1. Radical Cooperativism is back in the conversation
2. First definitions of Radical Cooperativism
3. What is "Radical Cooperativism"?
4. Radical Cooperativism and Maximalism

Radical Cooperativism is back in the conversation

In the years immediately prior to the pandemic, references to "radical cooperativism" began to be proliferated in all kinds of media in the Anglosphere: prestigious magazines in the Democratic world such as The Nation defined "radical cooperatives" as those new worker cooperatives that contribute to recovering deindustrialized areas. Soon books on the new "big topic" began to appear and even new sources and media of the start-up world, such as Fast Company, published articles commenting on the topic.

The pandemic, however, stopped in its tracks what was a promising but still confused conversation. But in May of this year the magazine Jacobin reignited the conversation through an article that proposed a return to the strategic outlook of the Second International. The article reappeared later translated into Italian with the title Le cooperative e la sinistra. And in July of this very year, the Athens Anti-racist Festival served as a framework for the Attica network of social economy to invite Cooperation Jackson, the quintessential example of radical cooperativism in the USA, to two round tables.

The event brought several Greek worker cooperatives to the limelight, such as the free software cooperative Sociality and Bio.Me, the cooperative of a cleaning products factory. But the contribution of Cooperation Jackson, according to the report of the organizers, was focused on Mississippi.

We were transported to the deep south of the U.S. and understood the fundamental importance for the survival (literally) of the black community to own their land and self-organize food in a self-sufficient manner.

But what does this model actually consist of?

First definitions of Radical Cooperativism

When we visited the Cooperation Jackson website we began to understand that the radicalism of this local grouping of cooperatives consists in its rejection of the neutralism of the minimalist model of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) and its various national branches. Neutralism is the principle that cooperative organizations should not take sides in political debates and issues so that they remain open to all workers and not only to those who share a certain perspective.

Cooperation Jackson believes that we can replace the current socio-economic system of exploitation, exclusion and the destruction of the environment with a proven democratic alternative. An alternative built on equity, cooperation, worker democracy, and environmental sustainability to provide meaningful living wage jobs, reduce racial inequities, and build community wealth. It is our position and experience, that when marginalized and excluded workers and communities are organized in democratic organizations and social movements they become a force capable of making transformative social advances.

The first cooperatives to call themselves radical share a very similar understanding of radical cooperativism. In the late 1990s a number of housing cooperatives began to cluster around a Leeds housing cooperative whose members were militant environmentalists. Over the years that nucleus would become Radical Routes, a second-tier cooperative made up largely of housing coops dedicated to organizing cooperative promotional events, promoting the cooperative model, facilitating internal investment and lending, and impulsing the network of members and its surrounding environment. When we take a look at its principles, the only characteristic element is its rejection of ICA neutralism and its adherence to social causes such as support for refugees or anti-racism.

In order to find a definition for "radical cooperativism" that integrates elements to define a cooperative model and that goes beyond the rejection of ICA neutralism, we have to take a second look at Greece.

In 2016, Theodoros Karyotis, one of those university researchers who during the 10s of this century became ubiquitous in every alternative economy shindig, offered in a table at the Athens Biennale the only principled definition so far.

It must be said that this was not a description of something that was happening, at least not in the examples he cited, but a normative statement: Karyotis was stating what worker cooperatives must do to be a socio-economic alternative and exit the mercantile system. Basically:

• In order to avoid becoming a collective capitalist, a radical worker cooperative cannot have employees. It is a basic principle in worker cooperativism but it is interesting that it is reaffirmed by Karyotis because it was a principle abandoned by the ICA when it bet on internationalization. The best known, and massive, example was the internationalization of the Mondragon factories in Mexico, China, India and Poland. The native workers in those factories were not nor could they ever aspire to be cooperative partners, and they soon outnumbered the members of the Basque cooperatives that owned the factories.
• Introducing direct production lines for social needs outside the market is only possible in a generalized way if entire value chains are built.

That is to say, for Karyotis, radical cooperativism was that which, aligned with workers' movements and struggles, was oriented towards the creation of a production and consumption circuit outside the market. It is important to note that:

1. He never asserts that this circuit should be decommodified as would intuitively seem obvious. In fact, he cites as an example the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, today Cooperativa el Poblet, whose unrealized objective was to create autarkic local markets that was not going to be any less commodified than the markets that we experience today and which was going to operate through the use of an alternative currency, the FairCoin.
2. This is probably why he did not point out the difference between artificial scarcity and scarcity imposed by productive capacities, and therefore does not incorporate in his cooperative model the creation of commons nor technological development oriented towards abundance, outcomes which arise and only make sense in a context of demercantilization.

Karyotis' definition does not seem to have been followed up in the form of cooperative principles or other clear guidelines to be incorporated into existing worker cooperative statutes. This is perhaps due to Karyotis' position as an academic remaining separate from the real movement, a position which does not fail to share a certain distaste for entomologists. In fact, despite all the time that has passed, radical cooperativism is a term that few in the cooperative movement seem to have made their own and no one else seems to have wanted to materialize it in a normative definition.

What is "Radical Cooperativism"?

Over the years and given the permanence of the term in conversation, we can say that Radical Cooperativism is defined by:

• The rejection of ICA neutralism and consistent alignment with environmentalist, leftist, anti-racist, black nationalist or workers' movements or a mix of some of the above, depending on the particular orientation of each cooperative.
• The will to create inter-cooperation networks on a local (Cooperation Jackson) or national scale (Radical Routes).
• The creation of cooperative educational training programs, as we see in both examples.

Let's be honest: this definition is so loose that it is difficult for even the most lukewarm in the cooperative movement to disagree. Of course, intercooperation and the promotion of cooperative educational training are not in dispute.

The rejection of the neutralism characteristic of the ICA is not really groundbreaking nor is it a truly polemic issue either. On the one hand, it is not anything new either, it is a topic that has opened up since more than a century ago when it constituted the battle horse of the communist cooperators¹. On the other hand, nowadays who is going to deny to a cooperative or federation of cooperatives the right to take a side when it comes to climate change or the precarization of labor? Nor is the ICA itself the International Olympic Committee when it comes to imposing an apoliticism which even its own leadership does not really follow². But in any case, it is doubtful that this is the main problem of its minimalist model of cooperativism.

In reality, the use of the term radical is just a way for these cooperatives to emphasize that that have internalized the spirit of cooperativism and not merely the "letter of the law". It does not necessarily mean that they are maximalists, it means that they refuse to be minimalists even if they do incorporate some version of the Rochdale cooperative principles in their bylaws.

The "Radical Cooperativism" of Cooperation Jackson for example is traditional worker cooperativism that is labeled radical to signal that it aims at what worker cooperativism always stood for: productively organizing workers and giving them the capacity for social influence by cooperative means.

As is ultimately evident from reading books like Scheneider's, which have been so influential in the U.S. cooperative environment, radical cooperativism is, in fact, what cooperativism was originally like. Calling it radical is just a way to differentiate it from the shift of cooperativism towards social enterprises and the discourse of corporate responsibility.

Radical Cooperativism and Maximalism

Twenty years ago, U.S. worker cooperativism began to emerge as a movement. At about the same time, the first Maximalist cooperatives were being formed in Europe.

Over time, we Maximalists have been refining a model that goes beyond recovering the meanings of cooperativism as it originally was and what it originally stood for. We intensively incorporated from the very beginning the new universal communals that were emerging then, we upheld the centrality of collective work and over the years we created a whole way of life and social contribution imbued with a communitarian spirit. After twenty years, two crises and a pandemic, we are now also beginning to meet and organize ourselves on an international level.

The Maximalist model is based on seven principles that on their own define a field of practice and organization perfectly compatible with the few limitations of the term radical cooperativism. But there are a few more things that we have learned throughout the years. And one of the most important is the importance of having a moral and we opted for a moral based on universalism. With that understanding, we recognize that the identitarian shift of the American left, which also affects worker cooperativism in that country, undermines the foundations of the very idea of a universal human community.

Will the term "Radical Cooperativism" be just another bridgehead for American identitarianism in European cooperatives? In that case the term "Radical Cooperativism" and Maximalism would be incompatible. We cannot form part of a movement in which race, sex, gender, ethnicity or any other element would divide communities into watertight identities among themselves, force an identitarian homogeneity in the composition of each of them or make us perceive each other as representatives of this or that imagined community in our relations with others instead of as autonomous persons forming a work community. The identarian path inevitably leads us to becoming both the victims and perpetrators of intimidation, permanently seeking a kind of recognition for an abstract community that cannot possibly be satisfied in a community of equals.

But, for the moment, what "Radical Cooperativism" projects is broad enough for us to feel included in the term.

And precisely because we are frankly and openly universalist, because we aspire to restore human community, we can say that Maximalism is the radical cooperativism of the 21st century.