The history of the emergence of cooperatives
All the most significant successes of mankind have been achieved by combining the forces and intellect of people.
The cooperative enterprise is the documented essence of the human well-being paradigm: the pooling of strengths, resources and brains to achieve the goals of a safe, prosperous and meaningful life.
Man, joining forces, ascended to the top of the food chain, because only by uniting in communities we are a force worthy of respect and blessings.
Thousands of years have passed...and nothing has changed.
Alone in the field is still “not a warrior”, but in modern life he is simply a “victim” of those who are not alone, those who have united in communities, organizations, in a bunch of like-minded people, after all.
If you want to avoid loneliness, find or create a social circle for yourself in the form of a club, hobby groups, etc.
If you want to live in prosperity and wealth, find or create your own economic community in the form of a consumer cooperative.
How people came up with cooperatives:
How people came up with cooperatives:
The first cooperative enterprises were founded in Great Britain at the very beginning of the 19th century by philanthropists who sought to improve the situation of workers. And already from the 1820-1830s, the workers themselves became the owners of cooperative shops, mills, and bakeries. Cooperatives enabled workers to buy goods at low prices.
At the very beginning, cooperatives arose for several reasons:
- The salary was not enough and it was necessary to find a way to reduce the cost of providing a living.
- People wanted to live with dignity, buy good food, travel, dress well, give their children a good education, but for this an additional source of income was needed, there was no opportunity to open an independent business, start-up capital, experience, and ordinary workers were afraid of losing their jobs, which although he didn’t give them everything they wanted, but in any case he gave them a chance to simply not starve to death (in those days, for a jobless person, this was a real threat).
- Employers and philanthropists were looking for an effective methodology for creating an additional social security resource for employees without increasing the burden on the company's budget.
In the 1860s and 1880s, the cooperatives of Great Britain and Germany were so successful that they began to form unions. In the same years, cooperative systems arose and strengthened in
Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. In the 1890s, the cooperation in Europe covered more than 2 million members.
At that time, Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire. By the number of cooperatives and members in them, Russia at the beginning of the 20th century ranked first in the world. No other country has known such a rapid growth of cooperation. By 1917, the number of cooperatives of all types approached 50,000 (about 25,000 consumer societies, 16,500 credit cooperatives, 6,000 agricultural societies, 2,400 agricultural partnerships, 3,000 butter-making artels, 1,500-2,000 manufacturing and handicraft artels). They consisted of about 14 million people.
After the October Revolution of 1917, the existence of cooperation in the USSR determined its interaction not with private capital, as in other countries, but with the monopoly state sector of the economy. After the adoption in 1921 of the New Economic Policy (NEP), it was the cooperatives that began to create the bulk of consumer goods and gave impetus to the development of the economy of the young Soviet state.
At the dawn of independence, Kazakhstan raised the first generations of successful businessmen also from cooperatives.
Today, experts from international think tanks also emphasize the role of cooperatives in the fight against poverty and employment.
In resolution 64/136 of December 18, 2009, the UN General Assembly noted the special role of cooperatives in poverty reduction, employment and social inclusion.
In 2010, according to the International Co-operative Alliance, the cooperative movement covered 700,000,000 people.2012 was proclaimed by the UN as the International Year of Cooperatives (UN Resolution 64/136).