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The origins of Mondragon: Catholic co-operativism and social movement in a Basque valley (1941–59)∗

2008; Routledge; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03071020802268314

1470-1200

Fernando Molina Aparicio, Antonio E. Momplet Míguez,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes ∗Research for this article has been funded by the Xunta de Galicia through the Research Project 'Grupo de Referencia Competitiva: Historia agraria e política do mundo rural. Séculos XIX e XX'. Main Researcher: Doctor Ramón Villares Paz, Code: 2006/XA024. 1R. Oakeshott, 'Mondragon. Spain's oasis of democracy', The Observer, 21 January 1973. 2It was reflected in J. Vanek, Self-Management: Economic Liberation of Man (Harmondsworth, 1975) and covered in greater detail in Oakeshott's 'Grass roots enterprises thrive amid the Basques', Financial Times, 9 July 1976; The Case for Workers' Co-ops (London, 1978); The Prospect and Conditions for Successful Co-operative Production (London, 1978); Worker-owners: Mondragon Revisited (London, 1987). 3S. Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon. Co-operatives, Politics and Working-class Life in a Basque Town (Albany, NY, 1996) proposes an interpretation of this co-operative effort as a supposed instrument for entrepreneurial and class acculturation that is strategically identified with the social and political agenda of the Basque Nationalist Party; K. Bradley and A. Gelb, Co-operation at Work (London, 1983) and G. Cheney, Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressures at Mondragon (Ithaca, NY, 1999) associate the business values of Mondragon with those that are characteristic of Basque ethnicity. 4See D. Greenwood and J. L. González, Industrial Democracy as Process. Participatory Action Research in the Fagor Co-operative Group of Mondragon (Maastricht, 1992). This helps explain why an economic study of the productive and labour successes of this business model could begin with a 'Historical and organizational overview' that, after the Introduction, centres on 'the Basque nation: structural changes'. In it the two political-cultural factors already mentioned are established as the framework for the Mondragon experiment. See also H. Thomas and C. Logan, Mondragon. An Economic Analysis (London, 1982), 14–17. 5W. Foote Whyte and K. King Whyte, Making Mondragon. The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Co-operative Complex (Ithaca, NY, 1988), 270–81 and H. Desroche, 'Preface: Mondragon, ensamble interco-opératif non-conventionel' in Q. García, Les coopératives industrielles de Mondragón (Paris, 1970), 7–21. Along similar lines, see the more modest intellectual study of R. Morrison, We Build the Road as We Travel (Philadelphia, 1991), 45–6. 6X. Itçaina, 'Catholicisme, économie identitaire et affinités électives: les coopératives Basques comme groupements volontaires utopiques', Social Compass, xlix, 3 (2002), 398. 7The concepts of 'collective action frames' and 'contentious identity', along with the dimension of collective action itself, are the result of a synthesis between North American social theory, focused on the political process and organizational structures, and the European approach, which is more interested in the question of collective identities. This synthesis is quite successful in, for example, the work of D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy and M. N. Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge, 1996). For a more recent study by the three great social movement specialists of today, which explains some of these concepts which they label as the 'classical agenda', along with several new ones (although with that sociological focus that always seems excessive to a historian), see D. McAdam, S. Tarrow and C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, 2001). 8J. Goicoecheaundía, Antecedentes históricos del Movimiento Sacerdotal de Vitoria (Vitoria, 1994), 141 and 151; I. Perea, El modelo de iglesia subyacente en la pastoral del clero vasco, i (Bilbao, 1991), 134–7; F. Lannon, 'A Basque challenge to the pre-Civil War Spanish church', European History Quarterly, ix (1979), 29–48. 9F. Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta (1915–1976). Biografía (Mondragón, 2005), 98–101, 116–19. 10 ibid., 114 and 119. 11J. B. Eguzkitza, Gizarte Auzia (Zornotza, 1935). 12Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit.,120–2. 13J. Azpiazu, La acción social de sacerdote (Madrid, 1934); 'El sacerdote social', Idearium, i, 5 (1934), 402–15. 14Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 129–35. 15Regarding the figure of Rufino Aldabalde, see J. M. Javierre, La aventura de ser hoy sacerdote. Biografía de D. Rufino Aldabalde (Bilbao, 1997), and L. Güell, Rufino Aldabalde, sacerdote (Madrid, 1989). 16J. M. González, La metalurgia guipuzcoana en la primera mitad del siglo XX (Bilbao, 2005), 11–17. 17 ibid., 36–65. 18Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 229–76. The historical process that led to the Mondragon co-operative model should be considered through the lens of opportunity, structure and identity factors, which are expressed in 'micro-mobilization contexts'. This explains cases in which sub-groups are organized informally by age, cultural relations or friendship, and exist prior to political action, as pointed out by D. McAdam, 'Micro-mobilization contexts and recruitment to activism' in B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi and S. Tarrow (eds), International Social Movement Research. From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research across Cultures (Greenwich, 1988), 125–54. Bert Klandermans, in The Social Psychology of Protest (Oxford, 1997), has pointed out the importance of the phenomenon of transformation of discontent into action as a process of attribution of meanings. 19Archives of José María Arizmendiarrieta, Folder 18, draft of a letter to Mr Ricardo Oreja, August 1942; Folder 41, 'Experiencias sobre una forma co-operativa: Mondragón', speech at the Fomento de Actividades Culturales, Económicas y Sociales Society, 21 January 1965. The archives of José María Arizmendiarrieta are located at the Centre for Cooperatives Studies of Otalora owned by Mondragon Corporation in Gipuzkoa (Spain). 20Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 257–8. 21The quote from the last paragraph, and almost all of these issues, are addressed in Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 295–300. 22The various dimensions of the political opportunity structures are summarized in S. Tarrow, 'States and opportunities: the political structuring of social movements' in McAdam, McCarthy and Zald (eds), Comparative Perspectives, op. cit., 41–61. 23L. M. Torra-Cuixart, Espiritualidad sacerdotal en España (1939–1952). Búsqueda de una espiritualidad del clero diocesano (Salamanca, 2000), 409–10; F. Verdera, Conflictos entre la Iglesia y el Estado en España. La revista Ecclesia entre 1941 y 1945 (Pamplona, 1995), 166–71 and 186–95. A general overview in P. Martín, De la Victoria al Concordato. Las relaciones Iglesia-Estado durante el primer franquismo (1939–1953) (Barcelona, 2003). 24Archives of José María Arizmendiarrieta, Folder 14, commentaries to Antonio Pildain's pastoral letter, undated; Folder 23, 'El sentido y ámbito de la justicia social', undated; 'La acción social. Problemas de justicia y apostolado', Mondragón, December 1945. 25Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 276–81. 26 ibid., 281–2. 27J. M. Ormaechea, 'El hombre que yo conocí' in J. M. Ormaechea et al., Semblanzas de Don José María Arizmendiarrieta (Aretxabaleta, 1991), 60–1. 28Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 282–6. 29Archives of José María Arizmendiarrieta, Otalora, Folder 25, speech for the graduating class of 1948 at the Professional School, manuscript. 30Archives of José María Arizmendiarrieta, Otalora, Folder 54, 'Liga de Educación y Cultura', undated (1948); pamphlet of introduction to the League of Education and Culture, undated (1948). 31Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 340–3. 32Desroche, 'Preface', op. cit., 11–13. 33F. Molina, Fagor Electrodomésticos (1956–2006). Historia de una experiencia co-operativa (Mondragón, 2006), 35–43. 34J. M. Arizmendiarrieta et al., Caja Laboral Popular. Una experiencia co-operativa (Bilbao, 1967), 9–14. 35Molina, Fagor Electrodomésticos, op. cit., 55–67. 36Molina, José María Arizmendiarrieta, op. cit., 310, 352–3, 473–5, 483–4.