Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 16:00:26 +0100
From: Iain McKay <iain.mckay-AT-zetnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Send money to anarchists


Hi all

"Brian J. Callahan" wrote:
> 
> Shawn writes:
> >Anybody out there interested in talking about building some economic
> >infrastructure for anarchist projects?
> 
> Sure, but I don't know how you would go about this.  Cooperatives or
> collectives seem to follow two paths--resist market forces and fail or adapt
> to market forces and become much more like other organizations in the economy.
> 
> Is there a third way?

The third way is to build support structures around co-operatives.
Isolated
co-ops either fail or adjust to the capitalist way and stop being
co-ops.
However, if the co-ops were in a network, which had its own credit union
or mutual bank, and links to local community groups and unions, the
pressures
on them would be reduced. The FAQ discusses this, in section J.5, as
does
C. George Benello in the book _From the Bottom up_. This support network
is what helped Mondragon survive so long and remain co-operative in
nature
(although even this success is being undermined by market pressures!).

Iain