Recognizing the emergent Solidarity Economy

By Matt Noyes mn@rollingearth.org, Matt Noyes is a social movement educator based in Colorado Springs, Colorado who writes on horizontal education, union democracy and reform, workers cooperatives, and solidarity economy. He extends thanks to Leire Uriarte Zabala, Yurie Kubo, Charley MacMartin, and Cheyenna Weber.

Introduction

This strange movement, nameless, untethered, taking place here and now in multiple forms, scarcely visible, barely sketched out, unstable but always beginning again.1 — Miguel Abensour, Le Procès de Maîtres Rêveurs

Since the 1980s, the concept of solidarity economy has been used around the world to describe the practices and possibilities of an alternative economy that prioritizes human solidarity, equality, and democracy and promotes a very different relationship with the planet.

In the United States today, there are dozens of projects from coast to coast in which people are using the concept of solidarity economy to name and understand their work. GEO (see http://www.geo.coop/archive) has documented much of this work.  Normally, people seeking to study or promote solidarity economy look to places where there are highly developed practices and organizations pursuing a shared strategy, like the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy or the Basque Country in Northern Spain, or, in the US, Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland or Cooperation Jackson, in Mississippi.2

In a 2017 study of solidarity economy in El Paso County, Colorado, I took a different approach, conducting a study of solidarity economy in an unlikely context, a region best known as the unofficial capital of the Fast Food Nation, home to the military industrial complex and the Religious Right. I describe that study and its results in a separate article. Here I want to share the conceptual framework I developed in order to recognize solidarity
economy where it is emergent and scarcely visible, even to many of its practitioners. The goal was to discover and identify relevant projects, organizations, and relationships and determine, if only tentatively, the degree of coherence of existing practices and relationships with the concept of solidarity economy. I also hoped to assess their coherence as a movement, that is, the degree to which they are networked, mutually supporting, and sharing a strategic orientation. To do this I needed a working definition of solidarity economy, a conceptual framework that would enable me to focus on key challenges, and a set of coordinates to serve as benchmarks for measurement.

If solidarity economy can serve as a tool for grasping this “barely sketched out” movement in its integrity, it might open new perspectives for collaboration and solidarity. Organizations might discover new allies and partners, new opportunities for growth, and new social, economic and political horizons. Solidarity economy can also provide a robust basis for developing tools to assessing the work of organizations and networks, along the lines of the “social audits” (auditorias sociales) used in Catalunya, Spain and other countries. (See the Auditoria Social of REAS Red de Redes in the Basque Country (http://www.economiasolidaria.org/informe_auditoria_social_2016_reas_rdr) and Balanç Social of Xarxa d’Economia Solidària de Catalunya in Barcelona (http://mercatsocial.xes.cat/ca/eines/balancsocial/)

The concept itself can have social impact.

Starting with a brief history of the term, the article examines four key concepts for identifying an emergent solidarity economy. I then present the nine coordinates used in the 2017 El Paso County study.

Why Solidarity Economy?

As I began my research in El Paso County, Colorado, I found that practitioners used a variety of terms: “social impact,” “fourth sector,” “social enterprise,” “sustainable business,” and “social entrepreneurship,” but none mentioned solidarity economy. This may simply be due to the low profile of solidarity economy in the US. I suspect it is also related to the difficulty of defining solidarity economy, a difficulty that flows from two sources. First, the activities and organizational described by solidarity economy are diverse:  not limited to one particular type of organization, one industry, or one sector. Second, solidarity economy is philosophically pluralistic not defined by one political strategy or ideology, nor by one historical tradition. There is no single list of features, characteristics, or goals. There is also a kind of conceptual interference by the dominant framework of nonprofit and charitable activity, and newer notions of conscious capitalism, social responsibility, sustainability and the like.

So why use the term and conceptual framework of solidarity economy? There are two reasons:

• First, in order to build a sustainable dialogue among solidarity economy practitioners and researchers, it is useful to stick with a common terminology. Solidarity economy has proven useful as a shared identity and a point of dialogue among practitioners and theorists in the Americas;
• Second, solidarity economy is particularly useful for framing strategic reflection on economy and society – in ways that “social impact,” for example, is not – because it emphasizes concepts like equity, pluralism, the centrality of labor, planetary crisis, and social transformation.

Perhaps it is easiest to make sense of solidarity economy by looking first at the evolution of the term, building off of the timeline offered in Ethan Miller’s “Solidarity Economy: Key Concepts and Issues.” (Miller 2010)

History of “Solidarity Economy”

The term “solidarity economy” began to be used in its current sense by theorists and practitioners in Latin America in the 1970s. Chilean theorist Luis Razeto Migliaro recently described how he came to use it.  “I have been called the founder of the concept of solidarity economy, the one who coined the term… but I heard the expression ‘solidarity economy’ from a woman from a people’s economic organization. It was at a Meeting of Labor Workshops that we organized… in 1981, in which various organizations participated: joint-buying groups, resource and community service centers, community kitchens, health groups, and others. We were reflecting on what identity such diverse groups might share. Our groups had different names but we were here together at this event, reflecting on and trying to find solutions to the problems we all faced… It was there that a woman from a popular organization said that… since all of the groups were economic organizations and solidarity organizations, what they shared was being solidarity economy organizations. That clarified the question of shared identity for so many organizations that were seeking to resolve economic problems through solidarity actions.” (Razeto 2016, 22)

The term was the product of participants in a popular education process of collaborative reflection and action among researchers and members of grassroots organizations, useful because it provided a shared identity and served as a point of dialogue. 

1990s
In the 1990s, Miller says, solidarity economy grew as a “social movement with a research agenda.” (Miller 2010, 2) Popular organizations and researchers formed local, regional and national networks in many countries including Brazil, France, Peru, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, and Quebec. (Miller 2010).  Other writers have pointed out that the understanding of solidarity economy and its use  “varied depending on the geographic perspective and socio-historical perspective” from which the concept was approached. (Guerra 2002). In France, where “social economy” had been the dominant term for over a century, solidarity economy was used to name “a new
generation of social economy… a (re)emergence of the ‘old’ social economy principles” of solidarity, reciprocity, and associationism in new, more diverse forms. (Moulaert and Ailenei 2005, 9).  Associationism was a movement contemporaneous with the emergence of industrial capitalism, centered on human solidarity and freedom, that rejected the separation between economic and social practices. Perhaps the most famous Associationist was Charles Fourier whose ideas inspired dozens of “phalanxes” and other communities, as described in John H. Noyes’ History of American Socialisms. (Noyes, 1870) As capitalism became hegemonic, “social economy” became institutionalized as another sector alongside the “market” and “state” sectors, autonomous, but also integrated into them by providing services they failed or chose not to provide, thus supplementing and stabilizing the system. The concept of solidarity economy called into question this division, “repoliticizing” the economy by challenging its separation from, and domination over society, and demanding democratization of the socio-economy. (Uriarte, Pagalday & Zufiaurre 2012, Lipietz 2000, Laville 2013).  Ironically, the assertion of a new, pluralist orientation that embraces a diversity of economic forms led to the creation of the catchall term “social and solidarity economy” that has come to be commonly used by European organizations. (Laville and Cary 2015) Still, many theorists continue to stress the specific character of solidarity economy even
as they emphasize its inherent pluralism:

“Solidarity economy is a heterogeneous phenomenon that covers different economic sectors and different phases of the economic cycle. It adopts a variety of organizational forms. Labor organizations, social movements, universities and governments actively promote solidarity economy from different fields of activity… In a wide range of sectors and geographic locations, social-economic activities are launched by working class and popular sectors motivated by necessity and the desire for social justice.” (Uriarte, Pagalday & Zufiaurre 2012)

2000s
The first “truly international” meeting of the solidarity economy movement took place in Lima, Peru in 1997, leading to the formation of “the Intercontinental Network for the promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, or RIPESS.”5 (Miller 2010, 2) RIPESS adopted the following definition of solidarity economy: “The social solidarity economy is based on human values and principles of solidarity that advocate the recognition of others as the foundation of human action and the source of the renovation of politics, economy and society. The social solidarity economy includes activities and organizations of associative, cooperative, and mutual nature created to respond to the need for jobs and the well-being of people, as well as those citizen movements geared toward democratizing and transforming the economy.” (RIPESS 2017)

The idea of solidarity economy spread rapidly in the 2000s, “thanks in large part to RIPESS and to the amplifying role of the World Social Forums.” (Miller 2010) The spread of RIPESS global website: www.ripess.org solidarity economy to Africa and Asia is evidenced by conferences in Dakar in 2005 and Manila in 2007.

Throughout this period, the movement for global social and economic justice grew, popularizing the slogan “Another World is Possible.” The movement reached a new stage in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis which brought into sharp focus the character of capitalism as “an economy that places the profit of a few above the well being of everyone else.” (Miller 2010, 1) The 15 May Indignados movement in Spain and similar
movements around the world, notably, in the U.S., Occupy Wall Street, combined an ambitious vision of social and economic transformation with a commitment to direct democratic “prefigurative” action – the recuperation of public spaces and the creation of communities of solidarity.

In the shift from “anti-globalization” to “altermondialisme,” the concepts of crisis, occupation, and recuperation are important. They reflect a shift of focus away from protests and demands on the state for increased services to direct actions aimed at recovering, protecting, and developing resources necessary for life. Examples are the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, which organizes landless farmers to occupy and cultivate disused
lands, and the workers in Chicago who created the New Era Windows cooperative after repeated factory occupations, the union struggle featured in Michael Moore’s 2009 film Capitalism, a Love Story. As Jean Louis Laville wrote, “solidarity economy harmonized with a movement no longer content to protest, articulating its own demands and proposals.” (Laville 2013, 282)

2010s
The U.S. Solidarity Economy Network was founded on the eve of the Global Financial
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Crisis, in 2007. In response to the crisis, new activists and existing organizations turned to
cooperatives and other solidarity economy activities. In New York City, Hurricane Sandy
demonstrated the insufficiency of the existing governmental emergency response system in
the face of “superstorms” and the value of self-organization and direct-action networks like
SolidarityNYC. Like Razeto and his colleagues and partners, many in this new post-Occupy
generation found in solidarity economy a unifying or coordinating concept they could use to
build projects that
“move beyond stemming the tide, to grow a resilient and secure city… in a manner
that respects and values every individual and every blade of grass… to create an
economy for people and the planet.” (SolidarityNYC, 2013)
Today and Tomorrow
In June 2013, veteran black activist Chokwe Lumumba was elected Mayor of Jackson,
Mississippi, on a program of political and economic democracy. One of the key organizations
in Jackson is Cooperation Jackson, a solidarity economy project which, in addition to
borrowing from the Mondragón Cooperative Experience (see “Coordinates” below), draws on
the social movement activism of the 1970s and the rich tradition of cooperative economics in
African-American communities, a history recently brought to wider attention by Jessica
Gordon Nembhard. (Flanders 2014; Nembhard 2014)6 Though Lumumba died eight months
later, the movement continues and his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, was elected Mayor on
June 6, 2017. The younger Lumumba shares his father’s commitment. “We have to figure out
how the economy will work in the hands of the people.” (Cooperation Jackson 2017).
This sketch of the history of solidarity economy should be enough to give the reader a
6 The histories of solidarity economy in latino/a, indigenous and other communities deserve similar study.
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sense of how the concept has been used and in what contexts. We next need to specify a set of
concepts and coordinates that can be used to identify solidarity economy in practice in the
particular context to be studied. The four concepts that seem most important are the centrality
of labor, the impact of the planetary crisis, the re-framing economy and society, and the
identity of solidarity economy as a sector or a movement. Having examined these, we will
look at nine principles, or “coordinates,” of solidarity economy. (Miller 2010)
Four Concepts for Solidarity Economy
1) The Centrality of Labor and the “C Factor”
One of the most important questions for solidarity economy has to do with work – who
does it, who controls it, who owns its product and the materials needed to produce them? In
standard economic thought, production is understood as a combination of factors, each of
which contributes to the value of the product, Land, Labor, and Capital being the most
important. In the traditional framework, “Labor” is understood narrowly, as an input to be
purchased cheaply and used efficiently.7 The capacity of people at work to cooperate, to help
and sustain each other, to organize their work and relationships, to control, collaborate, create
– this capacity on which capitalist production, like all production, depends – is “used
instrumentally and highly exploited” but not recognized as a source of value. (Razeto 1997, 6)
Luis Razeto Migliaro, popularizer of the term solidarity economy, has named this capacity for
collective activity the “C Factor” (C for cooperation, community, care, and other aspects of
the reciprocal relations between people, many of which begin with the letter “C”).
Razeto counts the C Factor separately, but really it is understood to be tied to Labor.
Interestingly, it also includes forms of collective activity related to production, including
7 Carmen Huertas-Noble describes this well in her critique of the “Standard Shareholder Oriented Model.”
(Huertas-Noble, 2016, 336)
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elements like community and family. Simply put, the C Factor is “human solidarity
recognized as a factor of production.”
But more is at stake than the recognition of a new factor. With the C Factor, Razeto
introduced the idea of the “organizing factor” of production. In capitalist production
relations, the “organizing factor” is capital, the factor to which the others are subordinated.
(Razeto 1997) The invisibility of the C Factor is a symptom of the subordination of
production to capital, for which the other factors count only as sources of its increase.
In discussions of solidarity economy, the term “capital” is often used in two senses. On
the one hand it denotes an investment of financial resources, in this sense worker cooperatives
can be said to have capital, even if they are not capitalist enterprises. On the other hand, as
Marx saw, capital is a social relation of production, with human protagonists: capitalists and
workers. To keep them clear, it is best to use the proper noun Capital for the social relation.
As the Associationists argued at the dawn of modern capitalism, human beings are
inherently equal. The inequality between people that defines capitalist production, the
sovereignty of Capital as the organizing factor, is not something given. It has to be imposed
and reproduced.8 To maintain its position as the organizing factor, Capital must wage a
constant struggle, whether openly or surreptitiously, to subordinate the factors Labor and the
C Factor. This is a social struggle, the classic example being the struggle over the length of
the working day that is the centerpiece of Volume One of Marx’s Capital.
In solidarity economy, where Capital is no longer the organizing factor, the new
organizing factor is dual: Labor and the C Factor. “The rationality of the solidarity…
economy is that founded on the factor labor power and the factor community. Labor tightly
8 This notion of innate equality comes from 19th century educator Jean-Joseph Jacotot. (Rancière, 1987)
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related to community.” (Razeto 1997, 10) Capital, to use the language of the principles of the
Mondragón Corporation, is “instrumental and subordinated” and Labor is “sovereign.”
Under Capital, Labor is subordinated and treated as a mere input, like energy or
materials. In solidarity economy, Labor and the C Factor, divided and denied under Capital,
are reintegrated and the functions of coordination and leadership that were alienated from
workers and concentrated in the hands of managers are recuperated by the workers and their
community. The broader identity of the workers and their participation in social networks that
spread beyond the workplace is recognized, and organized in networks of solidarity and intercooperation.
In order for the solidarity (Labor and the C Factor) to become the organizing
principle, the relation between Capital and Labor must be inverted: Labor must become
sovereign and Capital must be subordinated and reduced to an instrumental status.
This has important implications for practice. Who does the work, who organizes the
work, who directs the work, who controls the work, its conditions and its products, who plans
the work and creates strategy; are all key questions. Reliance on familiar top-down
management structures with wage-earning employees (or, in the case of most NPOs,
volunteers) undermines the emergence and consolidation of the C Factor and Labor as
organizing factors.
The concepts of sovereignty of Labor and the C Factor also reveal the vital role of
workers movements in solidarity economy, including those organized by unions and workers
centers. José María Arizmendiarrieta, founder of the Mondragón cooperative experience,
often insisted that workers cooperatives must be understood as part of a larger workers
movement. To forget or devalue this identity would be, he said, to “fall into an unforgivable
myopia and lack of solidarity.” (Azurmendi 1991, 824). The founders of ULGOR, the first
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workers cooperative at Mondragón, were skilled workers at the Unión Cerrajera lock factory
where they helped organize labor struggles in an effort to improve working conditions and
democratize the paternalistic but decidedly capitalist firm. (Molina 2005, 334). Failing to win
over the factory owners, they decided to leave the company and create a workers cooperative
as a vehicle for building democratic, worker-owned, socially conscious enterprise. Even as
Arizmendiarrieta developed a remarkable ecosystem of cooperative organizations, he never
gave up on the goal of social transformation of capitalist production, always maintaining that
cooperatives were one form among many in the broader workers movement. This means that
worker organizations in capitalist firms – labor unions, workers centers, caucuses and union
reform groups – should be understood as crucial players in a solidarity economy strategy.
The sovereignty of Labor and the C Factor, the centrality of human solidarity in
production, is a key concept for solidarity economy that has both an ideological importance
for cultivating a counter-hegemonic discourse, and a practical importance as the organizing
factor of solidarity economy.
2) Planetary Crisis: “Capital Versus
Life”
Now we zoom way out – to a planetary
perspective. The long-term effects of a
social-economic system built on the basis
of hydrocarbon consumption and organized
around the valorization of capital are
increasingly evident. Changes in global
temperatures, polar ice levels,
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Planetary Spheres
concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, acidification of oceans, deforestation,
depletion of fisheries and extinction of species are among the key indicators. It is more than
climate change: population growth, global wealth inequality, food insecurity, refugee and
migration pressures, the disappearance of languages and cultures, and more make it a
multidimensional crisis. (Azkarraga et al. 2011) As Uriarte Zabala et al. write, the system’s
underlying instrumental rationality has “come into stark contradiction with the logic of
reproduction of life to the degree that the principal conflict of our epoch can be described as
capital versus life.” (Uriarte, Pagalday, Zufiaurre, 2012, 2)
Today, solidarity economy must start from the recognition of the economy as embedded
in a larger sphere of social activity, which is in turn embedded in a larger sphere of life, itself
part of an even larger system. We can think of it in terms of concentric circles, with the
outermost circle comprising the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Cryosphere, and Geosphere; the
second circle the Biosphere; the third circle Society; and the fourth Economy. These circles
should be understood as inter-penetrating and in constant interaction. For perhaps the second
time in our planet’s history (the first being the rise of bacteria), the activity of a species has
fundamentally altered planetary systems; we are now in the Anthropocene.
As Naomi Klein has written, climate change “changes everything,” including the strategic
framework of social movements. (Klein 2015) “Sustainability,” a broad term that can include
anything from a kind of pure natural state, without human intervention, to the successful
reproduction of the existing socio-economic relations, has been replaced by the concept of
“survival” – the prevention of further destruction and mitigation of the irreversible effects that
are already occurring. Climate change adds urgency to social struggles, especially the fight for
radical democratization of economic and political life, particularly in regards to the energy
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sector and the rest of the hydrocarbon economy.
As a key sign of the incompatibility of capital accumulation with life, wealth inequality
deserves special mention. Thomas Piketty and his colleagues have shown the growth of
inequality to be capitalism’s defining, and continuing, historical trend. A recent report by
Oxfam indicated that the eight wealthiest men in the world now own as much wealth as the
poorest 3.6 billion. (Piketty 2014, 2016; Oxfam 2017; Hardoon, Deborah, et al. 20169 The
planetary crisis is both environmental and social.
Former Oxfam researcher Kate Raworth has found a way to visualize this combination of
planetary limits and social deficits, over-exploited resources and impoverished populations.
She calls it the “doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.”
9 Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist presents a
compelling argument for planetary framework that integrates economic, social, and planetary dynamics.
(Raworth 2017)
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In the inner circle, the doughnut hole, are indices of social needs (based on the United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals). On the outer edge of the circle are the planetary
boundaries, where human exploitation of resources become unsustainable (based on the work
of Johan Rockström). The green circle, the doughnut, represents the zone of “regenerative and
redistributive” economic activity in which planetary resources are used sustainably and social
needs are met. The diagram is intended to restate the basic goal of economic activity which is
no longer growth as such – an ever-rising GDP – but meeting social needs within planetary
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Illustration 1: “The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries (2017)” (Raworth 2017)
boundaries.
Solidarity economy shares the goal of creating a regenerative and redistributive economy
and requires that we re-frame the economy and its relation with society and the planet so as to
develop strategies for reaching it.
3) Reframing the Economy
The scale and urgency planetary crisis and growing inequality has inspired action in
multiple sites and forms; as Miller says, “alternatives are everywhere.” There are people at
work in a wide variety of projects and organizations: “cooperatives, fair trade…, alternative
currencies,… credit unions, …community land trusts and more.” (Miller 2010, 1) The problem
is that they are often “invisible,” taken for isolated examples of charitable or virtuous activity,
or siloed into sectoral categories, like “nonprofits,” or “social enterprises” and not recognized
as elements of an emerging alternative economy.
Solidarity economy helps us find and identify the “compelling array of grassroots
economic initiatives” and connect them “in ways that build a coherent and powerful social
movement for another economy.” (Miller 2010, 3)
It does this first by changing the definition of “economy.” Miller defines the economy
broadly as “all of the diverse ways that human communities meet their needs and create
livelihoods together.” Wage labor, government employment, household work, informal work,
natural processes are all part of this larger economy. The Australian feminist economic
geographers who shared the pen name J. K. Gibson-Graham use the metaphor of an iceberg to
illustrate this. The activities normally recognized as economic – typically those involving
“wage labor in a capitalist firm” – are above the surface while those underwater go unseen.
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Solidarity economy (Gibson-Graham call it
“community economics”) takes into account the
full iceberg of diverse forms of labor and
articulates their connections. (Gibson-Graham
2013) A look below the water line reveals a mix
of activities, including, they point out, some that
are illegal and unethical. How do we determine
which activities belong to the solidarity
economy? If they are to constitute an economy,
how do they fit together?
Circles of Solidarity Economy
Ethan Miller approaches this problem by understanding solidarity economy as a circle of
“interconnected flows made up of different… spheres of activity” driven by a set of basic
human needs. (Miller 2010, 4)
Like the “materials economy” popularized by The Story of Stuff, Miller’s circle (Figure 3)
looks at the flow of material from creation to production, distribution, consumption, and
disposal.10 This approach is useful for thinking about the consolidation and reproduction of
the solidarity economy and the social relationships on which it depends. In Razeto’s terms,
“reproduction… – absolutely essential for solidarity economies – is about expanding,
perfecting, improving human connections, comradeship, unity, [and] networks with other
experiences….” (Razeto 1997, 12)
As Miller underscores, the purpose of his model is educational and strategic: this image is
not “a diagram of a specific economic structure, but… a tool for strategizing possible
10 The Story of Stuff, http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/. Raworth makes a similar argument.
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Figure 1: Economic Iceberg (Gibson-
Graham 2013, 11)
connections.” (Miller 2010, 5). The point is to perceive “existing relationships and imagine
potential linkages” between activities and organizations. For example, we can see how surplus
and waste can become financing and fertilizer for renewed creation and production. Farmers
and producer cooperatives can collaborate with solidarity markets. Credit unions can finance
the development of co-housing projects, or alternative energy projects, etc. In each part of the
circle, and across sections, we can find possibilities for collaboration and networking. As
Miller stresses, this is practical work: in each case the people at work are building actual
economies and livelihoods. (Miller 2010)
Miller’s circle helps us maintain a wholistic view of solidarity economy. Unfortunately,
because Miller’s image does not include other, non-solidarity-economy, forms or activities, it
does not help us locate solidarity economy in the larger social-economy, which is essential for
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Figure 2: Spheres of Solidarity Economy (Miller 2010, 5)
developing the type of strategic approach he advocates. For this we need a more complex
image like the one used by Mike Lewis and Dan Swinney (2007).
In this schema, economic activity is divided into three “systems” : the Private, Profitoriented
system; the Public Service, Planned Provision system, and a Self-Help, Reciprocity,
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Figure 3: Three Systems (Lewis and Swinney 2007, 3)
Social Purpose system. (Lewis and Swinney, 2007, 3)
The diagram features a geographical axis, from local to global, and an axis of
organizational scale, small to large. It includes a space for domestic economy, segments for
illegal and informal activities, and a sector of “social economy activities” that includes
voluntary organizations, charities, mutual organizations and social enterprises.11
The diagram deserves careful study. I introduce it here to provide just to provide a more
comprehensive view of economic activity within which we can locate solidarity economy.
In order to show how solidarity economy differs from social economy, Lewis and
Swinney offer a simplified diagram
(Figure 4) which depicts solidarity
economy not as a sector or system
but as a sphere of activity and
relationships that cuts across all
three systems (though, as they point
out, solidarity economy activity is
typically found in what they call the
“social purpose” system).12
This division of systems of
economy activity comes from Karl
Polanyi’s conception of four principles of economic activity: market, redistribution,
11 For purposes of presentation, each system is given equal size and the successive rings are equidistant. It
would be interesting to re-scale this diagram to show the actual weight or impact of the different elements.
For example, multinational corporations would dwarf the social purpose sector in many respects;
international charities would be drastically larger than most workers cooperatives.
12 The importance of this cross-sectoral concept of solidarity economy is explained by Jean-Louis Laville in
L’Économie Solidaire, Une Perspective Internationale. (Laville 2013) The diagram also shows how
solidarity economy differs from the sectoral concept of social economy.
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Figure 4: Solidarity Economy in the Larger Economy
household, and reciprocity. (Lewis and Swinney subsume household under reciprocity.)
Polanyi’s four principles help us to find and recognize solidarity-based activities taking place
across the economy, in institutions and forms that are ignored when we limit our view to one
form or sector, e.g., nonprofits, social enterprises, cooperatives, etc. This is important in order
to avoid the self-restriction of solidarity-based activities to the nonprofit or non-monetary
economy, where practitioners often end up struggling to maintain precarious projects on the
basis of external funding and volunteer efforts, failing to create sustainable employment and
wealth for the community.
A cross-sectoral view is also useful for identifying possible targets of transformation in
places where transformation seems least likely, for example, multinational corporations, and
for establishing links among organizations and projects operating in different sectors and at
different levels, e.g. labor unions, workers centers, fair trade or global labor rights groups,
cooperatives, credit unions, nonprofit organizations, local governments, and social and
political movements. The inclusion of activities in the market and state sectors enables us to
enlarge the spheres of action and the people involved, recuperating links with the solidaritybased
activities that occur within capitalist institutions, even in subordinated forms, and
encouraging the formation of democratic organizations in which capital is subordinated, like
cooperatives.
This also requires us to maintain a critical attitude toward the social relations at work in
reciprocity-based organizations where the relations of inequality typical of capitalist
production can reemerge at any time. The challenge is to develop diversified economic
activities without a) reproducing the inequalities which have governed the relationships
between market and non-market activities during the history of capitalism (not to mention the
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inequalities which have characterized human relations within institutions,) and b) ignoring the
need for solidarity with those struggling against capital within market organizations.
4) Sector or Movement?
As helpful as this more complex conception of the place of solidarity economy activities
in the context of the various sectors or systems may be, it remains insufficient because, as
Miller says, solidarity economy is “not so much a model of economic organization as a
process of economic organizing.” The goal is not to build a new (third? fourth?) sector, but
“to build a coherent and powerful social movement for another economy.” (Miller 2010, 3)
To build this movement we must expand our circle to include social movements that do
not appear in the economic spheres. We need to integrate efforts to build a new economy with
other “organized efforts to challenge structures of economic, social and ecological injustice
and.. build popular power.” (Miller 2010, 8) Solidarity economy is an important framework
because it “integrates economic alternatives into social movements and social movements into
economic alternatives.” (Miller 2010, 8) This integration of civil society and political
movements is characteristic of solidarity economy. (Laville 1994)
As Jean-Louis Laville has emphasized, solidarity economy creates “public spaces of
proximity” from which social movements can arise, spaces of “associations and popular
initiatives in which inter-subjectivity can become creative of new norms.” (Laville 2013)
“The existence of voluntary gatherings in which the driving forces of action escape
the market and bureaucratic logics becomes a determining factor in the elaboration of
institutions which draw their strength from “the power of social integration that solidarity
represents,” and which foment public debate through the free formation of opinions;
solidarity economy can be one way to engender such institutions.” (Laville 2013, 74)
22
We live in times in which dramatic and relatively short-term change is required.
Solidarity economy offers an ambitious framework and practical space for transformation of
the society and economy, the relationship between them, and our relationship with the earth
itself.
Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
We have a sense of solidarity economy and key concepts that we can use to understand it,
what Laville calls “a sense of a world that is shared with others.” (Laville 2013, 72) As a
practical matter, how do we identify solidarity economy activities? What do such a wide
variety of activities spread across all sectors of the economy and beyond have in common?
How does solidarity economy differ in practice from other socially responsible, sustainable,
or progressive strategies?
Most organizations address this need for a coherent practical vision by drawing up a list
of principles or values to articulate their strategic orientation. Ethan Miller offers such one
such list, but stresses that the principles it includes are better understood as “coordinates for
shared ethical debate and learning.” (Miller 2010, 7)
This very helpful shift in language from “principles” to “coordinates” points to a basic
philosophical issue. Solidarity economy is not a model or a set of fixed principles, it is an
evolving and open-ended practice – to use Arizmendiarrieta’s preferred metaphor, from the
poet Antonio Machado, it is a road we make by walking. Solidarity economy is pluralistic not
just because it includes a diversity of activities or sectors, but because it is “regenerative”
always radically open to debate and collective learning, deeply democratic, unstable but
always reborn.
23
We can see the conceptual pluralism at work in solidarity economy in the coordinates
used by organizations and researchers, for example the three lists in the following table:
Miller’s “coordinates,” the principles of RIPESS, and those of Cooperation Jackson.
RIPESS (Reseau Intercontinental pour la Promotion de l’Économie Social et Solidaire) is
an intercontinental network for the promotion of the social solidarity economy with member
networks in five continents. The coordinates listed below are from the RIPESS North America
network.
Cooperation Jackson is an organization working to “advance the development of
economic democracy in Jackson, Mississippi, by building a solidarity economy anchored by a
network of cooperatives and other types of worker-owned and democratically self-managed
enterprises.” (Cooperation Jackson, 2017)
24
Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
Miller RIPESS Cooperation Jackson
Cooperation and mutuality Humanism Internal cooperation (within the
Federation of Cooperative Jackson)
Individual and collective wellbeing
Equality, equity and justice for all Instrumental and subordinated
character of capital
Economic and social justice (or
equity)
Solidarity Sovereignty of labor
Ecological health Sustainable development Autonomy and independence
Democracy Democracy Democratic member control
Diversity and Pluralism Diversity Members’ economic participation
(Miller 2010) Creativity Self-management
Inclusiveness Pay solidarity
Respecting the integration of
countries and people
Voluntary and open membership
A plural and solidarity-based
economy
External cooperation (among
cooperatives)
Subsidiarity Education, training and information
(RIPESS 2008) Social transformation
Universal nature
(Cooperation Jackson 2016, adapted
from the ten cooperative values of the
Mondragón Corporation)
Table 1: Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
The Nine Coordinates used in this study
In the spirit of re-generation, I offer another list based on the history of solidarity
economy and four concepts outlined above. The nine coordinates described below are
designed for three uses: as criteria for identifying solidarity economy practices and defining a
basis for unity and collaboration; as focal points for discussion, debate and learning; and as a
25
framework for elaborating criteria and measures for self-assessment and accountability.
Equity – The starting point of solidarity economy is the recognition of equality of people
and the verification of that equality in practice.13 Equity, the equal treatment of people,
includes open and voluntary membership, as well as efforts to overcome all forms of
discrimination and inequality, both within organizations and in the society. This is especially
important in contexts with a history of racial, gender and other discrimination, like the USA.
Democracy and Transparency – Democratization of the economy and the society is the
strategic mission of solidarity economy as well as a principle of organization. Internally,
democracy is evidenced in the organizational and legal forms that support democratic
participation and control in the daily life of the organization, and in the degree and quality of
participation in governance, management and work. Access to information needed to
participate on an equal footing with other members is also important. Externally, participation
in social movements, especially those for democracy and transparency, is an indicator of
democracy in practice.
Sovereignty of Labor – The democratic control and ownership of work by workers in
conditions of equity. Worker membership, ownership, participation in governance and
management, and equal access to information, are all important elements of labor sovereignty.
Labor sovereignty refers to the democratic exercise of power and control by workers over
economic activity. In a workers cooperative, for example, the people who do the work own
and control the means of production and the products and control the production process. (In
order that this sovereignty not be constituted on an unjust basis, equity, community, social
transformation, and other coordinates must be taken into account as well.) Where workers are
subordinated to capital, labor sovereignty begins with struggles for dignity, respect, and
13 The concept of verification, a key tool for horizontal pedagogy, comes from Joseph Jacotot (Rancière, 1987)
26
power, a mix of self-defense and struggles for “more.” Though they take place in the capitalist
economy, these struggles are indispensable elements of solidarity economy as a strategy for
social transformation. This means that labor unions and campaigns for workers rights, for
example, are as much a part of solidarity economy as worker cooperatives.
Capital Subordination – a necessary but insufficient condition of labor sovereignty,
which also requires democracy and equity. Because Capital is the hegemonic organizing
factor in our society, the restriction of the power and influence of Capital in the ownership,
governance, and management of organizations is an ongoing task. Organizations that fail to
continually practice Capital subordination may soon find themselves adopting practices that
privilege capital valorization and hierarchical control. In organizations where Capital has not
been subordinated, efforts to democratize the organization and subordinate Capital become a
key goal. Because Capital is a social relation that extends beyond any given workplace, its
subordination implies not just a change in the social relations in a firm, but a process of social
transformation. See Social Transformation below.)
Cooperation (and inter-cooperation) – The typical organizational form of solidarity
economy has been the workers cooperative or collective because of the combination of
democracy, shared ownership, solidarity and cooperation in such enterprises. Nonetheless,
solidarity economy includes a diversity of forms and the cooperation that concerns us is not
only that internal to an organization, or to a company group (inter-cooperation), but also the
broader cooperation among organizations and social movements. This second level of
organization and inter-cooperation facilitates economic and political economies of scale, and
also creates “communities of mutual accountability.” (Miller 2010, 12)
Community (solidarity and development) – The social mission at the heart of solidarity
27
economy is creating equitable and democratic communities and societies. Social movement
activity often takes the form of community-based organization. Creation of employment, one
of the key objectives of solidarity economy, is crucial for community development. At the
same time, using the concept of the C Factor, we can see community as closely linked to
production, not a separate sphere, and look for connections and opportunities for
collaboration.
Protection and Recuperation – Climate change and inequality are the most urgent
problems of our time. From the beginning, solidarity economy has developed together with
notions of environmental protection and sustainable practices. The recent struggles by
indigenous people and allies at Standing Rock Reservation to stop the construction of oil
pipelines make an important point – in calling themselves “protectors, not protesters” they
take the standpoint of sovereignty, defending the earth and the water that belongs to all. In a
similar way, workers who occupy and take over factories – notably in South America, where
they are known as “recuperated factories” – are protecting their jobs and communities.14 The
concepts of protection and recuperation are important elements of solidarity economy. This is
also true of efforts to protect culture, language, and history.
Social Transformation – The realization of equity, democracy, labor sovereignty, capital
subordination, cooperation, community development, and protection and sustainability
amount to a project of broad and deep change in the basic structures, practices, and ideologies
of modern society. The explicit recognition of social transformation as its goal, distinguishes
solidarity economy from ideas of a self-contained social economy sector, or of social
economy as a supplement, complement, or correction to the abuses or failures of capitalist
14 See “The Take,” the 2004 documentary by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis about the recuperated factories
movement in Argentina.
28
society. (Laville 1994) Social transformation unites the utopian and practical aspects of
solidarity economy.
Education (transparency, innovation) – the origin of solidarity economy. For Mondragón
founder Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, education was at the core of cooperativism. The
development of the individual and collective capacity for cooperation and social
transformation took a very practical form; before the first cooperative was launched,
Arizmendiarrieta set up youth clubs, religious study circles, and a school for young workers.
Education is the link between daily practice and the basic philosophical framework. Because
solidarity economy is a road made by walking, in which the basic principles and strategies
must continually be regenerated, and the existing practices questioned and challenged, it
implies a constant practice of learning and inquiry.
Education has another specific value in solidarity economy: innovation. Solidarity
economy is a massive project of decentralized, horizontal, social innovation, requiring what
Laville calls an “entrepreneuriat solidaire.” (Laville 2013, 291) At the same time, it also
requires constant innovation in technology and production processes. Education, too, is an
area of innovation, as we see in the new forms of team and cooperative entrepreneurship
pioneered in the Tiimi Akatemia at Jyvaskyla University in Finland and spread worldwide by
Mondragón University’s Mondragón Team Academy.
Conclusion: the Social Impact of Solidarity Economy
Solidarity economy offers a pluralistic, re-generative conceptual framework that we can
use to make visible the outlines of a new socio-economy that responds to the urgent
challenges of our time. As the history of the term shows, as a concept solidarity economy has
29
had a social impact, providing organizers and researchers the framework for developing
strategies of bottom-up socio-economic transformation that go beyond more limited sectoral
approaches that offer social impact without social transformation. It has been said, but it is
perhaps good to stress, that the concepts and coordinates presented here are intended as an
offer of dialogue and debate. Solidarity economy only becomes a shared identity – if it does at
all – as a result of exchange and mutual learning among practitioners and theorists. How this
conceptual framework is applied in practice is the subject of my next article.

Matt Noyes mn@rollingearth.org
We’ll see it when we know it: recognizing emergent Solidarity Economy.
by Matt Noyes mn@rollingearth.org
Adapted from a Final Masters Project in Applied Social Economy and Cooperative Enterprise for
the School of Business Administration, Mondragón University, Oñati, Euskadi / Spain. July, 2017
The survey form and research data are available on request, under a Creative Commons 4.0
Attribution-ShareAlike International License.
Matt Noyes is a social movement educator based in Colorado Springs, Colorado who writes on
horizontal education, union democracy and reform, workers cooperatives, and solidarity economy.
Thanks to Leire Uriarte Zabala, Yurie Kubo, Charley MacMartin, and Cheyenna Weber.
Introduction
This strange movement, nameless, untethered, taking place here and now in
multiple forms, scarcely visible, barely sketched out, unstable but always beginning
again.1
Miguel Abensour, Le Procès de Maîtres Rêveurs
Since the 1980s, the concept of solidarity economy has been used around the world to
describe the practices and possibilities of an alternative economy that prioritizes human
solidarity, equality, and democracy and promotes a very different relationship with the planet.
In the United States today, there are dozens of projects from coast to coast in which people are
using the concept of solidarity economy to name and understand their work. GEO has
documented much of this work.
Normally, people seeking to study or promote solidarity economy look to places where
there are highly developed practices and organizations pursuing a shared strategy, like the
Emilia-Romagna region of Italy or the Basque Country in Northern Spain, or, in the US,
Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland or Cooperation Jackson, in Mississippi.2
In a 2017 study of solidarity economy in El Paso County, Colorado, I took a different
approach, conducting a study of solidarity economy in an unlikely context, a region best
known as the unofficial capital of the Fast Food Nation, home to the military industrial
complex and the Religious Right. I describe that study and its results in a separate article.
Here I want to share the conceptual framework I developed in order to recognize solidarity
economy where it is emergent and scarcely visible, even to many of its practitioners.
The goal was to discover and identify relevant projects, organizations, and relationships
and determine, if only tentatively, the degree of coherence of existing practices and
1 All translations by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
2 Other examples can be found on the archives page on the GEO website (http://www.geo.coop/archive)
1
relationships with the concept of solidarity economy. I also hoped to assess their coherence as
a movement, that is, the degree to which they are networked, mutually supporting, and
sharing a strategic orientation. To do this I needed a working definition of solidarity economy,
a conceptual framework that would enable me to focus on key challenges, and a set of
coordinates to serve as benchmarks for measurement.
If solidarity economy can serve as a tool for grasping this “barely sketched out”
movement in its integrity, it might open new perspectives for collaboration and solidarity.
Organizations might discover new allies and partners, new opportunities for growth, and new
social, economic and political horizons. Solidarity economy can also provide a robust basis
for developing tools to assessing the work of organizations and networks, along the lines of
the “social audits” (auditorias sociales) used in Catalunya, Spain and other countries.3 The
concept itself can have social impact.
Starting with a brief history of the term, the article examines four key concepts for
identifying an emergent solidarity economy. I then present the nine coordinates used in the
2017 El Paso County study.
Why Solidarity Economy?
As I began my research in El Paso County, Colorado, I found that practitioners used a
variety of terms: “social impact,” “fourth sector,” “social enterprise,” “sustainable business,”
and “social entrepreneurship,” but none mentioned solidarity economy.
This may simply be due to the low profile of solidarity economy in the US. I suspect it is
3 See the Auditoria Social of REAS Red de Redes in the Basque Country
(http://www.economiasolidaria.org/informe_auditoria_social_2016_reas_rdr) and Balanç Social of Xarxa
d’Economia Solidària de Catalunya in Barcelona (http://mercatsocial.xes.cat/ca/eines/balancsocial/)
2
also related to the difficulty of defining solidarity economy, a difficulty that flows from two
sources. First, the activities and organizational described by solidarity economy are diverse:
not limited to one particular type of organization, one industry, or one sector. Second,
solidarity economy is philosophically pluralistic not defined by one political strategy or
ideology, nor by one historical tradition. There is no single list of features, characteristics, or
goals. There is also a kind of conceptual interference by the dominant framework of nonprofit
and charitable activity, and newer notions of conscious capitalism, social responsibility,
sustainability and the like.
So why use the term and conceptual framework of solidarity economy? There are two
reasons:
 First, in order to build a sustainable dialogue among solidarity economy practitioners
and researchers, it is useful to stick with a common terminology. Solidarity economy
has proven useful as a shared identity and a point of dialogue among practitioners and
theorists in the Americas;
 Second, solidarity economy is particularly useful for framing strategic reflection on
economy and society – in ways that “social impact,” for example, is not – because it
emphasizes concepts like equity, pluralism, the centrality of labor, planetary crisis, and
social transformation.
Perhaps it is easiest to make sense of solidarity economy by looking first at the evolution
of the term, building off of the timeline offered in Ethan Miller’s “Solidarity Economy: Key
Concepts and Issues.” (Miller 2010)
3
History of “Solidarity Economy”
The term “solidarity economy” began to be used in its current sense by theorists and
practitioners in Latin America in the 1970s. Chilean theorist Luis Razeto Migliaro recently
described how he came to use it.
“I have been called the founder of the concept of solidarity economy, the one who
coined the term… but I heard the expression ‘solidarity economy’ from a woman from a
people’s economic organization. It was at a Meeting of Labor Workshops that we
organized… in 1981, in which various organizations participated: joint-buying groups,
resource and community service centers, community kitchens, health groups, and
others. We were reflecting on what identity such diverse groups might share. Our
groups had different names but we were here together at this event, reflecting on and
trying to find solutions to the problems we all faced… It was there that a woman from
a popular organization said that… since all of the groups were economic organizations
and solidarity organizations, what they shared was being solidarity economy
organizations. That clarified the question of shared identity for so many organizations
that were seeking to resolve economic problems through solidarity actions.” (Razeto
2016, 22)
The term was the product of participants in a popular education process of collaborative
reflection and action among researchers and members of grassroots organizations, useful
because it provided a shared identity and served as a point of dialogue.
1990’s
4
In the 1990s, Miller says, solidarity economy grew as a “social movement with a research
agenda.” (Miller 2010, 2) Popular organizations and researchers formed local, regional and
national networks in many countries including Brazil, France, Peru, Spain, Argentina,
Mexico, and Quebec. (Miller 2010)
Other writers have pointed out that the understanding of solidarity economy and its use
“varied depending on the geographic perspective and socio-historical perspective” from
which the concept was approached. (Guerra 2002) In France, where “social economy” had
been the dominant term for over a century, solidarity economy was used to name “a new
generation of social economy… a (re)emergence of the ‘old’ social economy principles” of
solidarity, reciprocity, and associationism in new, more diverse forms. (Moulaert and Ailenei
2005, 9).4 As capitalism became hegemonic, “social economy” became institutionalized as
another sector alongside the “market” and “state” sectors, autonomous, but also integrated
into them by providing services they failed or chose not to provide, thus supplementing and
stabilizing the system. The concept of solidarity economy called into question this division,
“repoliticizing” the economy by challenging its separation from, and domination over society,
and demanding democratization of the socio-economy. (Uriarte, Pagalday & Zufiaurre 2012,
Lipietz 2000, Laville 2013)
Ironically, the assertion of a new, pluralist orientation that embraces a diversity of
economic forms led to the creation of the catchall term “social and solidarity economy” that
has come to be commonly used by European organizations. (Laville and Cary 2015)
Still, many theorists continue to stress the specific character of solidarity economy even
4 Associationism was a movement contemporaneous with the emergence of industrial capitalism, centered on
human solidarity and freedom, that rejected the separation between economic and social practices. Perhaps
the most famous Associationist was Charles Fourier whose ideas inspired dozens of “phalanxes” and other
communities, as described in John H. Noyes’ History of American Socialisms. (Noyes, 1870)
5
as they emphasize its inherent pluralism:
“Solidarity economy is a heterogeneous phenomenon that covers different economic
sectors and different phases of the economic cycle. It adopts a variety of organizational
forms. Labor organizations, social movements, universities and governments actively
promote solidarity economy from different fields of activity… In a wide range of sectors
and geographic locations, social-economic activities are launched by working class and
popular sectors motivated by necessity and the desire for social justice.” (Uriarte,
Pagalday & Zufiaurre 2012)
2000’s
The first “truly international” meeting of the solidarity economy movement took place in
Lima, Peru in 1997, leading to the formation of “the Intercontinental Network for the
promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, or RIPESS.”5 (Miller 2010, 2) RIPESS adopted
the following definition of solidarity economy:
“The social solidarity economy is based on human values and principles of solidarity
that advocate the recognition of others as the foundation of human action and the
source of the renovation of politics, economy and society. The social solidarity
economy includes activities and organizations of associative, cooperative, and mutual
nature created to respond to the need for jobs and the well-being of people, as well as
those citizen movements geared toward democratizing and transforming the
economy.” (RIPESS 2017)
The idea of solidarity economy spread rapidly in the 2000’s, “thanks in large part to
RIPESS and to the amplifying role of the World Social Forums.” (Miller 2010) The spread of
5 RIPESS global website: www.ripess.org
6
solidarity economy to Africa and Asia is evidenced by conferences in Dakar in 2005 and
Manila in 2007.
Throughout this period, the movement for global social and economic justice grew,
popularizing the slogan “Another World is Possible.” The movement reached a new stage in
the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis which brought into sharp focus the
character of capitalism as “an economy that places the profit of a few above the well being of
everyone else.” (Miller 2010, 1) The 15 May Indignados movement in Spain and similar
movements around the world, notably, in the U.S., Occupy Wall Street, combined an
ambitious vision of social and economic transformation with a commitment to directdemocratic
“prefigurative” action – the recuperation of public spaces and the creation of
communities of solidarity.
In the shift from “anti-globalization” to “altermondialisme,” the concepts of crisis,
occupation, and recuperation are important. They reflect a shift of focus away from protests
and demands on the state for increased services to direct actions aimed at recovering,
protecting, and developing resources necessary for life. Examples are the Landless Workers
Movement (MST) in Brazil, which organizes landless farmers to occupy and cultivate disused
lands, and the workers in Chicago who created the New Era Windows cooperative after
repeated factory occupations, the union struggle featured in Michael Moore’s 2009 film
Capitalism, a Love Story. As Jean Louis Laville wrote, “solidarity economy harmonized with
a movement no longer content to protest, articulating its own demands and proposals.”
(Laville 2013, 282)
2010’s
The U.S. Solidarity Economy Network was founded on the eve of the Global Financial
7
Crisis, in 2007. In response to the crisis, new activists and existing organizations turned to
cooperatives and other solidarity economy activities. In New York City, Hurricane Sandy
demonstrated the insufficiency of the existing governmental emergency response system in
the face of “superstorms” and the value of self-organization and direct-action networks like
SolidarityNYC. Like Razeto and his colleagues and partners, many in this new post-Occupy
generation found in solidarity economy a unifying or coordinating concept they could use to
build projects that
“move beyond stemming the tide, to grow a resilient and secure city… in a manner
that respects and values every individual and every blade of grass… to create an
economy for people and the planet.” (SolidarityNYC, 2013)
Today and Tomorrow
In June 2013, veteran black activist Chokwe Lumumba was elected Mayor of Jackson,
Mississippi, on a program of political and economic democracy. One of the key organizations
in Jackson is Cooperation Jackson, a solidarity economy project which, in addition to
borrowing from the Mondragón Cooperative Experience (see “Coordinates” below), draws on
the social movement activism of the 1970s and the rich tradition of cooperative economics in
African-American communities, a history recently brought to wider attention by Jessica
Gordon Nembhard. (Flanders 2014; Nembhard 2014)6 Though Lumumba died eight months
later, the movement continues and his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, was elected Mayor on
June 6, 2017. The younger Lumumba shares his father’s commitment. “We have to figure out
how the economy will work in the hands of the people.” (Cooperation Jackson 2017).
This sketch of the history of solidarity economy should be enough to give the reader a
6 The histories of solidarity economy in latino/a, indigenous and other communities deserve similar study.
8
sense of how the concept has been used and in what contexts. We next need to specify a set of
concepts and coordinates that can be used to identify solidarity economy in practice in the
particular context to be studied. The four concepts that seem most important are the centrality
of labor, the impact of the planetary crisis, the re-framing economy and society, and the
identity of solidarity economy as a sector or a movement. Having examined these, we will
look at nine principles, or “coordinates,” of solidarity economy. (Miller 2010)
Four Concepts for Solidarity Economy
1) The Centrality of Labor and the “C Factor”
One of the most important questions for solidarity economy has to do with work – who
does it, who controls it, who owns its product and the materials needed to produce them? In
standard economic thought, production is understood as a combination of factors, each of
which contributes to the value of the product, Land, Labor, and Capital being the most
important. In the traditional framework, “Labor” is understood narrowly, as an input to be
purchased cheaply and used efficiently.7 The capacity of people at work to cooperate, to help
and sustain each other, to organize their work and relationships, to control, collaborate, create
– this capacity on which capitalist production, like all production, depends – is “used
instrumentally and highly exploited” but not recognized as a source of value. (Razeto 1997, 6)
Luis Razeto Migliaro, popularizer of the term solidarity economy, has named this capacity for
collective activity the “C Factor” (C for cooperation, community, care, and other aspects of
the reciprocal relations between people, many of which begin with the letter “C”).
Razeto counts the C Factor separately, but really it is understood to be tied to Labor.
Interestingly, it also includes forms of collective activity related to production, including
7 Carmen Huertas-Noble describes this well in her critique of the “Standard Shareholder Oriented Model.”
(Huertas-Noble, 2016, 336)
9
elements like community and family. Simply put, the C Factor is “human solidarity
recognized as a factor of production.”
But more is at stake than the recognition of a new factor. With the C Factor, Razeto
introduced the idea of the “organizing factor” of production. In capitalist production
relations, the “organizing factor” is capital, the factor to which the others are subordinated.
(Razeto 1997) The invisibility of the C Factor is a symptom of the subordination of
production to capital, for which the other factors count only as sources of its increase.
In discussions of solidarity economy, the term “capital” is often used in two senses. On
the one hand it denotes an investment of financial resources, in this sense worker cooperatives
can be said to have capital, even if they are not capitalist enterprises. On the other hand, as
Marx saw, capital is a social relation of production, with human protagonists: capitalists and
workers. To keep them clear, it is best to use the proper noun Capital for the social relation.
As the Associationists argued at the dawn of modern capitalism, human beings are
inherently equal. The inequality between people that defines capitalist production, the
sovereignty of Capital as the organizing factor, is not something given. It has to be imposed
and reproduced.8 To maintain its position as the organizing factor, Capital must wage a
constant struggle, whether openly or surreptitiously, to subordinate the factors Labor and the
C Factor. This is a social struggle, the classic example being the struggle over the length of
the working day that is the centerpiece of Volume One of Marx’s Capital.
In solidarity economy, where Capital is no longer the organizing factor, the new
organizing factor is dual: Labor and the C Factor. “The rationality of the solidarity…
economy is that founded on the factor labor power and the factor community. Labor tightly
8 This notion of innate equality comes from 19th century educator Jean-Joseph Jacotot. (Rancière, 1987)
10
related to community.” (Razeto 1997, 10) Capital, to use the language of the principles of the
Mondragón Corporation, is “instrumental and subordinated” and Labor is “sovereign.”
Under Capital, Labor is subordinated and treated as a mere input, like energy or
materials. In solidarity economy, Labor and the C Factor, divided and denied under Capital,
are reintegrated and the functions of coordination and leadership that were alienated from
workers and concentrated in the hands of managers are recuperated by the workers and their
community. The broader identity of the workers and their participation in social networks that
spread beyond the workplace is recognized, and organized in networks of solidarity and intercooperation.
In order for the solidarity (Labor and the C Factor) to become the organizing
principle, the relation between Capital and Labor must be inverted: Labor must become
sovereign and Capital must be subordinated and reduced to an instrumental status.
This has important implications for practice. Who does the work, who organizes the
work, who directs the work, who controls the work, its conditions and its products, who plans
the work and creates strategy; are all key questions. Reliance on familiar top-down
management structures with wage-earning employees (or, in the case of most NPOs,
volunteers) undermines the emergence and consolidation of the C Factor and Labor as
organizing factors.
The concepts of sovereignty of Labor and the C Factor also reveal the vital role of
workers movements in solidarity economy, including those organized by unions and workers
centers. José María Arizmendiarrieta, founder of the Mondragón cooperative experience,
often insisted that workers cooperatives must be understood as part of a larger workers
movement. To forget or devalue this identity would be, he said, to “fall into an unforgivable
myopia and lack of solidarity.” (Azurmendi 1991, 824). The founders of ULGOR, the first
11
workers cooperative at Mondragón, were skilled workers at the Unión Cerrajera lock factory
where they helped organize labor struggles in an effort to improve working conditions and
democratize the paternalistic but decidedly capitalist firm. (Molina 2005, 334). Failing to win
over the factory owners, they decided to leave the company and create a workers cooperative
as a vehicle for building democratic, worker-owned, socially conscious enterprise. Even as
Arizmendiarrieta developed a remarkable ecosystem of cooperative organizations, he never
gave up on the goal of social transformation of capitalist production, always maintaining that
cooperatives were one form among many in the broader workers movement. This means that
worker organizations in capitalist firms – labor unions, workers centers, caucuses and union
reform groups – should be understood as crucial players in a solidarity economy strategy.
The sovereignty of Labor and the C Factor, the centrality of human solidarity in
production, is a key concept for solidarity economy that has both an ideological importance
for cultivating a counter-hegemonic discourse, and a practical importance as the organizing
factor of solidarity economy.
2) Planetary Crisis: “Capital Versus
Life”
Now we zoom way out – to a planetary
perspective. The long-term effects of a
social-economic system built on the basis
of hydrocarbon consumption and organized
around the valorization of capital are
increasingly evident. Changes in global
temperatures, polar ice levels,
12
Planetary Spheres
concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, acidification of oceans, deforestation,
depletion of fisheries and extinction of species are among the key indicators. It is more than
climate change: population growth, global wealth inequality, food insecurity, refugee and
migration pressures, the disappearance of languages and cultures, and more make it a
multidimensional crisis. (Azkarraga et al. 2011) As Uriarte Zabala et al. write, the system’s
underlying instrumental rationality has “come into stark contradiction with the logic of
reproduction of life to the degree that the principal conflict of our epoch can be described as
capital versus life.” (Uriarte, Pagalday, Zufiaurre, 2012, 2)
Today, solidarity economy must start from the recognition of the economy as embedded
in a larger sphere of social activity, which is in turn embedded in a larger sphere of life, itself
part of an even larger system. We can think of it in terms of concentric circles, with the
outermost circle comprising the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Cryosphere, and Geosphere; the
second circle the Biosphere; the third circle Society; and the fourth Economy. These circles
should be understood as inter-penetrating and in constant interaction. For perhaps the second
time in our planet’s history (the first being the rise of bacteria), the activity of a species has
fundamentally altered planetary systems; we are now in the Anthropocene.
As Naomi Klein has written, climate change “changes everything,” including the strategic
framework of social movements. (Klein 2015) “Sustainability,” a broad term that can include
anything from a kind of pure natural state, without human intervention, to the successful
reproduction of the existing socio-economic relations, has been replaced by the concept of
“survival” – the prevention of further destruction and mitigation of the irreversible effects that
are already occurring. Climate change adds urgency to social struggles, especially the fight for
radical democratization of economic and political life, particularly in regards to the energy
13
sector and the rest of the hydrocarbon economy.
As a key sign of the incompatibility of capital accumulation with life, wealth inequality
deserves special mention. Thomas Piketty and his colleagues have shown the growth of
inequality to be capitalism’s defining, and continuing, historical trend. A recent report by
Oxfam indicated that the eight wealthiest men in the world now own as much wealth as the
poorest 3.6 billion. (Piketty 2014, 2016; Oxfam 2017; Hardoon, Deborah, et al. 20169 The
planetary crisis is both environmental and social.
Former Oxfam researcher Kate Raworth has found a way to visualize this combination of
planetary limits and social deficits, over-exploited resources and impoverished populations.
She calls it the “doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.”
9 Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist presents a
compelling argument for planetary framework that integrates economic, social, and planetary dynamics.
(Raworth 2017)
14
In the inner circle, the doughnut hole, are indices of social needs (based on the United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals). On the outer edge of the circle are the planetary
boundaries, where human exploitation of resources become unsustainable (based on the work
of Johan Rockström). The green circle, the doughnut, represents the zone of “regenerative and
redistributive” economic activity in which planetary resources are used sustainably and social
needs are met. The diagram is intended to restate the basic goal of economic activity which is
no longer growth as such – an ever-rising GDP – but meeting social needs within planetary
15
Illustration 1: “The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries (2017)” (Raworth 2017)
boundaries.
Solidarity economy shares the goal of creating a regenerative and redistributive economy
and requires that we re-frame the economy and its relation with society and the planet so as to
develop strategies for reaching it.
3) Reframing the Economy
The scale and urgency planetary crisis and growing inequality has inspired action in
multiple sites and forms; as Miller says, “alternatives are everywhere.” There are people at
work in a wide variety of projects and organizations: “cooperatives, fair trade…, alternative
currencies,… credit unions, …community land trusts and more.” (Miller 2010, 1) The problem
is that they are often “invisible,” taken for isolated examples of charitable or virtuous activity,
or siloed into sectoral categories, like “nonprofits,” or “social enterprises” and not recognized
as elements of an emerging alternative economy.
Solidarity economy helps us find and identify the “compelling array of grassroots
economic initiatives” and connect them “in ways that build a coherent and powerful social
movement for another economy.” (Miller 2010, 3)
It does this first by changing the definition of “economy.” Miller defines the economy
broadly as “all of the diverse ways that human communities meet their needs and create
livelihoods together.” Wage labor, government employment, household work, informal work,
natural processes are all part of this larger economy. The Australian feminist economic
geographers who shared the pen name J. K. Gibson-Graham use the metaphor of an iceberg to
illustrate this. The activities normally recognized as economic – typically those involving
“wage labor in a capitalist firm” – are above the surface while those underwater go unseen.
16
Solidarity economy (Gibson-Graham call it
“community economics”) takes into account the
full iceberg of diverse forms of labor and
articulates their connections. (Gibson-Graham
2013) A look below the water line reveals a mix
of activities, including, they point out, some that
are illegal and unethical. How do we determine
which activities belong to the solidarity
economy? If they are to constitute an economy,
how do they fit together?
Circles of Solidarity Economy
Ethan Miller approaches this problem by understanding solidarity economy as a circle of
“interconnected flows made up of different… spheres of activity” driven by a set of basic
human needs. (Miller 2010, 4)
Like the “materials economy” popularized by The Story of Stuff, Miller’s circle (Figure 3)
looks at the flow of material from creation to production, distribution, consumption, and
disposal.10 This approach is useful for thinking about the consolidation and reproduction of
the solidarity economy and the social relationships on which it depends. In Razeto’s terms,
“reproduction… – absolutely essential for solidarity economies – is about expanding,
perfecting, improving human connections, comradeship, unity, [and] networks with other
experiences….” (Razeto 1997, 12)
As Miller underscores, the purpose of his model is educational and strategic: this image is
not “a diagram of a specific economic structure, but… a tool for strategizing possible
10 The Story of Stuff, http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/. Raworth makes a similar argument.
17
Figure 1: Economic Iceberg (Gibson-
Graham 2013, 11)
connections.” (Miller 2010, 5). The point is to perceive “existing relationships and imagine
potential linkages” between activities and organizations. For example, we can see how surplus
and waste can become financing and fertilizer for renewed creation and production. Farmers
and producer cooperatives can collaborate with solidarity markets. Credit unions can finance
the development of co-housing projects, or alternative energy projects, etc. In each part of the
circle, and across sections, we can find possibilities for collaboration and networking. As
Miller stresses, this is practical work: in each case the people at work are building actual
economies and livelihoods. (Miller 2010)
Miller’s circle helps us maintain a wholistic view of solidarity economy. Unfortunately,
because Miller’s image does not include other, non-solidarity-economy, forms or activities, it
does not help us locate solidarity economy in the larger social-economy, which is essential for
18
Figure 2: Spheres of Solidarity Economy (Miller 2010, 5)
developing the type of strategic approach he advocates. For this we need a more complex
image like the one used by Mike Lewis and Dan Swinney (2007).
In this schema, economic activity is divided into three “systems” : the Private, Profitoriented
system; the Public Service, Planned Provision system, and a Self-Help, Reciprocity,
19
Figure 3: Three Systems (Lewis and Swinney 2007, 3)
Social Purpose system. (Lewis and Swinney, 2007, 3)
The diagram features a geographical axis, from local to global, and an axis of
organizational scale, small to large. It includes a space for domestic economy, segments for
illegal and informal activities, and a sector of “social economy activities” that includes
voluntary organizations, charities, mutual organizations and social enterprises.11
The diagram deserves careful study. I introduce it here to provide just to provide a more
comprehensive view of economic activity within which we can locate solidarity economy.
In order to show how solidarity economy differs from social economy, Lewis and
Swinney offer a simplified diagram
(Figure 4) which depicts solidarity
economy not as a sector or system
but as a sphere of activity and
relationships that cuts across all
three systems (though, as they point
out, solidarity economy activity is
typically found in what they call the
“social purpose” system).12
This division of systems of
economy activity comes from Karl
Polanyi’s conception of four principles of economic activity: market, redistribution,
11 For purposes of presentation, each system is given equal size and the successive rings are equidistant. It
would be interesting to re-scale this diagram to show the actual weight or impact of the different elements.
For example, multinational corporations would dwarf the social purpose sector in many respects;
international charities would be drastically larger than most workers cooperatives.
12 The importance of this cross-sectoral concept of solidarity economy is explained by Jean-Louis Laville in
L’Économie Solidaire, Une Perspective Internationale. (Laville 2013) The diagram also shows how
solidarity economy differs from the sectoral concept of social economy.
20
Figure 4: Solidarity Economy in the Larger Economy
household, and reciprocity. (Lewis and Swinney subsume household under reciprocity.)
Polanyi’s four principles help us to find and recognize solidarity-based activities taking place
across the economy, in institutions and forms that are ignored when we limit our view to one
form or sector, e.g., nonprofits, social enterprises, cooperatives, etc. This is important in order
to avoid the self-restriction of solidarity-based activities to the nonprofit or non-monetary
economy, where practitioners often end up struggling to maintain precarious projects on the
basis of external funding and volunteer efforts, failing to create sustainable employment and
wealth for the community.
A cross-sectoral view is also useful for identifying possible targets of transformation in
places where transformation seems least likely, for example, multinational corporations, and
for establishing links among organizations and projects operating in different sectors and at
different levels, e.g. labor unions, workers centers, fair trade or global labor rights groups,
cooperatives, credit unions, nonprofit organizations, local governments, and social and
political movements. The inclusion of activities in the market and state sectors enables us to
enlarge the spheres of action and the people involved, recuperating links with the solidaritybased
activities that occur within capitalist institutions, even in subordinated forms, and
encouraging the formation of democratic organizations in which capital is subordinated, like
cooperatives.
This also requires us to maintain a critical attitude toward the social relations at work in
reciprocity-based organizations where the relations of inequality typical of capitalist
production can reemerge at any time. The challenge is to develop diversified economic
activities without a) reproducing the inequalities which have governed the relationships
between market and non-market activities during the history of capitalism (not to mention the
21
inequalities which have characterized human relations within institutions,) and b) ignoring the
need for solidarity with those struggling against capital within market organizations.
4) Sector or Movement?
As helpful as this more complex conception of the place of solidarity economy activities
in the context of the various sectors or systems may be, it remains insufficient because, as
Miller says, solidarity economy is “not so much a model of economic organization as a
process of economic organizing.” The goal is not to build a new (third? fourth?) sector, but
“to build a coherent and powerful social movement for another economy.” (Miller 2010, 3)
To build this movement we must expand our circle to include social movements that do
not appear in the economic spheres. We need to integrate efforts to build a new economy with
other “organized efforts to challenge structures of economic, social and ecological injustice
and.. build popular power.” (Miller 2010, 8) Solidarity economy is an important framework
because it “integrates economic alternatives into social movements and social movements into
economic alternatives.” (Miller 2010, 8) This integration of civil society and political
movements is characteristic of solidarity economy. (Laville 1994)
As Jean-Louis Laville has emphasized, solidarity economy creates “public spaces of
proximity” from which social movements can arise, spaces of “associations and popular
initiatives in which inter-subjectivity can become creative of new norms.” (Laville 2013)
“The existence of voluntary gatherings in which the driving forces of action escape
the market and bureaucratic logics becomes a determining factor in the elaboration of
institutions which draw their strength from “the power of social integration that solidarity
represents,” and which foment public debate through the free formation of opinions;
solidarity economy can be one way to engender such institutions.” (Laville 2013, 74)
22
We live in times in which dramatic and relatively short-term change is required.
Solidarity economy offers an ambitious framework and practical space for transformation of
the society and economy, the relationship between them, and our relationship with the earth
itself.
Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
We have a sense of solidarity economy and key concepts that we can use to understand it,
what Laville calls “a sense of a world that is shared with others.” (Laville 2013, 72) As a
practical matter, how do we identify solidarity economy activities? What do such a wide
variety of activities spread across all sectors of the economy and beyond have in common?
How does solidarity economy differ in practice from other socially responsible, sustainable,
or progressive strategies?
Most organizations address this need for a coherent practical vision by drawing up a list
of principles or values to articulate their strategic orientation. Ethan Miller offers such one
such list, but stresses that the principles it includes are better understood as “coordinates for
shared ethical debate and learning.” (Miller 2010, 7)
This very helpful shift in language from “principles” to “coordinates” points to a basic
philosophical issue. Solidarity economy is not a model or a set of fixed principles, it is an
evolving and open-ended practice – to use Arizmendiarrieta’s preferred metaphor, from the
poet Antonio Machado, it is a road we make by walking. Solidarity economy is pluralistic not
just because it includes a diversity of activities or sectors, but because it is “regenerative”
always radically open to debate and collective learning, deeply democratic, unstable but
always reborn.
23
We can see the conceptual pluralism at work in solidarity economy in the coordinates
used by organizations and researchers, for example the three lists in the following table:
Miller’s “coordinates,” the principles of RIPESS, and those of Cooperation Jackson.
RIPESS (Reseau Intercontinental pour la Promotion de l’Économie Social et Solidaire) is
an intercontinental network for the promotion of the social solidarity economy with member
networks in five continents. The coordinates listed below are from the RIPESS North America
network.
Cooperation Jackson is an organization working to “advance the development of
economic democracy in Jackson, Mississippi, by building a solidarity economy anchored by a
network of cooperatives and other types of worker-owned and democratically self-managed
enterprises.” (Cooperation Jackson, 2017)
24
Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
Miller RIPESS Cooperation Jackson
Cooperation and mutuality Humanism Internal cooperation (within the
Federation of Cooperative Jackson)
Individual and collective wellbeing
Equality, equity and justice for all Instrumental and subordinated
character of capital
Economic and social justice (or
equity)
Solidarity Sovereignty of labor
Ecological health Sustainable development Autonomy and independence
Democracy Democracy Democratic member control
Diversity and Pluralism Diversity Members’ economic participation
(Miller 2010) Creativity Self-management
Inclusiveness Pay solidarity
Respecting the integration of
countries and people
Voluntary and open membership
A plural and solidarity-based
economy
External cooperation (among
cooperatives)
Subsidiarity Education, training and information
(RIPESS 2008) Social transformation
Universal nature
(Cooperation Jackson 2016, adapted
from the ten cooperative values of the
Mondragón Corporation)
Table 1: Coordinates of Solidarity Economy
The Nine Coordinates used in this study
In the spirit of re-generation, I offer another list based on the history of solidarity
economy and four concepts outlined above. The nine coordinates described below are
designed for three uses: as criteria for identifying solidarity economy practices and defining a
basis for unity and collaboration; as focal points for discussion, debate and learning; and as a
25
framework for elaborating criteria and measures for self-assessment and accountability.
Equity – The starting point of solidarity economy is the recognition of equality of people
and the verification of that equality in practice.13 Equity, the equal treatment of people,
includes open and voluntary membership, as well as efforts to overcome all forms of
discrimination and inequality, both within organizations and in the society. This is especially
important in contexts with a history of racial, gender and other discrimination, like the USA.
Democracy and Transparency – Democratization of the economy and the society is the
strategic mission of solidarity economy as well as a principle of organization. Internally,
democracy is evidenced in the organizational and legal forms that support democratic
participation and control in the daily life of the organization, and in the degree and quality of
participation in governance, management and work. Access to information needed to
participate on an equal footing with other members is also important. Externally, participation
in social movements, especially those for democracy and transparency, is an indicator of
democracy in practice.
Sovereignty of Labor – The democratic control and ownership of work by workers in
conditions of equity. Worker membership, ownership, participation in governance and
management, and equal access to information, are all important elements of labor sovereignty.
Labor sovereignty refers to the democratic exercise of power and control by workers over
economic activity. In a workers cooperative, for example, the people who do the work own
and control the means of production and the products and control the production process. (In
order that this sovereignty not be constituted on an unjust basis, equity, community, social
transformation, and other coordinates must be taken into account as well.) Where workers are
subordinated to capital, labor sovereignty begins with struggles for dignity, respect, and
13 The concept of verification, a key tool for horizontal pedagogy, comes from Joseph Jacotot (Rancière, 1987)
26
power, a mix of self-defense and struggles for “more.” Though they take place in the capitalist
economy, these struggles are indispensable elements of solidarity economy as a strategy for
social transformation. This means that labor unions and campaigns for workers rights, for
example, are as much a part of solidarity economy as worker cooperatives.
Capital Subordination – a necessary but insufficient condition of labor sovereignty,
which also requires democracy and equity. Because Capital is the hegemonic organizing
factor in our society, the restriction of the power and influence of Capital in the ownership,
governance, and management of organizations is an ongoing task. Organizations that fail to
continually practice Capital subordination may soon find themselves adopting practices that
privilege capital valorization and hierarchical control. In organizations where Capital has not
been subordinated, efforts to democratize the organization and subordinate Capital become a
key goal. Because Capital is a social relation that extends beyond any given workplace, its
subordination implies not just a change in the social relations in a firm, but a process of social
transformation. See Social Transformation below.)
Cooperation (and inter-cooperation) – The typical organizational form of solidarity
economy has been the workers cooperative or collective because of the combination of
democracy, shared ownership, solidarity and cooperation in such enterprises. Nonetheless,
solidarity economy includes a diversity of forms and the cooperation that concerns us is not
only that internal to an organization, or to a company group (inter-cooperation), but also the
broader cooperation among organizations and social movements. This second level of
organization and inter-cooperation facilitates economic and political economies of scale, and
also creates “communities of mutual accountability.” (Miller 2010, 12)
Community (solidarity and development) – The social mission at the heart of solidarity
27
economy is creating equitable and democratic communities and societies. Social movement
activity often takes the form of community-based organization. Creation of employment, one
of the key objectives of solidarity economy, is crucial for community development. At the
same time, using the concept of the C Factor, we can see community as closely linked to
production, not a separate sphere, and look for connections and opportunities for
collaboration.
Protection and Recuperation – Climate change and inequality are the most urgent
problems of our time. From the beginning, solidarity economy has developed together with
notions of environmental protection and sustainable practices. The recent struggles by
indigenous people and allies at Standing Rock Reservation to stop the construction of oil
pipelines make an important point – in calling themselves “protectors, not protesters” they
take the standpoint of sovereignty, defending the earth and the water that belongs to all. In a
similar way, workers who occupy and take over factories – notably in South America, where
they are known as “recuperated factories” – are protecting their jobs and communities.14 The
concepts of protection and recuperation are important elements of solidarity economy. This is
also true of efforts to protect culture, language, and history.
Social Transformation – The realization of equity, democracy, labor sovereignty, capital
subordination, cooperation, community development, and protection and sustainability
amount to a project of broad and deep change in the basic structures, practices, and ideologies
of modern society. The explicit recognition of social transformation as its goal, distinguishes
solidarity economy from ideas of a self-contained social economy sector, or of social
economy as a supplement, complement, or correction to the abuses or failures of capitalist
14 See “The Take,” the 2004 documentary by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis about the recuperated factories
movement in Argentina.
28
society. (Laville 1994) Social transformation unites the utopian and practical aspects of
solidarity economy.
Education (transparency, innovation) – the origin of solidarity economy. For Mondragón
founder Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, education was at the core of cooperativism. The
development of the individual and collective capacity for cooperation and social
transformation took a very practical form; before the first cooperative was launched,
Arizmendiarrieta set up youth clubs, religious study circles, and a school for young workers.
Education is the link between daily practice and the basic philosophical framework. Because
solidarity economy is a road made by walking, in which the basic principles and strategies
must continually be regenerated, and the existing practices questioned and challenged, it
implies a constant practice of learning and inquiry.
Education has another specific value in solidarity economy: innovation. Solidarity
economy is a massive project of decentralized, horizontal, social innovation, requiring what
Laville calls an “entrepreneuriat solidaire.” (Laville 2013, 291) At the same time, it also
requires constant innovation in technology and production processes. Education, too, is an
area of innovation, as we see in the new forms of team and cooperative entrepreneurship
pioneered in the Tiimi Akatemia at Jyvaskyla University in Finland and spread worldwide by
Mondragón University’s Mondragón Team Academy.
Conclusion: the Social Impact of Solidarity Economy
Solidarity economy offers a pluralistic, re-generative conceptual framework that we can
use to make visible the outlines of a new socio-economy that responds to the urgent
challenges of our time. As the history of the term shows, as a concept solidarity economy has
29
had a social impact, providing organizers and researchers the framework for developing
strategies of bottom-up socio-economic transformation that go beyond more limited sectoral
approaches that offer social impact without social transformation. It has been said, but it is
perhaps good to stress, that the concepts and coordinates presented here are intended as an
offer of dialogue and debate. Solidarity economy only becomes a shared identity – if it does at
all – as a result of exchange and mutual learning among practitioners and theorists. How this
conceptual framework is applied in practice is the subject of my next article.
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