Myth #4: Cooperatives are too easily corrupted.
Cooperatives operate democratically, using the “one person, one vote” rule and, as we all know, democracy is messy. Any democracy can become corrupted if we don’t participate in it. But George W. Bush’s famous declaration that dictatorship would be “a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator” should inspire us to continue working to strengthen democratic principles. Participation and perseverance are the keys to success; contending that cooperatives are too difficult won’t get us there.
Looking beyond the myths, we can see that as the foundation of a market economy, cooperation is more consistent with a vision of sustainability and fairness. Competition’s fatal flaw, which Adam Smith may not have foreseen, is that it never corrects imbalances, instead enabling the winners to keep winning bigger while the losers face an ever-increasing struggle to stay in the game. Now that the game has become so lopsided, it’s high time to give cooperation a fighting chance.
Mark Sardella is the co-founder of the Capulin Cooperative Alliance
and Local Energy, a nonprofit organization working to help communities
become more self-reliant in energy. He can be reached at www.marksardella.com
trade. But as we seek a more human pace heading into the age of sustainability, toward slower food, slower money and community-centered living, it’s fair to ask whether competition should continue to serve as the dominant market principle. Is it high time we learned to cooperate more and compete less?
Perhaps, but before cooperation can take hold, there are misconceptions that must be overcome, many of which have been repeated enough that they are commonly mistaken for truths. Here are a few:
Myth #1: Competition is the dominant force of nature and humans are born to compete.
As with every good myth, there is an element of truth in this. We are competitive creatures, to be sure, but the notion that competition is dominant fails to account for an equally prevalent natural process: cooperation. Nature recognizes and nurtures interdependent relationships, which are the basis of cooperative relationships. If you believe that natural systems are all connected, as the permaculturists tell us, what do you suppose the connections are based on—competition? Not a chance. Nature is a symphony, not a battleground.
Myth #2: Cooperation is great for health food stores, but not for much else.
The world’s most successful cooperative community, the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, is a collection of nearly 300 worker-owned businesses ranging from aerospace engineering and industrial manufacturing to banking and finance. These companies pool their profits to ensure their mutual success; they provide full employment, adequate retirement income and access to healthcare for all worker-owners, as well. An equally impressive example comes from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, where cooperative businesses make up 40 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and provide 85 percent of the social services in the surrounding cities.
Myth # 3: Americans are too individualistic and self-centered to cooperate.
Again, the hint of truth gives this fallacy more credibility than it deserves. We are a nation of rugged individualists but that doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate. In the U.S., we’ve enjoyed a prolonged period of economic growth which has falsely convinced us that we don’t need to cooperate, but that doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate. Cooperatives thrive during tough economic times and, by all measures, the United States appears to be in for a doozy. We are creative and adaptive beings and, as such, we have been building a strong foundation for cooperation through the National Cooperative Business Association and National Cooperative Bank, as well as with a network of cooperative training centers set up by the Cooperative Development Institute. So we are already cooperating, big time.
