In the 2004 documentary The Take, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis follow a group of workers in Forja, Argentina who decide to occupy the auto factory where they were fired. They walk into their old workplace, sleep on the floor, and refuse to leave. Eventually, they sweep the floors, polish the machines, pool money from their own pockets to invest in capital, assets, supplies, and production. They share the profit they begin to earn.
They form a worker’s cooperative.
Amidst massive poverty and unemployment, the workers—comprised of men and women—decided they’d had enough. They refused the inability to survive and they took power into their own hands. They did this despite the real risks to their lives. Watching their success from the sidelines with ire, their former boss—one of Menem’s cronies—attempted to break up their newly formed cooperative through force and police. Violence ensued.
Today, most people have had enough. Over the last twenty years we’ve faced crisis after crisis. Hyper-inequality, poverty, climate catastrophe, hunger, war, loneliness, and violence show no signs of slowing down. People are losing their jobs. People are also quitting their jobs. People are demanding to work fewer hours. When COVID-19 hit, already-existing inequalities grew. People suffered even more.
But what the pandemic did reveal were the possibilities to reimagine and recalibrate the way we structured work, the way we distributed power—that it wasn’t always up to the bosses, that we can say no to exploitation, and that we can mould the conditions of our work with our own hands. Worker cooperatives are especially gaining traction.
But what the pandemic did reveal were the possibilities to reimagine and recalibrate the way we structured work, the way we distributed power — that it wasn’t always up to the bosses, that we can say no to exploitation, and that we can mould the conditions of our work with our own hands.
What are worker co-operatives?
Worker co-operatives are businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by its members, who themselves are the workers. The main purpose of a worker co-operative is to provide employment for its members through operating an enterprise that follows co-operative principles and values such as mutuality, reciprocity, and equity.
In the United States, worker cooperatives have risen nearly 40% since 2013. Hazel Corcoran, executive director of the Canadian Worker Cooperative Foundation, says, “more and more people in Canada can’t make ends meet and are working jobs which stifle their ambition, drive and creativity without much hope of making enough to meet all their needs; co-operatives provide an alternative.”1
The same is true for many residents in Surrey, British Columbia. In 2015, Solid State began to build worker co-operatives that address the lack of meaningful employment for residents, especially for racialized immigrants, refugees, and youth. Today Solid State has developed over 18 worker co-operatives across different industries and services: arts, media, fashion, urban planning, mental health services, peer support circles, and more.
Despite the plurality and diversity of economic initiatives within Solid State, what binds these movements together are shared values. A recognition of interdependency is at the heart of this economy—the idea that our lives and fates, although coloured by differing levels of power and privilege, are ultimately bound together.
Solidarity economics
Solidarity economics is a set of ideas and practices about alternative ways of engaging in the economy. It is an economy that operates on this core belief: that people are deeply creative and capable of developing their own solutions to economic problems, that these solutions will look different in different places and contexts, and that all these can be connected with each other in mutually-supportive ways.
Solidarity economics does not come from a single political-economic idea or theorist. Instead, ideas about solidarity economics evolve through a collective process crafted plurally through participatory economic forms and relationships built over time. The practical dimension of solidarity economics develops through the diverse, creative ways that people engage economically without submitting to the mainstream market system, ruled by the logic of individualism and profit accumulation. Examples of these practices include:
- Worker cooperatives
- Fair trade initiatives
- Alternative currencies
- Community-run centres
- Resource libraries
- Community development credit unions
- Community gardens
- Open source free software initiatives
- Gift economies
- Ethical purchasing
- Democratic non-profits
- Forms of household production, self-employment, and self-provisioning
The practical dimension of solidarity economics develops through the diverse, creative ways that people engage economically without submitting to the mainstream market system, ruled by the logic of individualism and profit accumulation.
Radical Interconnectedness
Solidarity exists when we realize our connectedness and actively work to steward our relationships with each other. Not only with people but with animals and the earth too. Within the solidarity economy, work is inseparable from life. This stands in contrast against mainstream capitalism where we dissociate work from life.
Consider how common understandings of ‘work’ mean we must suppress our autonomy, defer to our superiors, wear a dress code, put on a professional mask, deny our bodily needs, and numb ourselves from how we feel.
In the solidarity economy, work is embodied and submerged within social relationships. For example, at Solid State, we form cohorts with people of our choosing. We do not serve bosses, nor do we want to become bosses. We plan and scheme, talk about our lives and our problems while devising ways of making money and honouring our creative spirits. We eat together. We become friends.
Capitalist economics versus solidarity economics
If capitalist economics look like pyramid, then we can imagine solidarity economics taking the shape of a constellation.
The capitalist system is organized like a pyramid
The solidarity economy is organized like a constellation
In large part, solidarity economics emerged as a movement and practical response to the failures of mainstream capitalism—a system that places the profit and well-being of the few above everyone else, leading to widespread inequality and suffering for many people in all parts of the world.
Historians often cite the 1980s as the era when solidarity economics emerged in its contemporary form, beginning with the cooperativismo movements in Chile and Colombia. By the mid-1990s, economia solidaria developed into a broader social movement involving networks of economic activity not only in Chile and Colombia, but also Brazil, Canada, France, Spain, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Senegal, the Philippines, eventually culminating in the first internationally organized group, the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy (Red Intercontinental de Promoción de la Economía Social Solidaria, or RIPESS).
Having said that, solidarity economics is not new, nor did it begin at one fixed point in time. Indigenous nations and groups have engaged in these kinds of economies since time immemorial. Feminist economists have also documented and acknowledged the different ways in which women have long since practised solidarity economic work through domestic labour and care work at home.
| Capitalist economics | Solidarity economics | |
|---|---|---|
Logic | Competition | Cooperation |
Decision-making | Centralized and 'top down' | Shared and democratic |
Structure | Hierarchical | Equitable |
Ethics | Puts people and planet in the service of money and business | Puts money and business in the service of people and planet |
Perspective on human beings | 'Homo economicus'—the human being as atomistic, self-interested, utility-maximizing and optimizing | 'Homo sociologicus' or 'homo reciprocans'—the human being as reciprocal, interpersonal, creative, and autonomous |
Perspective on earth and nature | Humans over nature—infinite expansionism and resource extraction in the name of profit and human development | Ecology—humans are in a reciprocal relationship with animals and earth. Natural resources are gifts we must take care of |
Belief | "There is no alternative"-Margaret Thatcher | "Um outro mundo e possivel" (another world is possible) |
Education | Dominant paradigm taught in schools, media, popular culture | Marginalized economic model more common within social movements and those engaged in alternative ways of living |
Popular examples | For-profit corporations, sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company (LLC) | Worker cooperatives, community currencies, Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) |
As Pablo Guerra, wrote, “We are building in the midst of contradictions, in the cracks of capitalism, a new type of society and economy.”2 Though capitalism dominates, there are spaces of hope and other possibilities in between. A better world is not only possible, it is already here.
