This work aimed to contribute to the cooperative system analysis in a context of capitalist productive reform, increasing in the unemployment levels as well as the resurging social protests, in Brazil, since the 1980's.

The cooperative system has an ambiguous nature. Depending on the social class which put it forward and how, it may be used either in favor or against the human being emancipation. This system can not be isolated from the social classes dispute.

In this work, we have tried to evaluate the formation process of two cooperative system versions, using a theoretical-historical approach. One of them has been linked to practices that, with more or less utopianism, always have among their major goals to improve the capitalism. The other version function basically as a tool, created and organized bz workers, with the objective of resistence and dispute.

Full text in Portuguese to download as pdf

Claudete Pagoto Cooperativismo.pdf