Catalan Integral Cooperative

Description

By Patricia Manrique:

"The Catalan Integrated Cooperative (CIC) began two years ago; it now has 850 members and several thousand people who participate in debates and projects. Under the label "integrated," the Cooperative functions as a political project seeking to tie together consumer and labor initiatives "and many others, such as education, mechanisms to create a cooperative basic income, eco-stores, collective stores, meetings and events, and a legal structure to help the formation of eco-networks and other similar projects in Catalonia," explains its communication team.

The Catalan Integrated Cooperative is a step beyond consumer cooperatives, because it also seeks out the contribution of services, creating a network of trust that allows the people associated with the Cooperative to cover many of their basic needs, with a will to transform" explains Gema Palamós from the legal team. Legally, the CIC is a ’mixed cooperative’ according to Spanish and Catalan law, meaning that it doesn’t limit itself to any one activity.

The term "integrated" alludes to the Cooperative’s political project, although it’s not a second-level cooperative—a cooperative whose partners are also cooperative members. Rather, it’s a "first-level cooperative whose partners are physical people" clarifies Palamós. The project brings together various eco-networks that function throughout Catalonia, connecting them and providing a legal structure for the physical people associated with them. This legal structure benefits the CIC in financial and legal terms, as well as in labor matters. "If we all were conscious of the advantages of the cooperative model when it’s goal isn’t profit, but rather living from your work, there would be a lot more cooperative projects," points out Palamós." (https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/blogs/diagonal-english/from-critique-to-construction-the-integrated-cooperative-in-catalonia.html)

Principles

Social Transformation

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

Society

1. Social justice and equity
2. Equality in diversity
3. Self-realization and mutual support
4. Commitment and self-evaluation
5. Sharing our practices throughout society

Economy

1. Addressing the needs of people above any other interest, everyone contributing according to their means.
2. Money as a measure of the trading system between the people of a community, but without seeking accumulation as an end.
3. Encouraging other non-monetary forms of exchange: free economy, direct exchange, communal economy.
4. 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.
5. The cooperative informs the producers of consumer needs to regulate production.
6. The ECOcoops can never be converted into euros and we do not agree on any form of interest on your loan.

Ecology

1. Ecology and permaculture
2. Degrowth and sustainability

Political organization

1. Democracy: direct, deliberative, participative
2. Self-management and decentralization
3. Transparency
4. Subsidiarity: form local to global
5. Based on assemblies

(http://cooperativa.cat/en/4390-2/general-principles/)

Governance

How do we organize ourselves?

"Catalan Integral Cooperative is organized through fortnightly open assemblies where decisions about its functioning are taken. In these assemblies which are called ‘permanent assemblies’, among other issues, the tasks carried out by different commisions and working groups are reviewed. Also, if need be, creation of new working groups and commisions can be aggreed upon.

Working commissions are constructed as nodes. These comprise and interrelate various commissions that have a certain relation with one and other.

How we understand a commission is, a stable group of people carrying out a necessary task for the proper functioning of the cooperative. The commission propose actions and fields of work, develop them and present their current states and results during permanent assemblies.

A working group is an ensemble of people who realize a punctual and fairly concrete task or iniciate a new branch inside the cooperative from the moment the premanent assembly finds it necessary. In the cases that a task developed by the working group is time consuming but at the same time important for the collective, the issue is brought up in the permanent assembly and then the commission could become a commission. Both the working groups and the commisions are open to public participation.

A very important tool for the commisions and the working groups is the social network of the cooperative through which those invovled in a group can share information, develop ideas, create debates, upload files. It is a tool to communicate through data transmission. Browsing through the social network one can see the scope of issues that were treated before." (http://cooperativa.cat/en/4390-2/how-do-we-organize-ourselves/)

Decision-making

The assemblies are the decision-making organs.Throughout the process, a minimum agreement on the basic principals should be reached, that should come to terms with all the projects within the framework of Integral Cooperative, as a tool to generate self-sufficient, affinity, mutual help networks and equality, based on self-management and assembly. We support a decentralized decision-making process, fundamental to the autonomy and empowerment of the cooperative through solidarity, ruling out bureaucracy and encouraging confidence and free will. Each cooperative project, working commission, eco-network or local group make their own decisions, always respecting the agreements reached within the framework of the CIC.

The questions that affect the totality of the composing elements of the Catalan Integral Cooperative are discussed in a combined manner in the permanent assemblies and seminars. Participation to the assemblies are totally open (fundamental principal of the assembly) and free (regardless of being an associate or not). The decisions are preferably taken in consensus, to make sure the diversity of the opinions and the cohesion of the group are respected and for the optimal progress of the process. In case of a predicament, the proposal is reformulated until the consensus is reached, thus eliminating the minorities and the majorities. All previous agreements are revocable.

The way to self-organize ourselves and the functioning is open to new proposals for better, that, after being debated and approved in consensus would alter the previous agreements." (http://cooperativa.cat/en/4390-2/decision-making/)

Seminars

The seminars are itinerant, meaning, each one is convened in a different place around Catalonia, to encourage participation of all and to raise conscioussness about the reality that exists in the places that they are realized. The place, date and the draft of the agenda of the assemblies are communicated to associates via mail, the social network and the webpage of CIC. If one cannot be present in the place where the meetings are taking place, according to the technical conditions, it could be possible to participate through Mumble, a video chat software. Any associate can add a point to the agenda of the assembly. The permanent assemblies, though also itinerant like the seminars, normally take place in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The tasks that emerge during a permanent assembly can be taken on by a person, a working group or a commission.

Permanent assembly

The decisions that affect CIC are brought up and debated in the social network and the decision is made in the permanent assembly, to which everyone is called to participate periodically, approximately every 15 days. One of each 2 assemblies coincide with the seminars, carried out in one joint monographic theme, which helps developing different aspects of the CIC." (http://cooperativa.cat/en/4390-2/decision-making/)

Discussion

By Patricia Manrique:

"Today the CIC boasts buying centers (spaces to store the collective purchases that reduce the costs of products by cutting out intermediaries), an alternative currency called the eco, various people receiving a basic income in euros and ecos for their work, a collective bus and, recently, Ca L’Afou, the new project of a post-industrial, post-capitalist eco-colony that hopes to respond to the basic need for housing.

Anyone associated with the CIC can acquire products and services through a system of virtual community exchange (CES or Community Exchange System) as well as in fairs and barter markets. "I cultivate a garden and I hardly buy any food in euros: I acquire everything I need in the eco-network and through the CIC with the ecos I earn by selling my vegetables," explains Vendrells. Buying within the CIC allows others to live from what they produce. "While many people are excluded from the euro, that’s not the case with social currency because anyone has some abilities that they can offer to people and with that, acquire what they need." Currently they’re working on creating access to health centers through the use of eco.

But these fairs, markets, eco-networks, and the CIC that ties them together are also spaces to share life in. "Going to the markets and the fairs is like recreation, it’s meeting up with friends and family in a spiritual sense," reflects Vendrells. The fairs generally last one day, and are intermittent. In the markets, that occur less frequently, local associations also participate.

The political project of the CIC includes spreading the model. The members give talks about eco-networks, the cooperative, and social currency in various parts of the country. As a result there are seeds of integrated cooperatives en Basque Country, Madrid as well as in Valencia, where another integrated cooperative, Amalur, has been functioning since 2010. In Valencia, La Madrágora association has been organizing practical workshops on what the Integrated Cooperative is, and how to create one." (https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/blogs/diagonal-english/from-critique-to-construction-the-integrated-cooperative-in-catalonia.html)