In our book club meeting last week, we got off for awhile on a tangent about cooperation and competition and human nature. This was in part because we were discussing a book on Elinor Ostrom’s work on the commons, which is a form of cooperation.
Now I’m a big fan of the cooperative approach from way back – I organized food co-ops, lived in housing co-ops, and am currently a member of at least three credit unions. And I also think competition tends to be overrated, especially since it so often leads to cheating and overemphasis on the winner of some contest.
On the other hand, competition is a good way to block monopolies and to give us the diversity of enterprises we need.
But here’s the thing about cooperation that really hit me: we don’t just use it to do good.
As my Aikido friend Ross Robertson once observed when we were discussing the subject, one of the first things human beings cooperated to do was war.
Now it’s likely that they cooperated to raise kids and feed each other first, but war does go back quite a way in human history. It’s not new.
And while an army usually has forced cooperation, it can still be seen as a cooperative enterprise, with the competition side coming out in fighting with others.
I mean, mobs can also be a form of cooperation. Social groups cooperate to keep others out.
We are social beings, and standing up against the group is difficult, even when we’re right. So while I’d like to think that true cooperation isn’t done for evil purposes, the truth is that people cooperate for both good and bad reasons.
Which, to get back to Ostrom and the commons and various kinds of co-ops, is one reason why it’s important to create solid and workable structures for such enterprises.
It will probably not surprise you to hear that I have opinions on this subject. I learned early on in my co-op work how important it was to make bylaws that both complied with the law (because the law governed how they were interpreted) and represented how the co-op itself made decisions.
A lot of co-ops failed because they didn’t have bylaws that worked when things started to fall apart.
These days I’m active in the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, which has complex bylaws that give rights to resident members, staff members, community owners, and investor owners. It’s complicated, but it also provides a solid base to work toward the goal of taking property off the speculative market and running it for the benefit of residents, users, and the community as a whole without over-burdening the staff.
That’s an example of a good structure that echoes the principles of cooperation but also moves the whole system forward.
I mean, REI is a co-op – I’ve been a member for forty years – but it has engaged in a serious union-busting campaign, which is to say it’s been exploiting its workers even as it supposedly benefits its consumer members. At least the union for the Berkeley store is now recognized, so I can go back to shopping there. But REI should have embraced unions and/or found other ways to make sure employees had power in the co-op a long time ago.
While consumer co-ops are a long-time model (and so, for that matter, are worker co-ops), one recent development is the hybrid model that includes consumers and workers. No one model fits every situation.
What’s true for cooperatives is also true for democracies: there are lots of ways to do them and some democratic societies are not as inclusive and good as they could and should be.
Figuring out ways for groups of humans to work together that is both fair and inclusive is an important part of making the world a better place to live. The bylaws for East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative were developed by lawyers with the Sustainable Economies Law Center who also have a solid structure and run a program by which people can become lawyers through working with them rather than going to law school.
Of course, cooperatives aren’t and democracies shouldn’t be get-rich-quick schemes. They’re set up to serve, not to exploit. That they can be abused does not mean we shouldn’t work to build as many good ones as possible.
I’d like to see a lot more commons, co-ops, and democracies, in all their glorious variations.