Social economy in Europe

The interest for social economy makes us reflect on the form of social evolution. The development of society can no longer be conceived in a simplistic manner, as a strictly linear process in which all that has been done in the past has been exceeded, either by final incorporation in new solutions, or removed as history errors. Development runs, rather, on a zigzag course. Some experiments are unfairly and simplistically rejected, only to be resumed later within a new context. This is just the case of the subject theme of this book. Is social economy a completely new concept? Yes and no. Its substance is a restart of the tradition of cooperativism. We have to learn from history. After the Revolution, by a, hard to understand, extremism, the cooperativist tradition, both under the forms disturbed by the Romanian socialism, and under the traditional forms, both Romanian and foreign, was violently rejected; this may only be catalogued as detrimental misunderstanding. And, as any error, we still have to bear its effects. Actually, the whole Europe, except the post-revolutionary extremism in Romania, rather tolerated cooperativism as an oddity. We are beginning to use the plurality of the non-standard economic patterns as important resources, which we have to resume and amplify within the new context. Maybe just to mark this thing, there was a need to look for a new term. IQLR, in the spirit of its mission, allocated part of its resources to promote the plurality of social economy models.