SOLIDARITY ECONOMICS
By Elmar Altvater and Nicola Sexler (ed)[This reading sample of the 2006 reader “Solidarity Economy” is translated abridged from the German on the Internet, www.vsa-verlag.de.]
“Another world is possible!” That is the self-confident, defiant slogan of the worldwide anti-globalization movement. Are there signs that this possible world is becoming reality?
We are witnesses how more and more areas of life and work are subject to market logic and profit maximization. The individualization of our life environment increases and our everyday life is ruled by “practical constraints” that pretend to be decreed by nature… The term solidarity is banished to the history books of the workers’ movement.
Nevertheless, forms of alternative economics, work and life are developing worldwide that oppose a self-determined and solidarity partnership to the misanthropic economic and political conditions. Autonomous enterprises, plant occupations, cooperatives, direct agricultural marketing, housing projects, exchange rings and fair trade are some examples. They all show that economies can be organized in solidarity and without obeying the profit-principle (“non-profit”).
This reader edited by the Advisory Council of Attac Germany shows the way to “another world” and reports about solidarity economics in different countries and regions. Concrete alternatives to the dominant neoliberalism are sketched. Then the discussions about solidarity economics follow.
Foreword
“Another world is possible!”… This is particularly true for the prevailing theory of the economy and for justifications of economic policy. High unemployment, the skidding of more and more people into poverty and an environmental crisis that threatens thelife of future generations – even in “rich,” highly developed industrial societies. The term solidarity is banished to the history books of the workers’ movement. It only occurs in fancy speeches and is often perverted. Solidarity is emphasized for the location Germany. Acceptance of social- and job cuts is solidarity…
The historical, political, cultural and economic context of solidarity economy projects must be considered… The constantly threatening danger is that alternative projects can offer both precarious and emancipating jobs. State policy prioritizing the solidarity economy is important. Whether solidarity economy initiatives have system-stabilizing components and how they are distinguished from anti-emancipating movements should be reflected…
Alongside the deliberate blockade of alternatives, practical constraints are established in which alternative economic- and social policy and attempted circumvention of the logic of the market breakdown. The resistance to alternatives garnished with neoliberal ideology is strengthened by a policy of the irrevocability of neoliberal reforms and by a “lock-in-effect.” This happens very intentionally and in many cases out of opportunism, tribute to the neoliberal spirit of the times and adjustment to the global conditions of political action which seem mad… Utopian thinking indispensable for developing alternatives is stifled… Therefore, it is remarkable that the discussion of alternative forms of socialization is still occurring despite many years of Tina-indoctrination and despite the failure of autonomous experimentation in former Yugoslovakia after the Second World War.
Many of the alternatives are practical experiments at the solidarity organization of work and life and are not only theory and utopian thinking. Many people in different world regions interpret Tina differently than the ruling elites. They rely on solidarity and undertake the practical search for alternatives. Attac and the movements in the World Social Forum proclaimed the optimistic and defiant slogan against the historical fatalism of no alternatives: “Another world is possible.” How could they build on other principles than the capitalist market society?
Alternatives of a solidarian economy, small projects and initiatives, are tiny compared to the global mega-corporations and the $2 trillion moving daily on the global financial markets, so tiny they mock Ernst Schumacher’s “Small is beautiful.” However, they can easily keep up with the heavyweights of the economy in the employment effects of the little projects. A competition over the number of destroyed jobs seems to have broken out. Many jobs are destroyed under the pressure of global competition and for the highest possible “shareholder value” for the shareholders of the big companies. New jobs arise mostly in the “third” sector of the informal and solidarity economy. However, the working conditions of informality are often precarious and not a really desirable alternative. Thus, the Tina term is an infamy because the alleged lack of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism forces people into the worst jobs outside the formal economy and makes their existence so precarious that emancipating needs are blocked and a life in dignity is impossible. Rohinton Mistry’s “The Balance of the World” describes the precariousness of itinerant workers in India. The daily press in Germany publishes reports about the “working poor,” persons who do not earn enough to share in social life
and feed and clothe their children despite training and intensive work. Something new arises in the solidarity economy, partly tied to old cooperative experiences to find their way out of the dreariness and lack of perspectives of a world without alternatives. This ambivalence influenced the title “Solidarity Economics – Precarious or Emancipating?
Practical Constraints through Privatization
Social movements in all regions of this world fight for alternatives to unemployment and financial speculation, poverty and violence and ecological destruction and the McDonaldization of the globe. The end of history is not reached at all. The “best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire) was never more than a demand to cope with the conditions of the world. The “practical constraints” are different than natural laws that are followed when they are useful. They are a self-manufactured straitjacket…
The debts of the public authority are the financial assets of private parties and guarantee a constant payment stream from the public to the private sector. The “private sector” means owners of financial assets. This monetary stream flows through taxes on the incomes of the less mobile production factors, the receivers of wage- and salary incomes, cutting social spending, the new indebtedness of the state and further privatization of state enterprises