The future of cooperatives and trade unions: the relevance for the question of democratization of society

ABSTRACT

Co-operatives and trade unions are the oldest organizations of democratic participation, founded nearly 200 years ago. For sure the main challenges for the world and especially for the trade unions and the social economy today are the environmental degradation in all realms and globalization dominated by the financial capital. To better understand these issues a historical approach is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Trade unions
• co-operatives
• democratization
• ecology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

György Széll was born in 1941 in Budapest, Hungary; European citizen; professor for sociology at the University of Osnabrück/Germany, visiting professor at some 60 universities in more than 30 countries; expert to the European Commission and numerous scientific bodies. (Co-) Editor of several international book series and a dozen scientific reviews; altogether more than 300 scientific publications; studied at the universities of Frankfurt/M., Münster/W., Aix-en-Provence, Cologne, Bochum & Algiers; Diplom-Soziologe (1965); Dr.sc.pol. (1967).

ORCID

György Széll http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7318-3755

Notes

1 See for an overview Case and Taylor (1979), Trappe (2001), and for recent data Dave Grace and Associates (2014).

2 A good overview of international and European trade union policies is given by Altvater and Mahnkopf (1993) as well as Platzer and Müller (2009). Also Crouch (1993) and Spyropoulos (1986) are quite helpful.

3 See Jacobi (2000).

4 In regard to the policies of the Global Union Federations, see Müller, Platzer, and Rüb (2003).

5 For an overview, see Baum (2001), Dølvik (1997), Platzer (1991), Széll (2001), and Waddington & Hoffmann (2000).

6 Wolfgang Lecher already saw in 1981 the trade unions in a crisis.

7 On democratic theories, see Széll (2008).

8 Although Karl Marx always spoke of the two main classes of bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and a number of classes in between – including himself.

9 Also in science the change from extreme left to extreme right is quite widespread (Götz Aly, David Horowitz, Bernd Rabehl et al.).

10 In regard to education and cooperatives, see Frantz (2008).