John Restakis

This book is about an alternative. It is a story about how a revolution in human society that began with the rise of democracy in politics continues to unfold as the democratic idea struggles to find its place in the world of economics. If economic democracy is the hidden face of this ongoing revolution, then the history of the co-operative idea is its most durable expression.

A key purpose of this book is to show that, in fact, the popular drive to democratize economies is a force that is working to transform virtually every economy in the world today. And for those who are willing to look, the evidence of a new, more humane economic and social order is there to see.

In its own quiet way, the cooperative vision continues to thrive and hold the keys to the emergence of an economic model that is capable of remaking and humanizing the current capitalist system.

What truly conditions how people live and what societies will become is the degree to which people can exercise control over their lives. Economics is central to this. This is the question that lies at the bottom of the resentment and rage that continues to fuel the resistance to globalization generally and the corporate model of free market capitalism specifically.

the underlying premise of this book is that economics is everybody’s business.

the co-op idea is an enduring vision that is being rediscovered and reinvented every day and in a thousand ways by people from all walks of life the world over. In times when the course of world events seems to leave little reason for hope, these stories are worth telling for they lend a hopeful light on human affairs and hint at a future worth striving for.

In fact, the operation of a hypothetical free market has never really been the issue. Markets have never been “free” in the normal sense of the term, nor will they ever be. They have always been, and will always remain, subject to external constraints — legal, political, cultural, religious. The question is to what degree and for what ends these controls operate. Purely free markets exist only in the ethereal regions of laissez faire economic theory, along with such treasured notions as perfect competition, freedom of choice and the “invisible hand” that guides the market to produce the optimum outcome for all through the unrestricted pursuit of self interest.

The free market system, such as it is, has been able to survive only because the state has been there to support it — and to salvage it. It happened during the depression of 1873–86, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the same pattern of state rescue in times of crisis continues today. The role of the state in sustaining the free market is constant and pervasive and has been so for well over a century.

one might ask, what exactly lay beneath this continuing insistence on the sanctity of the free market system? Was it the residual force of an ingrained ideology? Was it blithe ignorance? Or was it a cynical ploy to protect the privileges of powerful vested interests? Probably, it was all three.

This cornerstone of classical economics is rooted in the belief that economics exists in a sphere of its own, that its laws are complete and sufficient to themselves, and that the broader social and human relations that constitute the day-to-day reality of our lives are not only apart from it but should be subject to its dictates.