Strategies for Building New Economies
From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out

The dominant story defines The Economy as "The Market System," regulated by the law of supply and demand. The basic building-blocks of this economy are the rational, self-interested individuals and groups who seek to satisfy their supposedly-endless needs for growth and accumulation (profit-making) in a world of scarce resources. Competition is the name of the game. Economics is about understanding this competition and all that it entails: money, markets, prices, stocks and bonds, supplies and demands, employment, investment, profit, the world of companies, capital, and finance.

Economic space that is not occupied by the Capitalist Market, we are told, is occupied by the State. The State acts as both an accomplice to The Economy’s power and growth and as a fail-safe mechanism for when The Economy falters. It creates and upholds the legal frameworks that allow the Capitalist Economy to thrive and it also "fills in the gaps" by supplying the essential goods and services that this economy cannot (or will not). The tension plays out endlessly: how much, or how little, regulation should the State impose on the Market?

State socialism, often posed as "the" alternative to the Capitalist Economy, solves this problem by taking over the State and absorbing the Market into its bureaucratic clutches. Where there used to be Market and State, now there is just State—as far as the eye can see.

No matter how you cut it, the Market and the State define all possible "economic" space in this story. Other kinds of activities that meet human needs—growing food, giving birth, bartering, caring for elders, gift-giving, etc.—are not seen as economic, but rather social activities, "recreations" or "hobbies" that are marginal at best to the real economy. The real economy is where real wealth—capital—is generated, distributed, and accumulated. The real economy (now that State Communism is "dead") is named "Capitalism", a giant system like the weather— beyond our control and understood by only the most elite "experts". The rest of us just hope for sunny days and carry umbrellas.

In this story, we the people are just worker-bees and consumers, making money and then spending it, always hoping for the opportunity to accumulate more. A community of creative and skilled people without money or capital (or the desire to have money or capital) is considered "unproductive," "backward" or "underdeveloped."

This is why the economic developers are always talking about "bringing in new businesses", or "attracting investors" to improve the local or regional economy—because real value, for them, comes from the outside, not the inside. From the capitalist investors, not those who sweat on the shop floor. From the power of money to make more of itself, not from the power of life to self-organize and to thrive. This dominant story is about how our lives and our communities are never good enough, never complete or worthwhile without their money and their jobs.

But why should we tell a story that makes us feel small and helpless when we could tell one that makes us feel powerful and hopeful instead?

Try this story, instead: Let’s assume that "economy" is not just about supply-and-demand markets. In its largest sense, economics is about how we as human beings collectively generate livelihoods in relation to each other and to the Earth. The human economy includes all of the varied social relationships that we create in the course of meeting our needs and pursuing our dreams.

Capitalism, with its "free market economy," its "jobs" and its "wages," is only one part of how we actually create and maintain livelihoods in our families and communities. When we peel away the misleading idea of one giant "Economic System," we can begin to see the workings of many different kinds of economies that are alive and well, supporting us below the surface. These are not the economies of the stock-brokers and the "expert" economists. These are our economies, people’s economies, the economies that we build with our everyday lives and relationships.

While they are incredibly diverse in their manifestations, many of these life-sustaining "microeconomies" share a common orientation towards subsistence—towards the ongoing reproduction of healthy and mutually-supportive human communities. Maintaining social life, in all of its ugliness and beauty, is the primary goal of these "people’s economies." This aim, at its core, is fundamentally opposed to the dominant capitalist logic that places accumulation, growth-for-growth’s sake (a key characteristic, incidentally, of cancer), at the center of economic life.ⁱⁱⁱ

Householding economies—meeting basic needs with our own skills and work at home and on or with the land: raising children, offering advice or comfort, resolving relational conflicts, teaching basic life skills (such as how to talk!), cooking, sewing, cleaning the house, building the house, balancing the checkbook, fixing the car, gardening, farming, raising animals. Many types of work that have often been rendered invisible or devalued by patriarchy as "women’s work."

Barter economies—trading services with our friends or neighbors, swapping one useful thing for another: "Returning a favor", exchanging plants or seeds, time-based local currencies.

Collective economies—in their simple form these economies are about pooling our resources together (sharing): bringing food to a potluck supper, carpooling, lending and borrowing, consumer co-ops; in their most "radical" form, collective economies are based on common ownership and/or control of resources: collective communities, health care collectives, community land trusts, and more.

Scavenging Economies—living on the abundance of Earth’s own gift economy: hunting, fishing, and foraging. Also living on the abundance of human wastefulness— "one person’s trash is another one’s treasure": salvaging from demolition sites, using old car parts, dumpster-diving, the "swap-shop" at the local dump.

Gift economies—giving some of our resources to other people and to our communities: volunteer fire companies, community food banks, giving rides to hitch-hikers, having neighbors over for dinner.

Worker-controlled economies—workers deciding the terms and conditions of their own work: self-employment, family farms, worker-owned companies and cooperatives.

"Pirate" economies—various activities that might be labeled "theft" by those in power, but would be called "rightful re-appropriation" by those who have been robbed of power: re-incarnations of Robin Hood or Pretty Boy Floyd, squatters.

Subsistence market economies—thousands of very small businesses survive (and sometimes thrive) with little or no imperative to grow and accumulate wealth. These are subsistence-based businesses, created and run for the purpose of providing healthy livelihood to the owners (who are often the workers) and providing a basic service to the larger community (sometimes in the indirect form of creating a community gathering space).

These categories name only some of the many diverse, non-capitalist economic relationships that are interwoven throughout our lives. The project of identifying these relationships is a project of hope, one that allows us to begin de-colonizing ourselves from the devaluing and degrading ways-of-seeing that have been imposed on us by the Economics of Empire. We can begin to see, instead, the powerful spaces of freedom that already exist in our midst.

Solidarity Economics begins here, with the realization that alternative economies already exist; that we as creative and skilled people have already created different kinds of economic relationships in the very belly of the capitalist system. We have our own forms of wealth and value that are not defined by money. Instead of prioritizing competition and profit-making, these economies place human needs and relationships at the center. They are the already-planted seeds of a new economy, an economy of cooperation, equality, diversity, and self-determination: a "solidarity economy".

Though the capitalist economy has devalued or hidden these seeds from us, we can use them as starting points for our alternative economic organizing. The project of solidarity economics is to water these seeds—to identify and expand the spaces of solidarity that already exist and, in the process, create new and larger ones.^vi

This is a story-telling project with very concrete consequences. It changes the isolating stories that often shape our realities and allows us to experience new stories of connection. Once we open up the realm of "economics" and are able to see some of the many economies that exist in our midst, we can begin to identify those spaces and initiatives that are embodying liberating, life-affirming, non-capitalist values. It is here, at the convergence of diverse practices of economy, that "solidarity" becomes a crucial part of the story.

Solidarity, then, is a practice of fostering these and other related values with our fellow humans (social and economic solidarity) and with the rest of the Earth (ecological solidarity):

When someone asks the big question, "so what’s the alternative?", solidarity economics answers not with a Big Scheme (a "third way" beyond the Market or the State), but with another question: By what means, on whose terms, and with what guiding ethical principles will we collectively work towards new economic structures and relationships? This is an economic process, not a plan; it is a strategy for economic organizing that starts with our already-present practices and, from there, "builds the road by walking."

This process begins not with "experts," but with concrete grassroots organizing efforts. This will not be a revolution in which the "vanguard" with the Truth takes power and then imposes a new utopia on everyone else. This is a revolution of secession from the world of both capitalists and bureaucrats—an economic independence movement. We begin with the places in which we have already achieved independence and solidarity, and we build our movements from there—revolution from the bottom-up and the inside-out.

What does a solidarity economy strategy look like in concrete terms? We can think about it in five parts: seeing with new eyes, naming our practices, connecting our practices, strengthening these practices and creating new possibilities.

We must first learn to see and to value our alternative economic practices before we can begin imagining ways to expand their scope and power. Looking around us with the new economic story in mind, we can start to ask questions: What kinds of alternative economic practices or relationships can we find in our own lives? In the communities that we’re a part of? In our regions? In the US as a whole? Where are the spaces in which people are already meeting their needs with practices that value cooperation, equality, diversity, and self-determination?

On one level, these lists act as a resource for organizers to connect many different kinds of initiatives together. On another level, the information allows producers and consumers to seek out other solidarity-based groups in their areas with whom to build real exchanges and economic relationships—what some Brazilian organizers call the creation of "solidarity markets."

Gathering this kind of information lays critical groundwork for any future attempts to bring people together and organize. It provides us with a map of our strengths and with a powerful and positive place from which to start our creative work.

Similar work can be done here in North America. Though our language might be different (perhaps a name other than "solidarity economy" would emerge from our dialogues), it is just as important that we create names that can connect our many alternative practices and allow us to begin imagining strong, organized networks of support. Unless we can begin to find these common connections and economic visions, and to speak about them with a strong, compelling common language, we will remain isolated in the face of a dominant economy that seems to fill every space of conversation and imagination with its ideas and visions.

This process of coming together to make creative, concrete connections between initiatives is at the core of a solidarity economy strategy. By linking together previously-isolated and disconnected efforts, we can begin to construct the skeleton of a new economy within the body of the old. These connections are not just about "getting to know each other." On one hand, they are about building real economic relationships of exchange and support—connecting producers and consumers, marketers and distributors, investors and organizers (and re-defining what each of these roles are). In this sense, solidarity economics can be seen as a community economic development strategy to create local employment, support local producers, and build towards more democratic and sustainable economies in our places.

What might these concrete connections look like? What might be created and imagined at gatherings and strategy sessions with a diverse array of solidarity-based economic organizers? The actual details can only emerge from the real, face-to-face conversations that we will have. Here are some examples of possible connections and structures that could grow from such a process:

• "Solidarity Economy Networks" that could work to provide popular economic education to organizers and community groups, catalog grassroots initiatives, connect solidarity-based groups together across the state, facilitate long-term vision and strategy building, and make links with other social movements at regional, national and international levels.

• Concrete connections of support and interrelation between different sectors of the solidarity economy—organized consumers connecting with organized producers; currency networks connecting with goods-manufacturing sectors;growth and creation of cross-sector loan funds and granting institutions to support further creation of solidarity initiatives; and more.

• Collective power and organization with which to implement strategies of "non-reformist" reform that reduce the power of the Market and State in our lives. One example might be state-level "Cooperative Economic Development Acts" that would mandate state funding (re-directed from current corporate subsidies, perhaps?) for locally-controlled "community cooperative development groups" that could focus on building co-ops and other solidarity-based initiatives to meet local needs locally and democratically.

• Networks of "Community Trade Organizations", alternatives to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that could build direct, solidarity-based "fair trade" relationships between communities in different regions and countries.

"If the status quo survives relatively unscathed, it is not because of apathy, as is sometimes asserted, but because of dependency, which is an essential part of its project" (Jeremy Seabrook)."^viii

Solidarity Economics throughout Latin America began as an attempt to connect and radicalize an already-powerful "third sector" of cooperative and community-based initiatives. Many of these alternative economic practices had emerged during the 1980’s and 1990’s as survival-based responses to the effects of corporate globalization. As they grew in strength and made connections, the idea of a "solidarity economy" began to emerge as a sensible strategy to pursue in the name of cooperative, non-capitalist development.

It is important for us to recognize that our situation in North America is very different. While our communities and livelihoods are being threatened by the same global corporate forces, we have struggled to make the popular analytical connections and develop strong social movements to create wide-spread economic alternatives. Here, inside the "belly of global capitalism," our attempts to create formal and informal systems of community and cooperation have been undermined again and again. In the face of the capitalist economy’s colonizing power, we have all-too-often come to believe that viable alternatives are not possible.

The biggest obstacle to social change in the United States may be our imaginations. Most people have concrete experiences of the dysfunctional and violent nature of the dominant economy; the trouble is that many do not believe that it is possible to make significant changes. This is why solidarity economics, in a U.S. context, must focus a great deal of energy on opening up the landscape of the possible. We must begin with where we are, telling new stories about old practices, hoping to awaken a sense of already-present hope and possibility. Through new ways of seeing, naming, and connecting, a solidarity economy strategy can move us forward towards imagining other ways of being together and meeting each other’s needs.

Our sense of possibility cannot be expanded by ideas or "visions" alone; we must create real experiences for each other that allow us to feel new ways of thinking, relations, and living. Our movements will not succeed until they begin to include within their scope the construction of lived alternatives that meet our basic needs and allow us to experience new possibilities.

The creative projects that can emerge from this way of seeing must be, of course, connected to many other kinds of transformative work. Just as it is not enough to be "against", it is also not enough to create. We must build social movements that encompass and connect many forms of action: defensive action to protect ourselves and our communities from immediate harm; offensive action to challenge the current structures of oppression and exploitation in all of their racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and otherwise exclusionary forms; healing action to work through and recover from the pain and brokenness that has been imposed upon us in so many ways; and creative action to build alternative structures that meet our daily needs and help us secede from the oppressions of the dominant society and economy.

The ideas presented here about solidarity economics are meant to be a set of tools to add to our collective toolbox of social change—a set of stories and organizing ideas that can (and must) grow alongside of many other strategies, many other kinds of action. This is another crucial element to add to our diversity of tactics.

To conclude, then: We are all "solidarity economists". Together, we can take back our economies from those who have stolen them. The word "economics" comes from the Greek "oikos" (home) "nomos" (rules/management). The management of the home. Whose home? Our home! Whose management? Collective self-management! Together, we can reclaim our homes as spaces of safety, care, love, healing, growth, and solidarity.

- Eduardo Galeano

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Solidarity Economics: An Alternative for Development, Equity, Social Justice, and Peace in Colombia." By the Confederacion Latinoamericana de Cooperativas y Mutuales de Trabajadores (COLACOT), 2002. Translated by Justin Podur.

Goodman, Paul. Quoted in Colin Ward, Anarchy In Action. London: Freedom Press, 1982.

i. Lenin wrote about this strategy in his 1902 text, "What Is to Be Done?" and went on to employ many of the oppressive practices that his vanguardist approach implied. Milton Friedman is a contemporary economist at the University of Chicago and a well-known founder of the "Chicago School" of economics, advancing the abstract, utopian capitalist theories of neo-liberalism that have been violently imposed by institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

iv. It is important to be clear that not all of these non-capitalist relationships are liberatory. In addition to the economies listed below, our society also fosters slave economies (forced labor in prisons, for example), feudal economies (certain kinds of debt relationships, patriarchal household arrangements), and speculative economies (gambling, stock market, currency speculation). Of those that are listed above, we must acknowledge that householding economies can work to sustain male-centered power relationships and fix women in subordinate roles; barter economies can easily slip into a logic of accumulation when one party becomes greedy or dishonest; gift economies can be manifest as cleverly-disguised power-trips, as in certain forms of charity that reinforce the power of the giver over the receiver; subsistence market economies can involve incredible relationships of discrimination and exploitation at a local and personal level—and the list goes on.

The crucial point here, however, is that we all participate in non-capitalist economies in our every-day lives. While these relationships are complex and sometimes ethically ambiguous, they can also indicate and embody the existence of authentic and successful solidarity-centered economic practices in our midst. The key is for us to carefully identify those forms of economy that are, in fact, liberatory, and to acknowledge them as spaces of hope and resistance. This is precisely the starting point of solidarity economics.

v. Capitalism as an always-incomplete colonial project: "We might envision capital as a power grid overlaid on a vast nebula, with the working class as the nebula. Workers are captured by and in some ways defined by the grid, the multifold structures and processes of accumulation. This is the sphere of exploitation. However, the nebula is life: capital must draw on it and cannot survive without it, but the workers have life and can survive without the grid…No matter how controlling, capital cannot be everyday life, which thus remains a great reservoir of energy against capital." (from Neill, Monty. "Rethinking Class Composition Analysis in Light of the Zapatistas." In Midnight Notes. Auroras of the Zapatistas: Local and Global Struggles of the Fourth World War. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2001).

vii. The dominant economics peddles the illusion of "independence" and "freedom" while actually deepening hierarchical dependencies that reinforce the power of some over others. Solidarity economics recognizes, instead, that 1) the dream of total independence and freedom is an illusion and that interrelationships exist. Thus we must take responsibility for these relationships and build them consciously as ones of mutual support and care; and 2) a very real limited freedom and collective autonomy can be born from this conscious, collective, and democratic creation of the terms of our interrelations.

We must begin our analyses not with the assumption of separation, of clearly defined "insides" and "outsides," but rather with the assumption that we are interrelated. Particularly in this globalizing world, our identities and positions are bound up together. Classes, genders, sexualities, races, "first world" and "third world," are not so much categories of separation that "clash" or "support" each other from afar—they are, rather, parts of the same social processes: class processes, gender processes, race processes. They create each other in relationships of unequal power.

Take the "first" and "third" worlds as an example. The bloody dictatorships supported with US money, weapons and intelligence; the sweatshops; the long, horrific legacies of colonialism throughout the global south—these relationships form the very conditions of possibility for the life conditions and positions of privileged people like myself.

Interrelationship is not a choice. We are bound together. The choice is how we will be in interrelationship. "Solidarity" names one form, "parasitism" names another. We feed on the broken bodies of those who suffer to make our comfort possible. And this is not said for dramatic effect: it is a literal relationship.

viii. Seabrook, Jeremy. "Needs and Commodities." In The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making. Edited by Paul Ekins. New York: Routledge, 1996.