The Social Bases of Cooperation: Re-politicize the Forms of the Social Bond

Abstract

The article analyzes the tension field between cooperation as a principle which is intrinsic to social action and cooperation as a socio-historical product. After having recalled the utilitarian and “contractarian” conceptions of social action, the nexus between cooperation and social action is presented analytically in the context of neoliberal capitalism. Moving from a coactive extraction of cooperation which characterizes this framework, the author debates the risks of the erosion of the social bases of cooperation and of the social bound that the extraction of cooperation entails. Following the concept of counter-movement sketched by Polanyi, the article argues the necessity of overcoming every simplistic, dualistic scheme of market/society and of recurring to a more complex re-reading in which the political nature of the social is highlighted and an ulterior principle of qualification of the countermovement – the principle of emancipation – is emphasized.