Abstract

The point to be made in this article is that the growth prospects of the cooperative movement in years to come depend on a radical change in the current mainstream model in line with the following criteria: a) leaving cooperatives free to adopt profit-orientated management modes, b) framing policies geared towards furthering the emergence of medium- to large-sized cooperative firms, c) replacing the currently dominant WMF model with the LMF-type model theorised by Vanek. As the large-size LMFs which carry on business freely in today's markets are clearly anticapitalistic firms, the growth of this movement would both legitimise free competition between two opposed categories of business enterprises and help reverse the piecemeal erosion of the cooperative ideal in the present world.