A global contemporary review of cooperativism

Abstract

Long before the pioneers of Rochdale opened their first cooperative store, people nowadays forgotten and famous thinkers propagated and experimented with cooperative forms of production and living together. The list is long but one person who stands out among the m is Robert Owen. This Welsh/Scottish industrialist created several cooperative settlements, the best known being New Lanark, but none of these establishments managed to survive. Particularly among the utopian socialists there were many who dreamt of a world based upon workers' cooperatives. Looking back one must conclude that the success of production cooperatives, both in agriculture and industry, was limited. The first and second industrial revolutions were more influenced by individualistic entrepreneurs than by ideas of collective action.