The financial breakdown and its aftermath have been the most spectacular manifestation of an even more profound problem in our societies, one that we could assimilate to a crisis of paradigm, and even ultimately to a moral crisis.

The paradox is that the dying paradigm that has brought about the dysfunctions in the first place remains, in the absence of a new one, the frame of reference to deal with the consequences of the crisis itself, leading to further “morbid symptoms”.

Even though the paradigm has failed, it still stands by the sheer weight of its institutional strength, but again in large part because alternative notions have failed to gain enough intellectual grounding and political traction. So the challenge we face is not just overcoming the consequences of an economic breakdown, but fully appreciating its nature and providing appropriate responses to it.

Neoliberalism has enshrined a winner-takes-all approach to economic and social affairs that is unsustainable in the long run – unsustainable in environmental, economic and social terms. A component of the approach is the shareholder value doctrine that dominates corporate governance and has helped provide a seemingly “scientific” patina to otherwise self-serving corporate practices.

As we all know, this philosophy has had numerous effects, one of which has been the neglect of stakeholders and a justification for all sorts of deleterious if not downright anti-social behaviours such as the closing of profitable business concerns, stratospheric executive pay, handsome rents to players in the financial sector, and tax avoidance schemes, to name a few.

The consequences of the rise in pre-eminence of large financial actors and their priorities are by now well-known and have helped mould the context in which most of the business activities of public corporations take place: short-termism being the most prominent. If capital needs as quick a turnover as technology will permit, it is not the same with stakeholders, communities and the environment.

The most important development in this area has undeniably been the re-commodification of labour. Indeed, one of the big achievements of the 20th century had been the gradual (but incomplete) civilising of work through collective bargaining and employment standards, not to mention social protection systems.

Nothing was ever perfect, but workers, at least in economically developed countries, could aspire to decent conditions of work and to economic security. The promise of economic growth for workers in developing countries was precisely that they too could aspire to such economic security. The past 30 years have seen a slow but steady unravelling of this state of affairs at all levels.

It is quite telling that in the aftermath of a financial crisis, the main remedy put in place in many countries has been, yet again, ‘structural’ reforms to make labour markets more flexible.

Most notably, it has spanned vast chains of subcontracting that have in effect dissolved the traditional employer-employee relationship. Large corporations are thus able to evade their rightful responsibilities as order givers as easily as they can evade paying taxes. Continuing efforts to instil corporate social responsibility bear witness to that enduring problem and the incapacity of public authorities to come to terms with it.

The malfunctions of the system have been diagnosed numerous times in recent years and many ‘fixes’ have been proposed. Yet what is remarkable is the seeming political incapability to articulate solutions, never mind putting them into place. Certainly part of the problem has to do with the creation of a global economic space that has reduced the margin of influence of national governments and social actors.

The world, it seems, can only go as fast as the slowest links in the chain, creating virtual global paralysis around major economic and social challenges. But part of the problem is also one of an alternative paradigm. Surely many well-intended reforms are put forward – but they typically fail to offer a coherent value framework.

The traditional alternative frameworks of the left have either, rightly enough, lost their appeal in the case of communism, or, as in the case of social-democracy, seem to have become too functional to neoliberal thinking to offer meaningful solutions.

The trade union movement is not immune to this crisis of ideas, much of its policy contributions, worthy as they are, being in line with Keynesian-inspired notions. I would offer that the discussion about alternatives should, simply enough, start from “first principles” that are at the heart of our political community: the dignity of human beings, solidarity and democracy.

… as is customary in times of hardship, interest has increased in the contribution of co-operatives …

The co-operative movement has a lot to teach in this area. And not surprisingly, as is customary in times of hardship, interest has increased in the contribution of co-operatives. The resilience of co-ops in times of crisis demonstrates that the model adds value to both economic and social outcomes.

However, rather perversely, when economic reforms are advanced (eg the reform of the banking sector in Europe), little attention is paid to the good record of co-operatives and the lessons it holds, and it is co-operatives that, in the end, have to adapt to reforms geared at the failing of more conventional firms.

More generally, it is telling that the concept of the ‘social economy’ that has emerged in recent years as a catch-all category for co-operatives and non-profit organisations has been seized upon in neoliberal policy circles as the privileged player to operate in economic sectors with low profit margins, notably that of social services.

In this view, the social economy becomes functional to the neoliberal economy, ideally bringing an entrepreneurial culture to the provision of services that might otherwise be supplied directly by state agencies …

It might be time for the co-operative movement to stop adapting to the environment set by other less successful players and seek more fundamental changes to the legal and economic frameworks in which it operates to make them more congruent with its own purported set of values.

Given their track record, should it not be capital-based firms that are asked to adapt to a more worker/community-oriented model? The economic question then becomes: how do we go about creating an economic and legal environment where democratic and person-oriented enterprises are not at the margin of mainstream economy, but hold the central place? The trade union and co-operative movements have all to gain if they pursue the discussion about an alternative growth and development model.

In fact, it is fair to say that to gain a social grounding, this discussion requires the active contribution of both actors. A first small step might be to develop proper indicators of growth and development. What we measure affects what we do; and our indicators of economic progress should be in line with our collective values.

Current growth indicators are widely seen as inadequate to the task. What indicators would better reflect human progress? Furthermore, the context of the discussion on the post-2015 sustainable development agenda could offer an opportunity for a joint contribution on this important debate.

Of course, the corollary to using more appropriate indicators is that co-operatives should themselves do a better job of monitoring their own “indicators” such as to better illustrate and monitor their own performance.

Another area of common reflection should be that of creating an institutional support system (legal, regulatory, financial and technical) to foster the creation of co-operatives and the transfer of enterprises to employees as the basis for an alternative development strategy.

If the co-operative movement would be at first sight the most immediate beneficiary of such a discussion, trade unions would also gain by becoming themselves more direct and active agents of development, affording them one more tool in the pursuit of their mission.

Such a discussion would, of course, have to address head-on the issue of the relationship between trade unions and co-operatives and the irritants that often emerge in the area of worker representation.

If both movements are true to their mission of working to ensure the economic security of workers and their communities, in the current economic and social context, they are condemned to talk to each other so that the ‘new’ can at last be born …

• This piece is based on an article published within the report ‘Cooperative Growth for the 21st Century’, produced by the worker co-operative federation CICOPA and commissioned by the International Co-operative Alliance as part of its Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade. To find out more about the Blueprint, visit: www.ica.coop/blueprint.