Cooperation and Cooperatives: Instruments of Organization and Resistance of Landless Workers

Abstract

The goal of this article is to contribute to the reflections on the double character ofcooperativism: as an instrument of both political and economic organization forworkers. In some nineteenth century socialist theoretical currents we find this kind ofthinking in analyses of cooperative work alternatives. From this perspective, we cansee the double character of cooperativism in the cooperative organizations createdwithin social struggle. These have attempted to meet both the more immediate andthe broader needs of landless workers in the construction of rural settlements and,above all, in the construction of spaces of resistance to neoliberal economic policiesand to the contradictions of capitalism.