Seminar on a Solidarity Economy

Seminar on a Solidarity Economy
Marcos Arruda
Porto Alegre, 3 February 2002

Synthesis

The Seminar's last panel consisted of the presentation of syntheses of the various sessions of the seminar by six participants representing different networks and regions of the world present in the event. No common synthesis was agreed among the panelists; therefore each presentation is one's own responsibility. We believe that this would offer a richer overview of the Seminar.

I will divide my presentation in two parts: a strategic landmark or vision and the strategies to make it real. I emphasize the presence of two women among the four members of the Conference roundtable, and four women among the seven members of this Seminar panel. The relevant role of women is part of the innovations of a Solidarity Economy. Being the last one to speak, I observe that there is an explicit convergence among the syntheses of the various panelists. This indicates that we already have a solid base upon which to build international collaboration in solidarity. I recall that the responsibility of the synthesis belongs to each panelist and emphasize that those who will make the final synthesis, and the most important one, - that which will serve as a guide to practice - are the hundreds of Seminar participants and networks themselves.

1. Strategic Landmark or Vision

a. A Solidarity Economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historic struggle of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual and a collective. It arises also as the resultant of the crises of civilizational viability of the dominant world system centered on capital, on the market and on competition.

b. A Solidarity Economy is a fundamental part of another societal and civilizational project. Its horizon is not anti-globalization, but a globalization that is based on cooperation and solidarity. A Solidarity Economy is not only a microeconomic project. Nor is it only an economic project. If the human being counts, and since it is a multidimensional being, if economics is the art of the management and care of the various houses he/she inhabits, then the project is at the same time socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental, energetic and, for many of us, spiritual.

c. A Solidarity Economy is also conceived as a "work economy" (José Luis Coraggio) or "an economy of solidarity work" (Luis Razeto), because it takes the work, knowledge and creativity of male and female workers as a central value. For a Solidarity Economy history, anthropology and economics prove that the woman is a solidarity being par excellence.

d. Other basic values of a Solidarity Economy include:

1. Basic human needs - inferior and superior -, which demand consciously guides technological progress;
2. The various human exchanges supported by values such as cooperation, reciprocity, two-way communication, respect for diversity, solidarity and conviviality;
3. And a harmonious mode of exchange with Nature, our mother and our broader biosystem.

2. Strategies

a. We suggest three ways for the Solidarity Economy to overcome the wall between a democratic politics and a competitive, totalitarian economy:

1. The rooting of associative and cooperative enterprises in the persons involved, in the territory, the neighborhood, the community, the biosystem.
2. The mounting empowerment of female and male workers towards becoming the conscious, active and collaborative subjects of their own enterprises as well as of all their spaces of existence, from the local to the global. This involves the development of an economic sector of social ownership and self-management, overcoming specialization and professionalization, and educating workers towards becoming intellectuals, scientists, politicians and eventually government officials.
3. The growing articulation of self-managed enterprises among themselves, in the form of participatory, transparent and consciously collaborative networks, fed with an energy that seeks to build always new ties of unanimity in diversity, in the respect for the different, in complementarity among the different, from the local to the global.

This is precisely the meaning of the title of this Seminar: Radicalization of Democracy. It implies overcoming the traditional forms of democracy, to the extent that it institutes society as a whole working and creating and recreating life as the subject of its own social and human development.

b. Aware of the impossibility that a Solidarity Economy cannot exist without the simultaneous elaboration of a Solidarity Culture, we recognize the need of a whole new educational system, as well as decentralized educational sub-systems, adapted to the children, youth and adults of the different sectors of each society. This includes certain indispensable factors:

1. The educational process must be based on the praxis of individual and group autonomy and self-management, on the one hand, and on solidarity, on the other. It must envisage the development of all the potential of each and every educatee. This means that the personal transformation envisaged is integral and will not emerge from ideas or professorial speeches only but above all, from the practice of new values and modes of relation.
2. Transformation implies risks, obstacles and complex contradictions, not only external but also internal, not only objective but also subjective. Since we are complex, contradictory beings, we must be prepared for this challenge, by developing a philosophy of conflict that make us capable to use dialogue, not coercion in search of persuasion and unanimities around common projects.
3. Transformation is a long process, which is anchored in the individual, social and historic human being that we are, and also in the reality of globalized capitalism. These are largely contradictory referentials, but paradoxically they hide within themselves the germs and the potentials for radical transformation and supersession of themselves. We need to gather infinite patience and persistence in order to win.

c. We need a double strategy to guide our action: one, critical, the other propositive and creative. To do so demands working on several fronts simultaneously, among which:

1. Pressuring the private sector, awakening its sense of social and environmental responsibility and working for the adoption of codes of conduct.
2. Pressuring the State - at the local, national and global levels - for substantial changes towards participatory democracy, social investment, regulations, changes in legislation that introduce, among others, the recognition and the promotion of a Solidarity Economy and other forms of direct democracy such as sectoral popular councils, like the Participatory Budget Council. This front has a superior horizon that of the occupation of State power by organized society at various levels, and the creation of a Social World Bank, an International Solidarity Fund and a World Equitable Trade Organization.
3. Spreading the project, values and praxis of a Solidarity Economy among society, underlining the importance of reinventing money and its uses, and developing solidarity financial networks at various scales.

c. Enlarging the South-South, South-North, West-East, rural-urban trade and exchange, direct and electronic.

e. Developing methods of macro socioeconomic planning that orchestrate local, regional, national and continental development plans in harmony and solidarity.