To what extent can it be a cooperative solution? In fact, cooperativism – participation – is the solution because it transmits other values rather than the dominant values in the society of financial globalisation. It proposes a different philosophy in relation to an economy geared exclusively to satisfying the interests of investors. Cooperativism proposes a genuine economic democracy, with the participation of the working partners, as workers are producers and at the same time owners of the company.

There's a big difference. The cooperative is a capitalist actress, a market actress, but it's not a capitalist company. How does Marx define capitalism? When man exploits man. By definition, there is no such exploitation in a cooperative. A cooperative is an association of self-employed people who have voluntarily gathered around an economic project, of workers who have decided to work together.

Cooperativism has values such as mutual support, responsibility, democracy, equality… Quite the opposite of the selfish and exploitative functioning of financial capital in the age of globalisation. Of course, the partners of a cooperative are supposed to work in an honest spirit, with transparency, with accountability… The traditional capitalist enterprise does not always allow it.

The cooperative has principles that do not exist in companies that only think about profitability, that do not exist in companies that seek to meet the demands of the shareholders. You can integrate freely into a cooperative, it has a democratic and collective management, the worker can participate in the economy and in the benefits, the cooperative has more autonomy, more independence, cooperation between cooperatives fosters mutual help. In short, the cooperative pays attention to its community.

This does not mean that we are idealistic or that we think that all those who work in cooperatives are angels. We know that many cooperatives have gone the same way as traditional capitalist enterprises, that partners have a rather selfish desire to participate more in profits. But the deep philosophy of cooperativism is a counter-model, more necessary than ever in this globalized world.

Living well in Ecuador and Bolivia

I compare this cooperative, participatory and solidary ideology with the project that is emerging in Latin America. Both Ecuadorians and Bolivians call it sumac causai. What does that word mean? Live well. It's the philosophy of living well. In the Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia, this idea has been introduced: they have added the principles of living well. The State has an obligation to meet the basic needs of the population. This project is facing the project of the neoliberal state.

Many Latin American countries with progressive governments are the result of the destruction of the neoliberal state, which meant the withdrawal of their heritage from society. When the poor have nothing, they still have a heritage: the public sector. A poor one who has nothing, has a school for his children; a poor one who has nothing, has a free hospital for him and his family; a poor one who has nothing, has cheap public transport subsidised by the state and can have housing. When the school is privatized, when the clinic and health, housing or transportation are privatized, the poor are being robbed of that little they had, the patrimony that shared the state with society. We must not think that the neoliberal state can put anything in when it is privatised, as is being done in so many sectors. In fact, the community of that nation is being robbed of a right, a good, a patrimony.

How have the states of Ecuador and Bolivia responded? Well the principle of life enshrined and perpetuated in the Constitution. It is about guaranteeing people the satisfaction of basic needs, the quality of life, dignified death, love and love – all this is in the Constitution of Ecuador – the flourishing of harmony and health with nature, the sustainability of minority cultures and languages, the free time for contemplation, emancipation… In a cooperative there is freedom to do so, because the cooperative participates consciously in such a unique enterprise. The cooperative is very different from the exploitative and selfish companies that can exist in capitalism, and from those that seek pure profitability, which allows to create a new philosophy.

Of course, in many cooperatives the problem is how to highlight participation, how to organize participatory democracy in the cooperative’s activity. That means that participatory democracy must be maintained, encouraged and continually proposed.

Cooperativism “improvised” in Argentina

I have recently visited Argentina, visiting several cooperatives from companies occupied by workers. At the time of the 2001 crisis in Argentina, owners and entrepreneurs from very diverse sectors – whether shoe factories or hotels – owed the workers so many salaries and interests that they decided to close the company overnight and go abroad. But many workers occupied these factories and organized themselves into cooperatives to continue producing and being profitable.

It has been a great experience gained over these ten years with this improvised cooperativism. They themselves say that it is always important to remember partners who are part of a cooperative, who are not employees of a company, and that participation must be encouraged. Solidarity, dialogue and the relationship between the partner and management must be articulated on a permanent basis. It is also very important for them to imagine and make innovations in the organizational structure of the cooperative, not to let the structures of the cooperative linger, to seek new ways that come out of that repetitive rhythm that the train carries. From the thousands of debates they had, they conclude that the partner has an obligation to assume an economic and social responsibility within the cooperative.