thanks so much for the very diplomatic skewering of nearly every counter-cultural economic dogma strangling democratic advanced industrial ecological society
I've got emails and contacts, and various presentations and business documents I've collect if that helps
just heard you on KPFA on Under Currents. http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/494/id/451141/tues-11-08-11-wall-street-populism-and-left
I understand your sentiment regarding having a hard time at imagining a form of advanced industrial society run along democratic lines
I used to think that until I went to the town of Arrasate in Basque Country, or Mondragon in Spanish to visit the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.
You'll often have the small if beautiful worker cooperative crowd point to Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC) as an example of democratic worker owned society. However, its a bit sad, but recently a group of students from Mondragon University visited the Bay Area to do a study tour of Silicon Valley, and skipped an event with the crunchey-gronala coop types in the Bay to visit the Redwood Forests. They later shared an event, but Mondragon is a 21st century democratic multinational corporation, and the worker cooperatives here mostly counter-culture small businesses.
Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is a modern industrial corporation, a conglomerate of approximately 100 worker-owned and run internationally competitive industrial and service businesses, which as grown organically, under Francoist Spanish autarky, then the European Common Market, now the EU and neoliberal globalisation. Apparently, its the 7th largest corporation in Spain, and the Mondragon residents have one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Areas of Activity
The Corporation’s companies operate in four different areas: Finance, Industry, Retail, and Knowledge, with the latter something that characteristically makes Mondragon stand out as a business group. In terms of figures, in 2010 the Corporation posted a Total Turnover (total revenues) of 14,8 billion euros,[15]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#cite_note-14> roughly 20 billion USD, and employed 100,000 workers, making it Spain's fourth largest industrial and seventh largest financial group.[16]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation#cite_note-15>
Mondragon was started by a Basque Catholic priest, who was as a young man a journalist on a death list during the Spanish Civil War. As you know, the bombing of Guernica, in Basque Country was the Nazi Germany's first military action, and the Spanish Civil War the first major battle in the Anti-Fascist war that continued into WWII. While the Catalonian/Barcelona anarchist/socialist revolution was firstly betrayed by Stalin, undermined the by the liberal democracies (within broader revolutionary Spain, Catalonia and internationally) and then finally crushed by Francoist fascism. The Basque nation, which was also revolutionary, survived, largely because of fierce nationalism, mountain terrain, and perhaps critically, a deep connection to the Catholic Church. Loyola, a Basque aristocrat founded the Jesuits, which for many years acted as a kind of Vatican CIA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Loyola
Anyway, Francoist Spain was no friend of the Basque people, and the liberation struggle continues to this day, but like in Ireland, the struggle is largely political-economic, thanks in part to the more progressive aspects of the EU.
When we visited we where told that Mike Moore had asked about coming to film in Mondragon for his movie, Capitalism a Love Story. The MCC declined "too hot "was the explaination. Thats pretty polite if you ask me. The Basque people are very conservative, Catholic, nationalist and tribal. They are also linguistically and genetically unique. Perhaps the oldest European genetic and cultural line. Its impossible for an outsider to infilitrate Basque culture, the language is bizarre and pre-Indo-European. Considering Mike Moore went to Cuba for universal health care and described one US mid-west taxi worker cooperative corporation as "The Commie Cabbies" it was another good call from the Basques.
There is an American academic, Fred Freundlich, as the business school at Mondragon Universtity. We met him and he gave us a kind of interview. Fred Freundlich, Mondragon University, Spain ffreundlich at eteo.mondragon.edu
One of Fred's PhD students has done important work on the globalization of Mondragon, like any industrial multinational corporation it has a production system spanning the globe. http://www.slideshare.net/jmluzarraga/mondragon-multilocalisation-strategy-jm-luzarraga-phd-defense-4th-june-2008-presentation
Fred Freundlich, Mondragon University http://www.mondragon.edu/en/business-studies/research/research-lines/management-of-cooperative-organisations-and-social-economy/management-of-cooperative-organisations-and-social-economy http://www.mondragon.edu/en/business-studies/whats-fce/governing-bodies/governing-bodies
Eroski is a consumer-coop/worker-coop hybrid, a bit like a democratic Wal Mart or Whole Foods, I kid you not http://www.eroski.es/es/conoce-eroski/una-empresa-diferente/eroski-contigo
and took photos of the town of Arrasate (Mondragon) https://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonOrArrasateThePlaceInTheBasqueCountry?feat=embedwebsite and of the Cooperative https://picasaweb.google.com/permaculturecoop/MondragonCooperative?feat=embedwebsite I filmed - very badly - the official oral history of Mondragon, by Mikel Lezamiz http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL080C656FDD694838
MIT and Worker Cooperatives **********************************************************
In the US, the Community Lab at MIT recently published papers based on worker cooperatives
Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century http://colabradio.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Coops-CoLabOct2010.pdf
based on this PhD by Bronx resident, Nick Iuviene http://colabradio.mit.edu/?tag=nick-iuviene
MIT Community Innovators Lab http://web.mit.edu/colab/resources/index.html http://colabradio.mit.edu/ http://web.mit.edu/colab/ Email: colab-info at mit.edu
the MIT study group's Sustainable Economic Democracy document looks at Mondragon and a Cleveland initiative called the Evergreen Cooperative. Evergreen and Mondragon are quite different, many coop developers dont actually think the Evergreen project is a coop, as one of the principles is independence, Evergreen is run by the city and foundations, but does have many features of Mondragon. http://colabradio.mit.edu/tag/evergreen-cooperatives/
General Worker Cooperative Resources **********************************************************
if you want to go nuts on American Coop info check out http://american.coop
also, my site http://news.workercooperatives.com is a global news aggregator for worker cooperatives
Worker Cooperative Credit Union **********************************************************
there is also a young man in Berkeley called Mike Leung, who is working on a Worker Cooperative Credit Union, which is in advanced stages of pre-launch and will be federally charted http://www.workercoopfcu.org/ http://www.workercoopfcu.org/people/
Abolish Human Rentals **********************************************************
for advanced theoretical underpinnings of Worker Coops, see acadmic, and former speech writer for Jo Stiglitz while he was Chief Economist at the World Bank, David Ellerman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6AGDsbmtU&list=PL080C656FDD694838&index=8&feature=plpp_video http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org/
Cleveland ********************************************************** http://www.community-wealth.org/ Ted Howard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_KWPFqOI84&list=PL080C656FDD694838&index=5&feature=plpp_video
Summary ********************************************************** Whats so very sad about the Genoa G8 was all the gladtiorial battles and state terrorism was redirected at the Genoa Social Forum (the first European Social Forum) which was an out-growth of the World Social Forum's in Latin America.
The riot porn and battle always draws resources away from the serious and more boring policy and business of social economic work. It also keeps any kind of business like Mondragon away from such events.
Mondragon is not the end-game in post-capitalist society, its democratic industrial capitalism operating within global neoliberalism. But worker participation in management, ownership and profits is a major step in transition to a better future. Mondragon's slogan is Humanity in Work.
ps: A US delegation visited Mondragon last year and apparently someone important from the board of Democracy Now (or was in Pacifica went), but as far as I know, nothing really transformative has happened.
-- Nicholas Roberts US 510-684-8264 http://Permaculture.TV http://permaculture.coop