Cooperatives & Social Development - Entrepreneurship

• Cooperatives and Social Development is designed for BS Entrepreneurship, Open University, social sciences, and business students
• The course will provide foundational knowledge on cooperation, its principles and practices, and the Philippine cooperative law
• The course seeks to instill equity, equality, understanding, responsibility, self-reliance, self-help, and mutual help
• The students will be social agents and catalysts for change and development
• A course outcome is to internalize an appreciation of the inherent nature of people to cooperate as a foundation of societal formation and development
• A course outcome is to appreciate the social context/factors of cooperatives in human and social history and how it affected the principles/philosophy of cooperativism
• A course outcome is to contextualize cooperatives in the history/development of Philippine society, looking at local cooperative movement
• A course outcome is to understand basic laws, definitions, and processes of establishing cooperatives in the Philippines
• A course outcome is to realize the role that cooperatives play in social transformation and national development

Basic Concepts in Societal Development

• Early humans became social beings due to the need for survival and the ability to subdivide tasks and use resources collectively

Human and Work

• Division of labor and accumulation of better tools increased control over nature and potential to produce necessities

Early Form of Cooperation

• The primitive communal society is the first stage of societal development
• People owned everything communally and worked together as equals, using available communal resources
• Balance with nature provided necessary materials for survival, with consumption based on collective tasks and no special privileges

Kibbutz System of Israel

• Tasks/division of labor was based on hinting, farming, and leading within a tribe, referring to a "classless society"
• The Kibbutz system in Israel appeared in the early 1900s by Jewish pioneers
• People worked for the system to provide for the needs of the community, sharing agricultural produce

Societal Stages

• The slave society followed the primitive communal stage in ancient civilizations from the Mediterranean regions to China
• Ancient civilizations include Egypt (4th millennium B.C.), Assyria (3rd millennium B.C.), China (2nd millennium B.C.), Greece, and Rome (1st millennium B.C.)

Slave Society

• Slave masters, kings, and rulers of ancient empires enforced laws with their armies
• Ancient Roman lawyer Florentinus stated that slavery was against natural law but accepted as legal
• The slave society improved farming and animal raising, producing products mainly for consumption and handicrafts for exchange
• These improvements led to the formation of a new social layer including peasants, freemen, craftsmen, and artisans

Social Classes

• The slave masters did not own the new societal layer; they owned small properties
• The "social classes" emerged with masters of slaves at the top, freemen/artisans/craftsmen in the middle, and slaves at the bottom

Feudal Era

• The feudal era succeeded the ancient slave system starting in the 6th century
• Feudalism is known as the manorial system in Europe and the hacienda system in the Philippines
• Agriculture was the main system of production, with landowners exacting land rents from serfs/tenants and holding dominant positions
• Advances in handicrafts, trade, and commerce caused an emergence of new social divisions consisting of landowners (nobles, freemen, craftsmen, artisans, merchants) and landless serfs/tenants

Guilds of the Feudal System

• Guilds were influential in the lives of people, covering personal, sociocultural, economic, and religious concerns
• Craftsmen/artisans guilds controlled the standards and sales of goods/services
• Merchant guilds are well-organized and exercised monopoly control on supply/pricing of goods
• Guilds of the apprentice served as training grounds for the unemployed
• Religious and peace guilds existed in many places in European society

Feudalism in the Philippines

• Feudalism in the Philippines by the Spaniards started with the encomienda system
• The encomienda system was a territorial area for tribute/tax collection, not land usage
• Colonizers strengthened control by land titling and the hacienda systems
• The first feudal lords were encomienderos and hacienderos, mostly Spanish friars and soldiers
• Land titling and hacienda systems caused tenancy to become a social problem
• Under the tenancy system, farmers-tenants paid rent to landowners
• High land rental, lack of technology, and dependence on nature caused low incomes and indebtedness for tenants
• The tenancy system created a new level of enslavement of tenants to landowners