Cooperativa Integral Catalana

Cooperativa Integral Catalana

An Integral Cooperative is a tool to create a grassroots counterpower departing  from self-management, self-organization and direct democracy, and one that would help overcome the actual state of dependency on the structures of the system, towards a scenario of liberty full awareness, free of authority, and in which everyone could flourish under equal conditions and opportunities. It is a constructive proposal for disobedience and widespread self-managment to rebuild our society in a bottom-up maner (in every field and in an integral way) and recover the affective human relationships of proximity based on trust.

  • Cooperative, as a project practicing the economical and political self-management with the equal participation of all its members. Also, because it takes the same legal form
  • Integral, to bring together all the basic elements of an economy such as production, consumption, funding and a local currency. And at the same time, because it wants to integrate all the activity sectors necessary to survive: food, housing, health, education, energy, transport…
  • Catalan because it is organized and works mainly in the territorial scope of  Catalonia.

General Principles

Social Transformation

  • Concern for common good and for one’s own good
  • Getting rid of materialism
  • Cooperation and solidarity in social transformation
  • Day-to-day social transformation and getting closer to making utopia a reality.
  • Direct relation between practical action and theorization
  • Inclusive cooperativeand encompassing the whole society

Society

  • Social justice and equity
  • Equality in diversity
  • Self-realization and mutual support
  • Commitment and self-evaluation
  • Sharing our practices throughout society

Economy

  • Addressing the needs of people above any other interest, everyone contributing according to their means.
  • Money as a measure of the trading system between the people of a community, but without seeking accumulation as an end.
  • Encouraging other non-monetary forms of exchange: free economy, direct exchange, communal economy.
  • Establishing economic relations between producers and consumers: the cooperative regulates the estimation of fair prices based on their costs, its own needs and those of the consumers.
  • The cooperative  informs the  producers of consumer needs to regulate production.
  • The ECOcoops can never be converted into euros and we do not agree on any form of interest on your loan.

Ecology

  • Ecology and permaculture
  • Degrowth and sustainability

Political organization

  • Democracy: direct, deliberative, participative
  • Self-management and decentralization
  • Transparency
  • Subsidiarity: form local to global
  • Based on assemblies

In addition to our general principles, we also embrace the idealogical bases of the call for integral revolution

To visit the Cooperativa Integral Catalana website click here!