From Mondragon to America: Experiments in Community Economic Development

Randall White is the author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to
Senate Reform in Canada and Global Spin: Probing the Globalization
Debate, and the co-author of Toronto Women.

The continuing expansion of transnational corporations over the past few
decades, during the latest phase of acceleration in the growth of the
world economy, has put some new life into a longstanding quest for
alternative forms of economic organization in North America. At the end
of his very interesting book, Greg MacLeod aptly alludes to the
“personalist philosophers in the early part of this century” who
struggled over the question of whether “cooperative, democratic
businesses [could] survive in a capitalistic dog-eat-dog society.”

MacLeod hopes that the answer to this question is yes, and he feels
that the experience of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the
Basque region of Spain is a case in point that deserves more attention
on our own side of the Atlantic Ocean. Oddly enough, Mondragon was
established as a diversified cooperative democratic business in the
1950s, when Franco still ruled Spain. It is flourishing in the 1990s,
and even operates subsidiary factories in Argentina, China, and England.

The first part of the book focuses on the Mondragon experience itself.
Then, in an effort to counter arguments that Mondragon’s success has
depended too much on the unique circumstances of the Basque country,
MacLeod looks briefly at a parallel experiment in the Spanish city of
Valencia, in the (perhaps not quite different enough) region of
Catalonia. From here he turns to a number of broadly parallel recent
efforts at establishing cooperative democratic businesses in Canada and
Mexico (“North American Glimmerings,” as MacLeod puts it). He
concludes with some “Practical Reflections for Community Economic
Solutions” in our part of the world, and a very brief but impressive
“Postscript” on the continuing debate about dogs eating dogs.

MacLeod’s work springs from a longstanding Atlantic Canadian
tradition that is not quite in the mainstream of much related current
literature. Yet, whatever one thinks about its author’s articles of
faith, From Mondragon to America makes a provocative contribution to
various controversies about economic development in the present age of
globalization. Even within the mainstream literature, it deserves more
attention than it will probably get.