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Each co-operative institution will become a school of business in which each member will acquire a knowledge of the laws of trade and commerce.

Labor can and will become its own employer through co-operative association.

What do you call a co-worker these days? Neither teammate nor confederate will do, and partner is too legalistic. The answer brought from academia to the political world by Henry Kissinger and now bandied in the boardroom is colleague. It has a nice upper-egalitarian feel, related to the good fellowship of collegial.

As such people achieve influence within the organization, whenever there is a conflict between their own interest and the interest of the organization, their interests will win out.

There is among us a far closer relationship than the purely social one of a fraternal organization because we are bound together not only by a single interest but by a common goal. To win. Nothing else matters, and nothing else will do.

If people work together in an open way with porous boundaries - that is, if they listen to each other and really talk to each other - then they are bound to trade ideas that are mutual to each other and be influenced by each other. That mutual influence and open system of working creates collaboration.

In their work, then, as in their play, men and women are more and more coming to share with each other as comrades, and really the fun of life seems in no wise diminished as a consequence.

A hundred years ago, of course, the question that the German Composers' Co-operative asked itself sounded a lot more fundamental: How do you create a fair share for those who ensure that works can actually be performed at all?

Communal well-being is central to human life.