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Community Co-operatives: Building Local, Sustainable Co-operative Economies

“Community co-operatives are local organisations belonging to people in the community. The organisation promotes sustainability and channels any profits back into the community.”

2. How does it fit with Compass’ core beliefs of equality, solidarity, democracy, freedom, sustainability and well being?

Equality is at the heart of this proposal- there are no shareholders- just members, each one being equal. The community co-operative is the very epitome of collectivism- a community coming together and through the strength of their common endeavour achieving more than they can achieve alone. Sustainability is the foundation stone of the co-operative, from which everything else is built upon. Democracy dictates the direction of co-operative- empowerment, equality, collectivism and sustainability at a grass roots level.

3. How does it build the institutions of social democracy, like social groups and collective and cooperative forms of ownership and control?

Based on a co-operative structure requiring democratic votes, the community co-operative not only builds on institutions of social democracy, but create hundreds, if not thousands more all across the country.

4. How much will it cost or raise and where will any cost come from?

There would be a initial set-up cost to allow co-operatives to be created, however this would not be huge. Additionally costs will be incurred in providing a support network once the co-operatives are established. However when up and running, the co-operatives should generate a profit, to be invested back into the community, meaning there would be no ongoing costs to a government.

5. Which groups in the electorate are likely to support or oppose this measure? Is there any polling evidence you have on this?

The success of the Co-operative bank in weathering the financial storm has shown that co-operatives and mutuals are generally the safer form of banking. However those not within any of the community co-operatives may suffer. Those unable to join one for whatever reason may suffer. However the vast majority of people should benefit from this policy. There are many knock-on effects from creating a sense of community spirit and community cohesion that reach far and beyond sustainability.

6. Is there a place or country where it’s worked? Please provide some information.

Whilst there is the wider co-operative movement in the UK such as the Co-operative Group. A better comparison is with the small co-operatives set up by groups of farmers seeking Fairtrade status in countries such as Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and many more. A vote is taken on how to use the profit they make- spending it on things like water wells, educational material etc. In Venezuela cooperatives are being set up on a national level with a view to ultimately transcending the market and socialising economic relations.

7. What are the three main arguments in favour/against it?

1. Against: May leave many groups out or isolate some farmers
2. Against: Difficult idea to ‘sell’ to the public- requires numbers of volunteers
3. Against: may be generation gap with many students and graduates not associating themselves with a particular community
4. For: Lots of additional benefits from the creation of community spirit and cohesion
5. For: enables local response to local problems, particularly economically
6. For: Promotes sustainability on many different levels

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Equality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.