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Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy
The origins of the next radical economy is rooted in a tradition that has empowered people for centuries and is now making a comeback. A new feudalism is on the rise. While monopolistic corporations feed their spoils to the rich, more and more of us are expected to live gig to gig. But, as Nathan Schneider shows, an alternative to the robber-baron economy is hiding in plain sight; we just need to know where to look. Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on.Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution -- from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.
267 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 10, 2018
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863 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
April 2, 2019
If you’re looking for a how to manual, this book may disappoint. If you’re seeking clear chapters that break down specific categories of co-ops, it may also slip away from you. (Many parts of chapters were reconfigured from the author’s previous essays). Also, if you’re looking for a formula or model to save you from late capitalism, keep praying.
This book becomes more valuable the deeper you’re willing to go into the work and relationships of cooperatives yourself.
Its strength is in cataloguing the many far flung iterations of cooperative thought at this moment, from New Zealand tech companies sharing governance and income, to Catalonian anarchists using their own cryptocurrency, from surprise political wins in Jackson and Boulder, in anarcho-communalist insurgents in Syria, to conservatively maintained power grids in rural America, to pragmatic social philosophers in Bologna.
This is a vibrant photo album, a yearbook for the co-op now. It opens many conversations about power, data and equity, yet offers few prescriptions.
The overall thrust? There are many alternatives to the dominant economy. Realizing them is an act of love and devotion, always iterative, never complete. To outsiders, it might border on religious behavior—a different way of life, seemingly more difficult. To those engaged in the projects, they feel alive, pulsing, new.
There’s another thread of co-ops learning from other co-ops or sectors thinking/acting laterally. The book doesn’t explore how this might happen in detail, but it does provide many entry points into the cooperative world, for those willing to put in the work.
This book becomes more valuable the deeper you’re willing to go into the work and relationships of cooperatives yourself.
Its strength is in cataloguing the many far flung iterations of cooperative thought at this moment, from New Zealand tech companies sharing governance and income, to Catalonian anarchists using their own cryptocurrency, from surprise political wins in Jackson and Boulder, in anarcho-communalist insurgents in Syria, to conservatively maintained power grids in rural America, to pragmatic social philosophers in Bologna.
This is a vibrant photo album, a yearbook for the co-op now. It opens many conversations about power, data and equity, yet offers few prescriptions.
The overall thrust? There are many alternatives to the dominant economy. Realizing them is an act of love and devotion, always iterative, never complete. To outsiders, it might border on religious behavior—a different way of life, seemingly more difficult. To those engaged in the projects, they feel alive, pulsing, new.
There’s another thread of co-ops learning from other co-ops or sectors thinking/acting laterally. The book doesn’t explore how this might happen in detail, but it does provide many entry points into the cooperative world, for those willing to put in the work.
October 25, 2018
Fantastic book! I live in the same town as the Author and really appreciated all of the local knowledge. I loved learning about all the different Co-Op incarnations and projects along w/ the challenges that face these unique companies.
I HIGHLY recommend reading this book!
I HIGHLY recommend reading this book!
January 31, 2019
Looking forward to seeing Nathan Schneider speak at RadicalxChange in March. Also pleasantly surprised to read so much about co-op activity here in Colorado (where I live). He mentions a few orgs and groups here that I want to look into.
There's something here that's not quite reconciled for me, and that is the frequent citations of how substantial co-op activity is coupled with how much they are constrained and still exist as "edge" activity. Interested to explore further...
There's something here that's not quite reconciled for me, and that is the frequent citations of how substantial co-op activity is coupled with how much they are constrained and still exist as "edge" activity. Interested to explore further...
March 2, 2020
This is one to read with a notepad on hand. The author packs the book with references to more cooperatives and peer to peer communities than one can remember to research.
The stories of cooperative triumph are inspiring and Schneider gives a broad overview of co-ops as the presently exist and what is possible.
Excellent read.
The stories of cooperative triumph are inspiring and Schneider gives a broad overview of co-ops as the presently exist and what is possible.
Excellent read.
November 10, 2018
I used to think coops were unambiguously good things and possibly an alternative to corporations with the potential to stand up to them. The author convinced me that sadly they are no such thing. They are a cover for criminals and hippies and are only successful when ran like a traditional corporation.
April 18, 2023
Learned a lot but this book was a bit hard to follow for me. Not that the ideas were too complicated, just that the stories and examples were overwhelming and made it hard for me to remember the central themes
October 22, 2023
Nathan Schnieder's book is an important read for anybody thinking about where our economy has gone and where it ought to go. He does a deep dive into cooperative movements, beginning with their storied history and delving into how they might serve "as a test run[] for the social contracts that may later be taken for granted." (5) Co-ops in his mind don't necessarily replace capitalism but represent "an inversion of that capitalist order ... in that order's midst." (14)
Schnieder examines various sorts of cooperative experiments, from neo-monasteries to open-source social platforms to Mondragon (the large Basque coop network) to blockchain communities to underground Spanish anarchist networks. These examples are "flashes of the commonwealth." (206) Throughout, he emphasizes how cooperativism can help restore notions of the commons that we have lost and in turn drive opportunity for all. For the social contracts of generations to come to "be democratic ones, democratic experiments need to take hold in how we produce, trade, and consume." (220)
While his main argument clearly favors a more cooperative economy, he points out in various ways how cooperatives can become too corporate, how they can be exclusive, how the language of cooperation is co-opted by others who don't necessarily share its aims, and how they can engender backlash. Moreover, the business model faces systemic disadvantages, including stigma on the one hand and lacking awareness on the other. The key lesson I got from his many (entertaining and well-chosen) examples is that a more cooperative economy will require education and a dedication to opening minds and hearts to a novel-yet-ancient business model. This will take policy changes, but also personal action in our own communities to support cooperativism. Schneider calls our attention to an important economic model filled with promise.
Schnieder examines various sorts of cooperative experiments, from neo-monasteries to open-source social platforms to Mondragon (the large Basque coop network) to blockchain communities to underground Spanish anarchist networks. These examples are "flashes of the commonwealth." (206) Throughout, he emphasizes how cooperativism can help restore notions of the commons that we have lost and in turn drive opportunity for all. For the social contracts of generations to come to "be democratic ones, democratic experiments need to take hold in how we produce, trade, and consume." (220)
While his main argument clearly favors a more cooperative economy, he points out in various ways how cooperatives can become too corporate, how they can be exclusive, how the language of cooperation is co-opted by others who don't necessarily share its aims, and how they can engender backlash. Moreover, the business model faces systemic disadvantages, including stigma on the one hand and lacking awareness on the other. The key lesson I got from his many (entertaining and well-chosen) examples is that a more cooperative economy will require education and a dedication to opening minds and hearts to a novel-yet-ancient business model. This will take policy changes, but also personal action in our own communities to support cooperativism. Schneider calls our attention to an important economic model filled with promise.
June 7, 2019
Another book I started on a whim, but totally got into and realized it was exactly the book I wanted to read at the moment. The dirty word that is left out of the title is "Cooperation", as in worker-owned businesses, but also as a concept. This book is a reminder that cooperation has become worse than a curse word in the current atomized age of distrust and division. This is not a how-to book, nor is it a comprehensive history. Instead, this is Nathan Schneider's wandering investigation into a multitude of cooperative endeavors. The good news is that cooperatives are everywhere, and the bad news is that sometimes they go off the rails. Careful, this book may make you want to start a co-op!
May 20, 2021
A very enjoyable survey of the wide variety of cooperative enterprises and organizations throughout history, with some good analysis along the way. I think Schneider basically faces a couple of tensions in his celebration of America's and the world's history of cooperativism, whether through credit unions or mutual aid societies or populist co-ops in farming country or hundreds of others. First, he clearly recognizes (though even here there are many examples that he leaves out) that the great preponderance of successful cooperative organizations came about because of a shared moral commitment, some kind objective communitarian basis--a dogma, in other words. Mutualist organizations can and have emerged simply in response to need, but so often there is some deeper moral or cultural unity which holds them together (assuming that they can work out funding arrangements to enable them to survive as businesses as well!). Schneider, I'm pretty certain, admires that...but also wants to believe that such doesn't get in the way of constantly experimenting and adapting character of cooperatives as well. Related to that is simply the fact that he is enamored of the idea of cooperation going virtual, of it existing in a "nomadic," rather than a static sense. He dwells at great length on Bitcoin, on open-source software, and other things way over my head. He insists, again and again, that the coming wave of cooperative innovation, if it happens, will have to be something which does not dissent and retreat from the grid and the world of surveillance capitalism, but rather is capable to playing on the same field, but by its own rules. That conclusion, personally, I greatly doubt. But it's fun to be drawn into Schneider's arguments, nonetheless.
September 30, 2018
Nathan Schneider, who made his name as a reporter turned activist during his time with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, makes a case for cooperatives as the economic model of the future. The book starts out by looking at the 1937 Rochdale principles which establishes each person with an equal share and equal vote and a distribution of the profits. What is never sufficiently answered for me in the course of this argument is true large scale enterprises where this is operating and even the bigger ones he mentions suffer from lack of participation as the author notes where people don’t turn out to vote and power is concentrated in the hands of a few. The author makes no mention of the largest coops that have all opted for the private route and how to avoid this particular scenario if this is truly the optimal way to organize resources. There is a lot of time spent discussing coops overseas where they don’t face nearly the level of competition here in the United States and while these are great models for their localized economy I do not believe we would see that same level of success in the United States. Ultimately it is an interesting book and a value proposition that should be studied further. In an effort to sell coops though it is a one-sided affair that does not really address the economic concerns and ultimately relies on very anecdotal evidence and not the numbers based studies of efficiencies gained/lost by engaging in this type of behavior that I would expect to see as an economist.
November 30, 2022
3.5 stars.
[I had a pretty long review written but for the third time this year goodreads somehow lost it as it was being published. Seems fitting that amazon's platform would drop this anticapitalist review ;) ]
Dry as heck but that's a deliberate choice, in the lineage of probably the most famous co-op, the Associated Press. This book successfully shows many options of cooperative enterprise, and works toward the sorely needed goal of education. The case studies here show how certain models can help their communities and perhaps even beyond (as well as some pitfalls, though this is underdeveloped). I'm unconvinced by the loftier goals. I think co-operation is hardly 'shaping the next economy' in a macro-sense, and will unfortunately be a minority if not fringe strategy for the foreseeable future. But how bout that unforeseeable future?
I was particularly drawn to the Basque and Catalan chapters, which seem quite successful from his sketching.
Favorite line:
These traces of commonwealth have begun to seem like a secret society, an inverted reality lurking inside what claims to be reality, economies that reject the rules by which the economy supposedly plays...Each example pokes a hole in the usual story about how the world came to be as it is, challenging tall tales about progress made from competition and the pursuit of profit.
[I had a pretty long review written but for the third time this year goodreads somehow lost it as it was being published. Seems fitting that amazon's platform would drop this anticapitalist review ;) ]
Dry as heck but that's a deliberate choice, in the lineage of probably the most famous co-op, the Associated Press. This book successfully shows many options of cooperative enterprise, and works toward the sorely needed goal of education. The case studies here show how certain models can help their communities and perhaps even beyond (as well as some pitfalls, though this is underdeveloped). I'm unconvinced by the loftier goals. I think co-operation is hardly 'shaping the next economy' in a macro-sense, and will unfortunately be a minority if not fringe strategy for the foreseeable future. But how bout that unforeseeable future?
I was particularly drawn to the Basque and Catalan chapters, which seem quite successful from his sketching.
Favorite line:
These traces of commonwealth have begun to seem like a secret society, an inverted reality lurking inside what claims to be reality, economies that reject the rules by which the economy supposedly plays...Each example pokes a hole in the usual story about how the world came to be as it is, challenging tall tales about progress made from competition and the pursuit of profit.
December 31, 2022
The problem with this book is that it offers almost no analysis, opting instead for a wide-ranging exposition of different cooperative endeavors, from medieval European monastic communities to agricultural co-ops to anarchist utopias to open-source code to cryptocurrency to proposals for universal basic income. All well and good, this is a basic orientation to co-ops for those new to the topic, but I was frustrated by Schneider's repeated failure to go deep anywhere. Instead he opts for general speculation about what co-ops might do in the future, what would be great about them if they worked. But how to make them work??
Topics that go unaddressed:
- When co-ops fail, why do they fail?
- What would it take for co-ops to scale large enough in the technology and finance sectors that it would pose a real threat to the prevailing world order of Silicon Valley?
It was also just sad to read this book, written in the very recent past, and see already how dated it is. Its optimism about Twitter, "the people's news network," and hopes for Twitter become a cooperative, was especially depressing. Same with his detailing of attempts to resist the technocratic overlords of the "gig economy" such as Uber.
Topics that go unaddressed:
- When co-ops fail, why do they fail?
- What would it take for co-ops to scale large enough in the technology and finance sectors that it would pose a real threat to the prevailing world order of Silicon Valley?
It was also just sad to read this book, written in the very recent past, and see already how dated it is. Its optimism about Twitter, "the people's news network," and hopes for Twitter become a cooperative, was especially depressing. Same with his detailing of attempts to resist the technocratic overlords of the "gig economy" such as Uber.
July 13, 2023
Dryly journalistic and disjointed, with a dearth of practical information. There are some interesting tidbits, but it’s a jumble of quotes and references, interviews, anecdotes and observations, academic analysis, and research notes, in desperate need of organization and editing. The choppy delivery makes it really hard to follow the thesis in many points.
For instance, one section starts with the author describing his taxi ride from the airport in Nairobi, jumps to the history of Stanford, then an interview in Madison, a program in Canada, a denunciation of the Kibbutz movement, an anecdote from high school, then back to Stanford, along the way touching on cooperative banking, higher education, colonialism, globalization, with no theme lasts more than a sentence or two.
Elsewhere in a single paragraph he jumps from quoting an Algerian scholar, to describing his childhood home, complaining about the 2008 banking collapse and Google's data mining, leaving whatever point he was trying to make about forced nomadism is lost in the whirlwind, let alone what any of it has to do with the topic of the book.
For instance, one section starts with the author describing his taxi ride from the airport in Nairobi, jumps to the history of Stanford, then an interview in Madison, a program in Canada, a denunciation of the Kibbutz movement, an anecdote from high school, then back to Stanford, along the way touching on cooperative banking, higher education, colonialism, globalization, with no theme lasts more than a sentence or two.
Elsewhere in a single paragraph he jumps from quoting an Algerian scholar, to describing his childhood home, complaining about the 2008 banking collapse and Google's data mining, leaving whatever point he was trying to make about forced nomadism is lost in the whirlwind, let alone what any of it has to do with the topic of the book.
January 4, 2022
A new feudalism is on the rise. While monopolistic corporations feed their spoils to the rich, more and more of us are expected to live gig to gig. But, as Nathan Schneider shows, an alternative to the robber-baron economy is hiding in plain sight; we just need to know where to look.
Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on.
Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution--from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.
Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on.
Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution--from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.
October 5, 2020
Tech democracy is about Access. But that is not enough. It is not capacity, ownership, governance or accountability.
Democracy is a process not a product.
We don’t want a sharing economy when it means loss of rights, loss of agency.
InternationalCooperative alliance
Voluntary Democratic, Economic, Autonomy, independence, education, training, cooperation concern to community.
A lifetime of working for wages without ownership or control or direction of work sometimes compared to a form of slavery.
Democracy is a process not a product.
We don’t want a sharing economy when it means loss of rights, loss of agency.
InternationalCooperative alliance
Voluntary Democratic, Economic, Autonomy, independence, education, training, cooperation concern to community.
A lifetime of working for wages without ownership or control or direction of work sometimes compared to a form of slavery.
October 17, 2023
Interesting overview of the history and present day practice of cooperatives. Quite a lot of the techbro type attempts at doing cooperativism with necessary critiques. I enjoyed learning more about Catholic traditions of cooperatives and Black social and solidarity cooperation too. Not sure about the nomad idea at the end: I think committing to place and doing what is needed to make economies work in place is more where I think we need to go.
February 18, 2024
The last of the post-capitalist books in my shelf for now, this one with the focus on cooperatives. It's less screedy and more historical than the others, which is good as a future resource but not so good for its entertainment value. Nonetheless, as I can feel the amount of research done for this, and I did learn a lot about the history and motivation behind cooperatives (with of course the obligatory mentions of Blockchain and UBI), four stars seem fitting.
July 18, 2021
Scheider opens up the world of cooperatives here, sprinkled throughout with personal recollections and anecdotes.
Cooperatives have seven well defined principles but Schneider leans on cooperativism - more a tendency towards accountable ownership and governance, than a box tick against those seven principles. That tendency, as he outlines it, goes hand in hand with social and moral value systems, with examples given in practice and through personalities.
There are many case studies from around the world of cooperatives that might fit your assumptions of what these social enterprises are capable of. However there are also some unexpected twists and turns such as explorations into the possibilities of blockchain.
As with everything meaningful (socially useful), cooperatives benefit from a political/economic framing to better understand their transformative potential. The lesson we come away with is that the radical/revolutionary potential of co-ops has mostly not been realised.
Schneider gives a timely critique of how platforms and the so-called sharing economy inhabit many spheres that might previously have been cooperative, but evolved into corporate beasts.
We learn that co-ops are not all created equal. Many don’t follow all of the seven principles. But what about those who do, with negative consequences? What are the cons of a co-op? That question is not explored.
Ultimately a cooperative future is not assured, at least in the ‘pure’ sense, but cooperativism is alive and well and a book like this serves as a useful meeting point for the stories that keep it going.
Cooperatives have seven well defined principles but Schneider leans on cooperativism - more a tendency towards accountable ownership and governance, than a box tick against those seven principles. That tendency, as he outlines it, goes hand in hand with social and moral value systems, with examples given in practice and through personalities.
There are many case studies from around the world of cooperatives that might fit your assumptions of what these social enterprises are capable of. However there are also some unexpected twists and turns such as explorations into the possibilities of blockchain.
As with everything meaningful (socially useful), cooperatives benefit from a political/economic framing to better understand their transformative potential. The lesson we come away with is that the radical/revolutionary potential of co-ops has mostly not been realised.
Schneider gives a timely critique of how platforms and the so-called sharing economy inhabit many spheres that might previously have been cooperative, but evolved into corporate beasts.
We learn that co-ops are not all created equal. Many don’t follow all of the seven principles. But what about those who do, with negative consequences? What are the cons of a co-op? That question is not explored.
Ultimately a cooperative future is not assured, at least in the ‘pure’ sense, but cooperativism is alive and well and a book like this serves as a useful meeting point for the stories that keep it going.
August 13, 2023
Interesting book on the modern and historic American practices of co-ops. Hated the section on digital currencies. Curious re: the various living co-ops that started and disbanded on cooperative ideals, interesting the multinational conglomerates that are co-ops. Do think the cooperative model in business is promising for redistributive wealth.
August 28, 2024
I loved this book. The author takes us into the world of cooperatives that is literally all around us and all around the world. He explores the deep roots of it and the current day efforts. It’s brilliant. Beautiful. He tells a variety of stories that stir the imagination. He helps me see a broader world. I loved it.
March 17, 2020
About co-ops, the history & the current state of the movement. The understandable parts are pretty boring & uninspiring. The parts that ought to be interesting, about current efforts with open source software and attempts to move into the future, are a lot of geek talk & are mostly confusing.
September 28, 2020
Super interesting if you’re into thinking about business more socialistically, but it was pretty dry and very repetitive after a few chapters. Probably would have been a better article than a full on book.
March 24, 2019
A patience, perceptive walk through the history and now of co-ops. I found this book inspiring enough to look into co-ops I could join.
Read
August 5, 2019I think working for a co-op, more of a memoir, would have been more compelling to me as a general reader.
June 25, 2020
Not a how-to, but more of a survey of the movement, with lots of first-hand reportage. Learned a lot from this! Integral to my little self-study of capitalism/anticapitalism.
December 31, 2020
This book is very interesting because I run my own company BizFolio LLP(Limited Liability Partnership) with other 11 partners.
Partnership is a material keyword in 21th century!
Partnership is a material keyword in 21th century!
December 13, 2021
Survey of cooperative economic history, both in the United States and abroad.
February 23, 2023
Took way too long to finish but it’s exciting to read about how folks work in cooperatives and it’ll get ya inspired to search for some in your own city 🤝
April 26, 2023
Schneider has important ideas that are relevant to a grander scheme.
August 4, 2023
I really wanted to like this book as I believe cooperatives and the sharing economy offer great potential, yet the book was so dry and disorganised, it was a painful effort to give it my attention.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews