Why Social Enterprise Could Do with a Strong Dose of Co-operation

One of our members was invited to do a guest blog on the UnLtd World website, a networking space for social enterprise people.  This is what he wrote. Views in a personal capacity, etc.

“Last week I saw Stephen Poliakoff’s new film ‘Glorious 39’, a psychological thriller set in the fine summer before the declaration of war. Poliakoff looks at how close the British political elite came to doing a deal with Germany, which would have positioned the UK as a Vichy-type client state of the Nazi regime. The film dramatises the lengths to which a significant section of the ruling class was prepared to go to defend its economic and social privileges.

Our society isn’t as unequal as it was in the ’30s, but it looks like it’ll be getting close over the next few years, as the government pays down the medium term cost of bailing out capitalism by cutting public services, increasing effective tax rates on workers and turning the screws on welfare. It feels like Back to the Future: business as usual, preserving the British way of life, socialism for the rich. Self-help, civic responsibility and ration books for the rest of us. Where does this leave co-operation and social enterprise?

I’ve often heard people in the movement deride ‘navel gazing’ – those pesky debates about politics, business governance and ownership, our relationship with the state, who’s a social enterprise and who isn’t, and so on. We need to maintain unity by transcending old ideologies and focusing on outcomes. Action not talk. But as Anton Pannekoek pointed out, we aren’t weak because we’re divided; it’s the other way round. If there’s any lack of confidence in our ability to really change society, maybe it’s because we haven’t sorted out what we are and who we stand for. With all the sucking up to politicians, civil servants and tycoons, is it any wonder we’ve not quite set the downtrodden alight with enthusiasm for pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps social entrepreneurship?

Sometimes, we seem to be among the last people still regurgitating clapped-out neoliberal discourse about how there’s no conflict between making pots of money and making society fairer; the need to emulate the dynamism of psychopaths with a ‘proven record’ of enriching themselves at the expense of the low paid before suddenly discovering a need to ‘give something back’; exaggerated respect for the dismal professions of management and human resources; threadbare ‘corporate social responsibility’; the pursuit of politically-driven ‘core outcomes’ which change every five minutes depending on the latest panic.

Co-operation didn’t start with the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844, or the Diggers in 1649, any more than social enterprise began with SEL in 1997. The system of economics and governance of our society depends entirely on its parasitic relationship with co-operation – the pursuit of self-interest through mutual aid, or, if you like, social enterprise. The reason we give these movements capital letters, and mark these dates, is because people came up with a formulation of their aims and objects, and put them into practice, in a way which could be replicated in the circumstances of their time. The people who founded them weren’t satisfied with opening a peoples’ shop, collectivising a patch of land or setting up a few community businesses – had they been, they wouldn’t be remembered. They wanted to transform the system of economics and governance of their societies. Can we draw the lesson that to succeed, it’s not enough to identify ourselves as a pluralistic ’sector’, peacefully coexisting with interests that are hostile to our existence, and which will destroy or carpetbag us given half a chance (as the UK co-op movement found out in the 1920’s and 1980’s, and the Mondragon co-operatives in Franco’s Spain, and community land rights activists know in Africa, Asia and South America)?

So, back to those pesky issues of what we are and who we stand for. I’d suggest that imagining a different future for our society will mean reinventing the language our predecessors used, when they were trying to transform their world. In this spirit, I want to commend the values and principles of the co-operative movement, and ask whether, by throwing them out wholesale as an outdated and divisive code, our modern prophets of social enterprise haven’t merely succeeded in throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Admittedly, co-operation is a clunky social brand, but it’s been around for a long time, and in business terms it’s still more significant than the rest of the ‘official’ UK Social Enterprise (big S big E) movement – however you measure it.

Co-operative businesses are member owned, member controlled and for member benefit. Their values are self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. The co-operative principles, by which they put those values into action, are open membership without discrimination; one member, one vote; member economic participation; autonomy and independence; education; co-operation among co-operatives; and the sustainable development of the communities in which they operate.

What do these values and principles mean in practice? That if we want to get anything done, we have to do it ourselves, and take the consequences of our actions. That there is no room for discrimination within or without our organisations. That equality is something we assume and take literally, not something we are given as a right or something we have to deserve. That, far from being irrelevant, ownership, control and participation in our businesses, by the people who are supposed to benefit from them, is absolutely vital: without it, everything is just water through the fingers. That we cannot be owned, directed or controlled by another entity, be it a charity, another business or an agency of the state, because that means working to someone else’s agenda. That self-education, opennness and campaigning are essential to our survival and growth. That we hang together or we hang separately (oh yes – unity). That being truly autonomous means recognising our interdependence with the people whose lives our businesses impact upon, wherever and whoever they are. That although our principles don’t say anything about people getting filthy rich, they do say something about what kind of people we aspire to be, and what kind of society we want.

That’s a powerful, balanced and inclusive recipe for challenging ‘business as usual’. Who would say we don’t need democracy, self-help or solidarity when we’re living through a 30-year programme of the hollowing out of civil society, unceasing attacks by business and governments of both stripes on working class confidence and self-reliance, and the whittling away of local autonomy and real social accountability?

Ed Mayo, Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, gave a remarkable speech in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, called ‘A Dog Helps Dog World’. The speech set out his views on the primary importance of mutual aid in human ecology, and why the central economic challenges we face all require co-operation; reducing inequality, addressing climate change, providing public services in straightened times, providing a new infrastructure for utilities such as energy and water, getting business back on its feet, and using creative commons to deliver on the promise of the digital economy. A pretty ambitious programme. As the speech also pointed out, every crisis presents an opportunity to make real changes to the rules of game, and this one’s no different. But the window is closing quickly. That doesn’t mean we have to close off discussion in some frenzy of brainless activism; it does mean examining our true mission and acting on our best instincts.

In last few weeks, some No.10 policymakers have had an eleventh-hour rediscovery of their Labour roots in working class mutualism, as they try to build a policy platform in the short months before next year’s general election. At the same time, David Cameron has been sharpening his language about ’social responsibility’, extending employee ownership and a new Tory era of citizen activism (by which he doesn’t mean more strikes.) And Vince Cable used a recent keynote speech to reveal that co-operative values were written into the Liberal Democrats’ constitution all along.

The truth is that having sucked us dry, the political class is stuck for ideas about how to mend our ‘broken society’, beyond implementing cuts and ‘getting out of our way’ (as one wonk put it to me). Social enterprise will inevitably have to address social need in those areas of the economy the state and private business has decided is unprofitable, unaffordable or just undesirable. It always has, because ‘co-operation is the daughter of necessity’.

But let’s not thank them for their gracious condescension. Bankrupt politicians and businessmen have always been happy to shove responsibility for their failed rackets onto the people who depend on them. Instead, let our leaders say what any self-respecting businessman would say, when asked by a political party to endorse its manifesto. You want our co-operation? Show us respect by proving that you really understand our mission. You want social enterprise on the cheap? Think again.”