This is not the first time I’ve come across negative responses to articles about co-ops and cooperative endeavors. The problem is not that these comments are critical of co-ops. The problem is that they are superficial, ignorant, and lack nuance. These comments take a complex idea and try to simplify it, bypassing meaningful discussion along the way.

There are certainly things to critique about co-ops, but too often people don’t have that conversation. Those who are making these simple critiques have loud voices, and it seems that the strength of their voices are directly correlated to the weakness of their arguments.

Believing that capitalism and big business are good for the economy and for workers is naive. This leaves people expecting that if they just work hard enough in their cog factory, someday they’ll get to be the cogmaster. But the system isn’t set up for mass success—it’s beholden to majority failure and stagnation.

Once we face the fact-based world, we see how our economic system enriches the few at the expense of the rest of us. From 2007 to 2011, there was an 8.7 percent decline in median household income. During this same period, income increased 1.6 percent for the top fifth of earners. As the majority of us were struggling to make ends meet this past year, CEOs saw their pay increase by 5 percent.

A 2011 study by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole, and Bradley T. Heim revealed that “the incomes of executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals can account for 60 percent of the increase in the share of national income going to the top percentile of the income distribution between 1979 and 2005.”

How can we address this? Co-ops are one solution, as they offer a way for people to take control of their economic futures and keep money within their communities, instead of giving it to CEOs. People in co-ops aren’t sitting in circles singing Kumbaya for handouts. They don’t hang around the cog factory idealizing the cogmaster—they actively try to make things better. Co-ops offer communities ways to pull themselves up through collaboration and innovation.

Workshop on cooperatives with TESA’s Andrew Stachiw.

Take, for example, workers in Argentina who took over their factories after the 2001 financial meltdown and have been lifting their region out of an economic slump. Or the fact that two million jobs are created each year in the U.S. because of cooperatives, according to National Cooperative Business Association interim president Liz Bailey.

Does that mean co-ops are perfect? No. We should be critiquing in the interest of improving, asking questions about how to make co-ops more viable and looking for solutions to the economic quagmire we’re in. This is the conversation we need to be having. But we can only have it if we get past the superficial and ignorant and dive into what it would really mean for all of us to become active, democratic participants in our economy.

Taliesin Nyala is a worker-owner at The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA), which created and published Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. You can follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

There just doesn’t appear to be any in-between. Except that there is.

This year and each subsequent one, we can avoid supporting the big box corporations that exploit people, communities, and the planet as a whole while enriching an elite few without being self-righteous or abetting exploitation ourselves. Cooperatives and self-directed enterprises, democratically owned and controlled by their workers, are a great way to improve labor rights and inject money into a local economy. Best of all, the gift you give benefits more than just the recipient.

Purchasing from a Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprise (WSDE) is casting a ballot for a community. Free of the burden of compensating Board members and expensive CEOs, WSDEs pay their workers more, give them better benefits, and give more to charity than their traditional capitalist counterparts.

Because the workers live where they work, they provide twice as much money into the local economy through taxes and purchases. This also makes them far less likely to move their operation (and selves and families) to a different country to save a buck or two.

if you’re considering going WSDE but you’re not quite sure where to start, below is a partial list of progressive businesses that make up a  handful of what’s out there. (You can use these three resources to find more.)

Equal Exchange


Equal Exchange is a worker-owned co-op that offers fair trade products from small farmer cooperatives across the world. Whether you’re looking for high-quality chocolate, tea, bananas, olive oil, hot cocoa, and a score of other products for a loved one, the taste of Equal Exchange’s gifts are only enhanced by their flavor for justice. Equal Exchange works with farmer cooperatives and food cooperatives (consumer-owned) to connect people who grow the food to the people who buy and enjoy it.

Co-op 108


Co-op 108 is a worker-owned co-op that prides itself on being a safe alternative to the chemical- and preservative-based skin care products otherwise flooding the shelves. They are dedicated to using local and organic ingredients whenever possible and are always 100% preservative free.

Co-op 108 is focused on helping create a more co-operative economy by interco-operating with other co-ops, by contributing a percentage of their surplus to a co-op development fund, and by creating a more humanized workplace for the owners.

Food For Thought Books


Looking to avoid Amazon.com? Their deals may seem tempting, but  the online giant is doing everything it can to shut down small bookstores across the country and their labor practices have been absolutely horrid.

Over the years, Food For Thought books, a worker-collective in Amherst, MA, has certainly felt the pressure from Amazon’s onslaught. Yet, where many bookshops have had to shut down, Food For Thought has stayed open—in large part thanks to its collective structure in which the worker-owners share the burden amongst each other.

In addition to its neighborhood bookstore, you can purchase books on their website and have them delivered straight to your home.

TESA

The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) is a worker-owned producer of resources for social and economic change, from the cooperative movement itself to community organizing, people’s history, and beyond..One of their most popular items is the well-reviewed Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, which last year sold in more than 20 countries. Full disclosure, two of us work for this outfit, so we obviously think we’re pretty neat. But if the above organizations appeal to you, TESA is most-likely up your alley as well.

By Brian Van Slyke, Taliesin Nyala, and John Burkhart. Brian and Taliesin are worker-owners at The Toolbox for Education and Social Action. John is the Research Director at Democracy at Work, a social movement for a new economy.