Worker Cooperatives and Other 'Cooperatives'

The short answer is whenever the actual activity of the “cooperative” is not carried out by the members but by employees. The problem is, of course, not in cooperation per se but in the hiring, employing, renting, or leasing of people to carry out the supposedly “cooperative” activities of the “cooperative” (Ellerman, 2021). Consider the case of a typical consumer cooperative. What is the cooperative activity carried out by the consumer‑members? They do not consume cooperatively; that would be a commune or kibbutz. They shop and consume as individuals or as individual families. They do not carry out the activity of the consumer cooperative business—which is conducted by the hired managers and employees of the business. The whole notion of the consumer‑members cooperating together in some joint activity is a beautiful fiction, but a fiction nevertheless. Of course, there may be some overlap between employees and consumers, but we are analyzing functional roles, i.e., the roles people have qua consumers and qua workers. Moreover, the number of consumers will far exceed the number of employees.