The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town

by Sharryn Kasmir

Shows how the creation of an idealized image of the Mondragon cooperatives is part of a new global ideology that promotes cooperative labor-management relations in order to discredit labor unions and working-class organizations.

Genres: Labor, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Economics, Politics

260 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

Reviews

[Carl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite her many visits there, she doesn't quite get the main point. Worker-owners in the MCC Coops are not going to have the same outlook as militant trade unionists because they are NOT wage-labor. They are associated producer-owners. Moreover, this is not a step back to the past, but a step to the future, to a type of class that exists in a socialist order, even if for now, it still resides in capitalist Europe. She is correct that this is not utopia and full of contradictions, but she lacks a framework for understanding them.

[Worker Co-op & Economic Democracy Reading List]

I found her analysis flawed and inconsistent. Further, since its publication, so much has changed as to make a lot of her critique irrelevant. However, it is one of the few Mondragon books that does not offer a glowing tribute. For that reason, it is worth the effort to read this ethnography.--John McNamara

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. A British sociologist with radical political symphathies studies the Mondragon cooperatives and also the labor unions in the Mondragon area of Spain. She provides very solid evidence that the class I call the coordinator class -- managers and high-end professionals like engineers and financial analysts -- are very much in control of the Mondragon coops, not the workers. In other words, there is a class division within the coops.

[Mitch Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quality critique from a realists perspective.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a coop member in rochester, ny and as a person hearing managers of my coop glowing over mondragon i was really happy to find a critique of that system. I found some similar problems with managers/workers relations and it should be know that people who work at the coop are not necessarily member-owners. A good over view of rise of this Coop system in Basque, Spain and some good insight; this book really does a nice job of letting people know how important context is. Pretty good, but not sure how dated the book is. Some of the comments below suggest that. Cheers!

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an insightful and thought-provoking critique of the Mondragón cooperatives. It frames the shift toward employee ownership as a middle-class reform encouraged by a Basque priest associated with Catholic Action, Father José María Arizmendiarrieta. It also traces how Mondragón has promoted an apolitical/depoliticized workforce within the tumultuous context of anti-colonial struggles for self-determination in Euskadi (the Basque Country). Radical Basque nationalists are shown as both supporting the Mondragón cooperatives as local-national (as opposed to Spanish or international) capital, but also at times as criticizing them.

Kasmir makes some good points in comparing and contrasting Clima (one of Mondragón's cooperatives) with an equivalent private firm with syndicate presence. The findings here suggest that Mondragón's workers have become passive and apathetic in light of the company's domination by management... thus calling into question the whole point of cooperativism!

I agree that trade unions/syndicates are an important corrective, so I wonder to what extent a union-coop model might mitigate the author's objections... I guess, as a U.S. American, the realistic question for me is whether laboring at a worker coop is better than at a non-unionized private firm, given how very risky it is to try to organize unions here!

[Beñat Urrutikoetxea Arrieta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kaixo! Here you can read the essay of this book: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o...
Enjoy and we are in touch! AURRERA!!