In October 2024, confidence in capitalist enterprises remained stable at 46 percent as in 2021, while that in cooperative enterprises rose further, going from 57 percent to 64 percent.
The profound dynamics in the country are in constant fibrillation. Under the ashes of an apparently narcotized framework, behind the push of a growing individualism, a contrary aspiration is also fueled, the push towards dimensions of new sharing, cooperation, collaboration. The more society pushes towards self-centered dimensions, the more the need grows, in contrast, in many social groups, to find new ways to be together, to support each other, to reduce the pernicious effects of a society driven only to think of itself.
All the articles in our column “The telescope – Society explained through data”, edited by Enzo Risso
A very recent (October 2024) investigation by the Fragilitalia observatory of Centrostudi Legacoop and Ipsos, carried out for the new edition of the Bologna cooperative Biennale, brings to light the different dynamics underway, comparing the data between 2021 and 2024. Three years ago 70 percent of Italians reported the need to accentuate forms of cooperation, today we have risen to 78. We can record a similar growth in the need for sharing, which in the three-year period went from 69 percent to 76. The growth is much stronger recorded on the need for mutualism.
The increase was 12 points, going from 61 percent in 2021 to 73 today. The American anthropologist David Graeber argued that “mutualism is the foundation of all human social relationships and of morality itself.”
Graeber saw mutual aid as the very basis of human sociality. For 45 percent of Italians, mutualism means assistance and mutual help and for 27 percent it also means a pact between people to share benefits and advantages. Only 5 percent of Italians consider mutualism a mere utopia. The working classes feel the most pressing need for new forms of mutual support (78 percent), but the topic is also of high interest for generation Z which already in 2021 was giving signs of the need for new collective and non-collective responses. only individualistic.
The American writer, activist and feminist bell hooks has always underlined the importance of mutualism to increase forms of social justice. “Solidarity,” he stated, “is not an act of charity, but an act of mutual recognition and support.”
Economic visions
The push towards new forms of cooperation and mutual support also reverberates in the world of economics. For 80 percent of the country (it was 74 percent in 2021) there is a need to increase the quantity and role of cooperative enterprises in the Italian economy. Not only young people under 35 are convinced of this (85 percent), but also the middle class (84). A need that is also confirmed by the growing rate of trust in cooperative enterprises compared to capitalist enterprises. The gap between the two ways of doing business has not only become large again after the long period of neoliberal hangover, but is also growing.
Three years ago, trust in capitalist (for-profit) businesses was 46 percent while trust in cooperatives was 57 percent. In October 2024, confidence in capitalist enterprises remained stable at 46 percent, while that in cooperative enterprises rose further, reaching 64 percent. A rate of connection and a positive opinion towards cooperatives that rises further if we look at the data of young people from Generation Z (75 percent) and residents in the south (72 percent).
It is also significant to take a look at how the group of subjects is composed (54 percent of Italians) which signals a distrust towards for-profit capitalist companies. First of all, these are people belonging to the working classes (65 percent); of those over fifty, the age group that experienced the era of profound love for the neo-liberal proposal and narrative (63 percent); of members of the lower middle class, the group of people who once considered themselves middle class and who over the years have lost their role, economic strength and purchasing power (59 percent).
In the 19th century, the French economist and philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that “reciprocity is the formula for justice”. Two hundred years later, mutualism no longer appears as an ancient and outdated dimension, but, in an increasingly interconnected and individualistic world, the recognition of the importance of mutual support becomes crucial to face global challenges and to build fairer and more sustainable societies.
