For All the People
Seeking to reclaim a history that has remained largely ignored by most historians, this dramatic and stirring account examines each of the definitive American cooperative movements for social change-farmer, union, consumer, and communalist-that have been all but erased from collective memory.
Focusing far beyond one particular era, organization, leader, or form of cooperation, For All the People documents the multigenerational struggle of the American working people for social justice. While the economic system was in its formative years, generation after generation of American working people challenged it by organizing visionary social movements aimed at liberating themselves from what they called wage slavery. Workers substituted a system based on cooperative work and constructed parallel institutions that would supersede the institutions of the wage system.
With an expansive sweep and breathtaking detail, this scholarly yet eminently readable chronicle follows the American worker from the colonial workshop to the modern mass-assembly line, from the family farm to the corporate hierarchy, ultimately painting a vivid panorama of those who built the United States and those who will shape its future.
John Curl, with over forty years of experience as both an active member and scholar of cooperatives, masterfully melds theory, practice, knowledge, and analysis, to present the definitive history from below of cooperative America. This second edition contains a new introduction by Ishmael Reed; a new author's preface discussing cooperatives in the Great Recession of 2008 and their future in the 21st century; and a new chapter on the role co-ops played in the Food Revolution of the 1970s.
John Curl is the author of Ancient American Poets, History of Work Cooperation in America, Memories of Drop City, and seven books of poetry. He has been a member of Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop for more than 30 years. He lives in Berkeley, California. Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and National Book Award nominee. He is also a publisher and editor of numerous anthologies and magazines as well as a teacher and lecturer. He lives in San Francisco.
Author: John Curl
Format: Paperback, 582 pages, 152mm x 229mm, 835 g
Published: 2012, PM Press, United States
Genre: Political Science & Theory
Seeking to reclaim a history that has remained largely ignored by most historians, this dramatic and stirring account examines each of the definitive American cooperative movements for social change-farmer, union, consumer, and communalist-that have been all but erased from collective memory.
Focusing far beyond one particular era, organization, leader, or form of cooperation, For All the People documents the multigenerational struggle of the American working people for social justice. While the economic system was in its formative years, generation after generation of American working people challenged it by organizing visionary social movements aimed at liberating themselves from what they called wage slavery. Workers substituted a system based on cooperative work and constructed parallel institutions that would supersede the institutions of the wage system.
With an expansive sweep and breathtaking detail, this scholarly yet eminently readable chronicle follows the American worker from the colonial workshop to the modern mass-assembly line, from the family farm to the corporate hierarchy, ultimately painting a vivid panorama of those who built the United States and those who will shape its future.
John Curl, with over forty years of experience as both an active member and scholar of cooperatives, masterfully melds theory, practice, knowledge, and analysis, to present the definitive history from below of cooperative America. This second edition contains a new introduction by Ishmael Reed; a new author's preface discussing cooperatives in the Great Recession of 2008 and their future in the 21st century; and a new chapter on the role co-ops played in the Food Revolution of the 1970s.
John Curl is the author of Ancient American Poets, History of Work Cooperation in America, Memories of Drop City, and seven books of poetry. He has been a member of Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop for more than 30 years. He lives in Berkeley, California. Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and National Book Award nominee. He is also a publisher and editor of numerous anthologies and magazines as well as a teacher and lecturer. He lives in San Francisco.