Potentially, cooperativism could absorb a large part of the workers of the Popular Economy. Nearly 4 million people could be formalized and have a base of rights that include many of the benefits of those who are employed, such as pensions or access to health.
All these enumerated data cannot be a rational argument to make the invisible visible. They are not enough to describe the true contribution of the solidarity sector to society. In the different territories of the country you can still see and feel the place that cooperativism and mutualism had in the founding of Argentina. Country created, in part, along with the development of the cooperative and mutual sector. The vastness of our territory helps to understand the motivations of a people who did not wait for capital or the State to organize their daily activities, their work, access to public or economic services, health, births and burials, among others. so many other things.
Argentine society has demonstrated a great self-organizing power that later knew how to articulate with the State. When there were policies to strengthen the State, it was from and with that already organized community; then the union and workers’ organization, still in force, was added, as evidenced by the unionization of this new worker subject, outside the dependency relationship, the workers without a boss, expressed and contained by the People’s Economy. The sum of the cooperative and mutual universes, together with the union, allow us to see that world of the organized community.
The State is articulated and empowered with that community in the same way that the community is empowered in the State, and it is for this reason that the Social and Solidarity Economy (ESS) is thought of as a project that encompasses that totality and in which people are the center of society, life as the central axis. As the pandemic and the respective crises have shown, the SSE is a producer of community and social life, of allowing the majority to exist as a people, of reorganizing territories and of producing an imaginary of a better life for many and not for the enrichment for a few.
The relevance of the SSE and the role played by our country can be explained by some recent events. re-election to president of the International Cooperative Alliance (ACI) from Argentine Ariel Guarco, organism in charge of nuclear cooperativism worldwide; the vice presidency for Latin America of the International Mutual Association (AIM), occupied by another Argentine, Alexander Russo. Both events are a source of pride and proof of the relevance and prominence of the sector for the country.
After 110 years, the International Labor Organization (ILO) recently discussed, at its annual meeting, the definition of Social and Solidarity Economy. Together with the Ministry of Labor and the head of the portfolio, Claudius Moroni, we participate as representatives for Argentina in a debate that aims to rethink the world of work. World in which the SSE must acquire new legal forms, access financing and provide a series of tools that empower it to provide solutions in the world of work, increasingly precarious and with a sustained drop in private wage employment, as reflected any stats.
Many of these ideas are reflected in the policies applied by the national government and by INAES. We have modified a series of regulations and administrative systems to guarantee the right to cooperate. The resolution “Renew” has become a right to access production, the time to set up a cooperative has accelerated remarkably. Credit and financing systems have been promoted for the sector; and for all workers and producers unable to access credit given the logic of world financial capitalism, of a system that does not generate productive financing.
President of the National Institute of Associations and Social Economy (INAES).
Source: Ambito
