Mondragon: An Alternative Economy Nested Within Capitalism

I recently came across the word “Mondragon” in a Kim Stanley Robinson novel called 2312, which takes place in that future year and postulates about how a solar-system-scale economic system might work. Robinson lifted the term for the way interplanetary exchange could be regulated from a real arrangement: the Spanish cooperative system called the Mondragon that developed in the 1950s and today is called the Mondragon Corporation.

Don’t let the “corporation” in the name fool you: this is a worker-owned and -operated enterprise. In addition to having a literal stake in the product of their labors, “worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs"—according to Richard Wolff, who visited the Mondragon Corporation several years ago.

At that time, the cooperative had 85,000 members (today it is closer to 75,000) and focuses on transparency and security in terms of employment. And yet, though conventional capitalist wisdom would have it that workers need strict, hierarchical management to be productive, the system has proven remarkably agile over the last half-century, remaining up to date with new production processes and technologies.

Wolff believes that Mondragon proves that there is an “alternative” to capitalism. I don’t know if I would go so far, but I would say that it offers alternatives within capitalism that are more equitable and rational beyond the typical corporation.