The Time Has Come To Resuscitate the Cooperative Movement

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Everywhere we look, we see Big Business getting their way.  All this T-Party stuff might look like grassroots action, but it is ultimately Big Business, and Big Businessmen pulling the strings to get the laws changed to suit their ends.  (All this was foreseen centuries ago, when observers of the political scene predicted that government would eventually be subverted by financial interests.)

In the Sixties and the Seventies, the Cooperative Movement was active everywhere.

As a poor grad student, I remember buying a membership in the local Cooperative Store, working so many hours a week, shelving, packaging, labeling, and fetching local produce from our supplying farmers.  The Cooperative Movement owned a large central warehouse, leased their own trucks, and volunteers brought raw milk from the dairy farms, other volunteers put it in bottles, and yet other volunteers delivered the milk to the doorsteps of Cooperative members who subscribed to the milk plan.  Doesn’t this sound like heaven?  These days it is so difficult, and so expensive, to obtain raw milk!  I don’t want to be overly critical of our local health-food store, which has made a comfortable business out of health foods, and without whom we would not have certain types of supplies here at all.  But, unfortunately, it caters to high-end customers, and we cannot afford some of the stuff they offer.  (Some of what they stock is actually very inexpensive.)

Since what a 21^st-Century consumer is on the lookout for is different from what a shopper in the Sixties and the Seventies was on the lookout for, and of course, since Big Business of the present day is determined either to not supply what consumers need, or to mis-educate consumers to demand goods that ─in our humble opinion─ breed bad consumption habits, it will be both challenging and interesting to create a new Cooperative Movement to produce and provide what might be useful to both the consumer and the environment, and possibly the economy.

* People still need healthy food for reasonable prices.  Starting retail food outlets in the old model is still a viable and useful thing to do.  We just have to brazen out accusations of being communists, which Big Business will surely orchestrate.

* It is going to be important to either support small farms, or to create Cooperative farms that can afford to farm according to best practices, or to ignore "Best Practices" that have been established by BB.

* Computers.  Generally speaking, computers deliver what most of us have been accustomed to wanting.  But it is well known that, the Internet being controlled by BB, we're only given what is in the interest of the providers to allow us to have.  On a mobile device, such as a Tablet, all you can get is a few tiny pieces of information, and LOTs of advertising.  But the Linux OS and open source software delivers so much, if more of us were to use it, it would become better, and cheaper.  Can you imagine a Cooperative Computer Store, run by volunteers?  With so many young people looking for work, we could make such a thing happen.

* Fabric and clothing.  By and large, most of us probably have the sort of clothes we want to have.  But the great tradition of sewing your own clothes, which was admittedly something easier for women to do than for guys, is dying out.  And the fabric stores don’t make it any easier; have you checked out the prices recently?  It is high time we invested some interest and effort into helping home sewing make a comeback.  And who better than a Cooperative Fabric Store to do such a thing?

* Health Care.  Generally speaking, members of the Health Professions are divided on the issue of health care; some deplore the recent innovations in health care, others are enthusiastically for it, though opponents of Obamacare are at pains to depict the health care profession as united in their criticism of the ACA.  But in my travels, I have seen Cooperative Hospitals functioning beautifully in the Third World.  It can happen here!

* In many places, there is Animal Care; generally speaking, animal lovers are quite willing to provide help, advice and training at a modest cost.  I don't quite see how this sort of thing fits into the Cooperative Movement, but it’s something to keep in mind.

* Education and Child Care.  This is tricky; while I’m uncomfortable taking resources away from the public schools, I have to admit that some accusations of school teachers that they are incompetent, might well be true.  Generalizing is very dangerous, and counterproductive.  Until everybody: parents, teachers, and the public, joins together to move away from thinking of education as a necessary evil, which one brings out only at election time, to thinking of education as the primary engine for social betterment, we can’t get anywhere.  But I’m beginning to think that the education of the very young might be better done in a community, volunteer environment.  The emphasis should not be on teaching, though children are happy to learn in the ages 4-6.  But a holistic approach is important, rather than a sort of tiny-tot version of "College Bound".

There are already Cooperative Movement Outposts in forward-looking cities throughout the country, especially in the NorthEast, and the NorthWest.  Most established Coops are interested in spreading the gospel, and will offer help to set up Coops in any location.

If anyone reading this has information, please write in!

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