[CLUE-Talk] [OT] A Call to Action

[Matt Gushee]

Interesting post, Sean. I wish I could take the time to fully
contemplate all the issues you raise. There is one point I'd like to
respond to, though:

On Sat, Jul 13, 2002 at 10:26:43AM -0600, Sean LeBlanc wrote:

> a half, taking part in a food co-op, etc.  They eventually ditched the food
> co-op (and it imploded soon after, anyway) because the same few people were
> always getting strapped with all the work, while a great many others were
> always making excuses for not being able to help, and so those doing all the
> work soon tired of it.  They did switch to bulk food soon after: nearly the
> same prices without all the politics - just go and buy it and be done with
> it.

That's not a particularly novel statement, but I'm surprised to hear
someone as intelligent, articulate, and--as I see now--aware of the
relevant issues, arguing that because a particular food co-op failed,
food co-ops are a bad idea.

While we're doing the autobiography thing, here's mine: I spent most of
my formative years in Madison, WI, and went to college in Eugene, OR.
Both cities are notorious for having been "hotbeds of campus radicalism"
(though there's an important difference between the two, which I'll get
to in a minute), and both were big on co-ops of various kinds in the
70s.

At their peak in the mid-to-late 70s, there were probably 9 or 10 active
food co-ops in Madison; I'm less familiar with Eugene in that period,
but when I first visited in '78, it seems to me there were about half a 
dozen. A quick check of the web indicates that 2 of the old Madison
co-ops are still running today, and there are 2 others that weren't
there before. In Eugene, however, all the co-ops were already gone when I
arrived for college in 1982.

I think it's very instructive to look at which ones survived and which
didn't. The 2 survivors in Madison are the Williamson St. (Willy St.)
and Mifflin St. Co-ops. Now, as I recall, Willy St. was often criticized
for being "too corporate" or "too bourgeois," or whatever terms were in
vogue back then ... basically, as far as I know, it was because they had
managers and were concerned about keeping accurate books and a clean
store. Mifflin St. was radically different: to them, managers and
bookkeeping were "fascist" (I think I may have actually heard someone
say that at some point), cleanliness was anal-retentive ... they used to
get high at the checkout counter. Well, they almost didn't make it.
Finally, along about 1980, they decided that yes, they were going to
have managers, they were going to keep books, and they were going to
clean the place up. Last time I saw the place, in 1997, it was clean,
well-organized, and seemed to be doing a good business. And it was still
a co-op.

Now, I don't know what happened in Eugene, but I can guess. Although
Madison and Eugene are both known for their "counterculture," the two
places really had rather different countercultures. Madison was a
stronghold of the Old Left, and later became a center for political (as
opposed to lifestyle) radicalism in the 60s. I don't know what Eugene
was like before the 60s, but it became a haven for the
love-and-drugs-are-all-you-need-man crowd, and to this day is full of
people who think that the idea of being on time for meetings, for
example, is "oppressive." There are still real live hippies in Eugene,
where Madisonians have long since grown up and moved on with life. So I
think it's no coincidence that Madison still has co-ops and Eugene
doesn't.

I'm tempted to go on at great length, but I don't really have time, and
you probably don't either. Some lessons I draw from the above and other
experience which I haven't mentioned are:

 * Democratic economic organizations can be viable
 * Democracy takes formal process and an awful lot of work
 * It can be rewarding for everyone if it's done right
 * Rigid ideology of any stripe is usually destructive (I guess this is
   a corollary of "the perfect is the enemy of the good")

And I think that will be my final word on the subject on this list. I'm
not very interested in pushing ideology or in theoretical debates about
the merits of one or another economic strategy. I'm trying to respond
creatively to what I see as a crisis. I believe that if we can create an
organization that is both democratic and professional (and I've seen it
done more than once, along with a lot of failures), we can achieve much
more as a group than individually. Anyone who thinks I'm on the right
track is invited to join me. If you disagree with my approach or doubt
that there's a need for this, fine, let's just stay out of each other's
way.

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/