beyond capitalism

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.

Razeto starts with an analysis of two perennial sources of transformational energy: the “impoverished and untenable” situation of those who are marginalized and subordinate in the existing order, and the profound dissatisfaction of those better situated who nonetheless hope for a better society in which higher values and ideas are made real. Challenging the wide-spread notion of “system change,” the idea that “the existing social order – understood as a “system” – must be replaced by a different one: a new type of society,” Razeto critiques the focus on conquest of power, and the emphasis on politics as the “proper arena for the application of forces tending to the construction of a better society.”

Having previously identified the participation of workers in decision-making as the key to the emergence of solidarity in labor and the recuperation of work’s “rich meaning and content,” Razeto deepens and expands his analysis of participation and self-management. A “bottom-up” analysis of management, power, and authority – understood as a gift the subordinated make to those in power – enables a powerful critique of centralization, bureaucracy, delegation, and co-optation.

In this chapter, Razeto explores the human meaning of work and its social organization, showing how this fundamental creative process has been impoverished and expropriated under a regime of dependency and wage labor.