Churches and Cooperatives (Part V): Worker Cooperatives as Toeholds of Transformation
John Aden
A theological vision for economic justice will fall flat if it is not paired with a practical model of organization that empowers workers to collectively meet their economic needs. The cooperative model is one well-tested, values-oriented alternative to extractive capitalism, and churches concerned about economic justice have several potential avenues for supporting the cooperative movement. According to the International Co-operative Alliance, a cooperative is simply “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”1 Cooperatives take many different forms. Consumer cooperatives, for example, are owned and governed by the people who utilize their services. Producer cooperatives, on the other hand, allow independent producers to share resources and market their products together. Each cooperative approach has its strengths, but here I will center worker cooperatives because they radically subvert the values and organizational hierarchy of extractive capitalism by returning power to workers.
Worker cooperatives exist, first and foremost, to ensure the well-being of their workers. Unlike traditional investor-oriented corporations that delegate power based upon a democracy of the dollar, worker cooperatives are collectively owned and operated by “worker-owners” on the principle of “one member, one vote.”2 Day-to-day tasks may, of course, be delegated like any other organization; the ultimate difference is that workers themselves determine the purpose, administration, and profit distribution of the enterprise instead of taking orders from the top. In other words, workers are not merely production costs, toiling for outside investors and disconnected CEOs, rather worker concerns are the center of economic activity.
Although cooperatives participate in many traditional business activities and can be pursued within a capitalist market, they ultimately push beyond the exploitative structure and values of capitalism. In our current context, participating in the capitalist marketplace is strategically necessary; giving in to its extractive hierarchy is not. Cooperation and democratic participation is “an inversion of that capitalist order, but one that can nevertheless persist in that order’s midst,” as Nathan Schneider states.3 In both microeconomic organization and macroeconomic values, worker cooperatives offer a pragmatic and theologically just alternative to capitalist extraction. On the organizational level, worker cooperatives return surplus-distribution mechanisms to the creators of that surplus.4 Extraction is eliminated from the equation as workers and owners are collapsed into one group.
Though cooperatives oppose the profit extraction found in capitalist businesses, they should also not be confused with not-for-profit enterprises that churches traditionally support. Cooperatives do not shy away from profits; rather, they are free to pursue more than profits. Capitalism sacralizes profit as the ultimate goal of economic activity, rendering all other concerns secondary. Corporations “race to the bottom” in an effort to minimize production costs, slashing worker compensation if not abandoning communities altogether in the pursuit of cheap labor. But when workers have the final say, care for the community naturally follows as a core commitment of the enterprise. Schneider claims, “[B]ecause a co-op’s owners are the people who live where it operates, they have every reason to care about how it affects their communities. The community is not an externality, it’s part of the business.”5 This expansive, communal notion of economic responsibility lays the groundwork for working-class solidarity.6 Cooperatives bring disparate workers together around their shared interests, and in this movement from atomization to solidarity, the working class builds alternative power that presents a genuine alternative to capitalism.
Our current historical moment is an opportune time for developing worker cooperatives. The model of extraction is reaching its tipping point, and Americans across the political spectrum are growing more and more dissatisfied with an economy governed by elites. As the “baby boomer” generation reaches retirement age, we risk losing thousands of small and medium sized businesses. These businesses are invested in their communities in ways that large corporations never will be, and converting them to cooperatives can retain local jobs long after their original owners have retired. Jessica Gordon Nembhard argues that cooperatives “address such issues as community control in the face of transnational corporate concentration and expansion” and “the pooling of resources and profit sharing in communities where capital is scarce and incomes low.”7
In short, cooperatives prevent capitalist extraction by recirculating their surplus value among those who are genuinely invested in the community. This circular model of economics makes cooperatives an especially promising option for historically marginalized people. Cooperatives will have limited impact if they recreate white-dominant and male-dominant economic spaces.8 Building alternative power to capitalism means simultaneously challenging the interlocking systems of white supremacy and patriarchy within the economy by shifting concentrations of wealth to marginalized communities.9 Unfortunately, low-wealth communities that would benefit the most from worker cooperatives often lack the resources to create them. Those that do find their footing often struggle with scaling up or competing with larger corporations. This is precisely where churches can play a role. Just as the Black Church served as a hub for the civil rights and labor rights movements in the 1960s, so too can churches in the present support the cooperative movement by encouraging democratic practices, defraying start-up costs, or even establishing their own cooperatives.
Context is key for churches seeking to embody economic cooperation. The cooperative model necessarily embraces diverse enterprises shaped by each community’s needs, resources, and overall context. Not every church can or should incubate a cooperative in the immediate future, but every church can find toeholds of transformation, that is, imaginative yet pragmatic starting points that move people of faith towards the work of economic justice. Toeholds of transformation are just that: toeholds—small yet pivotal steps on a much longer journey. What follows is a series of steps churches might take to support worker cooperatives and embody the theological vision of economic justice.
Assess the Church’s Own Democratic Practices. Worker cooperatives are fundamentally an extension of democracy from the political sphere to the economic sphere. In many cases, churches are the only other places outside of the ballot box where Americans practice democracy on a regular basis: approving pastoral calls, selecting council members, voting on how to use church property, and more. However, even in communities with cooperative ideals, pastors and church leaders are well aware that many church programs stay afloat on the dedicated volunteerism of the ten percent who do ninety percent of the work. Likewise, many churches simply follow the lead of their charismatic pastor, as if taking orders from a benevolent boss. Cooperative economics seems impractical because so few of us have any practice exercising our democratic muscles. By critically assessing and extending their democratic practices, churches can instill a sense of cooperation in their communities and help normalize the practice of democracy beyond the electoral system. A critical step in this process is analyzing power dynamics between clergy and laity, with the goal of flattening hierarchy within the congregation.10 Congregations may ask themselves: does the church mirror a capitalist hierarchy where those at the top are more powerful (or more holy) than the rest, or do all members of the community have equal authority? Democratizing and decentralizing power is not an outright rejection of pastoral authority, rather it is an embrace of power among rather than power over—the model that Jesus exemplified throughout his ministry and that cooperatives epitomize in the economy.
Cultivate Ecclesial Class Consciousness. Reclaiming a class lens and an economic hermeneutic is a difficult but necessary conversation if churches want to pursue a theological vision of economic justice. Countless biblical stories are characterized by cooperation and solidarity with the poor, but these values become far less evident without a sustained focus on relations of economic power. The term class carries semantic baggage in the United States, thanks in large part to the long history of capitalist propaganda that has equated the labor movement and criticism of the rich with communism. Legitimate or not, these fears have real power among many Christians today, so how might churches address class without citing Marx or creating a “red scare” within their congregations? Learning to name our self-interest is one way to highlight our shared class concerns.11 Self-interest should not be confused with selfishness: self-interest is the ground for shared, communal interest. Most of us want economic security (living wages, stable employment), a safe environment (clean water and air, minimal climate change), and equitable communities (well-funded schools, affordable housing). All of these interests are deeply related to class, whether we use class language or not. Churches may also begin the conversation by engaging their own denomination’s history with class issues. Catholics, for example, have a long tradition of social teachings that directly address working-class concerns, dating back to the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. Engaging economic issues as a community can instill a sense of ecclesial class consciousness and heighten the theological impetus to pursue economic justice. This process may also help certain congregants realize that working-class concerns are their own concerns, thus paving the way for worker solidarity.12
Identify Where the Work is Being Done. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Churches committed to the cooperative movement must resist the temptation to follow the traditional top-down charity model and instead embrace the cooperative ethos they are hoping to instill. A do-it-all savior-complex is not only ineffective but also inevitably maintains existing hierarchies by setting the church apart from the “others” they hope to serve. Instead, churches ought to embrace partnerships with other churches or community organizations already engaged in this work.13 In theological terms, churches are co-laborers in the work of justice. Christians can never bring about the reign of God on our own, rather we are called to follow God’s lead in solidarity with our neighbors. Identifying where the work is being done also involves a clear analysis of needs in the community. Cooperatives will gain little traction if they are not serving the needs of both worker-owners and the broader community. What are the gaps (“market inefficiencies,” in economic terms) that cooperatives could fill? Who in the community has been left behind by the capitalist economy? And who is already committed to addressing these needs?
Act. Theological and economic ideals are only valuable to the degree that they lead to real acts of liberation: “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17). As a starting point, educational programs are a helpful way to communally engage the three points above, but only if they are tied to concrete action steps. An education series might incorporate Bible studies and practical lessons about cooperatives, transition to community conversations about the church’s current economic and democratic practices, then conclude with actions that directly support cooperatives.14The shape of this final step is highly dependent upon the resources, interests, and needs of the church and its local community. Relatively wealthy churches might establish investment funds that support new or existing cooperative enterprises. These funds offer financial stability to cooperatives that may not be eligible for traditional financing.15 Churches might also allow cooperatives to utilize other resources like building space and land. If, for example, a suburban or rural church with a significant plot of land sees few prospects for supporting a worker cooperative in the immediate future, they may take a step in the right direction by converting a portion of their land into a cooperatively-run community garden.16 Cooperatives receiving support from a church should not be treated as external recipients of charity but partners with whom the church is in deep relation.
Finally, this partnership is never more pronounced than when a church establishes its own worker cooperative. In many cases, churches are already practicing internal, small-scale economic cooperation (hardship funds, rent support, food programs, etc.), and establishing a cooperative allows churches to extend these practices to the workplace itself. For many faith communities, working-class concerns are deeply personal, not merely a problem to be solved “out there” in the extended community. People of faith are workers too, and their lives would be enriched by an economic model that expands their capacity for economic self-determination and unites them in solidarity with their fellow workers and congregants.
If a church hopes to present a real economic alternative that offers more stability and decision-making power than capitalist enterprises, then the decision to incubate a cooperative should not be taken lightly. It takes careful planning, training, community support, and a dedicated group of worker-owners to establish a viable cooperative. To reiterate, starting a cooperative is one toehold of transformation among many, but successfully taking this leap amounts to much more than traditional charity work. Charity is a one-way street. Cooperation is a complete revision of the values and relations of capitalism, and churches are as deeply reshaped by this work as their cooperative partners are. Partnering with worker cooperatives allows faith communities to concretely disentangle from the gods of capitalism as they work to cultivate an economy that works for everyone and better embodies the reign of God on earth.
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The scope of this project was limited to churches and their relationship to modes of production, but the Church’s role in this work cannot be disconnected from larger democratizations of power. As a model of workplace democracy, worker cooperatives address the heart of capitalist extraction, and their impact will be multiplied when paired with pro-worker legislation, equitable voting access, universal healthcare, and unionization of workers without access to cooperatives. Churches pursuing cooperation will not be a panacea for economic ills in an era defined by inequitable distributions of financial power, but they must play a role nonetheless. By placing economic justice at the core of its theology, praxis, and biblical interpretation, the Church can present a real alternative to capitalist extraction. The Christian tradition has the theological wisdom and the organizational capacity to cultivate the type of solidarity and cooperation that has a ripple effect in the broader economy. We should not overestimate the Church’s power to bring about a just economy, but it would be a greater error to underestimate it.
1 “Cooperative identity, values & principles,” International Cooperative Alliance, accessed November 24, 2020, https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity.
2 Worker-owners typically purchase a “member share” as an initial buy-in. This differs from traditional investments in that all worker-owners offer an equal investment for an equal voting share. Cooperatives focused on low-wealth communities may choose to waive investment requirements or implement “sweat equity” or payroll reduction systems. Grants (including potential partnerships with churches) can help ease these initial investment costs so low-wealth worker-owners have no debt or out-of-pocket expenses. What ultimately matters is that investment structures are determined by workers themselves and that ownership and governance remain in workers’ hands.
3 Nathan Schneider, Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy (New York: Nation Books, 2018), 14.
4 This model aligns with what Richard Wolff calls workers’ self-directed enterprises. According to Wolff, this shift in economic organization, paired with the expansion of democracy in other areas of life, would “effectively end capitalism” [Wolff, 13].
5 Schneider, Everything for Everyone, 13.
6 This holistic sense of responsibility also extends to the ecosphere. The capitalist class can afford not to care about the climate crisis and environmental degradation in a way that communities directly impacted by these issues cannot.
7 Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014), 12-13.
8 See Nathan Schneider, “We Need to Reinvent the Co-op,” in Cooperatives and Religious Communities, Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, October 20, 2020, https://www.religionandjustice.org/ interventions-forum-coops
9 In African American communities in particular, there is a long yet under recognized history of Black-owned worker cooperatives that can be reclaimed in the present. See Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s Collective Courage for a detailed history of Black cooperative movements in the United States.
10 Other steps might include assessing how decisions are made (and who makes them), providing greater transparency and decision-making on budgetary decisions, evaluating membership/voting requirements, etc. For a more radical reimagining of non-hierarchical church relations, see “Envisioning the Church of the Multitude,” in Rieger and Kwok, 111-132.
11 In my own experience with community organizing groups, self-interest is best identified through “one-on-one” conversations. One-on-ones are conversations in which a leader asks questions that prompt an individual to share elements of their story that uncover their self-interest. These meetings build deep relationships and highlight shared interests among community members. The Gamaliel Network is one organization that offers training in one-on-ones and other community organizing tactics (https://gamaliel.org/).
12 Our experiences of class and the particularities of our self-interest are undeniably unique, and we should not gloss over vast differences in power, privilege, and experience, but these are not inevitable barriers to solidarity. Rieger and Henkel-Rieger use the term “deep solidarity” to address this issue. Recognizing that almost all of us have to work for a living, “deep solidarity allows us to respect our differences and put them to productive use.” [Rieger and Henkel-Rieger, 60.]
13 Beyond the local level, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) are two examples of denominationally supported justice groups committed to cooperative development. See, for example, CCHD’s partnership with the Democracy at Work Institute and LWF’s support of women’s cooperatives in Nepal: “About,” Democracy at Work Institute at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, accessed November 21, 2020, https://institute.coop/about-dawi; Cornelia Kästner, “From Darkness Into Light,” Lutheran World Federation, July 11, 2014, https://www.lutheranworld.org/blog/darkness-light.
14 For introductory resources on worker cooperatives, see the educational modules from the L.A. Co-op Lab Academy (https://academy.lacooplab.com/). The Southeast Center for Cooperative Development (a group with which the author is affiliated) is also currently researching and developing resources on churches and cooperatives through a Louisville Institute “Collaborative Inquiry Team” grant (https://www.co-opsnow.org/cit-project).
15 Banks and other lending institutes may turn away low-wealth individuals and groups seeking to become worker-owners for poor credit ratings or limited collateral. Even if a cooperative can secure a loan, interest rates place significant burdens on new cooperatives, and at worst, may trap them in a cycle of debt that eliminates what little wealth they began with. If capitalism in general is based on extractive relations between workers and owners, then financial capitalism is based on extraction between debtors and lenders. Church lending programs can combat this issue by lending on the basis of a genuine partnership rather than extraction. See the Seed Commons loan fund for a nationwide example of non-extractive lending for cooperatives (https://seedcommons.org/). Beyond direct support of cooperatives, particularly large churches may also consider establishing a credit union (a banking cooperative governed by its members) to help combat predatory lending and other extractive financial practices.
16 Partnerships involving church property should bear in mind 501(c)(3) regulations. Other examples might include events spaces for independent and cooperative entrepreneurs or community land trusts for affordable housing.