For instance, the Recommendation Concerning the Role of Cooperatives in the

Economic and Social Development of Developing Countries of the International

Labour Conference, Recommendation No. 127 (ILO 1997, p.3), defines a cooperative
as

an association of persons who have voluntarily joined together to achieve a

common end through the formation of a democratically controlled organization,
making equitable contributions to the capital required and accepting a fair share of
the risks and benefits of the undertaking in which the members actively
participate.

The various school of thpught which have proposed the establishment of

cooperatives as the basis of a new and better society and eceonomy are usually
characterized as cooperative socialism, cooperativism or cooperative
commonwealth. According to these ideas, cooperatives should develop gradually
and transform individual (private) property, i.e. individual ownership of the means of
production, into cooperatively-owned capital as well as eliminate the competitive
capitalistic system which should be replaced by an economic system based on
,mutual help, solidarity and cooperation.

The ideoilogists and conception of early cooperative socialism, cooperativism, and

cooperative commonwealth must be distinguished from the original Marxist
approach and from the Lennis-Soviet model of using cooperatives for the
construction of socialism i.e. for the establishment of a centrally planned socialist
economy and society.

According to his deterministic theory, Karl Marx regarded the proletarian

revolutiuon as a prerequisite for reaching the phases of a socialist and later a
communist society. Consequently, he denied the possibility of improving the
economic situation of the proletariat in the phase of capitalism and reaching a
cooperative socialist economic system in an evolutionary process. In this regard, his
position was contrary to the ideas of the cooperative socialists and coop[erativists,
for example, to the proposals of Lasalle, who propagated the introduction of the
political democracy in Germany and emphasized, like Blanc in France, the need for
comprehensive state-sponsorship of the establishment of productive cooperatives,
which should become the basis of the national economy.

However, Marx and also Lenin regarded the cooperatives in the phases of capitalism
in a dual way. On the one hand, cooperatives, which avoided the phenomenion of
exploitation seemed adequate to demonstrate the possibility of a commuunist
society (demonstration function of the productive cooperatives). Furthermore,

consumers cooperatives could help to promote the proletarian revolution.

Nevertheless, member-efficient cooperatives seemed also to reduce the
revolutionary potential of the proletarian masses and thus to prolong the survival of
socialism