Cooperative Economics

Cooperative economics are an alternative to both capitalism with its inexorable inequality and existing models of state socialism and central planning. Experience with worker-owned cooperatives around the world has shown that worker participation in decision-making can work, hierarchy is substantially reduced but not eliminated, worker satisfaction is qualitatively enhanced, and labor productivity and innovation can be competitive with capitalist enterprises. But can worker-owned cooperatives be scaled up to achieve economies of scale? What are the different models of cooperatives? What can we learn from cooperative bubbles like Tahrir Square, Occupy, Gezi Park, Rojava, Burning Man, or sharing economies? How do we understand the relations of production in worker-owned cooperatives and their relations of exchange? Can we imagine a global economic system dominated by cooperative economics?

Our speaker, Sharat G. Lin, PhD, is research fellow with Human Agenda and the Initiative for Equality. He writes and lectures on global political economy, labor migration, social movements, and public health. He has studied producer-owned cooperatives in Spain, Cuba, Venezuela, India, and the U.S. He has observed first-hand many temporary experiments in self-organization as well as state enterprises in both capitalist, socialist, and hybrid states.

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