The cooperative movement, cooperativism or cooperative movement, is the social movement or doctrine that determines the cooperation of its members in the economic and social range as a means to ensure that producers and consumers, integrated into voluntary associations called cooperatives, obtain a greater benefit for the satisfaction of their needs. It is represented on a global scale through the International Cooperative Alliance.

At the global level, the representation of savings and credit cooperatives is located in Madison, Wisconsin (United States), and is known by its acronym WOCCU - World Council of Savings and Credit Cooperatives.

The cooperative movement is currently an economic force that extends its benefits to the base of the economic pyramid, promoting financial inclusion for those most in need, creating opportunities for social, economic and environmental development.

Cooperatives are based on the following universal ethical values:

It also promotes the ethical values ​​of honesty, transparency, social responsibility and commitment to others. It is from these values ​​that the organizational guidelines of cooperativism that are detailed below are based.

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), an organization created in 1895, reviewed these principles in 1966 and 1995, its most current version being the following:

With several precedents throughout history (in 1769, the Fenwick Weavers' Society consumer cooperative had been founded in East Ayrshire, Scotland), and with the recent theoretical and practical exceptions of the utopian socialists, the effective starting point of the cooperative movement began on October 24, 1844 in England when a group of 28 workers (27 men and 1 woman) from the industry textile workers in the city of Rochdale who had lost their jobs after a strike, formed a company called the Rochdale Pioneers' Equitable Society, to which each contributed the amount of 28 pence.

These first cooperative members, known as the Rochdale Pioneers, provided themselves with a series of regulations that, when presented to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, were the seed of the Cooperative Principles. These rules were the following, for example.

Cooperativism is structured through representative organizations of cooperatives.