Economic cooperation for mutual development

Abstract

Before the recent reinforcement inside the tensions inherent in the international capitalist system, the stabilization in the expansion of the basic products trade, the controle over the activity of multinational corporations, and the cooperation for the diffusion of scientific and technological progress used to be prevailing themes of the so-called worldly economic cooperation. However the practice of international economic relations, far from expressing cooperation for the mutual development of several nations, express itself as the development of some countries at the expense of the increasing underdevelopment of others. The recent conjuncture, making more evident the necessity of a new solidarity, from the developing countries above all, brought new questions to a prominent position: the means and ends concerning the use of the additional income of OPEP countries non-exporters of oil affected by the raising in prices of food stuffs; the cooperation forms and the strategies concerning the whole of the «center» and the «periphery» countries, as regards to overcome the present international crisis; the national strategies of development, either on the «center» or in the «periphery», as a function within the new context of worldly economy. The question is, as Portugal is doing it,to look for forms of international cooperation compatible to the autonomization, within solidarity relations for mutual development, within national projects freely chosen by peoples.