Last month, as part of our Community Development Programme, DFC member and cooperative historian Partick Doyle gave a presentation on “Co-operation as a Critique of Capitalism: A Historical Perspective”. The video from this presentation is now available on our YouTube channel. Doyle presents a sweeping history of the cooperative movement and its Irish connections.
Crises and capitalism possess a long history. The emergence of co-operative movements in the nineteenth century represented one of the most important and enduring responses to economic and political instability. The rapidly changing nature of work, the disruptive emergence of new technologies, issues around precarity and inadequate pay affected the lives of populations around the globe. In response, this talk will outline some of the ways co-operators have sought to replace, reform, and find a new relationship with capitalism in the past. Drawing on a range of examples, including some from an Irish context, this talk will plot a potted history of those co-operators who imagined a radical and different future and consider what lessons we might draw from the past.
Our Community Development Programme for 2021 has been boosted by the support we received through the Social Enterprise Fund in 2020.
