Father José Arizmendiarrieta (1915-1976, 1999)
Pensamientos, or Reflections, is a collection of thoughts and aphorisms compiled by a family member of their author, Father José Arizmendiarrieta. “Arizmendi,” as many call him, was a priest and co-founder of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, the world’s largest federation of worker cooperatives, located in the modern Basque Autonomous Community, which was once land claimed by Spain. In 1943, Arizmendiarrieta launched a cooperative university which was free and open to all young people in the region. Over time, a manufacturing worker cooperative founded by some students, “Ulgor,” became the flagship cooperative for the still-existing federation. Arizmendiarrieta was an early adherent to Liberation Theology, an approach to Christian theology that later became popularized in its application in Latin America, and which stresses the liberation of all oppressed people as fundamental to the Christain faith. In practice, this means that the primary call of Christianity is to support all peoples facing economic, racial, ethnic, gender, and other kinds of mistreatment and marginalization. Arizmendiarrieta’s application of liberation theology - in the 20th century and in the Basque region - focused on economic liberation, given that the region's people, after finding themselves on the “losing” side of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, were suffering ongoing economic repression by Nationalist President Francisco Franco. Arizmendiarrieta died in 1976, one year following the death of Franco.
The reflections, originally published in the Basque language and subsequently translated into Spanish and English, is split into two main sections: “People and Society” and “Work and the Cooperative Enterprise,” both of which have several sub-sections. Throughout the text, there are several foundational beliefs and frameworks that are repeated -
- Chief among them is the centrality of education to cooperative work and enterprise. Given that Mondragon began as, and remains (in part) a university, this is an example of a philosophy that has borne great fruit.
- Additionally, Arizmendiarrieta consistently returns to the concept of self-restraint in consumption, as well as the concept of solidarity meaning sharing all surplus with others according to need. The latter of which effectively constitutes his repeated calls for the redistribution of wealth, which he refers to explicitly and implicitly countless times throughout the text. Relatedly, in several sections, he warns against over-prioritizing the consumer orientation, “It is imperative that we be resolved to be more than relatively fortunate consumers. [...] All we are doing is giving to our exploiters with one hand what we try to take from them with the other” (106).
- A third assertion that resonates within his reflections is that the necessary first step in cooperative practice is the revolution of a person’s mindset, or for a person to “unlearn” what predominant society has taught them. He considers this so essential that he believes, without it, broad-scale social transformation is impossible, no matter how much wealth can be shared or cooperatives constructured. “The redistribution of wealth is necessary, but the socialization of education is more pressing, to be able to think about the true humanization of work” (48).
- He viewed the Cooperative Movement as a vanguard among social movements, as - unlike many others - it addresses individual and social needs while uniquely dovetailing those efforts with striving for economic justice and revolution. Relatedly, he characterizes cooperatives and cooperativism not as an “end” or “ideal” but as a means to a not-yet-knowable ideal end that we are unable to fully imagine at this point in time.
- His expression of solidarity extends beyond the Cooperative Movement to embrace all people working towards broad-scale societal transformation, all those having to endure oppression, and even to those individuals toiling in service to capitalism and other systems of exploitation. He suggests that the ideal future is one in which humanity is constantly striving to be naturally and necessarily pluralistic. “Cooperation is an authentic integration of people into the economic and social progress, which shapes a new social order. Cooperators must collaborate in the pursuit of this end goal, joining forces with all those who hunger for justice in the world of work” (94). This compassionate and inclusive viewpoint does not mean, however, that Arizmendiarrieta embraced immoral models and systems - just the people within them. He repeatedly makes clear he believes in the ultimate capacity of any and all people to move towards self-actualization and collective liberation.
His other incredibly significant contributions involve the definition of key concepts - cooperativism, work, and enterprise, which are extensively used to shape coopyouth interpretations of these concepts in this toolkit. “Cooperativism is the affirmation of faith in people, in work, in integrity, in human harmony, turned towards constant and progressive enhancement” (100). Primarily, he conceives of work as something distinct from “employment”; instead, it’s viewed as the daily striving every individual enacts as co-conspirators in our collective existence. “[W]ork is the human contribution to the divine plan and designs to transform and improve a world” (64). Similarly, he never conceives of cooperatives as solely “businesses,” rather that the enterprise is a “living organism” and “eco-social cell” by which people pursue a “path of personal and communal self-realization” through collective work (65). This kind of language and framing endeavors to move beyond the capitalist frameworks that presently structure most of our world, lives, and relationships.
Through his decades of work, he very clearly maintained a strong focus on youth, dedicating most of his work to empowering young people through the university in their role as a “vanguard” within a “vanguard movement.” “It is easier to educate a young person than to reform an adult” (44). That said, overall, there is relatively little in the way of explicit and specific youth content in the reflections. However, the sentiments of Arizmendiarrieta deeply resonate with those expressed in formal and informal coopyouth discourse over the past decade. Many quotations from Pensamientos are included throughout this toolkit as affirmation and support of coopyouth work and thinking.