My critics have highlighted three shortcomings of my book—a focus on the economic scale of individual cooperatives, negative treatment of the urban-level focus of US solidarity economy activity, and a lack of discussion of racialized politics in the comparative cases. My responses reflect my “both/and” approach to these issues, rather than an “either/or” perspective: my critics are not wrong, but neither am I. On the first two points, the US solidarity economy benefits from small-scale and urban actions, but also requires large-scale and national efforts. Finally, racism isn’t unique to the US case, but its institutionalization and timing were uniquely detrimental for cooperatives.

First, on scale: American cooperators and solidarity economy participants sometimes seem allergic to scale. Many seem to want to transform the economy through legion three-person worker co-ops financed by artisanal, small credit unions or mutual banks. I might personally support such small entities, but responsible resource use requires economies of scale. The computer on which I wrote this response cannot be efficiently made—nor financed—by tiny firms. The trick is to structure production at scale in a humane manner, which large cooperatives can potentially enable. As researchers, we ignore this at our peril.

Second, I agree the urban scale is a key center of US solidarity economy innovation and action today, as my own research has previously addressed (Jason Spicer, Worker and Community Ownership as an Economic Development Strategy? Innovative Rebirth or Tired Retread of a Failed Idea,” Economic Development Quarterly, 34(4), 2020). However, without intentional “scale shift,” from city to nation, to fully institutionalize these models, history suggests solidarity economy action will not be sustained beyond opportunity windows. This lack of national institutionalization is also an academic problem: the largest American social science disciplines (political science, sociology, economics, and their cognate professional fields in business/management and public policy/affairs) methodologically privilege nationally scaled analysis vis-à-vis urban ones. To that end, senior US scholars tried to dissuade me from writing a book on cooperatives precisely because they are so marginal nationally, making them difficult for these core fields, which are also often dismissive of their urban subfields, to take seriously. By asking a nationally scaled question and using discipline-centered theoretical frameworks, I sought to make the topic more legible and acceptable to these disciplines’ core. To enable greater institutionalization of the study of the US solidarity economy, such studies are necessary. Europe has university centers on the solidarity economy rooted in core disciplines in Liège, Rotterdam, Trento, and other places. The United States has none, and may never, if solidarity economy scholars do not regularly engage with these disciplines’ nationally oriented core.

Third, racism is not unique to the United States. Still, in terms of how and when racism was institutionalized in the US economy, it presented unique obstacles that inhibited cooperation at scale. This is not to say that racism is neither a challenge nor an issue in the comparative cases of Finland, France, and New Zealand, but historical evidence suggests it did not undermine efforts there as much as it did in the United States.