Co-operatives exist to make a positive
difference to the lives of people everywhere. When the first co-op store
was opened in 1844 it wasn't opened just to sell goods. It had a wider
purpose than that. Its founders wanted it to be a shining example of honesty
and equality - and it was.
These values remain at the core of Co-operatives today. Co-ops value democracy, education and loyalty.
They believe in equality, empowerment, fairness and honesty. They work
to promote opportunity for all and invest in communities as they strive
to improve people's lives.
Co-operatives are an alternative to capitalism.
"Do you want to prevent men from ever oppressing other men? Arrange matters such that they
never have the opportunity. Do you want them to respect the liberty, rights and human character
of their fellow men?
Arrange matters such that they are compelled to respect them - compelled
not by the will or oppression of other men, nor by the repression of the State and legislation,
which are necessarily represented and implemented by men and would make them slaves
in their turn, but by the actual organization of the social environment, so constituted that while
leaving each man to enjoy the utmost possible liberty it gives no one the power to set
himself above others or to dominate them, except through the natural influence of his
own intellectual or moral qualities, which must never be allowed either to convert
itself into a right or to be backed by any kind of political institution."
"How to organize society in such a way that every man and woman who comes into the world
may find approximately equal provision for the development of his or her various faculties
and for their exercise through labour; how to organize society which, by making it
impossible for one man to exploit the work of another, allows each to share in the enjoyment of
social wealth - which in fact is produced only by labour - only to the extent that he has contributed
his own to its production."
Co-operatives exist to make a positive
difference to the lives of people everywhere. When the first co-op store
was opened in 1844 it wasn't opened just to sell goods. It had a wider
purpose than that. Its founders wanted it to be a shining example of honesty
and equality - and it was.
