The Unique Importance of Co-op Histories

While working on an institutional history of the Association of Vermont Credit Unions over the past few months, I've been giving the reason for writing such narratives a lot of thought. Particularly, I've come to the conclusion that, as a result of their unique ownership structure, histories of cooperatives serve fundamentally different purposes than do those of for-profit companies.

In the case of the latter, institutional history is commonly treated as a marketing tool. By crafting a narrative that puts the organization's best foot forward, a corporate history (whether in the form of a short blurb on a website or a full-length book) is generally driven by the goal of elevating the stature of its subject by providing it with ennobling historical roots. That objective, in turn, provides a powerful incentive to minimize (or overlook entirely) the conflicts and questionable moments that inevitably litter an organization's past.

At the root of this corporate tendency to whitewash their histories when presented for public consumption is the fact that their relationship with their customers is adversarial. As consumers are fickle and can often change which business they patronize with relative ease, it would be profoundly irrational for a corporation to actively promulgate an historical vision of itself which might damage its bottom line by scaring off its patrons. As a result, official corporate histories are notoriously unreliable and incomplete, which has, in turn, sparked a whole cottage industry of critical historical writing devoted to exposing the skeletons in corporate closets.

By contrast, the relationship of cooperatives (and consumer cooperatives in particular) to their histories is very different. Since the customers of such firms are, by definition, also their owners, the corporate concern over losing customers as a result of a warts-and-all portrayal of their history has little relevance to the cooperative context. Instead, such histories actually function to strengthen co-ops, since they provide the members and leaders of organizations with a clear sense of which paths have been taken or avoided in the past, and why. As a result, much of the institutional memory which is too often lost when a veteran board member or employee leaves can be preserved and used to inform future decisions without fear (as exists in a corporate environment) that its public exposure would cause great organizational harm. By maintaining a "long memory," cooperatives can cultivate an institutional culture (which their corporate competitors are structurally incapable of emulating) in which decisions can be based upon a deep and rational understanding of, and engagement with, past choices.

As philosophers from Francis Bacon to Michel Foucault have long recognized, the possession of knowledge is a source of great power. In the hierarchical, authoritarian cultures of many corporations, this fact is reflected in tireless efforts to obscure their pasts so as to deny their customers the power over them that knowledge of their history would provide. By contrast, at the core of the cooperative idea is the democratic dispersal of power: every member has an equal stake in the organization and an equal vote for the board of directors. However, such rights mean little if co-op members lack the information necessary to make truly informed decisions about how to wield their influence. As such, a corollary of dispersal of power to co-op members must be an equal dispersal of knowledge about the organization. Though such knowledge takes many forms (accurate annual reports, etc.), a comprehensive and well balanced institutional history is a vital tool of member empowerment that no cooperative should be without.

Book Review: We the People by Roy Bergengren

Reading through the works of credit union pioneer Roy F. Bergengren, it quickly becomes apparent that his books fall into two categories. The first consists of his "Credit Union Books" which, as the name suggests, were written for the benefit of the movement in a narrow sense. Containing practical guides to starting and running a credit union, the contact information of important people in the movement, and updates as to its status both nationally and in various locales, these books were primarily intended to be aids to credit unionists across North America as they struggled to build the movement from the ground up.

Although such texts make up the bulk of Bergengren's oeuvre, he also penned three works in response to contemporary events that take a much broader perspective. His memoirs can be seen in this light as a philosophical reflection upon his career as a co-operative organizer, and I Speak for Joe Doakes, written in 1944, is a call for international and economic co-operation as a way to prevent yet another world war from decimating yet another generation. However, the most involved and comprehensive of these books is We The People: Being an Impudent Dissertation on Certain National and International Matters.

The Coming Micro-Ownership Revolution

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In the more than two centuries since the beginning of the radical transformation of economic life that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, one of the most interesting trends has been the changing nature of the forms through which people have engaged in economic activities. Before the industrial revolution, an artisanal mode of production predominated, with many small work-shops producing the goods required by the largely agrarian economy. At first glance, such the existence of many small firms would suggest a highly competitive economy; however this was not the case. Rather, the high cost of transporting goods created by primitive transportation networks, the risk of brigands, etc., meant that, rather than a single integrated economy, there existed many small economies between which only low-bulk, high-value goods (such as spices) were exchanged. In this situation, workshops were almost universally owned locally, since the cost of monitoring an agent in a distant city would be prohibitively high (the exception being those in the aforementioned low-bulk, high-value businesses, but they also helped ensure the loyalty of distant agents by using family members).

However, the advent of the 19th century transportation and communication revolutions, which brought better roads, canals, steamships, railroads, and telegraphs into widespread use, changed the game. The many local markets became increasingly integrated, and the prices of commodities converged over the course of the century. These changes also led to radical shifts in how firms were both run and owned. With huge, growing markets at their disposal, firms could, as Chandler describes in his brilliant book Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, drastically reduce the unit cost of many products by engaging in capital-intensive mass production. However, in order to fully take advantage of such available efficiencies, firms needed to mobilize amounts of capital beyond the resources of almost any individual or family. As a result of this problem, the "managerial firm" emerged as the dominant model in many industries by the end of the 19th century. Where, previously, the owner of a business was generally involved with its operations, managerial firms were characterized by a separation of ownership and management (which began to be undertaken by salaried professionals).

Book Review: I Speak for Joe Doakes by Roy F. Bergengren

When one first picks up Roy Bergengren's I Speak for Joe Doakes, it is immediately apparent that the book stands apart from the bulk of his oeuvre. To start with, having been written in 1944 and published a year later, the realities and implications of the Second World War loom large and extend even to the book's physical form. Immediately below the copyright information, the reader is informed that the text is "manufactured in strict conformity with Government regulations for saving paper," and it is dedicated to "SERIAL NUMBER 0-560627 and SERIAL NUMBER 0-1289910 [presumably his enlisted sons] With All My Love." Unlike the rest of his books, which focus primarily on the credit union movement that he founded and led, I Speak for Joe Doakes has a much grander purpose: namely, to argue for a post-war international and economic order rooted in co-operation.

As its title suggests, the book is framed as Bergengren's advocacy for the interests of "Joe Doakes," his "symbol of the common man, the worker, the great mass of people." In general, Joe Doakes is not a man of expensive tastes or voracious appetites. Rather,

He is most vitally concerned with any circumstance which affects his opportunity to work at a fair wage ... it is essential to him that there be a lasting peace. He has no wish that this war shall end in futility as did the war which his father fought. He is interested in co-operation as a possible contributing factor in the creation of the great new world which might evolve from this war if his rights and hopes and aspirations are adequately recognized in the peace.¹

The validity of these insights, Bergengren argues, is rooted in his decades od criss-crossing the United States for the purpose of helping thousands of "Joe Doakes" from all walks of life to organize credit unions. That experience, he believes, provides him with a unique vantage point into the interests and desires of the inarticulate "common man," who he declares to be his "client." Thus, according to Bergengren, what "Joe Doakes" desires above all else is to avoid a full replay of the great traumatic episodes of Bergengren's generation: the First World War and the Great Depression, or, to put it more abstractly, to secure lasting peace and economic prosperity.