Owen or Raiffeisen: Who's the OG of the Cooperative Movement?

Robert Owen (Left) and Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (Right) through the eyes of ChatGPT

Are you one of those who gets confused about who really is called the Father of Cooperatives? We often hear the name of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (Raiffeisen) being widely acknowledged in the modern-day Cooperative Movement (the Movement), but seldom do we hear about Robert Owen (Owen). The latter's name is not even mentioned in the history of the cooperative movement page on the official site of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). What they do have, though, is the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers (Rochdale Pioneers), who, in most online articles, were known to have been inspired by Owen's visionary ideas and learnt from his failed cooperative communities. The Rochdale Pioneers are now being regarded as the founders of the Movement, and the erasure of Owen in the picture is apparent, with only five remaining articles about him on ICA's official website.

However, Robert Owen, whose death anniversary falls today, November 17th, is still widely considered the "Father of the Cooperative Movement," probably because some sources cannot just disappear into oblivion. Why people from inside and outside the Movement are confused between him and Raiffeisen? It is likely because progress has us interchangeably use "cooperatives" and "credit unions" to mean those enterprises that are jointly owned and democratically controlled by their members, or for some people, the better alternative to competitive capitalism. If you are wondering why the term credit unions became popular when they were really just called cooperatives before, blame the United States. 

Credit Cooperatives (or Credit Unions) used to be distinct from other forms of cooperatives, but the Movement later on had every type of cooperatives offer credit or financial services even if they are, say, consumer cooperatives or workers cooperatives, which... is really not a bad idea. The financial model of cooperative self-help, community-based lending, volunteer management and allocation of surpluses to reserves, adapted by modern-day cooperatives, are largely attributed to Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen. Thus, he is known to be the "Father of Credit Cooperatives". The Rochdale Pioneers are actually considered the founders of the "modern" Cooperative Movement. They laid the groundwork for current cooperatives with the Rochdale Principles, revised by the ICA in 1995 with what is now known globally as the Seven Cooperative Principles.

The table below compares Owen and Raiffeisen with AI's help. There is a whole movie about The Rochdale Pioneers if you want to know more about them.

Full Name	Robert Owen	Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
Born–Died	1771–1858	1818–1888
Nationality	Welsh	German
Background	Industrialist, social reformer, philanthropist	Mayor, social reformer, rural development advocate
Primary Focus	Worker welfare, utopian communities, education	Rural poverty, financial empowerment, credit access
Key Achievement	New Lanark Mills; Institute for the Formation of Character and a School for Children (first infant school in Britain, 1816)	Association for Self-procurement of Bread and Fruits; Rhenish Agricultural Cooperative Bank (first rural central bank, 1872)
Type of Cooperative Promoted	Community-based, worker and consumer cooperation	Financial cooperatives
Main Philosophy	Replace capitalism with cooperative, utopian communities where education and equality lead to social reform	Enable self-help and mutual aid through local, ethical finance to lift rural communities from poverty
Impact on Cooperative Movement	Ideological founder; inspired early cooperative thinking and the Rochdale Pioneers	Practical founder of cooperative banking and credit unions; his model spread worldwide
Global Influence	Inspired cooperative ideas across sectors and social movements	Model adopted in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa in the form of credit unions and rural banks
Approach	Idealistic and visionary (top-down social reform)	Practical and community-based (bottom-up self-help)

So, who's the real OG of the Cooperative Movement? Surprisingly, none of these celebrities from the 19th century were the actual starters of the "cooperative" ideology. Even if people would argue that "the Movement began with the application of cooperative principles to business organization", the beginning would still be traced from the 18th century, with the Fenwick Weavers' Society being the first documented consumer cooperative in 1769 and the original gangsters of the Movement might actually be... the Byzantine guild members from Greece.