All Things Co-op

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk with Hazel Corcoran and Jared Blustein from the Canadian Worker Cooperative Federation. Hazel has been the CWCF's executive director since 1995 and Jared is a founding worker-owner of The Allium, a plant-based worker co-op in Calgary. The group discusses the unique landscape of the Canadian worker cooperative movement, touching on issues around building the solidarity economy and Canada's national legislation on cooperatives. Jared and Hazel speak to both the benefits of operating within the worker co-op framework as well as the challenges their organizations face in a largely capitalist economy.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Cinar, and Kevin dive into the issue of leisure as it relates to both our current capitalist system and a future cooperative society. What does leisure look like under capitalism and how does it function? What does it mean for our non-work lives and interests to be commodified? The ATC guys explore what leisure could look like in a more cooperative society.

Welcome to Season 6 of All Things Co-op!

In this episode, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin introduce the theme of Season 6: there is an alternative. Critics on the Left love to talk about what they’re against but rarely offer real alternatives. Playing off the widespread feeling of capitalist realism—that there is no alternative to our current economic order—the ATC guys propose that building a cooperative society is a concrete alternative to capitalism. Throughout this season, they will speculate about what that future society could look like, both in terms of political and economic structures, but also on a wider, socio-cultural scale. Human beings are more than mere workers! Kevin, Larry and Cinar will look at all the aspects that make up our life, from sports to sex and everything in between, to see what living would look like in a cooperative world.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin, Cinar, and Larry discuss the urgency of scaling the cooperative movement. Traditional capitalist enterprises leave the majority of workers feeling trapped and exploited. Democratically-run worker co-ops are a functional solution to a system built on workplace inequality. The ATC guys explore how to grow the co-op sector by asking questions like: Why do co-ops need to scale? For what purpose? What does a scaled co-op economy mean in terms of challenging capitalism? Can the cooperative system help unify and support a Leftist political movement?

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin recommends a few resources for listeners who are interested in starting and running their own worker co-op. He then takes a step back and contextualizes cooperatives within our current economic system. What does it mean to do startup work in the worker co-op system? How does the co-op model relate to and differ from traditional capitalist enterprises?

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin talks to blogger and podcaster “The Blockchain Socialist” about how blockchain technology can serve as a mechanism for worker cooperatives and the Left. Though often tied to cryptocurrency, blockchains can also function as a means by which cooperatives maintain data sovereignty, can engage with various economic actors outside of traditional capitalist structures, and can enable scalability, while retaining democratic governance of enterprises. Though blockchain is not going to fix every problem, it does offer up many interesting opportunities to shift away from traditional, hierarchical capitalist institutions. 

In this episode, the ATC guys answer a question from a listener: "In the Soviet Union commodity production was retained and thus the money-commodity-money cycle that creates capital was able to continue, with the main change being that the capital accumulation was now directed by the state. Would a cooperative society not run into a similar issue, where the capital accumulation is merely directed by a different entity (in this case the co-ops) instead of eliminating capital accumulation itself?"

Kevin, Larry, and Cinar dive into this question and provide their perspective on issues of capital accumulation, commodity production, and the incentives of cooperative enterprises.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Kevin, and Cinar talk to Michael Lebowitz about his perspective on the social economic models in Venezuela and Yugoslavia. They speak about the creation of the social economy, the experience of Chavismo in Venezuela, and the differing goals of some cooperatives and traditional trade unions. Lebowitz highlights the importance of self-actualization through protagonism and how the most successful of these models focused on solidarity over self-interest.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk to Minsun Ji, a labor organizer and Co-op expert. They discuss what a platform cooperative is, how it differs from a corporate or capitalist platform, and its connection with the larger labor movement. Minsun also talks with the ATC guys about the growth of the social economy and cooperatives in Korea, and shares her take on the popular Netflix series Squid Games and what it reveals about the reality Korean workers are faced with today.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry and Kevin talk to Patrick Conlon of Worker Ownership Resources and Cooperative Services, otherwise known as WORCS.