Consumer cooperatives were born together with industrial capitalism and its social classes, being a reaction against miserable economic conditions and disgracefully low positions of farmers and workers. Nowadays, the traditional, classbased motives have lost their importance, but still many consumers are attracted by consumer cooperatives and each year numerous consumers stand for election to the committees of consumer cooperatives. A recent survey amongst newly elected and newly retired committee members in Denmark reveals three major motivating factors: cooperative ideology, survival of local shops, and nutrition. Therefore it seems wise for consumer cooperatives to emphasize activities related to these motives, and by doing so they may eventually succeed in their search for a new identity.
THE CLASS-BASED ORIGIN
Marketing cooperatives were born together with industrial capitalism. Consumers, workers, and farmers reacted against the challenge of industrial capitalism by forming cooperatives. Workers wanted to improve their miserable economic conditions and disgracefully low position with the help of consumer cooperatives and worker cooperatives, and farmers wished to control the increasingly important processing and marketing enterprises by forming farmer cooperatives, thereby attempting to limit the dominance of industrial and commercial capital in the towns.
Naturally, this class-based approach to cooperative development linked cooperatives closely to other class-based organizations such as the political parties, trade unions, and farmers' unions. Cooperatives claimed to be non-political organizations, but historically, cooperatives have nevertheless been highly influenced by political divisions, both divisions within cooperative organizations (e.g., the E-movement in Finland, see Ilmonen, 1986) and divisions between cooperatives (e.g., cooperatives in Italy).
Cooperatives may, however, be seen as something more, namely as a means of realizing the visions of a better society: a society characterized by high principles of democracy, liberty, equality, and justice. In all classes and strata of society, certain people shared such