On Co-operatives and Lifestyle
The history of co-operatives is of people pulling together their collective power to interact with, rather than counteract, capitalism, in a way that defended their interests against its worst excesses. The best known of the early co-operative societies, the Rochdale Pioneers, pooled resources to create a consumer co-operative. That is, a group of working class people could take advantage of bulk-buying staple products in order to access enough decent food to feed themselves and their families in a time of hardship.
On Co-operatives and Lifestyle
by Dónal O’Driscoll
Shift Magazine
July 2012
In Issue 15 of Shift, Tom Fox wrote a critical view of Radical Routes co-operatives, in which he used a broad-brush approach both to co-operatives and labour struggles in his critique of the former. As a result he missed out on some useful analyses that informs the roles that radical co-operatives can and do play in current struggles.
The history of co-operatives is of people pulling together their collective power to interact with, rather than counteract, capitalism, in a way that defended their interests against its worst excesses. The best known of the early co-operative societies, the Rochdale Pioneers, pooled resources to create a consumer co-operative. That is, a group of working class people could take advantage of bulk-buying staple products in order to access enough decent food to feed themselves and their families in a time of hardship.
Subsequent history has seen the co-operative model taken up by movements attracted to its collective nature, both socialist and anarchist. In many places the co-operative has been integral for societies reshaping themselves along non-hierarchical lines or for resisting oppressive economic policies. One can point to the mighty Mondragon co-operative in the Basque Country, the social movements in Latin America (most recently in Argentina), or even 1920s China. Co-operatives are vehicles for expressing politics or demonstrating that it is possible to explore alternatives ways of life n the present.
I agree with Tom that there is nothing inherently radical about being in a co-operative - but the point is that though co-operative societies may be a construct or consequence of liberal-capitalist society, they have regularly and successfully been co-opted by those with a radical, collectivist bent. I feel what he has missed is their ability to be a focus of radical politics. A cursory study of the radical labour history of co-operatives as mentioned above readily provides such examples. If anything, the failures ascribed to co-operatives are merely symptomatic of the wider failure of left wing politics to engage with insidious features of liberal ideology.
On a wider level, collective organisation is not inherently an expression of left-wing politics; it merely provides a structure in which more radical approaches can be explored. I think Tom has missed this distinction, seeing what Radical Routes is trying to achieve as being part and parcel of co-operatives per se rather than something that has been added to the model. That some people do see co-operatives as an end in themselves rather than a means to an end is the result of selective quoting and a blindness to seeing that others do find emancipatory politics within them. I similarly disagree with his starting point that co-operatives are part of, in his use of EP Thompson’s phrase, a warrening of capitalism by the workers. There is nothing solely restricted to the ‘worker’ in co-operatives. Joint ownership and action is not something that is class-specific.
I think that there is a category error taking place; people mistaking the place in which resistance to liberal and capitalist ideology happens as being the resistance itself, that every act in such a space is necessarily an act of resistance. This is similar to some aspects of lifestyle political praxis, where the act of choosing to purchase something more ‘ethical’ is seen as a point of resistance. It only becomes a resistance when there is a political aspect to it, when a wrong is actively being challenged.
This is not to exonerate the radical end of the co-operative movement, those who have chosen it to be a vehicle for their politics, from making errors in thought and action. I consider it to be a very flawed movement for a number of reasons, but at least one that is working to move in the right direction. The fact that people are trying to sort out their politics should be applauded rather than derided for being imperfect.
A key failure of many critics of this form of lifestyle politics is not recognising that we are suffering centuries of successful capitalism and liberal ideology, which have given us enormous apparent personal freedoms through consumer choice. The individual and their ‘rights’ are placed at the centre of everything and around which notions of freedom and identity are shaped.
To turn Tom’s use of E.P. Thompson’s quote on its head, it is liberalism that has warrened the consciousness of the working class, undermining its unity and sense of solidarity with an emphasis on the individual over collective responsibility and action. The failure to see this problem within the working class obscures recognition of the necessity for the likes of Radical Routes to combat this process – including internally among its own membership. We have internalised and ingested libertarian doctrine without the balancing of collective living and working. All too often it can be witnessed in self-defined anarchists, particularly those who struggle with collective responsibility in projects such as social centres, and yes, co-operatives.
In the present time, co-operatives, particularly those of Radical Routes, are a site of basic struggle against this, in so much that they are places where the bad habits of individualist libertarianism learned under capitalism are worked out. And it is a struggle: things can go very badly wrong in a co-operative. In my own work as part of Radical Routes legal group, whenever I’ve traced the collapse of a co-operative back to its root cause, it is down to people not working as a self-identified collective, but having reverted to a collection of individuals looking out for their own interests above those of everyone else – a reversal of the politics.
What Radical Routes offers is an intangible network of support for co-operatives. Yes, it is bureaucratic, but it has levered £10 million of properties out of the system and demonstrated a level of acumen when it comes to helping its members raise finance and mortgages. It may not be sexy enough for some, but it is practical support that gives people a chance to have their own homes independent of exploitative landlords. But, contrary to those who would like to advance a purely libertarian anarchist practice, anarchism in the real world will always have an element of bureaucracy and meetings – accessible decision-making and collective responsibility fundamentally requires it. I guess many people want things just handed on a plate, simply to be free of authority without the boring responsibilities of community care – but is that not just capitalist thinking all over again?
In terms of the wider movement, the professional, institution-building approach is something to be celebrated, even if it does not satisfy some anarchists’ need for spectacle. It offers a counter-argument to the regular slander that anarchism is chaos and disorganisation. It shows that anarchism can function on a bigger scale, that mutual aid is possible and even desirable; it is a practical demonstration that anarchism can be productive when needed. Mutual aid does not simply materialise; it requires discussion and process, in particular, figuring out capability and need, places in which mutual respect can be built up. What Radical Routes has been good at doing is politicising this process, seeking to ensure that the mass movement that Tom begs us to take part in has actual solid foundations. In the process, it is allowing a space for people to reflect on what radical social change means and giving people a sense of ownership over it – always better than simply quoting a long-gone guru who was the product of a different age.
If Radical Routes is a bit heavy on the side of the ‘aristocracy of activists’ as Tom puts it, it’s worth recognising the commitment to changing the basic politics of living and demonstrating that another world is possible, not just a slogan. It is also about sustainability, creating a space where you can work or live without having to stress as much about losing your house or work due to political activism. A key motivation within Radical Routes comes from people who recognise the importance of both larger scale organising and the need to demonstrate lifestyle choices. The result is that a number have felt the direct repression that comes with resistance to the political system through direct action and from society over their personal choices and campaigning. For some it is not simply about a cosy life, but a practical necessity to maintain resistance. From this perspective it is an example of mutual aid and solidarity in itself. This is not to say it should be completely separate from other struggles, but complementary to them.
In my experience it has often been those who experience the difficulties of maintaining their own lifestyle politics who get the political importance of radical co-operatives the most. If Radical Routes is having issues over what constitutes social change, it is precisely because there are many who seek to defend that political aspect. What is needed, is not sneering comments on the organisation as a whole, but practical support to sustain a critical politics – rather than letting another inspirational organisation degenerate into liberal lifestylism.
However, that niggle aside, I wish to finish by bringing in Matt Wilson’s article which followed Tom’s. Matt touches on a crucial point in his last paragraph when he states, “Lifestyle both prepares us for and moves towards a world where we, not state-capitalism, control our lives.”
If such a world is going to be more than pure libertarian in the worse possible sense of that word, then it needs to be based on mutual aid and collective organisation. This does not necessarily mean creating formal legal structures, but requires learning both how to live together and take decisions collectively. It includes understanding the impact of our decisions on the wider society around us and to anticipate the consequences in our own lives.
This is a lifestyle issue. Not facing up to this fact would send us back to the world when only the workerist struggle mattered, when all the issues currently dismissed as ’single-issue’ or ‘identity politics’ were sidelined, maintaining numerous little hierarchies and privileges. Large parts of anarchism has fortunately moved on much since then, though it seems that the class-based approach struggles to keep up at times.
At the same time it has important implications for workers struggles. A major failing of current struggles in the UK is the lack of belief that workers can actually take over their own workplaces and work together. Part of this loss in confidence comes from the increased colonization of our minds by the liberal notion that we are first and only individuals and anything collective is to be looked upon as denying our ‘freedoms’ or oppressive. In being directed to focus solely on identity in relation to the mass consumer society we are slowly stripped of the ability to form identities in relation to other possible communities. We are steadily led away from recognising that there is more power and (personal) freedom possible in collective organisation.
We talk about taking power back, but too often it is only in an abstract sense which makes it easy to avoid the difficulties of concrete action. My experience in dealing with co-operatives in crises is that we are not ready to enter such world where we have claimed back some of that power just yet – and that is with the people who are actively trying to make that crossover. If we are not to make the same mistakes as the past, then we need to unlearn liberalism and address the ways in which our identities and behaviour are shaped by social relationships, whether personal or structural. Self-indulgent lifestyles will not do that; a political approach to lifestyle with all the space that opens up in our day to day life, will. Learning to work collectively in structures as basic as our housing provides us with ways to changing our social relationships to something more sustainable and in tune with the world we want to see come about. We cannot eulogise the power of community while not recognising that we are all acting in ways that undermine it in the social relationships around us.
The ‘revolution’ will not spontaneously change our senses of identity or our belief system. Believing that will doom us to repeating the mistakes of history. One does not do that in a single, cataclysmic disruption, as a rudimentary sense of how the mind works tell us, it simply leads to trauma. Rather, we need to see it as a dynamical process, in which the change we wrought in our co-operatives changes also ourselves and the world around us, which in turn changes approaches to living and working collectively. The difficult bit is maintaining the momentum of such politics, which in turn requires not seeing activism as merely another consumer choice but a commitment to lifelong radical social change in all its forms. This requires sustainability and communities in which we can be sustained and inspire others.
The author is a member of a Radical Routes housing co-operative and a member of the Radical Routes Legal Working Group, were he regularly gets to see how badly co-operatives fuck up.
