Developing Democracy: Cooperatives and Democratic Theory

34 Pages Posted: 13 Jul 2012 Last revised: 27 Aug 2012

See all articles by Mark J. Kaswan

Mark J. Kaswan

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley; Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations

Date Written: 2012

Abstract

The Occupy movement sweeping the country has drawn critical attention to the need to develop new economic models that enrich communities rather than a small group of investors that have little or nothing to do with the communities from which their wealth is extracted. This need is nothing new, of course, especially for New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, although liberal capitalism among other factors has produced long-running economic disasters in many cities that parallel the natural disaster that befell New Orleans. However, there is more at stake here than economic resources. In fact, as I will argue in this paper, addressing the problem of wealth extraction also requires addressing the separation of economics and politics through the democratization of the economy. Specifically, this paper will examine the role of cooperatives as democratic institutions and an important element of the solidarity economy, giving attention to their historical development as a way of drawing out their democratic character. The size and extent of cooperatives in the U.S. is not often recognized, yet with some 120 million members (and 800 million members worldwide), cooperatives may represent the world’s largest democratic social movement. Indeed, the nature of cooperatives as democratic enterprises must be better understood, as they vary considerably in terms of size, shape, and the degree to which they adhere to their founding principles of egalitarianism, shared property and democracy. For example, while worker cooperatives are often regarded as the paradigmatic case of a democratic enterprise, they remain fully engaged in the capitalist logic of production for exchange rather than use. By the same token, the consumer cooperative model gets away from the problem of exchange-value vs. use-value, but their large size may mitigate against participatory frameworks in favor of the kind of alienated representative governance that tends to produce apathetic, disinterested publics. Two models, an associative model and multi-stakeholder cooperatives, will be considered as ways to address some of the problems of democratic deficits.

Keywords: economic democracy, cooperatives, democratic theory

Suggested Citation

Kaswan, Mark J., Developing Democracy: Cooperatives and Democratic Theory (2012). APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2105076

Mark J. Kaswan (Contact Author)

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley ( email )

1201 W. University Dr.
Edinburg, TX 78539
United States
956-882-8877 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://utrgv.academia.edu/MarkKaswan

Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations ( email )

Piscataway, NJ 08854
United States

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