Solidarity Economy Organizing

In this chapter Razeto uses the analysis of solidarity economy developed to this point to make sense of the family as an economic unit and form of collective organization, and understand the roles of women as its main protagonists. The disintegration of the traditional family under industrial capitalism, with the rise of wage labor outside the home, the erosion of domestic and community economic activity, the creation of the nuclear family, and the concomitant changes in gender roles and the division of labor are shown to have aggravated inequality and damaged core relations of human solidarity.

This chapter offers a framework for analyzing the “ecological problem” that should be useful to those seeking to make sense of the economic aspect of the current planetary crisis. Razeto summarizes the crisis, considers the importance and insufficiency of existing approaches at the level of the State and Civil Society, and the difficulty of controlling nature and then offers a “theory of the ecological question” that focuses on the economy and its “mode of action and organization.”