Democracy Talk

A market economy and capitalism are synonymous – or at least joined at the hip. That’s what most Americans grow up assuming. But it is not necessarily so. Capitalism –control by those supplying the capital in order to return wealth to shareholders – is only one way to drive a market.

Granted, it is hard to imagine another possibility for how an economy could work …in the abstract. It helps to have a real-life example.

Now, I do.

In May I spent five days in Emilia Romagna, a region of four million people in northern central Italy. There, over the last 150 years, a network of consumer, farmer, and worker-driven cooperatives has come to generate 30 to 40 percent of the region’s GDP. Two of every three people in Emilia Romagna are members of co-ops.

The region, whose hub city is Bologna, is home to eight thousand co-ops, producing everything from ceramics to fashion to specialty cheese. Their industriousness is woven into networks based on what cooperative leaders like to call “reciprocity.” All co-ops return three percent of profits to a national fund for cooperative development, and the movement supports centers providing help in finance, marketing, research and technical expertise.

The presumption is that by aiding each other, all gain.

>> More on Guerilla News Network

June, 2006

More about cooperatives:

Green Worker Cooperatives (latest: read about Bronx residents working to launch a Building Materials Reuse Center!)

U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives

International Cooperative Alliance

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