Article by Jason Nardi (RIES – Italian Solidarity Economy Network and RIPESS – Solidarity Economy Europe)
A transformative alternative to the financialised and market economy is emerging, deeply democratic and with a vision of a future for the commons and a shared and distributed management of resources, locally and territorially rooted but globally networked, seeking a political (but not ideological) framework at the European level and beyond.
From poly-crisis to pluri-alternative
The multiplicity and concomitance of global crises that threaten the very existence of our civilization appears to be a very difficult if not impossible challenge to face. Maintaining an optimism of will is certainly not easy, but we must try, taking advantage of the cracks in the system’, its vulnerabilities and the opportunities that arise, and learning to act collectively in a more rapid and cohesive manner.
In the past, people believed Margaret Thatcher’s saying that ‘there is no alternative’ to the capitalist system. But today there are, indeed, many alternatives: we simply cannot continue to promote and live in a model of an economy of infinite growth, which is destructive and disproportionately increases levels of poverty and inequality. The poly-crisis has taught us that we are all in the same boat. Many people, especially of the younger generation, are now much more aware of what they consume, how it is produced, the costs and impact of offshoring and large-scale ‘competitive’ international trade. They increasingly perceive themselves as citizens, not just consumers, and understand their power in shifting from unhealthy and unsustainable consumption to co-production in which they have an active role and relationship with those who produce what they use. They are empowering themselves because they realize the possibilities of organizing the economy differently. But they feel powerless in the face of a gigantic and incomprehensible system.
Like the financial crisis of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic tested capitalism, opening the possibility of a new direction that would meet the demands of solidarity and the demands of a just and inclusive ecological transition. Faced with the disruption of global value chains, the vulnerability of which was revealed, territories became a refuge in times of economic crisis, maintaining social ties and meeting – at least in part – the essential needs of the population. This crisis has also (re)opened windows to the utopias of the ‘world after’, which promise an ‘alternative and transformative economy’. In this context that, at least in principle, seemed favorable to change, the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) has become a key player in these transitions. Can it become the ‘standard for tomorrow’s economy’, as its promoters hope? Fifty years after the Meadows report (Club of Rome) on the limits of development, the SSE is putting in place cooperation processes, experimenting with more sober and inclusive development models and developing emerging norms at local, national and international levels.
But the windows are closing fast, under the strong impetus of the reconfiguration of late capitalism, the probable end of multilateralism, the geo-political rearrangement no longer only between state or regional ‘great powers’, but above all between financial oligarchies. The ‘shock economy’ described by Naomi Klein never stops…
Missing: Democracy in Europe
Europe is an extremely heterogeneous continent with diverse cultures, languages and economies. If there is anything that unites it, it is its social movements, whose roots lie in the origins of the workers’ cooperative movement, mutualist initiatives, public and private community banks, consumer groups and networks, trade unions and the core of the development of the welfare state. These movements are still active today, but remain very fragmented among themselves, although networks and coordinations have developed that try to converge common interests.
On the other hand, the European bureaucracies, the European Union and especially the European Commission, have become increasingly neo-liberal over the last 20-30 years. From Margaret Thatcher’s time until today, many of its policies have been influenced by the market economy and corporate interests. Since 2002, there has been a common currency in Europe that has brought a ‘single market’, but not greater social and cultural cohesion. It came with a treaty uniting banks and finances, but it was not supported by the citizens: it was imposed. In the few countries where a referendum was allowed, the citizens voted against it and today, with the populist and rightward turn of the majority of member states, the EU is in danger of changing further towards a warlike and fortress-like economy, competing with the other major international powers, which are increasingly autocratic.
Former European central bank president Mario Draghi’s report on the future of European competitiveness points to the current ‘vision’: while acknowledging that the size of the military expenditure of the 27 EU member states is the second largest in the world, it states that this is not enough for ‘economies of scale’ and for a common defense, so the answer is to increase defense spending and grow the military industry.
We have moved from a state-centered economy to a pan-European economy in which the European Central Bank – heavily influenced by the financial oligarchies – dictates the financial policies to be followed by the states. Thus, we are in the midst of a situation where citizens – their governments – are no longer in control of the economy. Of course, this is a simplified statement, but it is not far from reality.
And it comes from far away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, alter-globalization’ protest movements arose against undemocratic institutions such as the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and the G8. These movements developed over the years by raising awareness about the loss of democratic and social rights in favour of a financial architecture driven by private objectives, interests and speculation. We then had a wave of movements for ‘real democracy’, starting with ‘Occupy’ from the USA and the ‘Indignados’ from Spain, up to the climate and social justice movements of today’s new generations (from Fridays for Future to Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation…). All have identified the capitalist-financial and neoliberal system as the main problem. In a similar way, the movements for degrowth, commons and ecological transition call for a change in the way we measure our wealth and well-being, the resources we use, and to refocus on local development.
Diversely united: networking the ‘glocal’
What does this have to do with the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE)? And above all, what is SSE?
The term ‘social economy’ encompasses a series of structures based on shared values and principles: social utility, cooperation, local roots adapted to the needs of each territory and its inhabitants. It has only recently begun to be used in countries like Italy, more accustomed to a traditional tripartite division of the economy: state, market, third sector. The SSE is a further step forward, a systemic vision of the economy that adds to socially oriented entrepreneurship the transition to new forms of co-management and co-production in which six fundamental principles are expressed: equity, decent work, ecological sustainability, cooperation, fair distribution of wealth and commitment to the community – and which allow for the generation of initiatives, spaces and networks that are economically and socially transformative.
These alternatives are transforming people and communities. Some alternatives are historical. Fair trade, for example, has been practiced in Europe for more than half a century. Financial alternatives such as ethical banks, mutualist financial cooperatives and local currencies have been developed for many years. Many ‘consumers’ identify themselves in a movement that supports agriculture and the solidarity economy. There are groups in the degrowth and zero-waste movements dedicated to educating people about environmental justice and sustainability. There are movements fighting for the republicanisation of essential services that have been privatized. There are widespread campaigns to bring back the management of water not only as public but as a common good, outside the logic of commodification. The problem is that their adoption by ordinary people is still numerically marginal.
In the countries of the global South, the dynamics of the popular economy have been analysed more precisely, especially in the cases of Africa and South America, and have revealed how such experiences enable the majority of the population to find solutions that combine informal market activities with forms of mutualism, the sharing of domestic production and reproductive labour. In the northern countries, on the other hand, the historical experience of the social economy and the third sector has shown that non-capitalist enterprises (associations, cooperatives, mutual societies, etc.) exist and persist, but are often dependent on the public and private market and are sectorally divided, without networking and systemising, and in fact in competition with each other.
In fact, neither of the previous alter-economic traditions has been able to produce a major transformation (as opposed to the neo-liberal one described by Karl Polanyi). This is why, recently, several initiatives around the world have attempted to re-articulate these two traditions – the mutual and solidarity tradition with that of social and cooperative entrepreneurship. These solidarity initiatives have been neglected and sidelined by most public and private leaders. Considered minuscule in their eyes, they have been downgraded or mis-characterized and assimilated as mere precarious insertion devices or forms of social business. In short, they are treated as philanthropic attempts to marginally correct a system that remains unchanged.
Multiplying, pollinating and intersecting SSE ecosystems
The Social Solidarity Economy does not correspond to this caricature. Often implemented by women, who are the first to be confronted with the damage caused by the dominant economy, the Solidarity Economy exists and imposes itself as a quest for the ‘bemviver’. It rejects the rupture between nature and culture, as well as subject and object, that has governed economic ‘science’ until now, and instead adopts a relational approach that reintegrates the intersection of Southern and Northern knowledge to think about their social and environmental interactions. Present on all continents, the Solidarity Social Economy proposes alternatives in the plural and increasingly with a feminist and degrowth/post-growth vision.
Through the SSE movement, we want to move from protest to the ecosystemic construction of alternatives. We want to do this together with the resistance movements, but we also want to show that there are concrete and functioning alternatives, which are multiplying every day, spread across the continent, and which connect with each other, forging pacts and alliances of mutual support.
Examples of these alternatives are:
– Solidarity consumer groups and communities supporting agriculture
– Ethical banks, mutual and sustainable finance and local money
– Workers’ cooperatives, recovered factories, co-working and solidarity social enterprises
– Co-housing, ecovillages and initiatives for the right to the city
– Transition cities (also based on the donut economy model), degrowth and zero waste initiatives
– Republicization of common goods (water, essential services, co-management of public spaces, etc.)
– Renewable and solidarity-based energy communities
– Local agro-ecological production chains
– Shared mobility and cooperative platforms (for distribution and exchange) owned by members/users
– Community welfare, natural health care, holistic care practices
– Fair trade, both North/South and ‘domestic’
– Community or neighbourhood micro-factories: maker spaces, craft and digital production workshops
The list could go on and on – and indeed every day there are new initiatives in this direction. These are not simply alternatives to the capitalist economy. The difference from the past is that, slowly but surely (though not easily), these myriad, often very localised initiatives and practices are connecting and networking, beginning to create a bigger picture and a common vision. And trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
It is in this that they differ from seemingly similar forms of alternative economic enterprise: from social enterprise tout-court to capitalist cooperatives, from the for-profit ‘green’ economy to various forms of parastatal or private welfare and ‘socially responsible’ enterprises and companies. All these forms may be more careful and less speculative in their practices, but they essentially follow the same economic model that the Solidarity Economy is trying to change.
The bifurcation of the SSE
The year 2023 will probably go down in history as the year of the SSE’s great bifurcation: that of the beginning of its major institutionalisation. Yes! The social solidarity economy is becoming institutionalised. We have been asking for it for a long time, have worked tirelessly on it and have contributed to its success. It is an essential step in our ongoing campaign for a fair, democratic and sustainable economy.
RIPESS has actively contributed to this ‘success’. The movement succeeded in having the SSE officially recognised by international and multilateral organisations, from the UN to the EU. This institutionalisation gives the SSE movement worldwide, at supranational, national, regional and local levels, a real opportunity to demand the framework that SSE businesses and initiatives need to develop. This is no small feat… But beware! For a movement, institutionalisation, although a sign of growing strength and maturity, also carries the strong risk of being locked into formal legal frameworks and losing its radicality. Among the other organisations that make up the SSE movement, RIPESS remains the one that strongly claims the values and principles of a post-capitalist, solidarity-based, more egalitarian and truly ecological economy.
Politics and policies: the new frameworks
Let us look in more detail at what these institutional recognitions are and how they are developing.
On 18 April 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on promoting SSE for sustainable development1. This resolution explicitly follows the adoption on 10 June 2022 of a resolution on decent work and the inclusive social economy by the 187 member states of the ILO. In November 2022, the ILO adopted a seven-year strategy and action plan on decent work and the solidarity-based social economy (2023-29).
The UN resolution provides for the first time an ‘official’ universal definition of the Solidarity Social Economy, ‘encourages States to promote and implement national, local and regional strategies, policies and programmes to support and promote the Solidarity Social Economy as a “model for sustainable development”’ and asks the UN Secretary-General to prepare a report for the implementation of the resolution and, most importantly, with the assistance of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social Economy (UNTFSSE) that coordinates 19 agencies.
And then there is the EU: in addition to the European Commission’s Action Plan for the Social Economy1 , an EU Council Recommendation on creating framework conditions for the social economy was adopted on 9 October 2023. This is a political agreement reached by EU ministers that ‘recommends primarily to the Member States to take measures (1) to recognise and promote the role played by the social economy, (2) to facilitate access to the labour market, in particular for vulnerable or under-represented groups, (3) to promote social inclusion by providing accessible and quality social and care services, (4) to stimulate skills development, in particular for the digital transition, and (5) to promote social innovation and sustainable economic development’. We will see whether the new Parliament and the new European Commission will continue along the same path or there will be a turn towards social business.
For these reasons, we believe it is important to promote maximum subsidiarity, and therefore the transfer of authority and competences, as far as possible, to the scale of territories and local communities, the only ones who can truly take care of assets, common goods and social and ecological sustainability and trigger the transformative process.
If political intentions are not transformed into concrete realizations and shifts of investment (from the economy of war to the economy of care and community), we will witness a vast operation of social and (very little) solidarity-based green washing. It is therefore our responsibility to continue to preside over the territories and to put pressure on the institutions, by experiment and building, in the meantime, the world we want to live in.
