A COOPERAÇÃO AGRÍCOLA NA ORGANIZAÇÃO POLÍTICA DO MST: um estudo sobre as experiências desenvolvidas no Maranhão

Abstract

Study about the agricultural cooperation in the political organization of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), more specifically the experiences developed in Maranhão state, under the orientation of the Marxist tradition. It approaches the conceptions that historically influenced the debate about that theme, considering the historical construction of cooperation and cooperativism, associated to the cooperativist movement of the 19th century Europe and its relation with the fight for socialism, based on what identifies the main tendencies of analysis nowadays which orient different conceptions and practices related to cooperation. It points out analysis elements of the MST political organization process in the fight for agrarian reform in Brazil, within the class fight, situating the construction of the agricultural cooperation conception in that movement and the issue involving the relation between agricultural cooperation and the political organization in MST, within the context of the social fights in the country. It presents a reflection about the contribution of agricultural cooperation for the political organization of the rural workers in the MST settlements, facing the agrarian issue, considering the particular experience in Maranhão based in the configuration of agricultural cooperation. In the final considerations, it detaches the difficult task of MST, in the effort to articulate the immediate fight to the mediate one, in the perspective of construction of a new sociability for the rural workers, having as mediation the fight for land and for agrarian reform, in the objective life conditions in the settlements.