On the one hand, we are positive that autocracy is no good in the public sector economy. We'll even go to war to prevent its spread. On the other hand, we explicitly celebrate autocracy in the private sector economy, and we'll even reward go-it-alone entrepreneurs with special recognition.

In both cases, the private and the public sides of the economy are the creations of us, the citizens, and are both fueled by our primary resources—knowledge, energy, resources, and money—to serve our mutual, common good, interests. So why do we conceive of the best way to direct them in such radically opposed ways?

Good corporate communications are one good reason why we think autocracy is good in the private sector, even while we are sure it is quite bad in the public sector. Large investors have long recognized that they might sustain their autocratic positions in the private economy by throwing a few morsels out the window while passing through company towns—morsels like Vancouver's Carnegie Library (now Carnegie Centre), dropped there in passing by railway robber baron Andrew Carnegie.

Also, private sector autocrats have avoided bad press and built up an accumulation of good press by buying the presses. Had a genuinely free press existed all along, the waste of resources by private sector companies, for example, might have been as well documented as the waste in the public sector. Had there all along been a free press, we might have learned that the private sector has avoidably consigned to catastrophic injury or death more workers than the public sector around the world has in its wars. Certainly if our various levels of governments had been directly responsible for poisoning the rivers, destroying the ocean and lake bottoms, filling the air with cancer causing carcinogens, and throwing the climate completely out of balance, we would not hesitate to use our power to throw those responsible not only out of office, but off the bridge.

However, so long as the press is mostly in the hands of the private sector autocrats, the democratic, well-performing, and common-good seeking public sector will be relentlessly demonized, while the autocratic, mixed-success, and totally self-interested private sector will be ceaselessly celebrated.

There is no question that the private sector has proved itself useful to the public to a remarkable extent. What is also true, however, is that even if it didn't, its total power is such that we couldn't really do anything to remove or alter it at this late stage. The private sector is here to stay, but can it be altered sufficiently to become of net positive value to society?

With the environment being as at risk as it is, with finances for common goods being as thin as they are, and with people being as despairing of all forms of authority as they have become, it is without question time that we find a different method of directing significant portions of our economy, a method that is found in neither the prevailing autocratically-directed joint stock private company, nor in the strapped and cornered democratically-directed public sector.

Happily, such a method might well have been recently found. Though unfortunately burdened with an old-sounding name, the rise of the co-operative economy, combining the wise judgment delivered by the democracy of the public sector with the energy delivered by the single-purpose orientation of the private sector, might well foster the economic revolution that saves us.

The co-operative company is different from the traditional capitalist company in only very minor, deep-down ways. But like unseen minor alterations to a species' genetic code, the results can be spectacular.

In a traditional capitalist joint-stock company, votes on questions of the company's direction are allotted by shares of ownership. Generally speaking, someone who owns 51% of the shares of a company has absolute control over questions of direction of that company, since they would be allotted 51% of the votes at shareholder meetings.

In a co-operative company, votes on questions of the company's direction are allotted democratically—one vote per each member of the co-operative, regardless of what they have invested in it, or do for it. This is essentially the only difference between a co-operative company and a traditional capitalist company.

But look at the results. Members of a co-operative might typically be all the users of the service the co-operative proposes to offer, as well as all those employed at the co-operative to deliver those services, in addition to those who contribute financially by way of investing in the co-operative. If it is a food store the co-operative proposes to operate, since it is the customers and the staff who, each possessing one vote, dominate in voting on questions to do with the direction of the company, policies that directly favour the customers and the staff can't fail to be implemented. By contrast, at traditional capitalist companies, policies that directly favour the largest investors exclusively, and at the expense of the customers and the staff, cannot fail to be implemented.

As a result, co-operative companies can come into existence to serve a huge variety of purposes—as wide a variety as members can imagine. Traditional capitalist joint stock companies, by contrast, can generally serve one purpose only: the generation of profit. Co-operatives can therefore serve purposes that do not, either directly or as a by-product, produce profit, while traditional companies may only engage in those purposes that directly produce profit, leaving all other purposes to wilt.

A group of people might, for example, think of creating a co-operative company whose purpose is to save its members thousands of dollars a year in transportation costs by organizing a car sharing system. Such a company does not exist to generate profits for its owners, and might never actually be able to.

But it certainly can pool the contributions of its members to purchase a large enough fleet of cars and an efficient computer system and staff in order to take advantage of economies of scale and other efficiencies not available to single car owners, and thereby serve its purpose—to provide its members adequate car-based transportation at a fraction of the cost available otherwise, and do it very well and in a solidly sustainable fashion.

This is in fact exactly what the Co-operative Auto Network has been doing for years now in Vancouver, and as a member for three years, I have saved by my estimation $9,000 so far, with only occasional inconveniences when no car was available when I wanted one. No profit-oriented company could have turned this trick, nor could a standard non-profit enterprise been so single-mindedly dedicated to the strict self-interest of the customers of the company.

Another potential example: In British Columbia, we recognize that forestry is an integral part of the economy and cannot be completely stopped without bringing on worse consequences than the damage forest companies currently do to the forests and to the environment. But how about a co-operative forestry company in which the members are the staff of the company and the neighbours who live in the regions in which the company proposes to operate?

Currently, most forest companies are large and foreign owned, and their sole purpose for existing is to extract and export whatever profit can be squeezed from the activity of cutting trees down. A co-operative forestry company, on the other hand, would not exist to generate profits for distant unknown investors. Instead, it would exist for whatever reason its members wish for it. In this case, the members would wish for a moderate and secure living wage for the workers (some of the members being workers), and for a sustainable cutting practice that preserves the environment of the forest, and respects other uses like the recreational activities of the neighbours (who are also members).

Could such a company compete and stay in business? Perhaps it can. What it saves by way of not being required to generate profits skimmed off for the private pleasure of foreign owners might make up for the extra costs in taking care when cutting trees in sensitive areas. Certainly such a forest company can take advantage of the fact that it explicitly exists to only serve its workers and its neighbours' concerns for the environment in its marketing efforts to environment-sensitive markets like Europe, where it might promote the idea of boycotting the products of its irresponsible competitors.

There is nothing currently standing in the way of such a creation today, making the revolution possible now. All that is required is leaders with imagination and sources of capital with which to begin to engage in business.

Leaders with imagination will emerge when knowledge and expertise about co-operatives is spread sufficiently broadly and deeply throughout a society, creating a demand for them among the members of that society, a demand leaders will be provoked into addressing. Over the next several issues of The Republic, this paper will do what it can to spread knowledge and expertise about co-operatives for this very purpose.

Capital, on the other hand, is a harder thing to address, and will be the subject of future articles, as well as the next one in the series in this issue of The Republic.

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