History of the cooperative movement
[1] The Common Company (Syntrofia) of Ambelakia (1780 to 1812), established in Thessaly and providing Europe with high quality red cotton yarns, is typical of this system.
Its development was related with a dyeing technique using the roots of the wild madder (ριζάρι, Rubia tinctorum) and providing an indelible and shiny color.
[12] Financially, cooperative banks, called credit unions in the US, were invented in Germany in the mid-19th century, first by Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch (1852, urban), then by Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (1864, rural).
A Welshman who made his fortune in the cotton trade, Owen believed in putting his workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their children.
Spurred on by the success of this, he had the idea of forming "villages of co-operation" where workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making their own clothes and ultimately becoming self-governing.
He proposed sensible rules, such as having a weekly account audit, having 3 trustees, and not having meetings in pubs (to avoid the temptation of drinking profits).
[4] As the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution was forcing more and more skilled workers into poverty, these tradesmen decided to band together to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford.
The country's first organization to promote cooperative values and the Rochdale Principles was the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, known as the Grange that started after the Civil War.
[17] In Colorado, the Meadowlark cooperative administered the only private free land program in the United States, providing many services to its members who buy and sell together.
[20] Some have already incorporated environmental and/or Fair Trade criteria into their products, such as the aforementioned bread-maker, Organic Valley, and Equal Exchange.
[citation needed] Electrical co-operatives became an important economic strategy for U.S. rural areas beginning in the 1930s, and continue to operate successfully through events such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
[31] To address the need for an organization oriented to newer and smaller co-ops, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives was founded after 2000.
An alternative method of employee-ownership, the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), was developed in the U.S. by Louis Kelso and advocated by Senator Russell Long to be incentivized in the ERISA law of 1974.
Employee-owned trusts have also been developed more or less independently, for example at an established iron pipe company[35] Alice Acland, the editor of the "Women's Corner" in the Co-operative News publication, and Mary Lawrenson, a teacher, recognized the need for a separate women's organization within the Cooperative Movement and began organizing a "Woman's League for the Spread of Co-operation" in 1883.
This League formally met for the first time during the 1883 Co-operative Congress in Edinburgh in a group of 50 women and established Acland as its organizing secretary.
By the 1860s Brigham Young had started applying co-operative ideas in Utah,[42] and by the 1880s, the Knights of Labor and the Grange both promoted member-owned organizations.
[44] Diverse kinds of co-operatives were founded and have continued to perform successfully in different areas: in agriculture, wholesale purchasing, telephones, and in consumer-food buying.
[51] Co-operative enterprises are now widespread,[52] with one of the largest and most successful examples being the industrial Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in the Basque country of Spain.
Mondragon Co-op was founded under the oppressive conditions of Fascist Franco Spain after community-based democracy-building activities of a priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta.
UK co-operatives retain a significant market share in food retail, insurance, banking, funeral services, and the travel industry in many parts of the country.
[61] In some instances, the living spaces are financed by the Danish Housing Association, but other times residents collectively own the land and property.
[62] In Germany, the rebuilding of the country after World War II created a legislative opportunity in which politician Hans Boeckler significantly lobbied for the co-determination ("Mitbestimmung") policies which were established, requiring large companies to include a Workers' Council in the Board of Directors.
[64][65] Emilia Romagna, Italy had two separate and strong co-operative traditions that resisted Cold War interference by US agencies and have worked effectively in conjunction with each other.
Deregulation of the electricity markets allowed energy co-operative social entrepreneurs to begin to create alternatives to the monopolies in various countries.
[73] In Spain, wind power was developed by corporate-led efforts, and it took longer for a renewable energy-focused social enterprise to get established.
[76][77] Nevertheless, the crises generated by traditional inequalities and the shareholder model continues to require civil society and entrepreneurial responses, such as the Citizens Coalition for Economic Justice in South Korea, the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union in Japan, and the Self-Employed Women's Association in India.
[85] In Brazil, the World Social Forum process lead to the articulation of Solidarity Economics, a modern, activist formulation of co-operativism.
[88][89][90] In 2016, UNESCO inscribed "Idea and practice of organizing shared interests in cooperatives" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
