ABSTRACT
The tension has engendered the view of the community and the cooperative as antithetical terms. The establishment of an autonomous and joint community inspired by the ‘Villages of Cooperation’ of Robert Owen was to become a model of a ‘new social order’ to be achieved by means of the systematic and disciplined observance of a series of practices, known as the ‘cooperative principles’. The comeback of the cooperative community was advocated through the establishment of ‘Cooperative Villages’ in urban conglomerations, that is, multi-functional organisations to meet growing needs for employment and food. The cooperative can be seen as a form of individualisation of a particular form of economic endeavour, a sort of business logic transferred to the level of the self-managed group. The difference between the cooperative and the capitalist model is by far greater than that between the cooperative and the community.
