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Law and the Political in the History of the English Co-Operative Movement

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Law and the Political in the History of the English Co-Operative Movement ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Constituting the co-operative: law and the political in the history of the English co-operative movement https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40409/ Version: Full Version Citation: Mulqueen, Tara Ann (2019) Constituting the co-operative: law and the political in the history of the English co-operative movement. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Constituting the Co-operative: Law and the Political in the History of the English Co-operative Movement Tara Ann Mulqueen School of Law Birkbeck College, University of London Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2018. I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own, except where explicit reference is made to the work of others. Tara Ann Mulqueen | 2 Abstract Co-operatives are often regarded as alternatives to capitalist forms of business organisation. This thesis argues that this alterity has been circumscribed by the legal recognition and constitution of co-operatives as bodies corporate within a broader system of political economy in the mid-nineteenth century, in which co-operatives came to be regarded primarily as commercial entities. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, this thesis pursues a genealogy of the co-operative in order to expose the conditions of its constitution, beginning with a critique of dominant historiographical approaches to the co-operative movement that regard legal recognition as ‘enabling’ for a co-operative form that already existed outside the law. Following an alternative historical account that locates the beginnings of the co-operative movement in the late eighteenth century, in what E.P. Thompson referred to as the ‘moral economy of the English crowd’, this thesis situates legal recognition within shifting forms of power and governmentality in the creation of the modern state, while also emphasising the historicity of the legal form of the body corporate. The body corporate imports a transcendent form of unity from the medieval church that becomes normalised in the nineteenth century as part of the emergence of liberal and biopolitical governmentality, serving as a form of metaphysical enclosure that facilitates market discipline. While co-operatives do offer a meaningful alternative by virtue of an ethos of mutuality derived from the moral economy, this thesis argues that legal recognition was depoliticising for the co-operative, not in the narrow terms of political economy, but through what Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy refer to as ‘the closure of the political’. ABSTRACT | 3 Acknowledgments This thesis has had a particularly long gestation period, at least by standards in the United Kingdom. As a consequence, I have quite a lot of people to acknowledge. To his credit, my supervisor, Peter Fitzpatrick, has never once questioned why it should take so long. My sincere gratitude is due not only for his patience, but for the unwavering support he has provided over the past several years. A very heartfelt thanks is also owed to Ba ak Ertür, who has supported me during the final stages of the thesis. ş I also must go back further to acknowledge the invaluable influence of my undergraduate professors at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. In particular, Caroline Arnold, Paisley Currah, Michael Menser, Lisa Schwebel, Samir Chopra, Corey Robin, and Janet Johnson. Without their support, I don’t believe I would have pursued an academic career at all, which, for all intents and purposes, was a terrible idea. But they helped me anyway and modelled a way of being in the world that was foreign in many ways to my own upbringing. They helped me find ways to pay for college and support myself during those laborious four years. In addition, it was my experience at Brooklyn College that first exposed me to co-operatives and the possibilities they open. The Brooklyn College Coffee Collective was so much more than a coffee shop and it exposed me early on to the enormous potential of co-operative projects, as well as the many barriers they face. My friends and colleagues at Birkbeck College School of Law have offered invaluable support, solidarity and camaraderie over the course of this thesis. In particular, I must thank Lisa Wintersteiger, Hannah Franzki, Laura Lammasniemi, Anastasia Tataryn, Dan Matthews, Kanika Sharma, Mayur Suresh, Kojo Koram, Hayley Gibson, Paddy McDaid, Ceylan Yildiz Begum, Ozan Kamiloglu, Roberto Yamato, Tshepo Madlingozi, and Thanos Zartaloudis. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 4 I also owe a special thanks to my long-time flatmates and dearest friends Ana Carballo and Clayton Chin, who have been swept away to Melbourne. They made London our shared home and I can’t imagine the last several years without them. Perhaps more than anyone, I have my partner Máiréad Enright to thank – for her patience, support and encouragement. She has truly gone above and beyond to help me to this point. We’ve often speculated out loud whether I would have finished sooner if we hadn’t met. I’m fairly confident I would have, but life in the interim would have been much less joyful. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 5 Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. 4 Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 6 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 8 The “Constitutive Historicity” of the Co-operative ....................................................... 15 The Limits of Alterity ...................................................................................................... 22 A Finite History of the Present ....................................................................................... 33 Chapter 1: Co-operation and the Possibility of the Political ............................................ 35 The Political Historiography of Co-operation ................................................................ 40 Politics and Periodisation ................................................................................................ 49 Genealogy and Law ......................................................................................................... 61 The ‘Beginnings’ of Co-operation ................................................................................... 70 The Possibility of the Political ......................................................................................... 79 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 2: Co-operation and the Laws of Ordering ........................................................ 96 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 96 Law and Sociality ........................................................................................................... 100 The Laws of Ordering ................................................................................................... 109 The State as Deific Substitute........................................................................................ 118 Levelling the Leviathan .................................................................................................. 126 The Sovereign’s Silence................................................................................................. 138 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 147 Chapter 3: Co-operation and Incorporation .................................................................. 151 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 151 Law, Life and Corporate Personality ............................................................................ 154 Positivism and Naturalisation ........................................................................................ 162 The Political Theology of the Body Corporate ............................................................ 169 Incorporation and Governmentality ............................................................................. 181 The Normalisation of Incorporation ............................................................................ 189 TABLE OF CONTENTS | 6 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 199 Chapter 4: Constituting the Co-operative ....................................................................... 202 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 202 Legal Recognition and Market Discipline .................................................................... 205 Incorporation and Enclosure .......................................................................................
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