Category: cooperative society

Changes in The Cooperative Society Project

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
August 2025, Issue 54
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Greetings to all of you who read The Cooperative Society Project’s bimonthly newsletter.

Our first article was published in January 2017, featuring a cartoon of the just-inaugurated Donald J. Trump as the emperor with no clothes.

This August 2025 article is the 54th and the last in this bimonthly series.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re going away. And we hope you aren’t either.

The Cooperative Society Project website will undergo some minor renovations during the next couple of months.

The Project will continue to pursue its two primary goals:

  1. Discussing a paradigm shift in which humans may be on the threshold of a new historical stage: one characterized by cooperation, democracy, the equitable distribution of resources, and a sustainable relationship with nature.
  2. Making recommendations for how we can increase the likelihood of moving toward a more cooperative society during the next several decades.

All 54 newsletter articles and other articles, reports, videos, and social media posts will be available on our website. The primary themes of these posts are the development of cooperative enterprises, societal cooperation, political democracy, economic democracy, quality of life, environmental sustainability, and an emerging cooperative world economy in the 21st century.

Brief summaries of, and information on accessing, the following five books will also continue to be provided on the website:

Changes in activities will include:

1. Publishing occasional (rather than bimonthly) articles and more in-depth reports.
Topics during the next year may include:

  • A “Primer on Building a More Cooperative World Economy”
  • A “Report on Lessons Learned from the United Nations-sponsored 2025 International Year of Cooperatives”
  • A “Report on the Role of Cooperatives in Ameliorating Climate Change”

2. Joint activities with other US-based and international organizations that share our mission and goals. For example:

  • Increasing the role of cooperatives in implementing the United Nations’ development goals programs. There are many cooperatives, non-profit organizations and countries that actively supported the United Nations‘ Millennium Development Goals (MDG) program, which began in 2000 and ended in 2015, and currently support the UN Sustainable Development Goals program, which began in 2016 and ends in 2030. We anticipate a third UN development program, which will likely run from 2031 through 2050. Now is the time to apply the lessons learned since 2000 to shape the third development goals program.
  • Preparing a report on how the United States and the rest of the world can recover from Donald Trump’s second term in office and build a more cooperative world economy. Work on that report should begin immediately so that it is ready to serve as part of a plan of action for the 2026 and 2028 US election seasons and begin implementation in January 2029.

3. E.G. Nadeau is currently working on a monthly series of articles on corruption during Trump’s second term in office. This series of articles is not directly associated with The Cooperative Society Project. However, it will soon be accessible on a new website.

Conclusion
Again, thank you, Cooperative Society Project readers and supporters. Please stay with us as we make these minor changes in the Project, and please share with us your ideas, questions and concerns as we move forward by emailing The Cooperative Society.

Here is to working together to create a more cooperative world economy in the decades ahead.

Happy Co-ops Day! And Happy Co-ops Year!

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
June 2025, Issue 53
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Co-ops Day
The International Day of Cooperatives isn’t until Saturday, July 5, but I thought I would give you an early heads-up. 2025 marks the 103rd celebration of this event. The theme this year is “Driving Inclusive and Sustainable Solutions for a Better World.” In its Co-ops Day announcement, the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) stated that “Cooperatives operate in every sector of the economy worldwide—agriculture, finance, housing, health and care, education, energy, retail, industry and services . . . and have consistently demonstrated their ability to advance social justice, economic democracy, and ecological sustainability while offering efficient, innovative and inclusive solutions to community needs.”

Co-ops Year
2025 has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Cooperatives in a resolution that states, in part, “cooperatives . . . promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of local communities and all people, including women, young people, older persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples, whose inclusion strengthens economic and social development, and contribute[s] to the eradication of poverty and hunger. . . . “

The resolution also “encouraged all Member States, as well as the United Nations and all other relevant stakeholders, to take advantage of the International Year as a way of promoting cooperatives and raising awareness of their contribution to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.” (More about the Sustainable Development Goals below.)

So, why celebrate these events?
Co-ops are a big deal in the world economy. As democratically owned enterprises that put service above profit, they are a stark contrast to large stockholder- and state-owned corporations that currently dominate the global marketplace. The International Cooperative Alliance reports that there are more than 1 billion members of about 3 million cooperatives worldwide, and that 10% of the global employed population works for cooperatives.

There is plenty of room for exponential growth in the cooperative movement in the next couple of decades. The International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, concluded in a post-pandemic report that “more than 4 billion people [over half the world’s population lack] . . . access to health care and income security, particularly in relation to old age, unemployment, sickness, disability, work injury, maternity or loss of a main income earner, as well as for families with children.”

This analysis is consistent with the estimated need for reducing extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving a range of health, social service, economic and energy goals by 2030 identified in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals program.

A joint announcement by several UN agencies and co-op apex organizations recently stated that “[c]ooperatives are uniquely positioned to drive sustainable development, embodying principles of inclusivity, equity, and people-centered growth. By prioritizing the needs of their members and communities, cooperatives contribute directly to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs].” The announcement went on to list the roles that co-ops can play in advancing each of the 17 SDGs.

Because of the effectiveness of co-ops in addressing these problems, there is excellent potential to double the number of cooperative members to 2 billion by 2050.

For this rapid growth to occur, however, the international cooperative community will need to make some fundamental improvements in supporting and coordinating cooperative development projects.

These improvements are a key component of transitioning to a more cooperative world economy in the coming decades.

Conclusion
The good news is that millions of co-ops and more than a billion co-op members are already in place. We know the model works, and that many opportunities are available for expanding the size and number of these cooperatives.

The less-good news is that there is a need for much greater coordination among cooperative development organizations and other organizations supportive of co-op development to increase the effectiveness of fundraising, planning, organizing, financial networking, and applied research in order to realize the potential for exponential growth in the next quarter century.

Press Release: The Emerging Cooperative Economy

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
July 2024, Issue 47
By E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Saving the world by 2050?
Why is this human-dominated world so deeply flawed by the powerlessness and uncertainty that most of us feel, by the dramatic differences in the quality of our lives, and by the damage that we inflict on our physical environment?

In The Emerging Cooperative Economy, author E.G. Nadeau makes the case that we can transition to an international economy based on increasing political and economic democracy, meeting human needs, and sustaining the environment. This new book presents a path for moving toward an economy that puts the well-being of the many ahead of the wealth and power of a few.

Advance Praise
“Your book is amazing! It is a sweeping look at how we arrived at today, and it presents a blueprint for survival – not just survival, but a world with hope, rooted in a cooperative economy.”
Mark Lefebvre, Former President and CEO of Stanton & Lee Publishers

“E.G. Nadeau’s call for growing alternatives to our current economic order is . . . an urgent call to action.”
Tom Webb, Cofounder of The International Centre for Co-operative Management, St. Mary’s University

About the author
E. G. Nadeau has been researching, promoting, writing, and teaching about cooperatives and cooperation for more than 50 years. His cooperative career began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal in 1970. He has participated in dozens of cooperative development projects in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia and has authored or co-authored five previous books and numerous articles on cooperatives and societal cooperation. He is currently Codirector of The Cooperative Society Project, a nonprofit initiative.

Availability
The Emerging Cooperative Economy can be ordered through local booksellers and from Amazon.

For more information, contact E.G. Nadeau at (608) 345-3984 or egnadeau3@gmail.com.

Year-end greeting 2022

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
December 2022, Issue 38
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

Because E.G. is recovering from knee-replacement surgery, he’s not writing a newsletter this month. Instead, we invite you to scroll through the Newsletter Archive to the right, starting in January 2017. We thought you may be interested to see what we’ve been researching and writing about for the past six years.

The emperor’s new clothes (best clothes ever) – an image from our very first post in 2017. Hopefully we will not be seeing much of this figure in 2023 and beyond.

We also invite you to access the free PDF of EG’s most-recent book Strengthening the Cooperative Community on our website or as a print book through Amazon and local booksellers.


Here’s to a more cooperative 2023!
From The Cooperative Society Project team—
E.G., Luc, Jill, and Sue

Conflict and democracy in the COVID era

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
July 2021, Issue 29
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

This is the second of a four-part series of newsletter articles on the impact of the pandemic on major issues affecting progress toward a more cooperative society. The May article focused on economic concentration and wealth inequality. Upcoming articles will look at effects on population change, quality of life, and the climate crisis.

An overview of conflict and democracy

During the course of the 20th century, we made significant progress in reducing conflict and increasing democracy. There has been a dramatic reduction in deaths from war-related violence since the end of World War II and a rapid increase in the number of democratic governments beginning about the same time. Historical data also indicate that the rate of homicides has been decreasing for centuries.

But in the past 15-20 years, these positive trends have faltered. This has been especially true in the erosion of democracy in some countries; an increasing incidence of wars, within-country violence, and terrorist activities; and a wide divergence in homicide rates from country to country. These patterns are chronicled in our book, The Cooperative Society (2nd edition, 2018), and “The Cooperative Society 2020 Report.”

How has violence been affected by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021?

The simple answer is that there has been a mixed pattern of violence in the past year and a half.

ACLED, an international organization that monitors global violence, reports a small decrease in fatalities caused by violent events between 2019 and 2020, and then an upsurge in the first half of 2021 that returned the death rate to the 2019 level. These data suggest a temporary reduction in conflict deaths caused by the virus, but a return to “business as usual” in 2021.

An example of peaceful protests accelerated in the early months of the pandemic, resulting from George Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. Under the banner of “Black Lives Matter,” Floyd’s death sparked protests across the United States and in many other countries. According to the Washington Post, over 96% of protest marches in the U.S. were peaceful. The reaction to Floyd’s death and the conviction of Chauvin for murder appear to have initiated a broad movement to decrease violence by police against Blacks and other minorities.

Homicides and domestic violence appear to have increased during the pandemic.Some analysts have concluded that economic disruptions and restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus increased these kinds of violence. More data on these kinds of violence will be forthcoming in the next year or so.

Has democracy eroded at a faster pace during the pandemic?

Two well-known, annual reports on the state of democracy in the world conclude that there was a significant decline in democracy in 2020.

The Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2020 reports that:

Democracy was dealt a major blow in 2020. Almost 70% of countries covered by the Index … recorded a decline in their overall score, as country after country locked down to protect lives from a novel coronavirus. The global average score fell to its lowest level since the index began in 2006.

Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2021 sounded a similar theme.

As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. Incumbent leaders increasingly used force to crush opponents and settle scores, sometimes in the name of public health, while beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings.

These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.

The chart shown above is a screenshot from the Freedom House website: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege

As both of the excerpts from these reports indicate, part of the increase in anti-democratic tendencies during the pandemic may be temporary. That is, government efforts to enforce mask wearing, social distancing, and other actions to reduce the coronavirus infection rate limit freedom of action in the short term but may not signal a long-term increase in repression. Thus, in the latter half of 2021 and beyond, freedom of action may very well show a rebound.

Not all of democracy’s troubles in 2020 and the first half of 2021 can be attributed to the pandemic. For one thing, both of the above reports indicate a long-term trend in the weakening of democracy going back to 2006. The pandemic may have exacerbated anti-democratic tendencies, but the gradual erosion of democracy around the world has been occurring for well over a decade.

Democracy is under threat in the United States, not primarily because of COVID-19, but because of the anti-democratic words and actions of Donald Trump and his followers. In particular, he, many Republican elected officials at state and federal levels, and some rank-and-file GOP members have refused to acknowledge the reality of his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s continued promotion of “the big lie” led to the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., in which over 500 rioters have been arrested so far.

As part of this Trump and Republican-led effort to undermine democracy in the U.S., more than 20 state laws have been passed as of May of this year that make it harder for Americans to vote. President Biden and others have excoriated these and other proposed voting restrictions as the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

What changes should we expect?

What changes should we expect in conflict and democracy in the next couple of years?

It is difficult to predict future changes in conflict levels. The number of deaths from violent events around the world will depend on reforms in international and national policies and actions related to these events. At this time, there are no apparent trends, either positive or negative, that are likely to cause a significant change from the status quo.

Future trends in homicide are also unclear. On the one hand, there appears to be pent-up anger and frustration caused by the pandemic that have raised the worldwide level of homicides and assaults. On the other hand, as we gain more control over the pandemic, these sources of violence may subside. One hopeful note may be that in the United States and possibly in other countries, police violence against minorities may be reduced as a result of strong public protests against such violence. However, continued easy access to guns in the United States and gang activity in Central and South America are likely to increase homicides in the near future.

As stated above, some of the reduction in democratic freedom during the pandemic may disappear as restrictive measures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus are eliminated. But this change is a separate issue from the erosion of democracy during the past 15 years or so. Future trends in this long-term pattern are not readily predictable.

Then there is the anti-democratic cult of Trump and his sycophants in the Republican party. What will happen in the U.S. between now and the 2022 elections? Will we restore democratic norms or move increasingly toward authoritarianism?

Stay tuned. Or, better yet, play an active role in exposing “the big lie” and championing free and fair elections.

Announcing the publication of Strengthening the Cooperative Community

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
March 2021, Issue 27
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

How can we reduce inequality, combat global warming, and become more democratic?

One answer is through cooperatives. The one billion leaders and members of these member-owned and democratically controlled businesses throughout the world can be part of the solution to creating a better, fairer society.

From my 50 years of experience spent researching, developing, teaching, and writing about cooperative businesses, I describe in my new book, Strengthening the Cooperative Community, why and how co-ops succeed or fail. I also propose 16 specific, practical recommendations on how co-ops can become an even more dynamic force for positive change that benefits people and the environment in the 21st century.

The book first presents a historical review of a variety of cooperative sectors including insurance cooperatives that emerged around 1700; grocery, financial, and agricultural co-ops that originated in the 1800s; and electricity, employee-owned, and social services co-ops that began in the 20th century.

The book then focuses on examples of, and lessons from, my experience as a researcher and developer of dozens of cooperative projects in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The third section of the book describes six “building blocks” of cooperative development that have proven to be key factors in creating successful co-ops and a thriving International co-op industry. The final section presents opportunities for cooperative development in the 21st century that have the potential to generate jobs and services for hundreds of millions of new co-op members and employees.

Readers will discover that we, especially when acting cooperatively with others, really CAN make a difference. Strengthening the Cooperative Community can be ordered for $10 through local bookstores and, Amazon, or download the PDF at Book: Strengthening the Cooperative Community – The Cooperative Society

Violence in the Year of COVID-19

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
September 2020, Issue 24
by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.

The Cooperative Society Project tracks a variety of measures that indicate whether life is improving for people and the planet. One of these measures is “conflict.” The purpose of this newsletter is to take a look at how things are going related to this measure during the coronavirus.

Has violence increased or decreased in the world during the pandemic in 2020?

This is not an easy question to answer, partly because there is not a lot of reliable current data. The answer is also complicated by the varying impacts of the virus on different types of violence.

This newsletter sorts out some of the main things that we know and don’t know about violence besetting the world in 2020, and what can be done about it.

Several types of violence

In the case of domestic violence, there appears to be clear evidence that COVID-19 has caused a spike in violence to women and children. It is easy to believe these data because hundreds of millions of people around the world have lost their jobs, and in many cases are under stress from lack of money and food, the threat of infection, and uncertainty about the future. On top of this, many families are confined to staying at home in crowded conditions.

Homicides are a more difficult problem to analyze this year. Deaths from homicide appear to be up in a number of major cities in the United States. But these data can be misleading. The long-term trend in the U.S. and other countries is a decrease in the number of homicides per year. So, the increases observed this year may be a temporary blip rather than a longer-term trend. In addition, we have only partial data because homicides in rural areas and smaller cities are usually not aggregated and reported until the following year.

Protest-related data

ACLED, a well-respected data source on international violence, reported on September 3 that 93% of almost 8,000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the United States between late May and late August were non-violent. These numbers are far different from the stereotypes about the summer’s protests.

ACLED also reports worldwide data on conflict events and fatalities on an ongoing basis. As of September 19, the organization indicated that between mid-September 2019 and mid-September 2020, the number of “battles, riots, explosions/remote violence, and violence against civilians” had decreased by an average of a little over 20% per month during this time. During the same time, fatalities from these events decreased by over 10%, while protests increased by 33%.

One could speculate at length about what is behind these divergent statistics. So here are a couple of speculations from me: Crises like the pandemic may cause combatants and violent protesters to back off a bit on their violence because of disruptions created by a greater, more immediate crisis. On the other hand, non-violent protesters may increase their activity in reaction to the immediate crises and other grievances. Such a ramping up of non-violent protest is consistent with the Black Lives Matter demonstrations this summer.

The pandemic
Back to the pandemic, COVID-19 itself can be used as a form of violence, knowingly, through ignorance, or a combination of the two.

For example, we have recently learned from Bob Woodward’s new book Rage and the tapes from interviews between Woodward and Trump that the President was aware of the severity of the virus in early February 2020 but played down its importance to the general public – and continues to do so to this day.

The result of Trump’s deception as well as his incompetent leadership in fighting the virus is a form of violence against the American people, tens of thousands of whom have needlessly died of coronavirus, with tens of thousands more to come in the months ahead. To put this in perspective, the results of one analysis indicate that Trump’s bumbling of the War on COVID-19 has killed more than twice the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

Antidotes to the virus

So, what are the primary antidotes to the violence related to COVID-19?

In the U.S., the precursor to addressing the problem is to defeat Trump in November. After that, the Biden administration will need to put together an effective national strategy to get the coronavirus under control through rigorous enforcement of wearing masks; promoting social distancing; and widespread, rapid testing, tracing, and where necessary, quarantining. 

In parallel to gaining control of the virus, the new administration will also need to provide economic security for those who have been harmed by the financial effects of the virus. This will take the form of a combination of unemployment compensation supplements, rent and mortgage protection, other stimulus financing, small business grants and loans, and guaranteed healthcare coverage for those with inadequate or no health insurance.

The coup de grace will be an effective vaccine, which is likely to begin to be distributed in early 2021 and will be ramped up to cover the entire population, probably by the third quarter of the year. Of utmost importance in its distribution is that, in addition to those fighting the virus on the front line, the rollout of the vaccine should equitably reach all Americans.

Announcing The Cooperative Society 2020 Report

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
March 2020, Issue 21
by E.G. Nadeau and Luc Nadeau

The Cooperative Society 2020 Report was released on March 24. Download the full report here [ddownload id=”429″]

Following is the report’s executive summary:

Is the world on the verge of a new stage of human history, one characterized by cooperation and equitable access to resources rather than by conflict and extreme inequality?

We posed this question in the 2016 and 2018 editions of The Cooperative Society: The Next Stage of Human History. The purpose of this 2020 Report is to update the information presented in these two editions of the book, and to make revised recommendations on how to make our world a better place to live.

The Cooperative Society 2020 Report is organized around the same seven measures of human and environmental well-being as is the 2018 edition of The Cooperative Society: The Next Stage of Human History – Economic power, Wealth, Conflict, Democracy, Population, Quality of life, and Environment.

  1. 1. Economic power

Recent data indicate that the international pattern of economic concentration continues to be a major problem in the past few years. There is also inadequate evidence to indicate that more socially responsible business forms such as cooperatives and social enterprises are increasing or decreasing their role in the world economy.

The biggest factors that would alter this current stalemate are changes in the policies of international bodies such as the United Nations and the world’s most developed countries toward large, for-profit businesses. Tighter international anti-trust policies and enforcement of these policies, concerted efforts to thwart tax evasion by large companies, and progressive corporate taxation systems could reduce the inordinate influence on the world economy by large companies.

2. Wealth

Overall, the concentration of wealth in the world continues to decrease modestly. But inequality between the rich and the poor is still dramatically high.

Economic opportunities, international and domestic mechanisms to increase jobs and financial security, and progressive taxation policies are all means to move the world toward greater equality and financial security for the poor.

3. Conflict

In recent decades, there has been a pattern of reduced violence in the world – both from armed conflicts and from homicides – but we have a long way to go before we can claim that we live on a peaceful planet.

4. Democracy

Available resources show there was not a resurgence of increasingly democratic governments in 2019, but some data indicate that there is a strong popular will in a number of countries to move in such a direction. 2020 may prove to be the year in which that will is transformed into an upturn in world democracy.

5. Population

The UN Population Report appears to overestimate the world’s population growth rate because it underestimates future use of birth control around the world.

The World Population International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (WP) estimates the potential impact of improvements in reproductive health as they relate to significantly reducing the rate of population growth.

The results of these different methodological assumptions are dramatic. The UN projects 11.1 billion people by 2100 and WP projects 8.9 billion. What a difference comprehensive, international reproductive health programs could make!

6. Quality of life

There has been a recent slowdown in accomplishing the quality-of-life measures targeted by the UN and The Cooperative Society Project. This appears to be the result of reduced commitment by UN members; an overly ambitious agenda by the UN; and the magnitude of the climate-change crisis overshadowing other quality-of-life issues.

7. Environment

The recent increase in severe weather-related events around the world (at least partly attributable to global warming), slow and uneven progress in reducing carbon emissions, and the continued weak commitments of many countries to strong carbon-reduction policies are all worrying events. However, there are also some signs of optimism, such as science-based projections that we can still achieve 2030 carbon-emission-reduction goals, and increased commitments from the private sector, some countries, and sub-national government entities that are accelerating their involvement.

Conclusion

We conclude The Cooperative Society 2020 Report with cautious optimism. The increased political participation in many countries, mentioned above, may be a precursor to increased democracy and positive movement toward other components of the cooperative society. However, there is no guarantee that the recent uptick in political participation will result in widespread political reform.

Three Excruciating Years of Trumpus Rex

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
January 2020, Issue 20
by E.G. Nadeau

In January 2017, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. 

At the same time, with much less fanfare, The Cooperative Society Project launched its first bimonthly newsletter by making a set of predictions about the Trump presidency, entitled Trumpus Rex: A Damage Assessment.

Ordinarily, our newsletter addresses major international problems and trends, and doesn’t focus on individual political actors. But we made an exception in January 2017, because we feared that soon-to-be-President Trump would trample on many of the goals promoted in the second edition of our recently published book – The Cooperative Society: The Next Stage of Human History. 

Sure enough. He has. In many ways surpassing our most pessimistic predictions. Not only that, he has:

  • Achieved levels of jaw-dropping incompetence and perfidy that we had not even imagined. For example, making approximately 16,000 “false or misleading claims” while in office.[1]
  • Become only the third president in the history of the United States to be impeached.[2]
  • Ordered the assassination of a high-ranking Iranian general that has resulted in a major destabilization of the international political arena.[3]

Here’s an excerpt from our January 2017 article:

For those of you who have not yet read The Cooperative Society, you should be aware that the book and our website are not intended as sources for short-term political predictions. Instead, they look at long-term trends – on a worldwide scale – toward or away from greater cooperation, concentrated economic power and wealth, conflict, democracy, quality of life, and a sustainable environment. In that context, we examine the potential impact of the Trump Administration on the seven variables analyzed in the book and how it may affect movement toward or away from a more cooperative society.

We concluded that five out of the seven trends reviewed in the article would be negatively impacted by the Trump presidency. They have been. In fact, all seven trends have suffered, although Trump did sign off on an increase in funding to a U.S. international co-op development program. Much of the damage has been on a world scale, not just in the United States. (If you’d like, please review the 2017 article to check out our predictions.)

Here’s a quick review of some of the most egregious “cooperative society” setbacks this administration has precipitated:

  •  A cruel and bigoted migration “policy” especially targeting Muslims and Hispanics that has, among other things, separated children from their families, and subjected asylum seekers and other migrants to inhumane living conditions.[4]
  • The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” Trump’s signature piece of legislation, that has primarily been a financial boon to large corporations and the wealthy. [5]  
  • The withdrawal of the United States – the world’s largest per- capita carbon emitter – from the Paris Climate Agreement, thus greatly increasing the likelihood that the planet’s surface temperature will reach catastrophic levels in the next 30 years.[6]

As the 2017 article perversely concluded:

The divisiveness engendered during the presidential campaign and personified by Trump may lead over the next few years to a revitalized spirit of cooperation among the majority of the U.S. electorate as Trump’s contradictory and overblown promises go unfulfilled.

Let’s make that a 2020 New Year’s resolution.

[1] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days,” Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/16/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/

[2] Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Laura Bronner, “Our Poll Finds A Majority of Americans Think the Evidence Supports Trump’s Removal,” FiveThirtyEight, Jan 3, 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-poll-finds-a-majority-of-americans-think-the-evidence-supports-trumps-removal/

[3] Ankit Panda, “Iran Has Not Abandoned the Nuclear Deal,” The New Republic, January 7, 2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/156140/iran-not-abandoned-nuclear-deal

[4] “A Crime Against Humanity,” Resolution of the American Federation of Teachers, 2018, https://www.aft.org/resolution/crime-against-humanity

[5] Jesse Drucker and Jim Tankersley, “How Big Companies Won New Tax Breaks from the Trump Administration, New York Times, Dec. 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/trump-tax-cuts-beat-gilti.html

[6] Stacy Feldman and Marianne Lavelle, “Donald Trump’s Record on Climate Change,” Inside Climate News, Dec 19, 2019 https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19122019/trump-climate-policy-record-rollback-fossil-energy-history-candidate-profile

Beware of “isms”

The Cooperative Society Newsletter
September 2019, Issue 18
by E.G. Nadeau

Far too often, people use the same words, but mean very different things. This can be confusing, even dangerous, especially in the world of politics. With the lead-up to the 2020 presidential and congressional elections in the United States, it is particularly timely to take a close look at some of the major “isms” being bandied about by politicians, journalists, and pundits.

What does “populism” mean?
The word can apply to “a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of ‘the people’ and often juxtapose this group against ‘the elite’.”[1] But, right off the bat, use of the P-word runs into big trouble. You can have right-wing populists, left-wing populists, and demagogues like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela who claim to be populist, but have questionable popular support.

populism

So, ultimately, the word populism has become meaningless. To use it spreads confusion and disinformation rather than political understanding.

How about “socialism”?
Socialism is another word that has become a lightning rod for mystification as we approach the 2020 elections. Although running as a Democrat for president, Bernie Sanders refers to himself as a socialist. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, both members of Democratic Socialists of America, were elected as Democrats to the House of Representatives in 2018.

So, what is socialism? The classic definition with origins dating back to Karl Marx and others in the mid-1800s is, “Economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”[2]

But, these three self-proclaimed “socialists” sound much more like Northern European-style social democrats, who favor mixed economies that combine elements of both regulated private enterprise and a public sector that limits economic inequality and attempts to provide a minimal quality of life for all citizens.

To further complicate the meaning of socialism, President Trump and other Republicans accuse progressive Democrats of being out to destroy the US economy by nationalizing corporations and turning the US into an economic backwater like Cuba or Venezuela.

We would all be better served by dropping the word “socialism” from the rhetoric of the 2020 campaigns and focusing on the specific positions that candidates take related to healthcare, climate change, gun control, and other issues.

capitalism or socialism

What does “capitalism” mean?
A typical dictionary definition of capitalism is: “An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”[3]

The problem with a definition like this is that it doesn’t reflect the reality of the contemporary world economy, in which government regulation, taxation and incentives, and international trade agreements (and trade wars) play major roles in shaping the market in which corporations operate.

Virtually every country in the world – including such outliers as North Korea and Cuba – has a mixed economy, which combines private enterprise and public involvement in the market.

For example, Forbes’ Global 2000, the world’s largest publicly traded corporations, includes the four largest Chinese banks in its Top Ten list. These banks are predominantly government-owned, but also have limited investor-ownership.[4] The phrase “state capitalism” is often used to characterize the Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, and other national economies in which the government has a major, direct involvement in the market.

The purpose of corporations is also being redefined by some of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. CNBC recently reported that the Business Roundtable, comprised of almost 200 CEOs of major U.S. corporations, stated that the foremost function of their companies should not be to “serve their shareholders and maximize profits.” Instead it should be “investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers, and supporting outside communities.”[5]

Conclusion
Thus, as with populism and socialism, capitalism is not a useful term to describe a national economy, or a political ideology. The reality is that in different countries and in the international arena, there is a wide range of ways in which private enterprises, public enterprise, mixed enterprises, and various forms of public intervention interact to shape economic activity. The word “capitalism” is useless in capturing this diversity.

Thus, as we consider candidates for public office and the track records of those who already are in office, it’s not the “isms” we should be looking at, but the specific actions they have taken or propose to take to improve our social, economic, political, and environmental well-being. For more on what The Cooperative Society Project perceives as major components of a better society, please click www.thecooperativesociety.org

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism

[4] https://www.forbes.com/global2000/#68933a01335d

[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/the-ceos-of-nearly-two-hundred-companies-say-shareholder-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html