Other Ways of Doing Business
As individuals, as communities and as a society we need to remove ourselves from a dependent way of being - cash - and move toward relying on ourselves. We can barter with our friends and neighbors for what we need with what they need. This will strengthen our immediate communities. This will create an independent community and not one dominated by a cash economy. By creating a barter economy a community will be able to connect with itself and become more sustainable. The individuals will become more sustainable.
Co-ops: A Cautionary Tale
We need a structure to hang our concerns on. We need a structure that can be an alternative to the corporate way in the world. The co-op structure serves this purpose well.
Beginning as a way for people to get what they needed when power structures failed to provide those things, co-ops have served many needs for many people around the world. Food co-ops were begun in the late 1800s to get poor, impoverished workers access to quality food at prices they could afford. When the company stores that the workers were forced to use would not provide quality food at a reasonable price, the workers banded together to begin buying clubs and co-ops.
This is much the same way food co-ops have started in modern times. Residents of a deprived neighborhood get together and begin a buying club or a food co-op. This is a result of people wanting greater control of their food source, something corporations provide none of. A corporation controls; it does not allow the patron to control. This is the origin of the phrase born of the modern food co-op movement - “People before profits.” Sadly, this phrase has in recent times fallen from use. “People before profits” cannot be reconciled with “profit as a focus”.
Since the mid 1990s, food co-ops have begun a process of corporatization. Corporations cannot take over co-ops by direct acquisition, but they can control co-ops through indirect acquisition via policy, culture and contract.
Once co-ops have adopted internal structures that mimic corporate structure, those co-ops' responses become easier to predict. Once co-ops have signed exclusive contracts with corporate distributors co-ops become easier to pull into the corporate way of being in the world. Co-ops become dependent on corporations and the infrastructure they provide. Co-ops become easier to control and manipulate for corporate gain and profit. If competition cannot be eliminated it needs to be controlled for the gain of the controller.
When co-ops were more autonomous they were difficult to control and their responses to situations were difficult to predict. When the internal structures of co-ops were unique and supporting of their own individual and localized needs, co-ops were a much stronger force of resilience and a galvanizing force in the communities they sprang from. Sadly, the business of selling food in our culture has been slowly absorbed by corporate production, buying and distribution power. This makes it exceedingly difficult for small or moderate sized food co-ops to compete financially with corporate owned food chains. They cannot compete with the low prices corporate stores offer unless they buy their food from corporate owned and controlled sources in large quantities.
One answer co-ops have gravitated toward is joining together to strengthen their buying power. A seemingly easy solution was to form an umbrella organization to facilitate co-ops banding together and to dictate responses to changing situations within the co-op food industry.
This structure mimics a corporate one. Through the umbrella structure, the co-ops are advised how to structure themselves based on corporate ways of analysis. This includes internal policy and governance. By structuring themselves internally as corporations, the culture of the staff also changes. The day to day becomes more rote and less creative. Less input is sought by management and more is dictated.
The co-ops have also entered into binding contracts with corporate food distributors exclusively. This gives the co-ops better pricing for staple goods. But, this arrangement puts independent distributors out of the market helping the corporate system gain hegemony. Co-ops seldom support local vendors for purely political reasons anymore. Co-ops seldom do anything for purely political reasons anymore. Supporting local entities and boycotting corporate entities because it’s the right thing to do has given way to the financial benefits gained by supporting local or corporate entities.
Now If one co-op falls, they all can go down
in a very predictable way.
Do away with corporatization of the co-op. Return to core co-op structures, co-op ideals and a unique co-op way of being in the world. Corporatizing co-ops leads to focus on profits and not ideals. It’s the ideals that set co-ops apart.
An umbrella is a tool. To use it for fear of getting wet is understandable. But if there are obstacles in the way blocking the umbrella’s passage and the person under the umbrella lets the umbrella dictate that they cannot walk in the rain, this is counterintuitive. To know when to fold up the umbrella so that the person may pass by the obstacles in a more sure footed way is wise. The key is not to fear the rain. Then, the umbrella remains a tool controlled by the person, and not the other way around.
It is up to the members of co-ops to be very involved with what is being done internally at the co-op. It is up to the members to be the experts and not abdicate those responsibilities solely to a few people. It takes more work to involve the membership in more decisions and it takes a membership that wants to get involved. It means sharing deciding power. It means working together instead of top down decision making. It means making the co-op a true part of the community. It means making the co-op “ours” instead of “mine”, throughout. The “my” language is corporate. The “our” language is co-op.
This is the substance of the difference.
Corporations have long been viewed as the models of success because our culture views profit as success. The death, ruined lives, destruction and environmental damage done by corporations to achieve profit is never added into this model. Co-ops can change this way of doing business if they themselves don’t get trapped within it. By going down the path of corporatization, co-ops have squandered their most precious resources - their connections to local producers, their staff, their own members and ultimately their own communities.
However, co-ops that focus entirely on ideals are seldom financially sound. If their doors close there is no more vehicle for the ideals they purport. A balance of the business of selling food and the philosophy of people before profits is the core of what can make a co-op thrive. But leaning more toward ideals is what sets co-ops apart from corporations. It is a balance that is not symmetrical.
Profit
is a heavy weight to counter
indeed.
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