Original: Spanish
The Socialist International Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, SICLAC, meeting in Santiago on 30-31 May 1997, declares that:
The present tendency towards concentration and centralisation of capital on a world scale threatens to destroy the fundamental values of coexistence between individuals and peoples and the gains which had seemed indisputable in terms of the relationship between worker and capital.
It is impossible to try and prevent or stand up to the structural changes merely in a voluntaristic way. But it is just as antihistorical to accept that the mere globalisation of capital can give rise to some positive outcome. Therefore we must redouble our efforts to find ways of freeing ourselves from this threat and to reaffirm cooperativism as an instrument of rich, nonaggressive internationalisation among peoples in the search for solutions based on reason and on the conviction that solidarity between people is a more powerful force than the aspiration of big finance capital to impose their rule on the world.
The meeting confirms that we must regain and modernise the function of cooperativism as a more just, more economically and technologically appropriate, more human and efficient way of concentrating capital.