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Switzerland has a retail/grocery chain called co-op, I always wondered if it was an actual coop or not, I’m guessing it is.


It's probably a customer co-op. A funny thing about this is that every kind of alternative ownership structure is considered leftist and somehow "publicly owned".

But in a customer co-op that doesn't include the workers and in a worker co-op that doesn't include you.


Actually, customer co-op often include the workers, at least in France. They either get the same share as customers once they start working, or they have preferential price to get bigger shares.

You can even have co-op without workers (there was one in Stain, northwest of Paris when I lived there) with really good food at really good price, but you had to work there like 4-8 hours a month to be customer.


Sometimes coops are customer-owned which still subjects the workers to wage labor, such as REI. Customer-owned coops are not aligned with the anarchist principles that inspired OP


Many countries have co-op grocery chains or other outcrops of the cooperative movement using that name, but most of them (including in Switzerland) are member (customer) owned rather than worker owned.


Both of the largest grocery chains in Switzerland are coops, there is also a prevalent bank and a large agricultural federation and more.

But most of these are primarily consumer coops not worker coops.




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