatives
Sarah Kaine, Danielle Logue, Emmanuel Josserand
The Conversation, September 28, 2016
Excerpt:
This resurgence in interest in co-operatives reflects broader developments and trends in the “social economy”. One growing trend impacting retail spending and the philanthropic sector is people turning from simply donating to a charitable cause to actively being members of purpose organisations and engaged in “purpose spending”. >>> more

The Private-Investment Community Land Trust
A Better Way to Revitalize Communities
by Dan Sullivan

The essential concept
The private-investment community land trust is an alternative system for private land-holding, for generating community revenues, and for encouraging better land use. Essentially, land users lease the land, rather than purchase it, from a land trust. The trust then uses lease revenues to pay investors, to provide community services, to rebate taxes levied against occupants of trust land by larger taxing bodies, and to acquire additional land. It has many advantages over our traditional land tenure system, and particularly over urban-renewal projects, to the occupants, the investors, and the communities in which they are located.

Current Occupants Can Stay
People often complain that urban redevelopment projects create "gentrification," by which they mean pushing poorer people out in order to entice richer people to move in. The land trust approach attracts richer people and more dynamic businesses with little or no displacement of those already living or doing business in the community. Studies show that when a community gradually improves, it actually loses fewer residents than similar communities that stagnate or continue to decline. The real cause of displacement is the urban renewal project that is undertaken to trigger gentrification. Indeed, the original term for "urban renewal" was "slum clearance." >>> more

Artificial scarcity of land
Ronald E. Johnson highlighted key points:
Letter to the Editor, Canberra Times, July 2017.

Beware the economic "experts" who tell us that the ACT economy is back in a "sweet spot".

We are told that some of the key indicators of our supposedly renewed economic prosperity are increased house prices and "significant signs of improvement in the rental market".

Before readers get too excited, it seems that an "improvement" actually means that rents have increased.
All that these figures really tell us is that (due to the artificial scarcity of land) the growth in the price of land has continued to outstrip the growth in wages.

Just like rising levels of personal debt, rising land prices, per se, do not add to the wealth of the community as a whole. Rising land prices are merely an indicator that a minority of people are accruing a larger slice of the economic pie at the expense of the earnings of the community generally.

The higher our land prices become relative to wages, the more difficult it is for workers to become self-employed. Therefore workers are placed even more at the mercy of the power of unjust privilege held by landlords, banks and big business.

For our economy to become truly healthy, our abundant land needs to be freed for workers to use for secure housing and secure employment through worker-owned co-operatives.

Ronald E. Johnson, Charnwood, ACT

Community Conservation Centers
Excerpt from Mary deCamp's submission to the Mayor of Tucson, AZ, promoting establishment of Community Conservation Centers"

"...serve as neighborhood educational centers, featuring community gardens, instructional workshops, hands-on energy retrofit projects - all the activities that we must put in place to address changing planetary weather patterns and shifting resource availability. The shared public spaces would allow knowledgeable neighbors to share concerns if there are dangers to be addressed (proactive is cheaper and more effective than reactive). Do-gooder groups who do not have office space could use these centres for outreach/distribution sites or for meetings. With outside-the-box thinking, all sorts of creative and constructive outcomes could emerge."

Communities of Innovation
Michael Lim, Bee Yong Ong, (2019)
“Communities of innovation” International Journal of Innovation Science (PDF)
Lim and Ong define a community of innovation as "a group of people with a sense of comaradie, belonging and a collective identity who are jointly facilitating innovation." . . . "When we began our research on innovation within a UK university, a common theme that emerged was “community.”

Wikipedia excerpt:
"Traditionally, the company is the most efficient means of managing knowledge belonging to different people. The primary motivation is job security, career advancement and recognition. Lee and Cole (2003) argue for a community structure for knowledge creation that crosses firms’ boundaries. To substantiate their argument they put forth the case of how “thousands of talented volunteers, dispersed across organizational and geographical boundaries, collaborate via the Internet to produce a knowledge-intensive, innovative product of high quality” >>> more

Cooperative Modeling
Australian Wild Law Alliance: AWLA
AWLA’s mission is to promote the understanding and practical implementation of Earth Jurisprudence and Wild Law in Australia.
Wild Law is a new legal theory and growing social movement. It proposes that we rethink our legal, political, economic and governance systems so that they support, rather than undermine, the integrity and health of the Earth. AWLA’s activities include research, education, promotion and advocacy... >>> more

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy: CASSE
A leading American organization in educating the public and policy makers about the impacts of economic growth on the environment, national security, and international stability. "Perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Growth, especially in wealthy nations, is already causing more problems than it solves. Recession isn't sustainable or healthy either. The positive, sustainable alternative is a steady state economy."

Steady State Economy Defined
A steady state economy is an economy with stable or mildly fluctuating size. To be sustainable, a steady state economy may not exceed ecological limits. John Stuart Mill developed the idea of the steady state economy in the mid-19th century: "It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on." >>> more

Transition Town Network
Transition Network was originally launched in the historic town of Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland.
The Transition initiative is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction. There are thousands of initiatives around the world including Transition towns, cities, villages, universities, churches and more.
Follow TT's 8 paradigm shifts for the Heart of Reconomy
and take a look at The Big Transition Map: an Interactive map of Transition Town groups around the world

Relocalization
The relocalization strategy developed in response to the environmental, social, political and economic impacts of global over-reliance on cheap energy. In 2009 Post Carbon Institute partnered with the international Transition movement to support and inspire community led responses around the relocalization strategy. The aims and work of Relocalization Network, a Post Carbon program from 2003-2009 with a network of 200 local groups, were at this stage integrated into Transition.

Relocalization is a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to improve environmental conditions and social equity. >>> more

Distributism
“The basis of distributism is the belief that a just social order can only be achieved through a much more widespread distribution of property. Distributism favours a 'society of owners' where property belongs to the many rather than the few. It correspondingly opposes the concentration of property in the hands either of the rich as under capitalism, or of the state as advocated by some socialists. In particular, ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange must be widespread.”
– the Hon. Dr. Race Mathews, "Distributism: Past, Present and Future"
Paper presented at the Australian Chesterton Society Conference, Melbourne, 8 May, 2004. >>> more

The Emergence of the ‘Social Economy’:
the Australian not-for-profit sector in transition
Dr. Danielle Logue & Dr Gianni Zappala,
2014, University of Technology, Sydney

ABSTRACT:
The Not-for-Profit (NFP) sector in Australia is currently in transition. There is a growing recognition, in Australia and worldwide, that government and philanthropic funds are insufficient to address the problems facing society; as well as demands for increased accountability and demonstration of improved outcomes from traditional funding to the non-profit sector. There is also a growing global interest in social enterprises, socially responsible investment, and, in particular, impact investing – where investors aim to achieve a blend between commercial value and social impact. These trends are contributing to the emergence of new organizational forms, partnerships and financial products, and as a consequence, NFP organizations are becoming just one form of organization within the broader spectrum of organizations and activity described as the ‘social economy’. This research project begins to explore this transition by analysing a sample of organizations in Australia that while having formal non-profit structures, identified themselves as social enterprises in a bid for funding from one of Australia’s leading corporate foundations, the Westpac Foundation. The research builds on previous studies, yet also enables more detailed data on the leadership, governance, human resources, financial challenges, and focus of activities of social enterprises and raises questions about the future of the sector and the social economy.

Mary Hall's vision of cooperation seems easy to achieve:

"At some point there is a tipping point. Hundreds or thousands of people living in a space of love and peace with one another, getting all of their needs met without being controlled by corporations or the government is going to look pretty darn good. Good systems to grow the culture and revolution will mean it will be easy for people to see what a good life they could have by joining the new grassroots revolution. All the while the Empire falls, gently, without hurting a soul." – Mary Hall, 2012

The Gentle Economic Collapse of the Empire
by Mary Hall
January 14, 2012
"All the while the Empire falls, gently, without hurting a soul."

Excerpt:
Small groups around the country see the need for a totally different paradigm to live in, and are willing to give up current ideas of what security means and success to work for a larger vision that includes everyone getting their needs met. This means physical, emotional and spiritual needs. These groups, or maybe its just one group...lets stick with one group, because its easier for me to imagine, though my understanding is that many people all over the world are already working in this direction. So one group of say ten people buy a large house in a city. They commit to income sharing like Federation of Egalitarian communities do. I especially like Emma Goldman Finishing School's model of income sharing, where people "pay" into the house 20 hours a week in either domestic labor or their income for 20 hours at their job. They have a computer program to figure out how much money and labor they need each month, and are small enough to be able to be flexible enough to work with each person's ability and needs. In exchange for this payment, they have all of their survival needs met...heck they even had fancy organic shampoos, olives, a clean house and organic veggies from their garden, when I visited a number of years ago. The rest of their time is freed up to their art and activism...some of them also work more to pay off loans or save money personally.

So this group is dedicated to spreading their vision of income sharing households, I personally like the idea of eventually taking over a city and surrounding countryside with these cooperative households. This one group uses some of their income to save enough money to purchase another home. In addition to living together, they have been doing the personal liberation work I talk about in my last post, so they are creating a culture of love, non violent communication and transparency between them. At some point they have enough money to buy another property and do so, splitting the group and adding new members to each household. Eventually they may own the entire block. At this point I like the idea of ripping out the alleys and barriers between yards and creating gardens with food, building a central kitchen for everyone on the block, having solar panels and composting toilets, grey water systems and living roofs. Workshops for coop businesses that the group has created in the basements and perhaps garages and in the homes. Shared libraries, offices, and features such as hot tubs and saunas for the block. Oh, wait, this is already happening in some ways!

Ganas community (http://www.ganas.org/) in New York has something like five collectively owned houses with adjacent backyards and various businesses that are in their neighborhood, they are also dedicated to the personal liberation work. Twin Oaks (http://www.twinoaks.org/) has been income sharing for 40+ years and lives collectively on 400 acres in Central Virginia, with shared gardens, homes, businesses, a person made pond, river, sauna and an amazing playground or two. Emma Goldman was saving money to give to another group to buy property to create another community when I visited them five years ago, I'm not sure where they are in the process now. The thing is that none of these communities are doing all of the things that I think would make a successful long term revolution, AND they each hold such important pieces of the puzzle.

What if these small coop houses spread like Starbucks or McDonalds do?
Creating a culture of transparency and love, egalitarian living, with everyone in agreement about the larger movement or vision being economic revolution, moving from a capitalist culture to a gift economy, on a grassroots scale? Each community saving up extra resources to grow the concept, to create more cooperative businesses and communities to serve the whole movement. Put the land into land trusts, not big land trusts, but small ones that may only own up to ten homes, workshops, hospitals, farms, etc, so that you don't have more than 100 people having to work together to decide what to do with the land, and so that the power of controlling the land can't get out of hand. . . . >>> more