I am writing this on my understanding about cooperatives, which i am still learning and exploring to be a part of a cooperative in the locality that would serve for mutual well being as vital goal. Beware of mistakes and erors that i may have mistakenly added to the writeup. I completely welcome suggestion and criticism.

In previous ages a nation's life and culture could be protected to some extent by the growth of armies in national competition.
Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation.

- Albert Einstein

Cooperatives have long existed probably before our time now, and will surely exist even after our death. That is a fact. This writeup is not the cooperative that big business form during convergence and conglomeration for the sake for maximizing profit, deepening power establishment, exploitation, etc... This is about who a bunch of individuals of similar thought process, ideas, skill sets, can mutually agree upon a fundamental set of concrete principles that does not leverage on competition and profit theories, but on mutual wellbeing, reciprocity, collaboration, sharing, transparency, education, social solidarity, etc...

However, i am not going to discuss with you about what cooperatives are, its theory, etc... and a generic historical awareness can be provided by wikipedia page. What i am going to discuss is how individuals and their networks could form a effective cooperative with whay they have in hand. In the era of Information & Communication technology, form of goods and services are shifting rapidly from physical realm to digital realm. What i have learned is Cooperative philosophy does not provide you a set of success formulas that pushes you in to the sea of hurricanes of business competition, and expect you to succeed, so that a new formula would arise out of your effort. What it provides is a basic set of principles and guidelines that evolves from pragmatic understanding how we human beings can really live as social beings by not falling into the trap of competition and greed.

Wherever i see now, there is a community for everything (especially in tech. world). Not more than 10 years ago, there is barely a community and even if it is there it would be around a set of philosophical background and basically serve mutual learning platform - which we usually term as clubs. Fast forward 10 years, there is literally a community for every programming language, every technological framework, for every skill. This is the case in Urban places, where as in rural areas it is still challenging to have a community apart from local administrative councils. Communities are becoming the great place of knowledge sharing & deliberation that spans from technological issues to political issues. People in communities have more networked awareness about things that are happening around, that atleast enables forming a mindset to filter out the noise that we are constantly bogged down with.

What if these Networked individuals, who are already grouped together either for sharing knowledge or actively involved in addresing social issues, -- could use their skills, tools, knowledge to evolve from communities to networked community-cooperatives ?

• What if they can use the collective effort to address social issues more effectively ?
• What if such effort enable them to sustain themselves economically and financially ?
• What if such a triumph enables them to live independently - off the corporate or paternal bureaucratic systems ?
• What if they represent the living examples and proofs of alternatives ?

Already many communities are successful and stand out as roll models in civil society forms, atleast with the ones i am in touch with. They have even participation at times associated with social issue. What i am seeking is a further evolution in communities that would use individual skillsets and technologies for addressing social issues or to provide a service for marginalized people and sectors, with their collaborative nature.

Folks like me who either become a victim or becoming the instrument of invisible hands that help make others victims will eventually search for alternative solution. At emotional level its normative to be stressed out, sick, tired of the current economic system which we would bear the manifestation of the effect in psychological or medical conditions. We know for sure, that individuals health and happiness are significantly tangled with socio-economic conditions. Thus searching for alternative is a normative social function, which is when an individual's awareness about the systems and knowledge around them comes into picture. Without deliberation and analysis, empathizing on opinions and ideas would be difficult.

Those who understand the tangled interconnections between social, political, economical, cultural systems & practices, polices, decisions does always influences other creating a complex system where nothing can be deterministic. But the search for alternative that accept the non-deterministic and organic nature of systems and their associations always has continued and will continue. Alternatives, always has triggered the historical changes which in turn makes history. Without alternative ideas and systems, we would not be here. There is always a frustration potential behind a innovation, a degree of hatred about the state of conditions and things around the one who strives to bring the change through that innovation. So, altnerative is a fundamental key.

One of the beautiful advantages in community is that one shall learn from their peers and the information they share. One such learning in out community happened for me, when my peers shared about a structured course material that would help shape our theoretical understanding about Alternative Economic Models, more than what we have explored and known about. It certainly helped me learning about the historical underpinnings for the quest of alternative practices. Flamboyantly, the mentors elucidated numerous proved, proving methods and practices adapted guidelines of Cooperative Economics, by different communities distributed throughout the world convering as a self sustainable system.

It is a known fact, that Cooperation dates back as far as human beings have been organizing for mutual benefit. Tribes were organized as cooperative structures, allocating jobs and resources among each other, only trading with the external communities. I do not know whether i have even attempted to cover the history properly, however i try to portray as possible atleas for a neat introduction.

For those who are interested in this timeline data, i have made it using JSON, and feel free to download and share it with your peers, whenever you find it needed.

- Thanks to timelinejs team of knightlab.

We know that for any human society to function, and adapt smoothly to changes. We collectively learnt governance & economics determine the course of the societie's evolution. The following topics are the one i learned and felt that determines the course. Without basic understanding of these infrastructural pillars that reflect its influence in diverse domains & expressible in various forms. We are in a technological age where informational and scientific explanation is possible.

Invoking a Cooperative practice often is not similar to what a capitalistic regime would do. Unlike the capitalist model, cooperativeness is harnessed at the decentralized grass-roots level. The function of cooperative action differ completely in both theories. Capitalism contradicts itself with competition and thus uses cooperative structure to monopolize the market under one operation. Thus cooperative strategy can either be used for progressive or regressive outcome. It usually involves taking care of process to achieve the goal of cooperation. Not only the goal is vital, but also how the process is deviced and practiced in a cooperative way is vital.

Cooperativism as an alternative to crisis redundant, vicious Capitalism which devour well being and environment required for sustaining human life seems attractive. But one has to understand why Capitalism is crumbling around us since its inception. As Joseph Stiglitz stated, it was built on numerous theoretical assumptions upon assumptions that construct the fundamental foundation of the system. This construction eventually struggles, defends, and often gets offensive to stabilize itself from criticism and attacks. Since it is a form and function that gets infected in all agents who uses capitalism to derive economic support for life, will eventually become the vangaurds of its defense. We also have to accept the fact, that we are in this situation for which capitalism has contributed much in our past.

I am learning some of the properties that help construct a pragmatic alternative for such centrally controlled, secretive, exploiting, phase of our economic history. A democratic nation most possibly would support the right to form a cooperative association, devoid of gender difference. For instance, in our country - India, it has become a fundamental right to initiate or be a part of a cooperative or union. This supports the constitutional preamble of economic democracy. Whether we people choose to adapt and function is the pragmatic question. While the established economic functioning is mostly mixed and defined by free market, state intervention, & financial institutions, it is necessary to know about national, regional and local governance, socio-economic conditions to form a rational cooperative association. This means there is no formula as usually chased for success in modern capitalistic economy. Its rigor gets more organic and influenced by local conditions rather than global and distant conditions.

PROBABLE GUIDELINE

Booting up a Coopertive system as a collective economic platform which can adapt changes, vicious disruptions to provide for the community in a better way would be a challenging task and burden if not daunting. Especially, in the grand scale of capitalism's depth and breadth, choosing an alternative is itself a radical decision and thus will undergo a transitioning life cycle. The design of cooperative itself shall be based on globally believed set of fundamental cooperative principles and thus be organic and symbiotic rather than vicious and exploitative. Its basically a human centric design in a social view point.

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