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When asked what the difference is between buying a book from Amazon and the Bookshop Co-op, a new venture in Stevens Point, member/owner Justin Seis said the answer is simple: everything. 

A convergence between Marxian socialism and ecosocialism can help us envision a remedy to the deep troubles of our time. In this essay, I take utopia as that convergence. As articulated by the maverick philosopher, Ernst Bloch, the Marxist tradition is implicitly utopian. In this “warm stream” of the Marxist tradition, utopia provides orientation and explores the realm of the possible. It is first and foremost a catalyst for social change. It propels agency in the form of forward-looking thought, critique and engagement with the status quo.

The promise of sharing profits is surely alluring, but how profitable can a rideshare company be, especially considering how many years Uber and Lyft operated in the red? To Forman, there’s a clear path to profitability, particularly if it doesn’t spend millions on legislation, like Uber and Lyft have. “If you’re not trying to bankroll an assault on workers rights in the United States, it turns out you save a lot of money,” he says. To break even, he says, they need to complete about 1,300 trips a day. In New York City, there are more than 400,000 rideshare trips daily.

A tour of the La Montañita Co-op whose 4 stores and distribution center make it an important cooperative network in New Mexico.

Watch more from UW Center for Cooperatives on Youtube

Union co-ops shift economic and political power to workers and the communities in which they live by providing a pathway for worker-owners to not only share in the profits but also participate democratically in workplace governance. Ownership alone, however, is not enough. The way we own must also be different. We cannot simply replicate the status quo; we must redesign the systems that organize the production, distribution, and reproduction² of our needs and our wants and how they are achieved.

Four questions are useful for understanding what “community ownership” means in practice:

Rural electric cooperatives seeking to leave the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association have received exit fee estimates in a federal filing and it adds up to billions of dollars

The respective price tags for two Colorado co-ops in the forefront of the exit movement — Brighton-based United Power and Durango-based La Plata Electric Association — were $1.5 billion and $449 million.

“These exit fees are still barriers to leaving,” said Eric Frankowski, executive director of the Western Clean Energy Campaign, an environmental advocacy group.

Smith reports that in 2020 three firms—DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub—controlled 93 percent of the restaurant food delivery market (DoorDash had a 45 percent market share, Uber Eats 30 percent, and Grubhub 18 percent).

This past May, CEANYC joined the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives (NYCNOWC) and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) to host the first in a series of events called Rebuilding with Our Powers Combined, giving a chance to the dozens of attendees from across sectors to learn about each other’s work and strategize around future collaborations.  

In case you missed it, below are two event highlights. 

With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization.