Est. 2026
A new economy
is possible.
Ideas, tools, and stories for building cooperative, community-owned alternatives to corporate power.
Latest Posts
Cooperativism Is Not Charity. It Is Power.
Cooperativism is not capitalism with better manners. At its best, it is the seed of a different relationship between human beings. It is not a charity, a nonprofit, or conscious capitalism. It is a structural challenge to the way power is organized in economic life.
New Habits of the Soul: Why the Cooperative Movement Needs a Culture, Not Just a Structure
A new system does not only need new laws. It needs new habits of the soul. Building cooperative enterprises, legislation, and financial infrastructure is necessary — but none of it is sufficient if the people inside the new institutions still think like employees.
A Kinder Boss Is Still a Boss: What the Old Left Got Right — and What It Missed
A kinder boss is still a boss. A public boss is still a boss. The deeper question — the one the cooperative movement insists on asking — is whether we can build a society where the people doing the work also hold the power.
Every System Has a Core Relationship: Why Cooperativism Goes to the Root
The argument for cooperative economics is not primarily about policy, regulation, or redistribution. It is about something deeper. It is about the relationship between people inside the act of production itself.
The Marcora Law: A Blueprint for a Democratic Economy
Italy's Marcora Law lets laid-off workers turn their unemployment benefits into startup capital to buy the company that just closed on them — and relaunch it as a worker cooperative.
Brewing Prosperity: The World's Best Coffee Cooperatives and Why They Matter
Coffee is one of the most economically vital crops grown anywhere. Over 125 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. And for most of its history, the farmers doing the hardest work have captured almost none of the value. Coffee cooperatives are changing that.
Building Worker Power: The History of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives
The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives didn't appear overnight. It was built by workers, organizers, and cooperative developers who believed that worker ownership needed a national voice — and decided to build one themselves.
Compartimos, Crecemos, Prosperamos: Mexico's Cooperative Economy and the Fight for Economic Democracy
Mexico's cooperative tradition didn't begin with legislation. It began in the soil — in the communal land practices of indigenous communities that predate the Spanish conquest by centuries. This is the story of one of the world's most diverse and resilient cooperative economies.
Decentralized, Transparent, Built on Trust: How Open Collective Is Reimagining Financial Infrastructure for the Solidarity Economy
Every solidarity economy initiative faces the same invisible wall. You have the people, the mission, the community support. But to handle money legally you need a bank account, a legal entity, and an accountant. Open Collective exists to tear that wall down.
Does the Emilia-Romagna Model Actually Work? The Data Says Yes.
Skeptics say cooperative economies can't compete — that worker ownership is inefficient, that democratic governance is too slow. Emilia-Romagna has been proving them wrong for 140 years. Here's the data, the mechanisms, and the honest assessment of what actually works.
Dignity. Fair Pay. Democratic Control: The Drivers Cooperative Takes On Uber and Lyft
In New York City, 85,000 drivers — 91% of them immigrants — power one of the largest rideshare markets in the world. The Drivers Cooperative is building the alternative. Worker-owned. Democratically governed. Fair pay guaranteed.
History Is Not Moved by Good Intentions: Why Cooperativism Must Become a Real Economic Base
Feudalism did not end because someone made a better argument. It ended because a new form of power grew under its feet. History is not moved by good intentions. It is moved by power. The question the cooperative movement has to answer is whether it is building enough of it.
The Mondragon of Mississippi: Cooperation Jackson and the Solidarity Economy of the Deep South
Jackson, Mississippi is one of the poorest cities in America, in the poorest state in the country. In the middle of that, a network of worker-owned cooperatives is building something they explicitly describe as the Mondragón or Emilia-Romagna of the United States.
More Than a Brand: Equal Exchange and the Worker-Owned Fair Trade Revolution
In 1986, three friends working at a food co-op in Boston decided to do something everyone told them was impossible: import coffee directly from small farmer cooperatives, pay fair prices, and sell it in American grocery stores — as a worker-owned cooperative. Forty years later, that vision is still standing.
The New Orleans Five: Cooperative Businesses Building a Better Economy Right Here at Home
New Orleans has always known how to take care of its own. Here are five cooperative businesses proving that a different economy isn't a distant dream — it's being built right now, block by block, worker by worker, on the banks of the Mississippi river.
Nuestras Cooperativas, Nuestra Producción: Cuba's Long Tradition with Cooperative Economics
Cuba's relationship with cooperative economics predates the revolution by decades. From the tobacco farmers who organized against Spanish colonial landlords to the urban worker cooperatives opening in Havana today, this is the full story — contradictions and all.
Ocupar, Resistir, Producir: Argentina's Corralito Crisis and the Cooperative Economy That Rose From the Ashes
In December 2001, Argentina's economy collapsed. Banks froze deposits, the peso lost two-thirds of its value, and unemployment hit 25%. In the rubble of neoliberalism's most spectacular failure, Argentine workers occupied their factories, kicked out the owners, and ran them themselves.
Red Emilia: How One Italian Region Built the World's Most Cooperative Economy
Emilia-Romagna shouldn't exist — at least not according to conventional economic theory. It is one of the wealthiest, most productive, and most equitable regions in Europe, built not by billionaires or corporations but by farmers, artisans, and laborers who decided to own things together.
Rooted in the Same Soil: How Socialism and Cooperatives Are Connected
Cooperatives didn't emerge from thin air. Their roots run deep into socialist thought — collective ownership, democratic control, and the belief that work should benefit the people doing it. Understanding that connection doesn't just explain where cooperatives came from. It explains why they work.
The Third Way: Titoism, Worker Self-Management, and Yugoslavia's Cooperative Economy
Between the Soviet East and the capitalist West, one country chose a third way. Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia built a worker self-managed socialist economy where factory workers elected their own councils, set their own wages, and governed their own enterprises.
Tierra y Libertad: The Zapatistas and the Cooperative Economy They Built in the Jungle
On January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, thousands of indigenous Maya farmers emerged from the jungle highlands of Chiapas and declared war on the Mexican government. Over the next three decades, they built one of the most remarkable cooperative economies in the world.
Top 10 Real Estate Collectives Redefining Property Ownership
The old model of real estate — buy alone, own alone, struggle alone — is quietly being dismantled. Across the globe, a new wave of real estate collectives is proving that shared ownership doesn't mean sacrificing equity, autonomy, or quality of life.
Trabajo Colectivo y Solidaridad: The Cooperative Economy of Rojava
In the middle of one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century, something unexpected was being built. In the autonomous region of Rojava, Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, and other communities were constructing a cooperative economy from the ground up, under conditions of war, blockade, and extraordinary hardship.
What Is Mondragon? The World's Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative
One priest, one small town, and five workers changed the theory of what an economy could look like. Nearly 70 years later, Mondragon is a multi-billion dollar federation of worker-owned cooperatives — and the most powerful proof that another economy is not just possible, but prosperous.
When the People Owned It: Cooperative Economics in Venezuela
From worker-run textile factories in Caracas to 90,000 cooperatives nationwide, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution offers one of the most ambitious experiments in cooperative economics in modern history. What worked, what didn't, and what it means for us today.
Build the Next World Before Asking to Inherit This One
The future will not arrive because we are more ethical than capitalism. It will arrive only if we build forms of power that make capitalism less necessary. This is the final post in a series that has moved through history, theory, culture, and strategy. It ends here — not with a conclusion, but with a direction.
Systems Grow From Within: What Capitalism's Rise Inside Feudalism Teaches the Cooperative Movement
Capitalists did not begin by taking the state. They built something — quietly, persistently, inside the existing system. By the time capitalism became the dominant system, it had already built the world. The political victory was the last step, not the first.
The Law Usually Follows Power: Why the Cooperative Movement Must Build Before It Legislates
Do not confuse writing the law with holding the power that makes the law real. The cooperative movement has a persistent tendency to begin with legislation, elections, and policy. History suggests the sequence usually runs the other way.
The Future Is Not Improvised During the Earthquake: Why the Next System Must Be Built Before the Crisis
The future is not improvised during the earthquake. It is built while the ground still looks stable. This is the lesson the cooperative movement most needs to hear right now — not because crisis is not coming, but because it is.
We Are the Cooperative Codebase: Meet the Team
Three builders, three dreamers, one mission. Meet Aaron, Israel, and Jamie — the people behind Cooperative Codebase and why we believe ordinary people can build an extraordinary economy.