Quotes & Sayings About Cooperatives

The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness. Even the style can turn one into a slave if one does not run away from it, and then one is doomed to repeat oneself. — Gueorgui Pinkhassov

We have to deal with where we are. We have to create cooperatives, we have to create intentional communities, we have to work for local cooperation where we are. — Jerry Brown

In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It's hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce. — Noam Chomsky

There's a tendency for those unfamiliar with cooperatives to look down on them as the leftovers of the mainstream economy, implying that if these ideologically driven people simply reorganized themselves into "normal" private companies, they would be more efficient and productive. In fact, just the opposite is true: Cooperatives often enter into economic activities that private businesses will not take on. The most fertile period of cooperative growth was during the Great Depression. Rural electric cooperatives spread across the American plains when it became clear that other investor-owned and municipally owned utilities were uninterested in wiring up sparsely populated regions. Credit unions, as we'll soon explore, have seen an upsurge during the recent financial crisis. — Michael Shuman

I have found, in over fifty years of confronting governments and defending cooperatives from political and bureaucratic interference, that when you begin demanding what is rightfully yours, there are many people even within the bureaucratic system who ensure that you retain those rights. — Verghese Kurien

Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life. — Barry Commoner

Communism then defines a society in which there are communal forms for dealing with resources. Many communal forms exist where there are not communist governments. The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain and the thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in the United States, are viable alternatives to capitalism. — Cynthia Kauffman

In short, capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of state intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the point where the teat runs dry.

The result is a system in which governments and corporations are increasingly hollowed out. And meanwhile, growing up within this corporate capitalist "integument," things like open source software and culture, open-source industrial design, permaculture and low-overhead garage micromanufacturing eat the corporate-state economy alive. An ever-growing share of labor and production are disappearing into relocalized resilient economies, self-employment, worker cooperatives and the informal and household economy. In the end, they will skeletonize the corporate dinosaurs like a swarm of piranha. — Kevin A. Carson

Still lost?"
This time Grant tugged her against him and gave her a hard kiss. "Apparently you've survived a month of matrimony, but you're still skinny."
"And compliments still roll trippingly off your tongue," she retorted, drawing back. After a moment she laughed and hugged him fiercely. "Damn,I hate to say it out loud,but it's good to see you. — Nora Roberts

They were probably hitting the town. I hoped it was hitting them back. — Lemony Snicket

The cumulative effects of the economic and financial sanctions might well bring the rebellion to an end within a matter of weeks rather than months. — Harold Wilson

It is entirely possible to build the elements of the new system molecularly within the old. In the cooperatives, the credit unions, the peer-networks, the unmanaged enterprises and the parallel, subcultural economies, these elements already exist — Paul Mason

Money at the service of life can be managed in the right way by cooperatives, on condition that it is a real cooperative where capital does not have command over men but men over capital. — Pope Francis

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other. — Albert Pike

There are large cooperatives all across this country. Land O'Lakes is a $12 billion club functioning all across America. There are rural electric co-ops in 47 states. Ace Hardware is a cooperative. — Kent Conrad