What is a Cooperative?

According to the International Cooperative Alliance, a cooperative or ‘co-op’ is an “association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” The co-owners of a cooperative are also called members.

While the underlying ethos of cooperation stretches back to the very first humans, the modern cooperative movement began in 19th century England in response to the social dislocations that accompanied the birth industrial capitalism. Since then, cooperatives have grown during times of economic upheaval and social protest such as Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, and the 60's and 70's Civil Rights and New Left movements. We are currently living in a period of revived interest in cooperatives since the Occupy Wall Street movement returned economic justice to mainstream discourse.

There are many different types of cooperatives that serve a variety of different purposes.

The most common of type of co-op is a consumer cooperative in which the members are the customers who shop there. Some examples of these include local grocery co-ops or retail chains like REI.

Worker-owned cooperatives are businesses owned and managed by the employees.

Another common type of co-op are credit unions, in which the members are the account holders who elect the credit union’s board of directors to act in their interests.

Producer co-ops, such as Ocean Spray or Land of Lakes, are owned and managed by small to mid-sized producers producers who pool together their selling power to access larger market shares. 

Purchasing cooperatives, like Ace Hardware or Carpet One, are cooperatives owned by local retail stores which purchase collectively to pool their buying power to get greater benefits.

Rural electric co-ops, which expanded rapidly during the New Deal, are power utilities owned by the users rather than unaccountable investors.

Take a deep dive into the history of the cooperative movement in the United States with John Curl's classic work For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America.