In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin, Larry, and Cinar discuss the artificial intelligence renaissance going on today and its implications for a cooperative future. Artificial intelligence seems to be here to stay and we have to figure out how to engage with it. The ATC guys focus mainly on the issues of values and alignment, questioning if we should instill our essential human values of fairness and democracy in AI or simply let it run free? Under capitalism, however, the values we...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Kevin, and Cinar discuss the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, financial markets, self-regulation and the role of capitalist ideology in modern banking, the effect on real people of bank collapses, and more. **All Things Co-op is a  @democracyatwrk  production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work. 

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Cinar, and Kevin talk to Marcelo Netto, a Brazilian journalist and activist with the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil. They discuss Lula 3, the third term for Brazil's president Lula De Silva, the history of Brazil's development and the unique working class make up, the landless workers movement and their relationship with Lula, the impacts of the Bolsonaro presidency, and more. About our guest: Marcelo Netto is a journalist with a Master's...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin and Cinar speak with sociologist, political scientist, author and documentary filmmaker Dario Azzellini. They discuss recuperated workplaces—workplaces that have been abandoned by private capitalist owners and taken over by workers and reorganized to be democratically controlled—and why the process of engaging in struggle with fellow workers builds an enduring ecosystem of trust. They also explore critiques of the Mondragon corporation, why co-ops...

The hosts of our podcast All Things Co-op, Kevin, Larry and Cinar answer questions from a live audience.  This event originally aired on Friday, January 27, 2023 at 1pm ET. 

Please join us for a LIVE Q&A with the hosts of the All Things Co-op podcast on Friday, January 27! Learn more and RSVP: https://www.democracyatwork.info/ask_live_all_things_co_op In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin talks to movement lawyer and Clinical Law Professor Julian Hill. Julian’s research and teaching focuses on how law can be used as a tool to support the solidarity economy and social movements. Kevin and Julian discuss Julian’s background and how they got involved in...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin speaks with Paul Hazen, executive director of the U.S. Overseas Cooperative Development Council (OCDC) and Cooperative Development Foundation hall of fame inductee. Drawing on a lifetime of cooperative development work, Paul shares his insights on the importance of cooperatives in rural communities, how he helped his church start the Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative, how to achieve bipartisan support for co-ops in congress, national vs....

In this holiday-themed episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin speaks with Ellis Roberts of New York State of Pine, a worker cooperative selling Christmas trees in New York City. They discuss the exploitation of workers and huge markups for consumers from traditional Christmas tree companies, New York State of Pine’s democratic centralist model for decision-making, the question of scale, and the importance of working with and getting to know working-class people as communists and socialists. If...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk to philosopher, podcaster, and Jacobin contributor Ben Burgis about his views on cooperatives and their relationship to socialism. Burgis and the ATC guys discuss the value of co-ops under a capitalist economy and in a socialist future, the need for political victories to advance socialist ideals, the role of debating those who don’t share your views, and possible paths forward towards a new cooperative society.  

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry and Kevin talk with Joshua Preiss, professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Dr. Preiss talks with Kevin and Larry about the notion of the American Dream, notions of fair rates and just work, this American economic ideology and its relation to economic reality, Adam Smith and the framework of the "Well Ordered Society," the current Winner Take All economic...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin chats with Professor and author Elizabeth Anderson about her book Private Government, which pushes back on the myth that a free market means workers are free. Most workplaces function like dictatorships, with their own private governments—employers—calling the shots. Kevin and Professor Anderson discuss these contradictions, the historical American ideal of self-employment, classical philosophers and economists such as John Stuart Mill, contract...

In this episode of All Things Co-op in honor of National Co-op Month, Kevin interviews Priya Chatwani, a software engineer and organizer at Politics Rewired, a tech cooperative which grew out of the 2020 Bernie campaign that aims to build technology for Left organizing. Kevin and Priya speak about how Politics Rewired got started, the technology they’re currently working on, Big Tech and the role of tech cooperatives, cooperative decision-making, the relationship between technology and...

Welcome to Season 7 of All Things Co-op! In this special episode in honor of National Co-op Month, Kevin speaks with Kevin O’Brien, co-founder of the union co-op Worx Printing. You may have seen Worx Printing at the Democracy at Work online shop at https://democracy-at-work-shop.myshopify.com/. In this interview, O’Brien discusses his path to starting Worx, globalization and its effects on the apparel industry, the benefits and importance of the union-coop model, best practices for running...

In this special All Things Co-op season finale, Kevin traces a brief history of international relations, discusses the rise of international law and the failure of the UN to address our current global dilemmas, and speculates that a cooperative, rather than competitive, international order is necessary to create a sustainable, peaceful world.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar and Kevin discuss the issue of the environment, its destruction, the cause (spoiler alert: it’s capitalism) and the only true way we can address this looming crisis. They discuss the underlying reason why we have global climate change, its reverberating effects, the potential for revolutionary responses, the danger of eco-fascism, and how a cooperative response could save us.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar and Kevin talk with Erik Esse, the producer of the new documentary The Co-op Wars. The Co-op Wars traces the history of the food cooperative movement in the mid to late 1970s in Minnesota's Twin Cities. The rapid development of the food co-op network in the area prompted a split between anarchist "hippies" and Bolshevists who styled themselves as the “Cooperative Organization” and set about taking over the People's Warehouse by force. The film...

Polls show that most Americans think economic inequality is a problem, but if you listen to right-wing capitalist apologists, you’ll hear that economic inequality is either not that big of a deal, a consequence of economic freedom, and/or actually a good thing. In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar and Kevin pick apart these arguments, look at how wages are distributed in co-ops today, and talk about how inequality could be handled in a cooperative society.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Cinar, and Kevin celebrate Democracy at Work’s 10 year anniversary by reflecting on their history and involvement with d@w. The ATC guys discuss the value of d@w, their own political histories and perspectives, their path to becoming co-hosts of this podcast, the nuts and bolts of planning, recording and producing episodes, and what they are looking towards in the future.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk with Terence Courtney, the Director of Cooperative Development & Strategic Initiatives at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, an organization focused on land retention, cooperative development, and advocacy for small black-owned farms in the Southern United States. Terence and the ATC guys discuss the unique history of black farming in the south, institutional and ideological barriers to growth, and what cooperative...

Does capitalism allow real friendship? How does commodification shape our dating lives? How do people share intimacy in a world in which data is translatable to wealth? These and many more questions are discussed by Cinar, Kevin, and Larry in this episode of All Things Co-op.

In this episode of ATC, Cinar, Larry and Kevin talk with John Hayes of MyCoolClass about the rise of educational platforms and online learning. MyCoolClass aims to give power back to the teachers as they navigate the online teaching world and show how cooperative principles can shake up the space. John and the ATC guys chat about what cooperative cultural values bring to education and how an education system run by teachers could be truly revolutionary.

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk about the issue of innovation under both capitalism and a possible cooperative economy. The innovation we’ve seen over the last 250 years has been so immense that people often believe if we changed our economic system, we’d lose the drive for innovation. Though the innovation achieved under capitalism has led to a decrease in needless death, greater standards of living, and massive economic growth, it has also created...

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Cinar, Larry, and Kevin talk with Hazel Corcoran and Jared Blustein from the Canadian Worker Cooperative Federation. Hazel has been the CWCF's executive director since 1995 and Jared is a founding worker-owner of The Allium, a plant-based worker co-op in Calgary. The group discusses the unique landscape of the Canadian worker cooperative movement, touching on issues around building the solidarity economy and Canada's national legislation on cooperatives....

In this episode of All Things Co-op, Larry, Cinar, and Kevin dive into the issue of leisure as it relates to both our current capitalist system and a future cooperative society. What does leisure look like under capitalism and how does it function? What does it mean for our non-work lives and interests to be commodified? The ATC guys explore what leisure could look like in a more cooperative society.