Abstract

The essay reconstructs the contradictory nature of the concept of cooperation, highlighting historically some of the antinomies that remain latent even in the modern usage of this concept. Through the analysis and comparison of the texts of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Alfred Marshall two problematic axes of the concept are particularly stressed: cooperation as an extension of the human potential in opposition to cooperation as objectification and exploitation; cooperation as social norm in opposition to the cooperation of the cooperative movement. These antinomies are not exceeded in a harmonious and all-encompassing concept of cooperation, but instead are brought into play to return the complexity and the internal contradictions of a concept that runs through the sociological, economic and political contemporary debate