This advertisement for Aciéries de Ploërmel, France (a steel worker's co-operative) speaks to the importance of member economic participation. In this co-operative, the Board is us! The co-operative must sell its products in a challenging market, but members know that their jobs will not simply be moved offshore.

To fulfil its aims and objectives, a co-operative needs generations of members to allocate resources on a long-term basis without any speculative perspective. Even if their investment is redeemable they fully agree not to take back more than the money they have invested and, at most a limited "fair rate or compensatory rate" of return on it. They also agree not to sell-back or withdraw their investment without giving the co-operative the notice required for withdrawing their investment in the co-operative's rules. Thus members accept that a part of the co-operative's surpluses will never become the individual property of any member or future member. In the interests of the co-operative, this part of the surplus can be allocated to indivisible reserves which are the common property of the co-operative.

A co-operative may have rules or provisions that permit members to withdraw the amount of their shares minus any increase in value, unless otherwise expressly decided by its general assembly. Different rules for withdrawal of capital may be applied to voting and non-voting capital, but the withdrawal of any members' capital needs to be under very strict conditions so as not to endanger the co-operative's financial stability.

The treatment of the co-operative's reserves, built by accumulating capital that represents the collective investment of surpluses by multiple generations of members, is a very different matter. The co-operative's reserves are indivisible and cannot be tapped by a single generation of co-operative members.

A co-operative's members' non-withdrawable share capital and the co-operative's indivisible reserves are the common-wealth of the co-operative. They do not belong to a single generation of co-operative members but to the co-operative as a whole, as a legal entity. The ancient Roman law principle of "usufruct" is to be affirmed in the relationship of current members to non-withdrawable share capital and indivisible reserves.

This legal principle of "usufruct" is derived from two Latin words: "usus" and "fructus". "Usus" is "the right to use and enjoy a thing possessed"; "fructus" is "the fruit of". Members have the common ownership right to 'use' and enjoy the 'fruitfulness' of the co-operative's non-withdrawable share capital and indivisible reserves through the benefits a co-operative business creates, but a co-operative's non-withdrawable share capital and indivisible reserves cannot be divided among members because they do not own this common-wealth individually. The current generation of members cannot appropriate non-withdrawable share capital and indivisible reserves for their own personal self-interested benefit through the demutualisation or dissolution of a co-operative.