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Key Historical Co-op Movements –viewed through the lens of what motivates people to organize co-ops
Montana Cooperative SummitFairmont Hot Springs
March 7, 2018
Brianna EwertCooperative Development Program Manager
Lake County Community Development Corp.
With credit to:
Margaret M. BauCooperative Development Specialist
USDA Rural Development
What motivates people to
organize cooperatives?
Are there common themes?
What motivates people to
organize cooperatives?
• Market failure and power imbalances
• Perseverance in hostile conditions
• Equity and social justice
• Practicality
• Middle Way (between corporate capitalism and socialism)
Co-op history
illustrated through
stories…
The Rochdale PioneersEngland, 1840s
Overcoming Market Failure and
Power Imbalances
Cooperatives formed by African-AmericansPerseverance in the Midst of Hostility
Collective Courage: A History of African American
Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard
Founders of the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union
Houston County, Texas, 1886
Fannie Lou Hamer
Freedom Farm Cooperative
Alice Wine, cashier at the Progressive Club. She was a participant in the first Citizenship
School at the co-op and the first student to gain the right to vote. Circa early 1950s
The Progressive Club Food Co-op, Johns Island, South Carolina
Esau Jenkins of the Progressive Club and Myles Horton of the Highlander Center
Desjardins
Credit Unions(Quebec, 1900 – today)
Equity and Social Justice
Home of Alfonse Desjardins and site of
the first caisse founded in 1900
Rural Electric Co-ops in the US(1935-1945)
Practicality to Efficiently Achieve a Major Goal
Photo courtesy of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
FDR signs the Rural Electrification
Administration act
Mondragon worker co-ops(Spanish Basque region, 1956-today)
A Middle Way
steering a middle course between investor and state owned businesses
Basic Principles of the
Mondragon Cooperative Experience
1. Open admission
2. Democratic organization
3. Sovereignty of labor
4. Instrumental and subordinate character of capital
5. Participatory management
6. Payment solidarity
7. Inter-cooperation
8. Social transformation
9. Universality
10.Education
What have we
learned?
Observations from History
• In the spirit of “a middle way”…
– Practicality AND movement building
– Self-help, self-responsibility AND equity, solidarity
• When going to scale
– Access to model, financing, administration AND
study circles, adult education
What motivates
you?
For More Information
Margaret BauCooperative Development Specialist
USDA Rural Development (715) 345-7671
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.