Institute of Applied Social Sciences, University of Warsaw (Web) & Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, Polish Academy of Science (Web)

Time: 19.–20.11.2020
Venue: Warsaw, Poland
Proposals by: 31.07.2020

Cooperation – Economically Organized Democracy
The establishment of the first cooperative organizations was an attempt to realize the ideal of the common good not through top-down state programs or philanthropy of great capital, but the cooperation of those who were exposed to exploitation. The logic of cooperation was inclusive – membership in a cooperative was determined not by some special property that distinguished its members, but by a need that they shared with others. This is expressed by the words of Romuald Mielczarski – one of the fathers of the Polish cooperative movement: “Cooperation is an economically organized democracy.” Instead, it signified a conscious (in the ethical sense) and independent (in the political sense) mind, one that satisfies its (economic) needs through cooperative work: co-governing consumption and production. The two figures of participation in the social process that are split apart by liberalism, namely the member of the political community and the consumer, or subject of the market game, become one once more.

The Common between Two Crises
However, the concepts of cooperativists do not belong solely to the history of a certain stage of development of (peripheral) capitalism. The creators of the Polish cooperative movement from the interwar period believed that, in a sense, the best moment for social activities was precisely a time of crisis. It is then that the social mechanisms of mutual aid and democratic management are revealed. Since the global economic crisis evolved into a deep crisis of the very foundations of the socioeconomic order, deepening inequalities have undermined the fundamental principle of democracy: civic participation in the governance process. The “economization” of politics based on fetishizing private property and … read more and source (Web).