{"id":1698,"date":"2026-09-10T20:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T20:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/?p=1698"},"modified":"2026-09-10T20:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T20:02:13","slug":"book-cooperatives-confront-capitalism-challenging-the-neoliberal-economy-peter-ranis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/?p=1698&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Book: Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neoliberal Economy \u2013 Peter Ranis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peter Ranis, <em>Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neoliberal Economy<\/em>, London: Zed Books, 2016, 171 pp. ISBN: 978-1-78360-650-4 (hardback); 978-1-78360-649-8 (paperback); 978-1-78360-651-1 (PDF eBook).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Peter Ranis\u2019s <em>Cooperatives Confront Capitalism<\/em> <strong>approaches worker cooperatives as concrete instruments of economic democracy, worker autonomy, and workers\u2019 control against the hierarchical structure of the neoliberal capitalist firm<\/strong>. The book discusses not only whether cooperatives constitute an alternative model of enterprise, but also whether they can form part of a broader social and political project capable of expanding workers\u2019 control over production and management and challenging capitalist property relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ranis begins by tracing the intellectual roots of worker cooperatives through figures such as Marx, Robert Owen, William Thompson, John Francis Bray, Bernstein, Luxemburg, Lenin, and Gramsci. In this discussion, he focuses particularly on the exclusion of workers in capitalist firms from control over <strong>what is produced, how it is produced, and what purposes production serves<\/strong>. Worker cooperatives, by contrast, provide a practical counterexample to the assumption that capitalists or a separate managerial class are the necessary organizers of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the empirical center of the book are <strong>Argentina\u2019s worker-recuperated enterprises and their transformation into cooperatives<\/strong>. Through experiences such as Zan\u00f3n\/FaSinPat, Hotel Bauen, and others, Ranis examines factory and enterprise occupations, the restarting of production by workers, assembly-based management, egalitarian wage policies, demands for expropriation, and legal struggles. He emphasizes in particular that these enterprises have survived not only because of their internal organization, but also because of the relationships they have built with other cooperatives, social movements, local communities, and political support networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Within this framework, the book explicitly acknowledges that <strong>worker cooperatives are not completely autonomous islands outside the capitalist market<\/strong>. As recuperated enterprises continue to produce and compete within the market, they face problems of access to finance, property disputes, creditors, and legal uncertainty. For Ranis, the durability of workers\u2019 self-management therefore depends not only on internal workplace democracy, but also on inter-cooperative solidarity, social movements, and supportive public policies. In this sense, the Argentine experience is treated less as a model that has abolished the neoliberal business order than as <strong>a concrete alternative developed within it against hierarchical capitalist forms of work organization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the book\u2019s most distinctive discussions concerns <strong>the relationship between state intervention and workers\u2019 self-management<\/strong>. Ranis criticizes the withdrawal of the state from its responsibility to protect employment and provide economic security under neoliberalism, and argues that active public policies are necessary for the development of worker cooperatives. In particular, he proposes that the US power of <em>eminent domain<\/em> could be used to acquire, with compensation and in the public interest, enterprises that are closing down or relocating and transfer them to their workers. In this way, he establishes a connection between the Argentine experience of workplace occupation and expropriation and existing legal mechanisms in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ranis also relates the horizontal and participatory democratic ethos of the Occupy movements to the sphere of production. In his view, Occupy generated a powerful democratic challenge, but did not become sufficiently rooted in productive processes and workplaces. <strong>Worker cooperatives are structures capable of making this democratic autonomy more durable within the everyday organization of production.<\/strong> The cooperative therefore means not only the transfer of ownership to workers, but also the democratization of decision-making and the expansion of workers\u2019 control over their own lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The section on Cuba advances the idea that <strong>state ownership and workers\u2019 control are not the same thing<\/strong>. Ranis interprets the cooperative reforms developed after 2011 as a potential opening away from centralized state management toward greater economic democracy and workers\u2019 self-management, drawing attention to features such as worker assemblies, the principle of \u201cone member, one vote,\u201d and the election of administrators from among the members. At the same time, he argues that state ownership does not in itself amount to worker ownership or control, and that genuine cooperative autonomy depends on limiting bureaucratic centralism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In this respect, <em>Cooperatives Confront Capitalism<\/em> is <strong>an important study that takes worker cooperatives beyond the confines of cooperative studies and examines them in relation to workers\u2019 control, self-management, expropriation, economic democracy, and social struggle against neoliberal capitalism<\/strong>. In Ranis\u2019s central approach, the strength of cooperatives lies not merely in workers becoming co-owners of the enterprise, but in demonstrating that another organization of production based on collective decision-making and worker autonomy is possible in opposition to the hierarchical management of the capitalist firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Ranis, Cooperatives Confront Capitalism: Challenging the Neoliberal Economy, London: Zed Books, 2016, 171 pp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized-en","category-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iscidenetimi.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}