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Solidarity economics starts from the World Social Forum that "another
world is possible" and applies to it to economics. The idea is that it
is possible to organize economies around principles different than that
of global capitalism. [1]
Definition & Description
1.
From an overview article in Dollars and Sense at
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0706emiller.html
Ethan Miller:
"For some theorists of the movement, it begins with a
redefinition of economic space itself. The dominant neoclassical story
paints the economy as a singular space in which market actors (firms or
individuals) seek to maximize their gain in a context of scarce
resources. These actors play out their profit-seeking dramas on a stage
wholly defined by the dynamics of the market and the state. Countering
this narrow approach, solidarity economics embraces a plural and
cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship
in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate
livelihoods through many different means and with many different
motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual
gain. The economic activity validated by neoclassical economists
represents, in this view, only a tiny fraction of human efforts to meet
needs and fulfill desires.
What really sustains us when the factories shut down, when the
floodwaters rise, or when the paycheck is not enough? In the face of
failures of market and state, we often survive by self-organized
relationships of care, cooperation, and community. Despite the ways in
which capitalist culture generates and mobilizes a drive toward
competition and selfishness, basic practices of human solidarity remain
the foundation upon which society and community are built. Capitalism's
dominance may, in fact, derive in no small part from its ability to
co-opt and colonize these relationships of cooperation and mutual aid.
In expanding what counts as part of "the economy," solidarity
economics resonates with other streams of contemporary radical economic
thought. Marxist economists such as Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff,
for example, have suggested that multiple "modes of production" co-exist
alongside the capitalist wage-labor mode. Feminist economists have
demonstrated how neoclassical conceptions have hidden and devalued basic
forms of subsistence and caregiving work that are often done by women.
Feminist economic geographer J.K. Gibson-Graham, in her books The End of
Capitalism (As We Knew It) (1998) and A Postcapitalist Politics (2006),
synthesizes these and other streams of thought in what she calls the
"diverse economies perspective." Addressing concerns that are central to
the solidarity economy approach, she asks, "If we viewed the economic
landscape as imperfectly colonized, homogenized, systematized, might we
not find openings for projects of noncapitalist invention? Might we not
find ways to construct different communities and societies, building
upon what already exists?"
Indeed, the first task of solidarity economics is to identify
existing economic practices—often invisible or marginal to the dominant
lens—that foster cooperation, dignity, equity, self-determination, and
democracy. As Carola Reintjes of the Spanish fair trade association
Iniciativas de economía alternativa y solidaria (IDEAS) points out,
"Solidarity economy is not a sector of the economy, but a transversal
approach that includes initiatives in all sectors." This project cuts
across traditional lines of formal/informal, market/non-market, and
social/economic in search of solidarity-based practices of production,
exchange and consumption—ranging from legally-structured worker
cooperatives, which engage the capitalist market with cooperative
values, to informal affinity-based neighborhood gift networks. (See "A
Map of the Solidarity Economy," pp. 20-21.) At a 2000 conference in
Dublin on the "Third Sector" (the "voluntary" sector, as opposed to the
for-profit sector and the state), Brazilian activist Ana Mercedes Sarria
Icaza put it this way: "To speak of a solidarity economy is not to
speak of a homogeneous universe with similar characteristics. Indeed,
the universe of the solidarity economy reflects a multiplicity of spaces
and forms, as much in what we would call the 'formal aspects' (size,
structure, governance) as in qualitative aspects (levels of solidarity,
democracy, dynamism, and self-management)."
At its core, solidarity economics rejects one-size-fits-all
solutions and singular economic blueprints, embracing instead a view
that economic and social development should occur from the bottom up,
diversely and creatively crafted by those who are most affected. As
Marcos Arruda of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network stated at the
World Social Forum in 2004, "a solidarity economy does not arise from
thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle
of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual
and a collective." Similarly, contrasting the solidarity economy
approach to historical visions of the "cooperative commonwealth," Henri
de Roche noted that "the old cooperativism was a utopia in search of its
practice and the new cooperativism is a practice in search of its
utopia." Unlike many alternative economic projects that have come
before, solidarity economics does not seek to build a singular model of
how the economy should be structured, but rather pursues a dynamic
process of economic organizing in which organizations, communities, and
social movements work to identify, strengthen, connect, and create
democratic and liberatory means of meeting their needs."
(
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0706emiller.html)
2.
"The social and solidarity-based economy refers to
socially-oriented economical activities which are run in favour of the
setting up of a new way to live and devise the economy through about ten
thousands projects in the Northern countries as well as in the Southern
countries.
The Lima meeting which took place in 1997 and the Quebec meeting
which took place in 2001 both have given social and solidarity-based
economy the following definition: …
sets the human factor as the bottom line in the economical and social development.
Solidarity in economy consists in a project which is not only
economical but also political and social and which implies a new
conception and functioning of politics and a new way to establish
relationships on the basis of the consensus and citizen behaving.
(Statement of Lima, 1997)
In this type of economy, job and people come first, before money.
It is based on a democratic decision-making system, on a strong social
involvement and on quality relationships. The social and
solidarity-based economy contributes to the creation of job
opportunities and increases the capacities of social businessmen. It
helps social development and consolidates the power to act of local
authorities, by setting up new positions, offering new services,
improving life quality, protecting environment and by creating wealth
within ethical conditions. We have to devise economy other than
according to the neoliberal logic. Economy must serve the society and
not the contrary. The vision of economical pluralism does not reconsider
the significance of the private sector, but lauds a parallel
development of the public and social economy. It comes to produce
socio-economical innovation and social change and so, to develop a third
path, which is neither an unconscionable neoliberalism nor a full
state-owned economy."
(
http://www.lux09.lu/index.php?id=21&L=2)
Visualization
Origins
Ethan Miller:
"The idea and practice of "solidarity economics" emerged in Latin
America in the mid-1980s and blossomed in the mid to late 90s, as a
convergence of at least three social trends.
First, the economic exclusion experienced by growing segments of
society, generated by deepening debt and the ensuing structural
adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, forced
many communities to develop and strengthen creative, autonomous and
locally-rooted ways of meeting basic needs. These included initiatives
such as worker and producer cooperatives, neighborhood and community
associations, savings and credit associations, collective kitchens, and
unemployed or landless worker mutual-aid organizations.
Second, growing dissatisfaction with the culture of the dominant market
economy led groups of more economically privileged people to seek new
ways of generating livelihoods and providing services. From largely a
middle-class "counter-culture"—similar to that in the Unites States
since the 1960's—emerged projects such as consumer cooperatives,
cooperative childcare and health care initiatives, housing cooperatives,
intentional communities, and ecovillages.
There were often significant class and cultural differences
between these two groups. Nevertheless, the initiatives they generated
all shared a common set of operative values: cooperation, autonomy from
centralized authorities, and participatory self-management by their
members.
A third trend worked to link the two grassroots upsurges of
economic solidarity to each other and to the larger socioeconomic
con-text: emerging local and regional movements were beginning to forge
global connections in opposition to the forces of neoliberal and
neocolonial globalization. Seeking a democratic alternative to both
capitalist globalization and state socialism, these movements identified
community-based economic projects as key elements of alternative social
organization.
At the First Latin Encuentro of Solidarity Culture and
Socioeconomy, held in 1998 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, participants from
Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Colombia, and Spain
created the Red latinoamericana de la economía solidaria (Latin
American Solidarity Economy Network). In a statement, the Network
declared, "We have observed that our experiences have much in common: a
thirst for justice, a logic of participation, creativity, and processes
of self-management and autonomy." By linking these shared experiences
together in mutual support, they proclaimed, it would be possible to
work toward "a socioeconomy of solidarity as a way of life that
encompasses the totality of the human being."
Since 1998, this solidarity economy approach has developed into a
global movement. The first World Social Forum in 2001 marked the
creation of the Global Network of the Solidarity Socioeconomy, fostered
in large part by an international working group of the Alliance for a
Responsible, Plural, and United World. By the time of the 2004 World
Social Forum in Mumbai, India, the Global Network had grown to include
47 national and regional solidarity economy networks from nearly every
continent, representing tens of thousands of democratic grassroots
economic initiatives worldwide. At the most recent World Social Forum in
Venezuela, solidarity economy topics comprised an estimated one-third
of the entire event's program."
(
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0706emiller.html)
Example
Argentina
"Following are the chief forms of social and solidarity economy that they proceeded to create in 2002 and 2003 without money:
The pot-banging protest was turned into a permanent, directed
civic movement known as the “self-convened neighborhood assemblies.”
They spread over the country with 60 to 80 in the capital -- a lose
network often linked through websites. The assemblies debated and
organized solutions.
In what was Latin America’s most prosperous republic, 50% of
Argentinians fell below the poverty line in 2002, and an estimated 8 of
the nation’s 37 million people did not eat every day. So a massive
movement of community gardens called huertas, sprang up in public parks,
school yards and open spaces. Often linked to public restaurants or
comedores by bonds of solidarity, around 45,000 huertas fed over 2.5
million people into 2003.
To circulate the necessities of life without money some 5000
local barter networks were created under the Solidarity Barter Network
(RTS) and Ecovale, allowing millions to avoid destitution. Independent
of the peso, swap shops, barter, and other forms of social money
flourished.
Entrepreneurship having died for want of effective demand and
credit, associations offering microcredit came forward, filling the void
with micro-savings.
Perhaps most important of all, workers seized scores of factories
across the country: 17 in Buenos Aires province and 3 in the capital
itself by mid-2002, a movement that reached over 200 “recuperated”
enterprises at its peak. IMPA, for 4 years a self-managed co-op making
aluminum wrapping, opened its space to a cultural center and barter
club."
In sum, Caraggio said: “Activists long committed to the co-op
movement as part of a dynamic of modifying society, have suddenly found
fertile terrain in which to launch their projects.”
(
http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/articles/report_argentina.htm)
Discussion
Euclides André Mance:
"Millions of people across the world practise solidarity economy.
They work and consume in order to produce for their own and other
people’s welfare, rather than for profit. In solidarity economy what
matters is creating satisfactory economic conditions for all people.
This means assuring individual and collective freedoms, generating work
and income, abolishing all forms of exploitation, domination and
exclusion, and protecting ecosystems as well as promoting sustainable
development.
This network initially came out of successful practices of work
and income generation, fair trade, ethical consumption, solidarity
finance, and the diffusion of sustainable productive technologies. These
efforts were, however, isolated. It was necessary for them to develop
into collaborative networks that integrated these diverse actions with
strategies that increased the potential of economic flows and the
interconnections between them. This meant that solidarity finance could
enable the emergence and maintenance of worker-managed productive
enterprises that employed low-impact technologies and promoted the
highest social benefit. The products of these enterprises started being
commercialised in circuits of solidarity trade through shops, fairs,
international fair trade systems and even internet sales. This in turn
enabled consumers to replace the products and services they bought from
capitalist enterprises with products and services produced within the
solidarity economy, feeding back into a system of promotion of welfare
for workers and consumers, environmental protection and sustainable
development. Technologies such as free software and organic agriculture
began being employed, developed and shared across these networks. Excess
wealth produced in the circuit was reinvested, part of it in the form
of solidarity microfinance.
However fast solidarity economy is developing, millions of people
who fight for ‘another world’ do not practise or participate in it.
First, because they are unaware of it; second, because of the relatively
difficult access to the products and services produced within this
other economy. Both difficulties can be quickly surmounted. The main
obstacle is cultural: to overcome a consumerist culture that prizes
quantity, excess, possession and waste over the welfare of people and
communities, we need to replace unsustainable forms of production,
consumption and ways-of-life with the affirmation of new ways of
producing, consuming and living in solidarity.
As they progress in the economic and cultural terrains of this
revolution, solidarity networks will also advance in the political
sphere – transforming the State, creating and reinforcing mechanisms of
popular participation. There is no linearity in this revolution; each
reality changes in its own way. But by virtue of their being-in-network,
collaborative processes can communicate and learn from each historical
experience, successful or not. The information technologies that
facilitate their interconnection tend to become increasingly central to
the State and the public sphere. This opens up the possibility of new
processes and mechanisms of governance and shared management that can
result from the combined effects of democratic revolutions in the
cultural sphere with collaborative solidarity economic processes as its
material base."
(
http://www.turbulence.org.uk/solidarityeconom.html)
SE as a big tent, 'pluralist' approach
"Solidarity economy is not a single type of economy such as market
socialism, parecon, 21st Century Socialism, and so forth. It is a big
tent which can hold many different approaches. Solidarity economy is
committed to pluralism which means that this is not a one-size-fits-all
approach. We believe that different economic frameworks are suitable in
different places and times - or in the words of the Zapatista, "a world
in which many worlds fit."
We desperately need this big tent where proponents of different
models and strategies for achieving a just, democratic and sustainable
economy can dialogue, debate and learn from each other without having to
fight it out to be the ‘chosen one.’ This fight to be top dog is one of
the reasons that the left does not have a unified vision of what we are
for, as opposed to what we’re against.
The solidarity economy holds core principles of solidarity,
equity (in all dimensions – race, class, gender, etc.), sustainability,
participatory democracy, and pluralism, rather than hewing to a
particular economic ideology or model. We welcome debate, discussion,
and critique - all informed by real world experience and practice. We
believe that there is a huge foundation upon which to build the
solidarity economy if we only open our eyes to its many existing facets
and start to pull together toward a common transformative goal.
Pieces of this foundation include the practices that you list as
examples: land trusts, cooperatives and fair trade, along with many
others such as social finance, complementary currencies, participatory
budgeting, the commons movement, and various progressive policies. The
solidarity economy is not just another economic alternative, but rather
is a way of pulling together the wonderful, but isolated practices and
polices so that we can put forth a vision and build social/economic
systems that puts people and planet front and center."
(
http://trustcurrency.blogspot.com/2009/12/currencies-and-solidarity-economics-at.html)
Len Krimerman: the strengths of the SE movement
"First, and what for me is most distinctive and exciting, is what
might be called SE's "constructivist" or "agency centered" account of
economic institutions. To get at this, recall poet Muriel Rukeyser's
statement: "The world is not made of atoms, it is made of stories."
Applying this to the "economic world", we find that the very common
belief that a single homogenized economy called "capitalism" prevails in
this or that country or across the globe is, ultimately, just one story
among many.
This constructivist perspective is clearly expressed in another
of Ethan Miller's papers, in which he encourages us to leave behind "a
story that makes us feel small and powerless", and which "has hidden
from us our own power". In that new and empowering story, we would view
"capitalism, with its free markets, its "jobs" and "wages"... as
only one part of how we actually create and maintain livelihoods in our
families and communities. When we peel away the misleading idea of one
giant "Economic System," we can begin to see the workings of many
different kinds of economies that are alive and well, supporting us
below the surface."3
In A Postcapitalist Politics, another fountainhead source of both
the theory and practice of SE, Gibson-Graham discuss the problems faced
by Argentine factory workers involved in the "Take", the initiative
which began in 2001 to take over abandoned factories and recuperate them
under worker control. The main obstacle faced by these workers,
according to Gibson-Graham
...was not the state or capital...but their own subjectivities.
They were workers, not managers or sales reps or entrepreneurs, and as
one of them said, "If they had come to us with 50 pesos and told us to
show up for work tomorrow, we would have done so.4
In other words, they had swallowed the capitalist story and their
place within it. To move beyond this story, a first step in helping
construct a solidarity economy, required what these workers came to call
"a struggle against themselves"; that is, they found that
...combating capitalism [involves] refusing a long-standing sense
of self and mode of being in the world, while simultaneously
cultivating new forms of sociability, visions of happiness, and economic
capacities.5
For both Ethan Miller and Gibson-Graham, SE starts with the
familiar "reluctant subject" - often, ourselves! - whose sense of self
and agency is constricted by living inside stories fabricated by others.
Its aim in this is to move us from pervasive but disempowering stories
to ones which reveal previously hidden options and help us realize more
of our own capabilities.6 Beyond this, approaches such as those of the
Asset-Based Community Development method are utilized. These enable
participants to reframe not only themselves but their neighborhoods and
communities - to tell themselves different stories about these - from
what is missing or defective to what can be identified as resources and
strengths.
The assets-based portrayal invites communities to begin thinking
about what they can do to mobilize what they already have. While
assistance might be garnered from the outside, it is sought as a second,
not a first resort, and only after community members have decided how
they can manage additional resources themselves.7
Concretely, this constructivist first step has been an essential
first step for most SE initiatives: for example, for a lone Basque
priest and a few technical school students, faced with the devastation
of a civil war, to reject both capitalist and communist frameworks and
see themselves as "social inventors" of what has become the Mondragon
enterprise system of inter-connected worker owned and run cooperatives,
which now produces more durable goods than any other single Spanish
manufacturer and has only lost two enterprises in its six decades.
It was also essential, in 1965, for a handful of Tokyo housewives
distressed by the high prices and low quality of supermarket foods to
reframe themselves as "organizers who could broker contracts" between
households, neighborhoods, and small farmers for affordable and organic
dairy products, grains, and produce. Calling themselves "Seikatsu"
(roughly, "peoples lives"), their system of consumer and worker
cooperatives now serves over 300,000 members in several Japanese cities.
(
http://www.seikatsuclub.coop/english/)
A second and related asset of SE initiatives is the (comparative)
ease with which they can be started, at least within so-called liberal
democracies. The growth in CSAs in the USA is just one example; by some
estimates, there are now close to two thousand, up from only about sixty
in 1990. (
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/features <
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/features/0204/csa2/part2.shtml>
) A 2007 USDA survey indicated that "...12,549 farms in the United
States reported marketing products through a community supported
agriculture (CSA) arrangement". (
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml <
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml>)
These, like the greatest majority of solidarity economy projects,
including Mondragon and Seikatsu, began with little or no outside
capital; they are built on human labor and other locally available or
community-based resources, and their equitable exchange. They required
no unusual permission or forms of support from the mainstream political
establishment. Furthermore, as already mentioned, joining the SE family
does not involve pledging allegiance to any party lines, ideologies,
sectarian leaders, religious or ethnic factions, etc.
Of course, under repressive regimes, alternatives of any sort are
never easy to introduce; here, civil disobedience and constructive
non-violent resistance have often proved necessary. This is evidenced by
the case of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra) in Brazil, a SE initiative
which has forcefully occupied almost 20 million hectares of otherwise
unutilized land and settled well over 1 million formerly landless
people, helping them co-create housing, agriculturutal, and educational
cooperatives. (For other similar cases, see Vandana Shiva's Earth
Democracy, esp. chapter 5.).
A third strength of SE is that several of its most prominent
initiatives can be seen as pioneers of new, upscaled, and highly
participatory forms of democracy. This includes, among others, the
Brazilian participatory budget process, now exported widely across the
world (information at www.participatorybudgeting.org <
http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/>
); the afore-mentioned MST, as well as the Mondragon, Italian, and
Seikatsu cooperative organizations; and La Via Campesina, which
describes itself as [an] international movement of peasants, small- and
medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural
youth and agricultural workers. We defend the values and the basic
interests of our members. We are an autonomous, pluralist and
multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or other
type of affiliation. Our members are from 148 organisations) in 69
countries. (
http://www.viacampesina.org)
All of these, in strikingly different ways, are what workplace
democracy and anarchist activist George Benello called "working models"
of what democracy looks like when it is "upscaled" to enable meaningful
participation (beyond occasional voting) for populations which number in
the millions. That is, they have invented opportunities for all
participants or stakeholders to shape the priorities and practices of
large-sized communities; devolved authority to smaller or more local
groups; and reframed the core task of larger units as that of
facilitating leadership in and enabling collaboration among what emerges
from below.
The range of these pioneering models is also worth noting; from
landless peasants to middle class housewives, to university educated and
computer-savvy worker owners and cooperative developers; and across
national and continental borders. Moreover, they have achieved these
goals and have been walking their reinvented democratic talk for
multiple decades: they are here today, and for the long haul.
Fourth and finally, SE offers something unique to those joining
its ranks: the opportunity to make, or begin making, a living, to share
in the development and utilization of economically essential resources -
while contributing to the creation of a genuinely new and better world.
Of course, not every SE initiative by itself can guarantee
participants a living income, or a mortgage-free home with a computer or
laptop in every room. Some come close; the Mondragon or the northern
Italian cooperatives have standards of living above the European
average. Others, such as local currencies, or housing cooperatives, may
provide only a part of one's economic needs; they must be supplemented
to yield the missing components of economic security. A worker
cooperative may offer a decent income, plus a portion of the
enterprise's surplus revenues, to all of its members, but they will
still need a CSA and an energy coop....to combat inflated market prices
of essential material goods.
Nonetheless, especially in these grim times of more than 10% unemployment, the co-op is still a good start.
These then make up some of what could be called the "SE
Advantage": its constructivist and "subject-focused" approach to
understanding economic life; the relative ease with which its initiative
can get started; its capacity to build and maintain working models of
highly participatory democracy across both geographical, educational,
and class boundaries; and its ability to sustain us as we attempt to
build a new world for all of its inhabitants. In my own view, these are
advantages over not only (what Thatcher and the like tell us is) the
status quo, but in comparison with many more familiar forms of "social
change"; e.g., those aimed at either reforming that status quo through
conventional electoral politics or at overthrowing it by means of
violent uprisings. Possibly, my suggestions for strengthening SE, which
follow, may convince you of this."
(
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22092)
Solidarity Economics as a P2P Approach
A
Solidarity Economics approach to development starts with the idea of
Peer Equity.
The capacities of the individuals are considered paramount to the
success of any endeavor, and are the building blocks for what comes
next. A solidarity approach helps to identify the unique gifts of
peers,
and can lead to the identification of solutions that continue to
involve the participation of peers throughout the life of whatever new
Common Resource is developed.
Key Books to Read
- Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. by Carl Davidson. Lulu.com, 2007
URL =
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/solidarity-economy-building-alternatives-for-people-and-planet/2102869
More Information
- Intro essay: Introduction to the Solidarity Economy
- http://www.socioeco.org/en:
Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World, a workgroup on the
Socioeconomy of Solidarity. Currently the most comprehensive source for
material in English on solidarity economy theory and practice.
- http://www.communityeconomies.org:
Community Economies Project, an ongoing collaboration between academic
and community researchers and activists in Australia, North America, and
Southeast Asia, developing theories and practices around the concept of
"diverse economies."
- http://www.trueque-marysierras.org.ar/biblioteca2.htm: A website of one of Argentina's many barter clubs; a large, excellent library of Solidarity Economy articles in Spanish.
- http://www.ecosol.org.br:
A cooperative website maintained by a number of supporters of
solidarity economy; perhaps the best library of Brazilian Solidarity
Economy material available online.
- http://delicious.com/uniteddiversity/solidarity+economy - United Diversity's Solidarity Economy links on delicious
Articles
- Ethan Miller: Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues pdf
- Ethan Miller: Other Economies Are Possible html
- Ethan Miller: Solidarity Economics. Strategies for Building New Economies. From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out
pdf
- Carola Reintjes: What is a Solidarity Economy html
- Euclides André Mance: Solidarity Economics html
See also: the
Data Commons Project
German resources
![[2]](http://solidaritynyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SolidarityNYC-SolidarityEconomy.jpg){kind=link}