In order to move toward a more meaningful and just society, we need to have target goals and a strategy to get there. Here is a list of guidelines given by Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, a priest who had fought Franco After World War 2 in Spains Basque country, ended up in prison, but managed to get released instead of executed. Father Arizmendi, as he is popularly called, was assigned by the church to the valley in the Basque containing the small town of Arrasete-Mondragon. He set to work trying to solve the massive war-created problems at hand. He began building a small technical school, and then a credit union where the region's peasants and workers pooled meager funds. After a few years, with just five of the best students of the school, he started a small factory making one product: a small paraffin-burning stove so people could cook and heat water. It was a good stove, and sold well.
Most important, he gave the project a set of ten carefully thought-out principles to serve as guidelines for the current and any future endeavors:
- Open Admission, meaning no worker is to discriminated against because of nationality, gender, political party or religion and such.
- Democratic organization, meaning one worker, one vote.
- Sovereignty of labor
- Instrumental and subordinate nature of capital
- Participatory Management
- Wage Solidarity
- Cooperation between Coops
- Social Transformation
- Universality
- Education
We could all learn something from these simple guidelines. The goal of all of us remains to create a more just, peaceful, and prosperous society in which we can all live with some security. And it will take all of us to make this happen.
