International Cooperative Alliance (2015)
Authored via a three year collective process, the Guidance Notes on the Cooperative Principles (Guidance Notes) constitutes a unique outgrowth of the stewardship of the Cooperative Identity by the International Cooperative Alliance. In 2011, representatives from the Americas initiated a conversation within the International Cooperative Alliance to amend the Seventh Principle, “Concern for Community,” to more explicitly acknowledge how humanity is in relationship and community with the environment and non-human life. In turn, a Principles Committee was established, with only elder - mostly white - men and Executives serving as members. The Committee selected individuals and small teams of cooperators from around the world to each author white papers on a given principle. Those papers were then collected and edited into a coherent volume by British cooperator, David Rodgers, with experience in the housing sector and national politics.
Given the nature of how the document was drafted, each Guidance Note employs different methods of research, data collection, and authorship. The most obvious of these differences is the use of citations – some sections utilize none, others use them extensively. Perhaps the most notable but least visible is that only one Principle chapter, the Sixth Principle "Cooperation Among Cooperatives," completed a survey and outreach process to collectively source content from around the world. The language is relatively authoritative and states a commitment to using “universal” language, which typically refers to the western, english language employed within NGO and global government spaces. The document opens with an introduction from the first woman and then International Cooperative Alliance President, Dame Pauline Green, and is followed by a preface from Jean-Louis Bancel, Chair of the Principles Committee. Monsieur Bancel shares that the primary audience of the Guidance Notes is “the upcoming generation of cooperative leaders; the notes aim to encapsulate the knowledge and expertise of the current generation of cooperators for the benefit of the next” (xi). Green shares a powerful quote taken from a consumer cooperative in Great Britain dating back to 1938 -
“The cooperative ideal is as old as human society. It is the idea of conflict and competition as a principle of economic progress that is new. The development of the idea of cooperation in the 19th century can best be understood as an attempt to make explicit a principle that is inherent in the constitution of society, but which has been forgotten in the turmoil and disintegration of rapid economic progress.”
Each Guidance Note is structured the same by beginning with a brief introduction, an interpretation of words and phrases within the Principle itself or of adjacent topics, and it then delves into specifics of each Principle delineated by headers. It closes each section with matters for further consideration structured similarly to the earlier discussion of the Principle. While the document is just over one hundred pages and employs a significant amount of technical language, the intentional and uniform formatting of the document makes it both relatively accessible and usable as a reference tool - more so than as a narrative document.
There are thirteen uses of the word “youth” in the text, clustered in the Guidance Notes of the First (Voluntary & Open Membership), Fifth (Education & Training), and Seventh (Concern for Community) Principles. In its first mention as part of the First Principle, age discrimination is highlighted, as is the specific “danger of control by older members, effectively stifling the engagement of a younger generation,” as cooperatives need new younger members in order to sustain themselves (10). This is the same point presented in the final mentions of youth in the document as part of the last Principle, Concern for Community, which points out that, without youth, cooperatives will cease to regenerate, autogestate, and exist.
It goes on to suggest specific methods to ensure youth engagement – “elected youth representatives on boards, youth conferences, support for youth activities and cooperative youth organizations, and support cooperative education in schools, colleges and universities” (90). Within the context of discussion of Education and Training, which is the bulk of the consideration of youth in the document, the importance of educational cooperatives is the focus of discussion and, specifically, that cooperative schools are essential for the promotion and sustainability of the cooperative model and movement by spreading awareness and recruiting youth participants.
Internally, the Guidance Notes urges cooperatives to develop youth boards as a form of recruitment, education, and institutionalized form of intergenerational dialogue. While wonderful in theory and intention, the development of regional youth committees and networks throughout the last decade has resulted in significant struggles with elder Boards around youth autonomy and sufficient support has illustrated that there are right and wrong ways to do so. It has also allowed for youth leadership and participation to be tokenized or essentialized and sidelined, rather than incorporating youth perspectives authentically into an intergenerational dialogue. With regard to empowering youth into leadership roles held be elders, alike, and in a manner than authentically reflects some of the living contradictions within Cooperative Movement practice, it also promotes targeting the “most talented members [of a cooperative] to stand for election” - often used as justification to not empower youth, rather than advocating for all members of a cooperative to pursue leadership and be sufficiently supported in doing so (25). This a key example in the context of coopyouth, as a lack of experience or tenure can cause cooperatives to judge young people as less talented and, thereby, less worthy of full participation than elder counterparts.
The closing section of the document is a collection of glossary terms and abbreviations, some of them were used to shape the language of this toolkit. However, it is in this breakdown of concepts that a bias towards interpreting cooperatives as businesses, rather than tools for social transformation, becomes especially clear. Of special note within those items included is “cooperative commonwealth,” a term used throughout the Cooperative Movement canon, typically indicating a society beyond the lifecycle of capitalism into self-governed commons - in which wealth and value are managed, not pursued or created. “Commonwealth” is described therein as “the combined economic, social, and environmental activities and effects of all cooperative enterprises that create wealth in a sustainable way for the many, not the few.” One of the fallacies of capitalism is its belief in infinite growth, and that wealth can be created, rather than understanding the resources available to humanity on earth as finite. Interestingly, some of the terms such as “capitalism” and “colonialism” are absent from the glossary, despite their persistent importance for the movement and for all peoples - those terms are defined in the “Word Mean Things” section.
Overall, the Guidance Notes are most useful in their chronicling of a comprehensive list of issues and considerations within each of the Principles. At times, the discussion of certain issues is rather superficial, likely an understandable attempt at achieving universality. Despite any critique, it provides a solid foundation from which deeper conversations can grow and is concurrently helpful in revealing the perspectives on and interpretation of cooperativism by those elders and others with access to the international spaces and mechanisms within which cooperative canon is typically evolved.