The Cooperativism and Democracy, edited by Bartłomiej Błesznowski is not purely a scientific book, but rather a guide which shows how scholars and activists wrote about the community, social participation and the politics in Poland in the early 20th century. The book contains a selection of texts in socio-political thought, led by the work of one of most important Polish thinkers – Edward Abramowski, socialist, philosopher and psychologist. Polish cooperativism can be inspiring to both contemporary researchers and political activists in Europe post the economic crisis, which brought about a crisis of faith in political and economic institutions. These works have a chance to become a significant voice in the debate over the relationship of contemporary economics and politics. Contributors are: Edward Abramowski, Fr. Stanisław Adamski, Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Zygmunt Chmielewski, Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska, Maria Dąbrowska, Jan Hempel, Jerzy Kurnatowski, Romuald Mielzarski, Remigiusz Okraska, Maria Orsetti, Adam Próchnik, Marian Rapacki, Franciszek Stefczyk, Edward Taylor, Stanisław Thugutt, Stanisław Wojciechowski, and Jan Wolski. First published in Polish as Kooperatyzm, spółdzielczość, demokracja. Wybór pism by Wydawnictwo Uniwerstytetu Warszawskiego in 2014. The current work includes an additional chapter ‘Through Cooperatives to the Future Order’ by Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska.

In this inside look at worker cooperatives, Joan Meyers challenges long-held views and beliefs. From the outside, worker cooperatives all seem to offer alternatives to bad jobs and unequal treatment by giving workers democratic control and equitable ownership of their workplaces. Some contend, however, that such egalitarianism and self-management come at the cost of efficiency and stability, and are impractical in the long run. Working Democracies focuses on two worker cooperatives in business since the 1970s that transformed from small countercultural collectives into thriving multiracial and largely working-class firms. She shows how democratic worker ownership can provide stability and effective business management, but also shows that broad equality is not an inevitable outcome despite the best intentions of cooperative members. Working Democracies explores the interconnections between organizational structure and organizational culture under conditions of worker control, revealing not only the different effects of managerialism and "participatory bureaucracy," but also how each bureaucratic variation is facilitated by how workers are defined by at each cooperative. Both bureaucratic variation and worker meanings are, she shows, are consequential for the reduction or reproduction of class, gender, and ethnoracial inequalities. Offering a behind the scenes comparative look at an often invisible type of workplace, Working Democracies serves as a guidebook for the future of worker cooperatives.

With the rollback of net neutrality, platform cooperativism becomes even more pressing: In one volume, some of the most cogent thinkers and doers on the subject of the cooptation of the Internet, and how we can resist and reverse the process.

In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops’ articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation’s history.

Beedi workers and the Kerala model -- The making of the Beedi working class -- Solidarity versus retrenchment : the birth of KDB -- From mobilization to efficiency : the role of the central society -- The dynamics of shop floor democracy : empowerment versus supervision in the Beedi primary cooperatives -- Efficiency and profit in the primary societies : KDB's market dilemma -- KDB and the International Movement for Workers' Cooperatives -- Afterword : Tobacco production and diversification at KDB.

This is the first critical account of the internationally renowned Mondragon cooperatives of the Basque region of Spain. The Mondragon cooperatives are seen as the leading alternative model to standard industrial organization; they are considered to be the most successful example of democratic decision making and worker ownership. However, the author argues that the vast scholarly and popular literature on Mondragon idealizes the cooperatives by falsely portraying them as apolitical institutions and by ignoring the experiences of shop floor workers. She shows how this creation of an idealized image of the cooperatives is part of a new global ideology that promotes cooperative labor-management relations in order to discredit labor unions and working-class organizations; this constitutes what she calls the "myth" of Mondragon.

This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations, to showcase how organizations can ultimately support and serve broader communities.

The current co-op movement in the U.S. seeks to be a structural alternative to capitalism; this book seriously questions whether the current movement can accomplish that task. Carl Ratner offers a rich and unique political analysis and critique that provides helpful insights into the practice and problems of the contemporary cooperative movement. Noting that co-operators tend to view their work as apolitical because the explicit influence of national political parties is absent, the author constructs a compelling argument that co-operators nonetheless operate unwittingly with implicit political conceptions of freedom, opportunity, human rights, social participation, decision-making, power, and governance that are shaped and limited by the capitalist economic system. Ratner demonstrates how a more radical, anti-capitalist, socialist form of cooperation and co-ops are needed to realise the fulfilling potential of cooperation and co-ops. For those wishing to understand and advance the cooperative movement, this book is essential reading.

This book argues that capitalism cannot be said to be truly democratic and that a system of producer cooperatives, or democratically managed enterprises, is needed to give rise to a new mode of production which is genuinely socialist and fully consistent with the ultimate rationale underlying Marx’s theoretical approach. The proposition that firms should be run by the workers on their own, was endorsed by John Dewey, the greatest social thinker of the twentieth century, but is also shared by Marxists such as Anton Pannekoek, Karl Korsch, Angelo Tasca, Antonio Gramsci and Richard Wolff. This book explores the history of this argument taking in concepts from economic and political thought including historical materialism, cooperation, utopianism and economic democracy. The book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of political economy, Marxism, socialism, history of economic thought and political theory.

The origins of the next radical economy is rooted in a tradition that has empowered people for centuries and is now making a comeback. A new feudalism is on the rise. While monopolistic corporations feed their spoils to the rich, more and more of us are expected to live gig to gig. But, as Nathan Schneider shows, an alternative to the robber-baron economy is hiding in plain sight; we just need to know where to look. Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on. Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution -- from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.