Jonathan,
Thanks for telling me about "Gung Ho"-- it looks like something worth investigating. I also want to learn more about the Maoist collectives like Nanjiecun. (Have you seen the Nanjiecun website? It's fascinating: http://www.nanjiecun.cn/). I had heard of Huaxicun as belonging to this same category, but the website is starkly different from that of Nanjiecun (http://www.chinahuaxicun.com/)-- no reference to Mao or to communism in general; it looks remarkably like the Mondragon MCC website (http://www.mondragon.mcc.es/), except that MCC shares are still restricted to cooperators (as far as I'm aware), whereas Huaxicun is listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange.
We wield our golden-banded cudgels and use our magic to turn the old world upside down, smash it to pieces, pulverize it, and create chaos!
We are bent on creating a tremendous proletarian uproar,
and hewing out a proletarian new world!"
(Manifesto of the Qinghua University High School Red Guards, 1966)
***
>From: Jonathan Lassen <jlassen@clarku.edu> >Reply-To: jlassen@clarku.edu >To: zhongguo@openflows.org >Subject: re: The Co-operative Model: Mondragon, Reagan, and China >Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 02:12:00 -0400 (EDT) > >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 > >