COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES : FACING CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION
Overall: By emphasizing distinctions like the one between a the capitalist firm and market allocation system, which is a much broader concept, the writers clearly explain the unique theoretical characteristics of a cooperative.

It is not until Chapter 7 that Zamagni and Zamagni raise the question that is my reason for purchasing this book: Is it still possible that in today's new conditions the cooperative enterprise can continue to do well-as well as its capitalist counterpart-and also serve its other purposes?

I found this frustrating because I was expecting the book to begin with this question, then spend the better part of C.E.'s 95 pages analyzing and proposing a model for the successful cooperative, or maybe making policy proposals. This was not so. The first 2/3 of C.E. is not quite what I expected, but this book is a great, compact learning experience.

And it's a shame about the price.

A. J. Sutter

June 13, 2010

This book provides a concise and informative overview of cooperative entities. Cooperatives differ from typical companies in several ways. For example, memberships aren't freely transferable, and each member has one vote, regardless of the amount, if any, of capital he or she has contributed. The return received by any outside capital is limited, with profits going to members, not the capitalists. The authors describe these and other general principles of co-operatives, and the history of the co-op movement. They also provide a survey of types of co-ops around the world (which, at least in the case of Japan, paints a somewhat rosier picture than practical reality). Perhaps less interesting for most readers will be a separate chapter (Ch. 5) that focuses on the development of co-ops in Italy, including legislative details. A bit slow, too, is the following chapter, which compares the efficiency of co-ops to that of typical corporations. It assumes some familiarity with conventional neoclassical economics, and pedantically strolls to an obvious conclusion: since efficiency is a concept drawn from (neoclassically-based) capitalism, and since co-ops aren't designed according to the principles of capitalism while corporations are, it's no surprise that conventional corporations are usually more "efficient" than co-ops. The book concludes with a discussion of co-op governance. However, despite the subtitle (new in this edition), globalization is not the main focus of the book, or even given much attention at all. The original subtitle, "between the market and economic democracy" ("tra mercato e democrazia economica") is far more pertinent.

I read the book in its Italian original, which I'd have rated 4 stars for readers outside Italy (deducting one star for the two tedious chapters and the sketchiness of the bibliography). The translation appears to have some improvements, which merit a half-star boost. First, a spot-check suggests that some of the more academically-written sections in the original have been slightly cleaned up: e.g., a ridiculously long sentence that opened Ch. 2 in the original has been divided into two here. Also, this edition includes a more formal and complete list of references than the original. One way in which the Italian original excels, however, is the price (13 Euros) -- even with express courier shipping, it will cost you less than half the price of this edition. The high price tag is a shame, because the book deserves a wider readership than it's likely to get. It describes an important real-life example of how capitalism and participation in a market economy are not the same thing.