LEN: As folks head towards the very first US Social Forum in Atlanta questions arise: other than convening a rich mosaic of progressive organizations and activists, does the social forum movement have a mission to bring about "another world," and, if not, should it now adopt a strategy for doing so?

By Robin Hahnel

Worker-owned cooperatives are wonderful alternatives to privately owned, capitalist firms. Workers can decide what they want to produce and how they want to produce it instead of having all that decided by their employers. In other words, workers can take control of their laboring capacities and use them as they see fit. Moreover, whatever benefits come from their efforts belong to them, not to an absentee owner who did none of the work.

For more than twenty years, the Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Newsletter (called "Changing Work" from 1984-1991) has published news and analysis of global efforts to build a democratic and cooperative economy. In 2007, we decided to move from a printed format (with a supplemental website) to a fully-online web publication. Welcome to the new GEO Online!

This Occasional Paper by editor/activists at Grassroots Economic Organizing is meant to stimulate dialog on the future of the grassroots economic democracy movement. This is a fully re-written update of an essay available since 1994 to GEO readers. We hope for wide use of this text, with attribution to the authors and GEO. Please email us with ideas/dialogue.

Our goal is more than simple options for individual improvement. It is more. If the co-operative enterprise does not serve for more, the world of work has the right to spit in our faces.
- Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (Quoted by MacLeod 1997)