The 26th issue of Arena Quarterly has a special section on cooperatives. Post-capitalist work, social engagement and new forms of housing are the centrepiece of this issue—how to cooperate with others to get all manner of things working for you, your communities, your comrades. This is the promise of the cooperative movement. Practitioners and researchers in this special section provide crucial leads for thinking about and enacting new forms of meaningful association. The section seeks to look at the possibilities, limits and structural conditions that shape cooperatives in today’s context of converging crises.
This special section is also an invitation for deepening conversations on co-operatives and post-capitalism. We warmly welcome replies, responses, critiques and further developments. If you would like to make a considered reply to any of the pieces, please write it up as a submission and send it in. Furthermore, we would love to have another special issue on cooperatives, maybe next year. Please get in contact if you would like to pitch a piece for this, and keep these vital discussions alive and developing.
Speak of invites, if you are in freezing Melbourne, please consider attending the launch of issue 26, details below, should be a fun night…!
Tim Ström
On behalf of Arena Publication Editors
Issue 26: Cooperatives: Prefiguring a post-capitalist good life?
Buy a hard copy or PDF of the issue here, or—better yet—subscribe to support Arena to produce more such excellent critical and radical articles…!
Editorial: Cooperatives Take Root
Timothy Erik Ström, Jun 2026
“Put simply, we need a socially cooperative way to live fairly and meaningfully with one another within the living natural world”.
Responding to the Crisis of the Left
Colm McNaughton, Jun 2026
“Through giving people a taste of what is possible we can overcome the decades of defeat and paralysis that the radical Left has suffered”.
Cooperatives on the Ground
Antony McMullen, Clare Fountain, Yolanda van Gellecum, Jun 2026
A practical discussion among cooperative developers about enterprise and democracy, and how co-ops are just plain useful
“The social and solidarity economy names forms of enterprise where use, participation, reciprocity and stewardship matter more than external return”.
Planning, Managing and Enjoying Your Own Affordable Housing
Lou Crabtree-Hayes, Jun 2026
“Housing cooperatives are an organisational form constituted to own, govern and/or manage physical housing stock, where members of the cooperative live in and manage the housing cooperative together”.
Prefiguring Postcapitalist Work
Colin Long, Jun 2026
“Practising cooperation in today’s world is a revolutionary act in itself, helping to raise consciousness and confidence, while experimenting with new forms of ownership and control”.