In contrast to many aficionados of Mondragon, the author provides a much more sober assessment of the possible contributions that Mondragon and other cooperatives can make in building a new economy and society.
As co-ops demonstrate, beyond their everyday work, their organizational abilities to create financial institutions, develop co-op educational projects, secure land and buildings through land trusts and develop housing, healthcare and recreational facilities, they enhance their economic resilience, and in doing so, demonstrate to other groups ways of forging durability through bottom-up alliances. The cooperatives, in other words, might act as catalyzing agents for the grassroots economy, not to lead it, but to contribute their organizational expertise to the larger alternative economy.