Worker Co-Operatives for the 21 st Century

In his 1957 book Mythologies, French philosopher Roland Barthes explains the crucial role of myths in the formation of public opinion. What people consider to be common sense is not rooted in natural facts but is the product of the laborious creation and diffusion of fixed tropes in public discourse. People need these refrains to give consistency and stability to a chaotic and ever-changing world. Myths provide reassuring narratives that allow people to successfully navigate their social environment. They make the contingent and contestable appear natural and self-evident. For Barthes, myths are the rock-solid basis for the vivacious flows of social interaction. Barthes himself focuses on consumer myths, but the same applies to the realm of work. People relate to developments in the capitalist sphere of production via particular myths that make the world of work sensible. Examples of such mythic tropes today are “competitive markets are always more efficient than public bureaucracies”, “automation will soon render human labor obsolete,” or “algorithmic management neutralizes human biases about race or gender at work.” None of these statements are necessarily true or false across the board. They are rather hypostasized generalizations that transform contingent and local realities into eternal truths. They provide soothing yet simplified narratives to understand the world of work and its future. One part of the labor market particularly enveloped in myth is the co-operative sector. Over the centuries, many commonplaces have formed that do not necessarily reflect the everyday realities of co-operative governance. Both supporters and critics often represent reified notions of how cooperatives are created, governed, and undone. This is not wrong in itself; myths offer crucial guidelines for political action. Myths have the force to mobilize people for or against political initiatives and they provide helpful prisms to reveal political opportunities otherwise invisible. Once in a while, however, it is necessary to confront myths with actual reality to test their enduring usefulness. The social world is subject to change, so previously well-performing abstractions of reality are not necessarily helpful today. The myths about co-operative governance formed in the 19th and 20th centuries in Western Europe do not automatically apply in other places of the world or to the 21st century.