Pursuit of Social Goals Through Consumer Co-operatives
Many advocates of the formation of consumer cooperatives - from a variety of political perspectives - have seen them as integral to the achievement of wider social goals.
Thus, the founding document of the Rochdale Pioneers, who established one of the earliest consumer cooperatives in England in 1844, expressed a vision that went far beyond the simple shop with which they began:
- "That as soon as practicable, this society shall proceed to arrange the powers of production, distribution, education, and government, or in other words to establish a selfsupporting home-colony of united interests, or assist other societies in establishing such colonies."
Cooperative Federalists, a term coined in the writings of Beatrice Webb, were advocates for the formation of federations of consumer cooperatives as means of achieving social reform. They anticipated such a development as bringing a broad set of benefits including economic democracy and justice, transparency, greater product purity, and financial benefits for consumers.
The Neo-Capitalist economic doctrine seeks to transfer the provision of almost all government provided public goods and the conversion of any large privately owned monopolies into consumer cooperatives.
Read more about this topic: Consumer Cooperative
Famous quotes containing the words pursuit of, pursuit, social, goals and/or consumer:
“Those who wander in the world avowedly and purposely in pursuit of happiness, who view every scene of present joy with an eye to what may succeed, certainly are more liable to disappointment, misfortune and unhappiness, than those who give up their fate to chance and take the goods and evils of fortune as they come, without making happiness their study, or misery their foresight.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“Sport inevitably creates deadness of feeling. No one could take pleasure in it who was sensitive to suffering; and therefore its pursuit by women is much more to be regretted than its pursuit by men, because women pursue much more violently and recklessly what they pursue at all.”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (1839–1908)
“Pan had been amongst them—not the great god Pan, who has been buried these two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who presides over social contretemps and unsuccessful picnics.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”
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“The misery of the middle-aged woman is a grey and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)