Потребительские кооперативы: демократичное управление и взаимная помощь.

Autonomous association owned and managed democratically by its clients

A consumers' co operative is an enterprise owned by consumers and managed democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such co operatives operate within the market system, independently of the state, as a form of mutual aid, oriented toward service rather than pecuniary profit. Many cooperatives, however, do have a degree of profit orientation. Just like other corporations, some cooperatives issue dividends to owners based on a share of total net profit or earnings (all owners typically receive the same amount); or based on a percentage of the total amount of purchases made by the owner. Regardless of whether they issue a dividend or not, most consumers’ cooperatives will offer owners discounts and preferential access to goods and services. Consumers' cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers, such as food co ops. However, there are many types of consumers' cooperatives, operating in areas such as health care, insurance, housing, utilities and personal finance (including credit unions). In some countries, consumers' cooperatives are known as cooperative retail societies or retail co ops, though they should not be confused with retailers' cooperatives, whose members are retailers rather than consumers. Consumers' cooperatives may, in turn, form cooperative federations. These may come in the form of cooperative wholesale societies, through which consumers' cooperatives collectively purchase goods at wholesale prices and, in some cases, own factories. Alternatively, they may be members of cooperative unions. Consumer cooperation has been a focus of study in the field of cooperative economics.

Consumer cooperatives rose to prominence during the industrial revolution as part of the labour movement. As employment moved to industrial areas and job sectors declined, workers began organizing and controlling businesses for themselves. Workers cooperatives were originally sparked by "critical reaction to industrial capitalism and the excesses of the industrial revolution." The formation of some workers cooperatives was meant to "cope with the evils of unbridled capitalism and the insecurities of wage labor." The first documented consumer cooperative was founded in 1769, in a barely furnished cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's whitewashed front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society. In the decades that followed, several cooperatives or cooperative societies formed including Lennoxtown Friendly Victualling Society, founded in 1812. The philosophy that underpinned the cooperative movement stemmed from such socialist writers as Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. Robert Owen, as the father of the cooperative movement, made his fortune in the cotton trade, but believed in putting his workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their children. These ideas were put into effect successfully in the cotton mills of New Lanark, Scotland, where the first co operative store was opened. Spurred on by this success, Owen had the idea of forming "villages of co operation" where workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making their own clothes, and ultimately becoming self governing. He tried to form such communities in Orbiston, Scotland and in New Harmony, Indiana in the United States of America, but both communities failed. Similar early experiments were made in the early 19th century and by 1830 there were several hundred co operatives. William King made Owen's ideas more workable and practical. He believed in starting small, and realized that the working classes would need to set up co operatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a monthly periodical called The Co operator, the first edition of which appeared on 1 May 1828. It gave a mixture of co operative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using cooperative principles.

The first successful co operative was the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, established in England in 1844. This became the basis for the development and growth of the modern cooperative movement. others argue that consumer cooperatives do not return a profit by traditional definition, and similar tax standards do not apply.

Since consumer cooperatives are run democratically, they are subject to the same problems typical of democratic government. Such difficulties can be mitigated by frequently providing member/owners with reliable educational materials regarding current business conditions. In addition, because a consumer cooperative is owned by the users of a good or service as opposed to the producers of that good or service, the same sorts of labor issues may arise between the workers and the cooperative as would appear in any other company. This is one critique of consumer cooperatives in favor of worker cooperatives.

One of the world's largest consumer co operative federations operates in the UK as The Co op, which operates over 5,500 branches of 'Co op' branded business including Co op Food (the UK's sixth largest supermarket chain), Co op Funeralcare, Co op Travel, Co op Legal Services, and Co op Electrical. The Co operative Group is by far the largest of these businesses, itself having over 4,500 outlets and operating the collective buying group. In Switzerland, the two largest supermarket chains Coop and Migros are both co operatives and are among the country’s largest employers. In Ireland, the Dublin Food Coop has been in operation since 1983. In Scandinavia, the national cooperatives Norway, Sweden, and Denmark joined as Coop Norden in January 2002, but separated again in 2008. In Italy, the Coop Italia chain formed by many sub cooperatives controlled 17.7% of the grocery market in 2005. In Finland, the S Group is owned by 22 regional cooperatives and 19 local cooperative stores, which in turn are owned by their customers. In 2005 the S Group overtook its nearest rival Kesko Oyj with a 36% share of retail grocery sales compared to Kesko's 28%. In France, Coop Atlantique owns 7 hypermarkets, 39 supermarkets, and about 200 convenience stores. In Germany, the ReWe Group is a diversified holding company of consumer cooperatives that includes thousands of retail stores, discount stores, and tourism agencies. It ranks as the second largest supermarket chain in Germany and in the top ten cooperative groups in the world. In Spain, Eroski is a supermarket chain within Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa. As a worker consumer hybrid, some of the personnel are hired workers and some are owner workers. The owners include workers and mere consumers, but buying is open to everybody. It has franchises under the brand Aliprox not owned by Eroski but sharing its product range. Its origin is in the Basque Country. In its process of expansion, it merged with the Valencia based cooperative Consum, but the merger dissolved in 2005. It has expanded across Spain and entered France and Gibraltar. After the Spanish crisis of 2008, Eroski sold several of its supermarkets and hypermarkets.

The Co op Bookshop sold textbooks both online and on university campuses. It also owned Australian Geographic. In 2020 its retail stores closed and its online store was sold to Booktopia. The Wine Society (Australian Wine Consumers’ Co operative Society Limited), established in 1946, now has more than 58,000 members. It sources and sells premium wines under the Society label, runs comprehensive wine education courses, and recognises excellence from young winemakers. Bank Australia was formed in 2011 as the Members and Education Credit Union. It changed its name to Bank Australia in 2015. The bank is wholly owned by its customers, reported at 125,000 in 2012.

Japan has a large and well developed consumer cooperative movement with more than 14 million members. Retail co ops alone had a combined turnover of 2.5 trillion Yen (21 billion U. S. Dollars) in April, 2003. Co op Kobe (コープこうべ) in the Hyōgo Prefecture is the largest retail cooperative in Japan and, with more than 1.2 million members, is one of the largest cooperatives in the world. In addition to retail co ops there are medical, housing, and insurance co ops alongside institutional (workplace based) co ops, co ops for school teachers, and university based co ops. Approximately one in five of all Japanese households belongs to a local retail co op and 90% of all co op members are women. Nearly six million households belong to one of the 1,788,000 Han groups. "Kanagawa Network Movement", and so on). They depend on consumers movement, feminism, regionalism, and prefer to anti nuclear. These parties keep small but steady sections in prefecture and municipal assemblies.

In the United States, the PCC (Puget Consumers Cooperative) Natural Markets in Seattle is the largest consumer owned food cooperative. The National Cooperative Grocers Association maintains a food cooperative directory. Seattle based R. E. I., which specializes in outdoor sporting equipment, is the largest consumer cooperative in the United States. Outdoor retailer Mountain Equipment Co op (MEC) in Canada was one of that country's major consumer cooperatives. In the Canadian Prairie provinces as well as British Columbia, gas stations, lumberyards, and grocery stores can be found under the Co Op brand. All credit unions in the United States and Canada are financial cooperatives. Tim Worstall has called the Vanguard Group a customer owned cooperative, since the owners of Vanguard funds are the funds' investors.

In Puerto Rico, several Supermercados Fam Coop operate.