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Producers' Cooperatives in Switzerland

This brief account of the development of producers' cooperatives in Switzerland is meant merely as an effort to stake out a more in-depth analysis yet to be undertaken. The topic has received some systematic treatment, but there is still a need to pull together various threads of inquiry and perhaps raise a few new questions. The following begins with an outline of the theoretical and programmatic premises which set the stage for the emergence of a substantial number of producers' cooperatives in Switzerland after the middle of the nineteenth century. It then looks at the practice of producers' cooperatives by examining the causes that prompted their founding and the conditions of their survival, alteration, or failure. A concluding overall assessment examines the organizational structure of producers' cooperatives, their utility, and their relationship to the labor movement in general. This survey has been prompted by the suggestion that present-day issues of workers' control may be illuminated by insights into the one hundred-year history of producers' cooperatives. This point will be discussed at the end of the paper. Currently, this research is not very far advanced. But it seems appropriate to pinpoint here what is known on the basis of printed sources and to indicate some areas of further inquiry.