Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neo-Liberal Economy [Paperback]

Business co-operatives can offer successful alternative models of decision making, employment, and operation without the existence of managerial and hierarchical structures. Through case studies spanning the United States, Europe, and Latin America—including the first in-depth look at the Cuban co-operative movement, Peter Ranis explores how co-operatives have evolved in response to the recent economic crisis and how the success of co-operatives is spurring the reinvention of labor unions today.
 
Placing the work of key radical theorists including Marx, Gramsci, and Luxembourg alongside that of contemporary political economists such as Block, Piketty, and Stiglitz,Cooperatives Confront Capitalismprovides a unique theoretical synthesis and offers a far-reaching analysis of the ideas, achievements, and wider historical context of the cooperative movement. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in how co-operatives and democratic worker organizations can create a lasting solution to unemployment and poverty.

Peter Ranisis professor emeritus of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books includeClass, Democracy and Labor in Contemporary ArgentinaandArgentine Workers: Peronism and Contemporary Class Consciousness.
 

Acknowledgements
1 Why worker cooperatives? The historical underpinnings and defense of worker cooperatives
2 The role of the state and the US social economy
3 Worker cooperatives in the post-Occupy digital economy
4 Argentina’s cooperatives challenges and breakthroughs
5 Argentina’s leading edge
6 The proliferation and internationalization of the Argentine cooperative experience
7 Eminent domain: confronting the loss of jobs in the United States
8 Building toward worker cooperatives by the use of eminent domain in the United States
9 Cuban cooperatives as a galSg