In the past Powderhorn coop has been noted for carrying only pure, whole grain food, often running out of items, closing during store
hours, being overly bureaucratic, and having too high a mark-up for shoppers who don't work in the coop.
Powderhorn is changing. Under new leadership and direction Powderhorn Coop is beginning to develop a stronger organization. The food
line is being expanded to include more staples, canned goods, meat and household items. The mark-up has been lowered for all shoppers

[I presented this paper at a community meeting just before I quit. All I can say about that meeting is that people are not convinced to give up power and will struggle to retain it. I worked a long time on different arguments but almost not at all on oranizing people around these ideas. ]

The trend towards private possession of individual coops, and the overall domination of much of the coops by a small class clique, cannot be overlooked any longer by those with some level of socialist consciousness.

In spite of the fact of incorrect leadership in the coops, the coops do represent some form of socialism. Who can deny the tremendous amount of socialized labor that went into the construction of the coops? This means not only the hundreds of people who work long hours with no thought of personal reward but also all the other workers in all branches of production on whom the coops depend for their goods and services.

From the beginning, the coops have operated on two false premises:
1. That you can operate a non-profit business in a capitalist economic system.
2. That there would be an always-available, readily tappable supply of extra money in coop people's bank accounts to bail the coops out when they got into trouble or needed to expand.

[continued]

The coops are giving birth to a new revolutionary force. This revolutionary force has before it the unfinished business of setting the masses of workers in motion around issues which directly affect their lives. All issues which affect the existence of the masses of workers have their origin in the economic system of capitalism: for instance, high inflation rate, massive unemployment, energy and food shortages, adulterated food, economic exploitation and social oppression based on class, race and sex, etc.

The "Response to the Beanery Paper"written by Jeb Cabbage and Emma Evechild should not be overlooked or pushed aside.
What Jeb and Emma did in responding to the Beanery paper was in effect to throw a nasty bourgeois-intellectual stone from the unsanitary cesspool of anti-communism.
The deliberate twisting of quotes.out of context and the gross distortion ·and spreading of untruths of communist history lead us to conclude that this Nixon type tactic is being used to try and discredit their political opposition. This is being done for two obvious reasons: to protect their control of Mill City and to.protect the ownership and control of the class clique that now leads most of the coops.

“To know your history, and act accordingly is to be revolutionary”

The political climate of the 50s and 60s