A Critique of Consumer Cooperation: ‘ Cheap Cheese’ or the Heavenly Kindgom as the Issue That Divides practical Cooperators from Utopians

A bstract .Consumer cooperative reformers, alone among American cooperatiors, define cooperation in terms of the Rochdale Principles. However, to define a cooperative as an organization characterized by owner‐user identity is more useful. Cooperation eliminates profit motivation, not profit itself, as reformers suggest. Consumer cooperators make invidious comparison between consumption and production instead of acknowledging their organic relations. They assign to consumers the same role in uniting the world that Marxists assign to the proletariat. They expect consumer cooperation to promote the brotherhood of man. A better approach than espousing utopian ideals would be to stress practical benefits and economic advantages of cooperative activity.