re: The Co-operative Model: Mondragon, Reagan, and China

[Jonathan Lassen <jlassen@clarku.edu>]

Hi Matt,

I think I mentioned Gong He (International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese
Industrial Cooperatives) here last year sometime. They now have a website (or at
least I finally found it):

http://www.iccic.org.cn/

Nanjiecun, Huaxicun, etc. may also qualify?

There's also an article at CSG on rural coops awaiting translation, if anyone's
intersted:

http://www.chinastudygroup.org/translation/index.php?action=articleshow&article=47
(originally posted to China and the World)

My own experience in a dining coop at college did indeed lead me to think that
bosses aren't necessary, and I still carry around with me a wealth of knowledge
about bread-baking, how to run a Hobart (ok, maybe not so useful anymore), etc.
Working part-time in the Mariott-run dining service under some real asses only
confirmed this.

Anyway, I'm thinking that the uptick in the push for cooperatives in China is a
reaction to the dictatorship of competition, and, with un/under-employment at
something like 200 million, also a reaction to the squandering of the real
measure of social wealth: people and their time, even while mountains of
commodities rise up. I see the push for coops as an entirely positive thing.
While in other circumstances calls for coops may have been to defuse
contradiction, I don't see that very much now.

Cheers,

Jonathan