Mutualist.Org: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

A.1.3. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MUTUALISM AND THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT?
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A.1.3. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MUTUALISM AND THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT?

There isn't much of a difference. Co-ops are a specific form of mutualism. Look at it this way, mutualism is a set of general principles and the co-ops are one of the practical forms that these principles have taken. Historically, the practical forms were developed by the working class before the general principles were propounded by political philosophers. The problem today is the loss of consciousness of cooperatives as the embodiment of a form of mutualist practice.