When a business isn’t a business: law and the political in the history of the United Kingdom’s co-operative movement

• Main Author: Tara Mulqueen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law 2012-05-01
• Series: Oñati Socio-Legal Series
• Subjects: Co-operative Law; the Political; Politics; Social Movements; Institutionalization; Legislación sobre cooperativas; Política; Movimientos sociales; institucionalización
• Online Access: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050353

<p>Contemporary efforts to develop and promote co-operatives and the social economy confront a tension in the competing and often conflicting aims to achieve commercial sustainability in a capitalist market while also promoting social transformation. Through a review of the historical experience of institutionalization in the Co-operative Movement in the United Kingdom, this article attempts to generate insights into these tensions. Despite being seen as unpolitical, co-operatives can be understood as political at the level of re-shaping sociality through co-operative practice. Although the similarity between co-operatives and joint-stock companies produces ambiguities within the movement, this does not in itself detract from the co-operative project. It is argued that the codification of co-operatives in law as bodies corporate constitutes the closure of the political aspect of co-operation and reinforces and gives consequence to the misconception of co-operatives as primarily commercial entities.</p> <hr /><p>Los esfuerzos por desarrollar y promover las cooperativas y la econom&iacute;a social se enfrentan a un conflicto entre los objetivos contrapuestos de lograr la sostenibilidad comercial en un mercado capitalista, a la vez que se promueve una transformaci&oacute;n de la sociedad. Realizando una revisi&oacute;n de la experiencia hist&oacute;rica de la institucionalizaci&oacute;n del movimiento cooperativista en el Reino Unido, este art&iacute;culo pretende analizar estas tensiones. A pesar de ser apol&iacute;ticas, las cooperativas se pueden entender como un elemento pol&iacute;tico por su intento de reformular la sociedad. Aunque la similitud entre cooperativas y sociedades an&oacute;nimas produce ambig&uuml;edades dentro del movimiento cooperativista, esto no va, por s&iacute; mismo, en detrimento del proyecto de cooperaci&oacute;n. Se argumenta que, al contemplar en la legislaci&oacute;n a las cooperativas como personas jur&iacute;dicas, se acaba con el aspecto pol&iacute;tico de las cooperativas. A su vez, esto refuerza y termina con la idea err&oacute;nea de las cooperativas como entes b&aacute;sicamente comerciales.</p> <p><strong>DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: </strong><a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050353" target="_blank">http://ssrn.com/abstract=2050353</a></p>