Historia de los Pioneros de Rochdale

The Rochdale Pioneers Story is the example that reality can be transformed through awareness and organization of common effort. In England, in a town where the textile industry imposed harsh living conditions on workers and their families, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society was formed in 1844, a cooperative that took the first steps of the international cooperative movement. Georges Jacob Holyoake, in 1878, wrote the account of the origins and the first decades of existence of this society, a popular organization aimed at satisfying the needs of its associates through their own efforts, solidarity action and mutual aid. The work of the Pioneers was the vademecum of European cooperativism, the reservoir to turn to for inspiration and guidance in cooperative activity. With their scarce resources, the Rochdale Pioneers succeeded in developing a new model of economic and social relations. A model so successful that it spread internationally and has survived to this day as one of the alternatives to the capitalist system of production and consumption. This is the story of the first of the great little masterpieces of world cooperativism.