The executive director’s blog

Comparing apples with apples

Posted by Ramsey Margolis on 29 September 2009 | 0 Comments

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As a small child, I read the Daily Express my dad brought home from work avidly, to begin with spreading the broadsheet on the floor and kneeling on it because I wasn’t big enough to hold it.

The voice of Canadian Max Aitken (later 1st Baron Beaverbrook), I remember scratching my head when the paper would contrast “democracy” with “communism”, as this to my young mind was not comparing two similar things.

Surely, I felt, they should be comparing either capitalism with communism as economic systems, or democracy with totalitarianism as political systems.

What brings this to mind? One sign, I believe, of a successful cooperative is the way it communicates with members. CRT does this excellently with their monthly magazine CRT Agline.

During this year, they have been running a superb series of articles in CRT Agline in which directors explain what co-ops are and how they work.

The July article, “Cooperative versus corporate”, however, got me thinking. The content is superb but the title does not compare apples with apples: a cooperative is an economic entity which can be large or small, while a corporate is actually a form of social structure, generally large.

The comparison should, I feel, be between cooperatives and investor-owned firms.

A corporate I understand to be a large business, which could be compared with small and medium entities.

There’s no doubt that comparing co-ops with investor-owned firms gives a very real understanding of the benefits of the cooperative and mutual business model.

Comparing cooperatives with “corporates”, though, muddies the water.

I hope they put this excellent series of articles on their website at www.crt.coop for all to access.

– from the August/September 2009 Cooperatives News