Worker cooperatives have a lengthy, often radical history, with interest in them growing since the onset of global recession in 2007–2008. Their resurgence, especially in parts of Latin American and Southern Europe, usually as a response to firm closures, has seen them emerge as an alterna- tive to the proliferation of the “gig economy” and its associated job insecurity. Yet, despite their historical longevity and substantial evidence of their relative resilience to economic fluctuations, their presence in most countries remains at most marginal. While cooperative firms overall (including consumer, producer, and buying cooperatives) are quite prominent internationally, with nearly 280 million people working in them, cooperatives owned and managed by workers account for only around 11.1 million members worldwide (Eum 2017: 13). This low figure, though, indicates that worker cooperatives have considerable scope for growth—the premise underpinning these two books.
Each provides significant theoretical and strategic insights into how worker cooperatives might not only galvanize worker and community resistance to insecurity, poverty, and unemploy- ment but also inform strategies for long-term radical-democratic mobilization. Yet there are also significant differences in emphasis and purpose. Ranis (2016), building on previous publications (e.g., Ranis 2010, 2014), demonstrates how worker cooperatives in Argentina and other coun- tries, such as Cuba, can inspire and inform workers and communities in the United States. He focuses particularly on how eminent domain (the U.S. term, broadly comparable with compul- sory purchase, acquisition, or appropriation by the state, in other national jurisdictions) might be used to realize the progressive potential of worker cooperatives. In earlier work (e.g., Jossa 2009; Jossa and Cuomo 1997), Jossa had argued for a view of socialism as a system of labor-managed firms (LMFs) within a market economy, whereby he rejected any need for central planning. In Labor Managed Firms and Post-Capitalism, he extends the theoretical and empirical dimensions of this argument, illustrating how his interpretation of LMFs might contribute to a new under- standing of both Marx and Marxism.
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