One of the most singular and accomplished commons I’ve ever encountered is Cecosesola, a federation of Venezuelan cooperatives. The remarkable federation artfully manages multiple ventures as commons while deeply immersed within a system of capitalist markets.
Founded in 1967 in the state of Lara in Venezuela, Cecosesola got its start when working-class people in poorest barrios of the region organized to set aside money every month to build their own cooperatives.
Nearly sixty years later, Cecosesola now coordinates a wide variety of enterprises. It works with farmers to supply 800 tons of vegetables to large urban produce markets serving 100,000 people a week. Its healthcare services treat 250,000 patients a year, including many specialties and surgeries. Its savings and loan cooperative, funerary enterprise, and dozens of other organizations serve low-income families at dramatically lower prices than conventional markets.
While the market performance of the coops is impressive, its most significant achievement is its internal work culture and grassroots support. Cecosesola hosts a radically nonhierarchical, egalitarian culture of trust and participation for its 1,500 associates. Its success is based on its deep commitment to building social trust, responsibility, and personal self-improvement.
“For doing good business, we do things the opposite way,” said Gustavo Salas, an associate at Cecosesola for more than fifty years. “We concentrate on an educational process of constructing trust based on ethical values. If you are able to construct trusting relationships, much of what you do in business to control workers isn’t necessary.”
In 2022, Cecosesola won the Right Livelihood Award for its achievements. The prize honoring leadership in social change selected the group for its exemplary work in “establishing an equitable and cooperative economic model as a robust alternative to profit-driven economies.” (See my 2022 blog post.)
To learn more about how to engage in commoning within a capitalist market context, I recently interviewed Salas for my latest episode of Frontiers of Commoning (Episode #64).
My late colleague Silke Helfrich and I had written about Cecosesola in our 2019 book Free, Fair and Alive, focusing on its ability to “ignore the market” in the course of commoning within a market system. We were fascinated by how a trust-based system of collaboration and ethical commitment can build a powerfully effective, large-scale work culture.
While out-performing conventional market players in terms of price and grassroots support, Cecosesola provides a humane, fair and stable work environment for its associates. The group’s tagline (in Spanish) translates as “building trust through diversity.”
“We don’t work with economic goals or plans,” said Salas. “We concentrate on our educational process, and grow….Trust is an emergent phenomenon.” Cecosesola strives to replace competition with cooperation…. efficiency with resilience…. short-term thinking with sustainability… and profit-centered approaches with a needs-centered outlook.
The organization’s radical decentralization of authority is balanced by a social cohesion. The result is a large team that is highly creative and flexible. Associates are trained to share frontline information about production realities, economic pressures, and customers, which helps the coops respond quickly and strategically. Associates are shifted to different jobs within the organization from time to time, teaching them a range of skills and a larger sense of the whole enterprise.
This culture has helped Cecosesola navigate some serious inflation and economic disruptions in Venezuela over the past few decades.
Among Cecosesola’s suppliers and associates – as well as outside vendors – exchanges of money obviously happen. But it isn’t experienced as a market. There isn’t a transactional, self-serving mindset or a competitive attitude. The first priority is nourishing everyone’s personal growth, responsible judgment, ethical relationships, and group commitments.
How does Cecosesola pursue commoning so conscientiously within a capitalist system? Two explanations have been given: “We suspend property without abolishing it,” meaning private property rights are not elevated above all else; and “[We are] a business without business priorities,” meaning attention is paid to the needs and humanity of the whole person.
Cecosesola’s experiences spurred Silke and me to identify an important pattern of commoning that applies more generally: “Keep commerce and commoning distinct.”
For example, Cecosesola associates don’t barter over price with farmers and other suppliers. It asks them to talk about their actual costs and how much they need to live. The point is not to focus only on economics concerns and charge whatever the market will bear; it is a discussion about what is necessary and fair in the context of a long-term relationship.
Similarly, vegetables are not sold with individual prices, but with an average price per kilogram for all produce. This allows people to buy vegetables at roughly half the price of conventional supermarkets.
Because Cecosesola doesn’t rely on outside wholesalers, distributors, middle management, marketing, and similar overhead costs, it has considerably more freedom to manage its finances and work practices. It can afford to set its prices at substantially lower levels than most businesses – while paying its associates twice as much income as similarly situated workers. To deepen its work culture, Cecosesola’s associates recently decided to work only three days a work, instead of four, so that the extra day could be used for internal meetings.
To listen to my interview with Gustavo Salas about Cecosesola, click here.
For more information about Cecosesola, see this video profile of the group; this video interview with Gustavo Salas; and the ceremony presenting the Right Livelihood award to Cecosesola in 2022. Also interesting: this interview with Cecosesola members in the book Patterns of Commoning, and this 2010 essay by Cecosesola about its philosophy and practices, "Toward a Collective Mind? Transforming Meetings into Get-Togethers."
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