Maximalism

A primary evaluation of current trends in cooperativism

The SCICs (Cooperative Societies of Collective Interest) in France, the «Steward Ownership» models in Germany and those based on «Assets in Common» in the USA are the spearhead of a new productive cooperativism in which workers share or cede ownership to other agents.

The term «New Cooperativism» has been used in academia since 2010 to define cooperative initiatives that go beyond the hegemonic model of the ICA and which promote new forms of cooperativism based on commons that prefigure «post-capitalist» relationships.

«The Fever» is, without a doubt, the best series of 2024 and will probably be remembered as one of the three best series about politics of the last 25 years

What is «radical cooperativism»? What does the debate in the US bring to table and to the future of cooperatives?

If you type «work community» in the Google search bar, the first results that pop up after you press enter would likely be "click bait" on something mistakenly referred to as «communitarian work». The articles talk about professional «social work», NGO volunteering or punitive community service, but never about what a «work community» is nor what real «communitarian work» entails, an institution as universal and ancient as the commons.

Thirty-six years ago, Bruce Sterling's «Islands in the Net» expressed for the first time the dream of a transnational cooperativism capable of offering its members an alternative that would simultaneously address the erosion of social cohesion that was then emerging under Reagan and Thatcher and the fracture, growing steadily since the post-war period, between the general conditions of life and access to resources and knowledge in the most capitalized countries and the rest of the world.

What demoscopic studies reveal about the current level of social awareness, the rise of authoritarian leaderships and how we can work to bring about real change.