Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 21:11:48 -0500 Subject: M-I: MacLeod-Mondragon Book. (fwd) From: jschulman-AT-juno.com (Jason A Schulman) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 18:03:54 -0800 From: Franklin Wayne Poley <culturex-AT-VCN.BC.CA> To: LABOR-L-AT-YORKU.CA Subject: MacLeod-Mondragon Book. (fwd) Please note that the email address is ns, not n.s as stated at the end. Dr. MacLeod is considered as one of the leaders in this field of community economic development in Canada. Seems to me there is nothing to stop him from telling unionists how they could have their own economically self-sufficient chain of union cities across Canada. "Decanting" a few million from the 25,000,000 increase in Canada-U.S. over the next decade would suffice. Such a network of cities would be immune to NAFTA/GATT/MAI/APEC predations. FWP. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 97 21:32:19 -0500 From: Greg MacLeod <gmacleod-AT-sparc.uccb.ns.ca> To: Franklin Wayne Poley <fwp-AT-vcn.bc.ca> Subject: Re: Book. -- [ From: Greg MacLeod * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] -- Dear Franklin attached is a summary and the us. contact for ordering, greg Mondragon Book by Greg MacLeod 1. TABLE OF CONTENTS 2. SUMMARY OF BOOK AND POST-SCRIPT 2. AND WHERE IT CAN BE PURCHASED OF INTEREST ALSO, BCA WEB SITE : http://www.uccb.ns.ca/bca CHAPTERS 1. Inside Mondragon A: Background B: Mondragon: The Parts C: Structures and Governance 1. Single Enterprise 2. The Zone Group 3 The General Congress 2. The Strength of Mondragon A: Mission Statement B: Ten Principles C: Enterprise Creation And Development D: Providing For Continuance 3. New Vision 9A: Sources 1. The Church Tradition 2. The Basque Social Tradition 3. Socialism and Personalism B: Don Jose Maria's Synthesis. 4. A Critique of Private, Social and State Enterprise A: Capitalist Corporation B: Traditional Cooperatives C: Soviet Model D: Towards a New Model 5. A New Model A: The Cooperative Corporation B: A New Role for Management C: Role of Workers D: Evaluation and Replicability 6. The Valencia Experiment A: Beginnings and Development B: The Parts C: Evolution to a New Phase D: The Future E: Basic Principles 7. North American Glimmerings A. Community Business Corporations B. Alternative Financial Initiatives C. Mexico: A Sustainable Development Project 8. Practical Reflections for Community Economic Solutions A: Community Economic Development B: Getting Started C: Person-Centered Economics Appendix I: Biographical Sketch of Don Jose Maria Appendix II: List of Mondragon Companies Appendix III: Useful Addresses Abstract CHAPTER ONE describes the facts about Mondragon, what the visitor will see on a visit there or what one will read in the annual business report of the Caja Laboral Popular (Credit Union or Cooperative Bank) which for many years served as the glue to hold the complex together. The description includes how the components function and relate to one another. Mondragon exists as a concrete, functioning and profitable enterprise. CHAPTER TWO explains how the strength and success of Mondragon is rooted in the founders' vision of society and their guiding value system. Aggressive expansion in response to community needs is seen as a virtue. The complex techniques of enterprise creation are described in detail. Also analyzed is their freedom from bankruptcy. CHAPTER THREE responds to interest in the original intentions and innovative ideas that gave rise to all this activity. The researcher will find that none of the components is original but that each was proposed by some earlier thinker.1 The genius of Don Jose Maria was to construct out of these elements an original synthesis which proved to be applicable to the world in which he lived. Syntheses are extremely important for the advancement of knowledge. The synthesis of ideas behind Mondragon is important because it triggered a collaboration among a variety of institutions that are normally divided and in competition. CHAPTER FOUR contains a critique of different models for a business enterprise: capitalist, communist or communitarian. With the fall of the communist systems in Eastern Europe these questions are important. An extremely simplistic attitude might assume that the capitalist model has 'won'. However, problems like chronic unemployment, pollution, and events such as the Los Angeles riots, indicate that traditional capitalist systems have not provided a formula for human wellbeing. CHAPTER FIVE presents the new model as envisaged by Don Jose Maria, the communitarian model which has yet to be widely tried in the Western world. An examination of its success in the Mondragon complex reveals that it is neither simply cooperative nor simply capitalist. The chapter shows how Mondragon takes elements from several models and results in a community- based business system which is very flexible and adaptable to changing social needs and circumstances. CHAPTER SIX describes the Valencia experiment as an example of the transferability of Don Jose Maria's model. Founded by a group describing itself as followers of the Mondragon approach, the Valencian experiment consists of a community bank, a string of cooperative retail stores, an insurance company, employee-owned factories and a professional school. CHAPTER SEVEN examines how the original motivation which inspired the Mondragon experiment is shared by many groups in North America, including one in Mexico, who are struggling to fight unemployment and economic decline in their own communities. Also discussed are examples of other community businesses which contain, in various degrees, some of the values associated with the Mondragon experiment. CHAPTER EIGHT explains how technology is a way of thinking and a way of organizing. Based on his involvement in community economic development in Atlantic Canada during two decades, as well as his visits to the Spanish projects, the author proposes that basic guiding values and good technology are essential in making a new economy for a sustainable future. Appendix II is a useful list of the 96 member-enterprises of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, including product lines and addresses. Postscript - THE DEBATE Like so many founders of social-economic movements, Don Jose Maria would be surprised and puzzled by the giant international Mondragon Cooperative Corporation of today. By 1997 Mondragon had established subsidiary factories in Argentina, England and China. These resemble subsidiaries of General Electric or any other large multi-national corporation. Also in Spain, the cooperative retail systems of Eroski of Mondragon and Consum of Valencia have joined forces to create a holding company called Erosmer. Erosmer is now setting up subsidiary supermarkets throughout Spain as private stock companies. The Eroski group owns 51% of the shares with the other shares being owned by venture capital groups such as ONCE, a managed fund owned by the national organization for the blind in Spain. The reality of the retail food business is that small companies do not survive well. The Eroski group is now one of the giants. It is number three in Spain. The two top grocery chains are multi-nationals. Number four is another multi- national. If Eroski did not go big there would be very little Spanish control in the food business. However, it should be noted that, even if the Eroski chain looks like the multinationals, there are important differences. Within the Mondragon and Valencia areas the retail stores are still co- operatively run. Both Eroski and Consum have central elected boards. The central Eroski board, like the Consum board, has 12 members, six employees and six consumers. The consumers are usually delegates from other cooperatives. While each local consumer store does not have a management board, it does have a consumer quality-committee. The consumer committee provides continual input into management concerning quality of products and services. The multi-nationals do not do this. Also, the Eroski system promotes locally produced products, especially products from its own community- owned producer systems. On the shelves of Eroski stores one will find a surprising high percentage of Eroski produced goods. A further difference is the policy of selling 8% of the shares to the supervisory staff of each non-cooperative Eroski supermarket. The debate about the seeming contradiction in philosophy is deeply rooted. It is similar to the debate among the personalist philosophers in the early part of this century. Some said that cooperative, democratic businesses could not survive in a capitalistic dog-eat-dog society. Others said that it is possible to organize democratic, socially responsible businesses in a hostile competitive economy. Don Jose Maria took the optimistic side, hoping that new democratic businesses would influence the others. Leaders in Mondragon and Valencia say that they hold to their original philosophy of promoting participation and serving the larger community but they recognize the hard, cold realities of the international economy. If they did not expand the Eroski cooperative store system to the whole of Spain then they would have been swamped by the multi-national grocery chains who have lower prices through economies of scale. They judged it impossible to maintain a small chain of worker and community owned stores and still remain competitive in price and product range. The only options they saw was to go big or disappear altogether. To organize worker-owned supermarkets in other cities like Madrid and Grenada was simply not practical. With multi- nationals analyzing every city for market penetration decisions had to be made rapidly and these decisions involved many complex factors which are beyond ordinary citizens and ordinary workers. It involves much sophisticated technology. So, the end result is that a cooperative, community owned complex is flourishing in Mondragon but its health and even survival depends to some extent on its non-cooperative subsidiaries in other centres and in other countries. There is a parallel situation in the area of electro-domestic products and automobile parts. Huge multinationals have the dominant control. Over 30% of the Mondragon production is exported. If they stay as there are they will be put out of business by the competition; the original factories in Mondragon simply would not last if they relied on the local market. Yet they cannot organize democratic factories in England or the United States. So they simply buy subsidiaries sometimes in strategic partnerships with other corporations. Also, they will accept contracts to produce components for large capitalist corporations like General Electric. It is a very real dilemma. If they stick to their original worker-owner system, then harm will be done in that workers in Mondragon will eventually lose their jobs. If they participate in the capitalist, multi-national system then they will go against their original democratic philosophy. I think that Don Jose Maria Arrizmendiarrieta would have seen this as a classical problem of life. In such a dilemma where one is faced with an evil on both sides, the rule was to choose the lesser of two evils. This, the leaders of Mondragon have done, but they have done it reluctantly. They did it, not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to, and that is a good ethical stance. The trend towards mergers and giant conglomerates became very clear during the 1990's. For example, in May of 1997, when the Grand Metropolitan Corporation and Guinness Corporation announced what soon became known in London as the blockbuster merger of the year. It involved combining under one corporate umbrellas such diverse companies as Haagen Daaz ice cream, Bell Whiskey, Burger King, Johnny Walker Whiskey and Guinness Stout. This new corporate combination was valued at over 50 billion dollars (23.8 billion pounds sterling). Part of the rational was that 2000 jobs could be cut from the combine workforce of 85,000. This last fact brings out a fascinating difference between the traditional corporation and the Mondragon corporation. In its five strategic plan for 1997-2002 MCC projected the creation of 8000 new jobs. While the traditional capitalist corporations merge to reduce jobs, the community oriented Mondragon corporation merges to create jobs. This manifests a very fundamental difference in the underlying philosophies. Professional management and efficiency can be instruments to impoverish communities or they can be instruments to enrich communities. The difference lies in the vision and the philosophy. The debate in Mondragon concerning the tension between efficiency and participation is not unique. The same kind of dilemma exists in Eficoop in Mexico, in New Dawn/BCA in Canada and in most cases where community-based groups organize business enterprises. There seems to be an inherent tension or even a contradiction between efficient wealth creation and democratic participation. Professional management is necessary for efficiency and wealth creation, but professional management can only function with authority delegation and indirect democracy. It has often happened that cooperative, community businesses destroyed themselves in resisting outside control and insisting on local decision making. The worthy goal of local democratic control led to incompetent people attempting to make decisions in highly technical matters that they simply did not understand. It is not a question of being malicious or self-seeking, it is simply a fact of life that most businesses in our technological age require systems and networks with highly trained, sophisticated managers. This kind of debate is an ongoing one. It is paralleled in our general political system. The ideal kind of political system would be one of continual referendums where every citizen has an equal say in all decisions. Thomas More in his Utopia of the 16th century designed a marvelous democratic system, but it depended upon all citizens becoming well educated and morally enlightened. No one has been able to implement such an ideal system up to now. Most countries have chosen a system of representative democracy with a great deal of indirectly delegated powers. It works more or less for most people, but is certainly not satisfactory for the poor and the unemployed. For some activists in the cooperative movement the essence of cooperatives is participation. Some cooperatives refuse to participate in larger networks and ventures through fear of losing control. They would rather remain small and democratic than grow bigger and have to submit to outside control. A good number of cooperatives are commercially successful following this formula. They have their qutonomy. However, some could consider this a selfish view. It can happen that such a cooperative is providing wealth and security for its five hundred or so members but that outside that cooperative there are masses of poor and unemployed. Perhaps Kropotkin was thinking of this when he signaled the danger of cooperatives becoming exercises in collective egoism. The Mondragon leaders would say that each cooperative has a duty to expand and create jobs as long as there are unemployed people in the community. If a cooperative is profitable, it has all the more obligation to set aside part of its profits and to invest in the development of new businesses. Likely, the International Cooperative Alliance was thinking this way when they added as one of the basic principles of the cooperative movement: "Cooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members." In this book we have looked at Mondragon, Valencia and a number of smaller examples of community initiative to set up businesses dedicated to the common good. The ones that survive seem to be the ones that maintain a set of ideals and values but who admit that they cannot be all achieved. Rather, they hold the ideals as a kind of horizon which we aim at. Progress is judged not simply in attaining the ideal, but rather coming closer and closer to the ideal. The danger is that the incomplete, compromise situation will be accepted as the ideal and that no effort will be made to change and improve what we have. While almost every other corporation in the world is cutting back and reducing the number of employees, MCC has as part of its five year plan the goal of creating at least 8,800 new jobs in Spain. This is accepted as a duty to the general community which is suffering from unacceptably high levels of employment. While for the Guiness Corporation, the priority is to increase profits, the priority for Mondragon is to increase jobs and preserve the community. This manifests the over-riding fidelity of Mondragon to its most basic distinguishing characteristic: THE PRIORITY OF PEOPLE OVER CAPITAL. Merger.. Times of London, p. 31, May 13, 1997 "From Mondragon to America- Experiments in Community Economic Development" by Greg MacLeod. UCCB Press, sydney, ISBN 0-920336-53-51- $24.95 cAN. Available from Coles Book Stores and most other bookstores. or Goose Lane Editions 469 King St. Fredericton, N.B. Canada E3B 1E5 TEL 506-450-4251 FAX 506-459-4991 General Distribution Services Don Mills, Ont. Toll Free Order Desk.. Ont/ Quebec tel 800-387-0141 Eastern/Western Canada 800-387-0172 Electronic Ordering vis Canadian Telebook Agency (CTA) S 1150391 In USA: General Distribution Services Buffalo, N.Y. tel 800-805-1083 fax 800-481-6207 or fax 800-481-6207 OR WRITE DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLISHER UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF CAPE BRETON PRESS P.O. BOX 5300 SYDNEY, N.S. CANADA B1P 6L2 -------- REPLY, Original message follows -------- Date: Wednesday, 12-Nov-97 12:41 AM From: Franklin Wayne Poley \ Internet: (fwpoley-AT-vcn.bc.ca) To: gmacleod-AT-uccb.ns.ca \ Internet: (gmacleod-AT-uccb.ns.ca) Subject: Book. Dear Dr. Macleod: Does that $24.95 for your book include postage? FWP. ***** Usenet on Future Villages: vcn.false-creek; listserv on Future Cities: send an email to khadija-AT-wn.apc.org with "subscribe your-email-address" in the body; URL updates: <http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex> ***** -------- REPLY, End of original message -------- -- Greg MacLeod University College of Cape Breton P.O. Box 5300 Sydney, N.S.- B1P 6L2 CANADA FAX 902-567-0153 Univ. tel 902-539-5300 Res. 902-562-2420 E-MAIL GMACLEOD-AT-SPARC.UCCB.N.S.CA --------- End forwarded message ---------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005