Principles of the Common: Towards a Political Philosophy of Polish Cooperativism

The aim of the article is twofold. First, it is to interpret the main philosophical ideas of the Polish cooperative movement from the first part of the twentieth century and how they were applied in practice, by using the conceptual vocabulary of post-structuralist and post-Operaist political philosophy; and, second, to further develop the notion of “institutions of the common” that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri introduced — during debates about alternatives to both capitalism and the state-form — with their formulation of “principles of the common”, which is to say, general principles for creating democratic and popular institutions around the ideas of inclusion and solidarity, an ethos of mutual help and democratic governance over production and exchange of material wealth.