Towards “qualitative growth” - oriented collective action frameworks: articulating Commons and Solidarity Economy

Under what form would a convergence between the Commons and Solidarity Economy movements promote “qualitative growth” (Capra and Henderson 2014) in a way that also ensures equity, justice and participatory democracy in access to resources? What aspects in the predominant organizational forms emerging from these movements need to be addressed in order to make such convergence possible? This paper is based on an inductive comparative analysis of three major types of commons-based peer production (CBPP): An ecovillage, an “integral cooperative” and a self-identified commercialization-based solidarity economy network. Benkler (2006) defines CBPP as a modular form of socioeconomic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively over any type of commons. The case studies were chosen due to the fact of being leading agents whose practices are reproduced within three of the largest and most significant international social movement networks operating in the fields of the Commons and Social Solidarity Economy. They also represent three infrastructure types of “new commons”: a) Tamera, an ecovillage founded in 1995 in southwestern Portugal, which applies regenerative ecology and community-building to the development of a “foundational economy” (Conaty 2015), meaning the infrastructures that sustain everyday life (i.e. food, water, energy, housing); b) Cooperativa Integral Catalana, an “integral cooperative” founded in 2010 in Catalonia. It defines itself a governance system that combines information technologies and face-to-face assemblies in the promotion of a network management system for economic activities; c) Esperança-Cooesperança, an urban commons-based commercialization network based on Solidarity Economy principles and goals, based in the town of Santa Maria, in the heartland of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It was founded in 1985 with the support of pre-existing Ecclesial Base Communities, as well as Caritas Brazil. These case studies also represent attempts at developing respectively an alternative political ecology, an alternative political institutionality and an alternative political economy. Each of them was the object of four months of fieldwork, carried out between 2015 and 2017.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Solidarity in a global age: Seattle and beyond

There are good grounds for taking seriously Wallerstein's dictum that the world system has entered what he describes as an interregnum. By this he means two important things: First, that the world is moving between two forms of world system, from a capitalist world system to something new; Second, that in such an interregnum questions of structure become less significant than those of agency. The world system is one that has been produced, reproduced and will ultimately be transformed by human actors. The direction that it takes will be the result of the political struggles that ensue in the interregnum. In this paper I examine some of these claims in the context of a series of events that have taken place over the past decade and in the run up to the protests that occurred in December 1999 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle. In so doing I hope to put some empirical flesh on the bones of the idea that Wallerstein has suggestively offered us. While I am critical of important aspects of Wallerstein's work and that of his cohorts at the Fernand Braudel Center I would equally argue that they have presented us with the most powerful and coherent framework for making sense of, I hesitate to use the term given Wallerstein's ontological assumptions, international relations. Thus, this paper is informed by sympathy with Wallerstein's ideas and an acknowledgement that they offer us a rich source of insight into the emergence of the modern world order

Women, Solidarity & the Global Factory

[Excerpt] For many of us who are concerned with international labor issues, a new image has come to represent our collective understanding of the global economy. It is an image of women in Third World nations toiling under sweatshop conditions in huge assembly plants owned by U.S.-based transnational corporations (TNCs). Yet what does international solidarity really mean in practice? Who does it include, and how? From a U.S. standpoint, if so many women workers are not organized into unions, how can they be included in international networks? If their voices are not heard, what can these networks hope to accomplish? This article explores these questions by looking at the experience of several groups in promoting international communication among women workers in the nonunion sector. It is excerpted from The Global Factory: An Organizing Guide for a New Economic Era. The complete publication, developed by the American Friends Service Committee, surveys the efforts of many different kinds of groups, inside and outside the trade union movement, to build international labor networks

Buying Time or Building a Future: Labor Strategies for a Global Economy

[Excerpt] A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the global economy. Mexico, the bright, new star in the investors\u27 heaven, crashed as spectacularly as a meteor in December last year. By June, two million jobs had been lost, wages had declined bv 50-60 percent in dollar value, and 83 banks and some 80 percent of small businesses were headed for bankruptcy[...] The crash serves as a case study in the workings - and failings - of the world economic system. It also needs to serve as a wake-up call to labor. Armed with an understanding of the world economic scene, labor needs to develop adequate responses to capital\u27s efforts to maximize profits by moving investment capital from one country to another in the blink of an eye - or more accurately, at the touch of a finger on a keyboard

Commons and Cooperatives

In the last decade, the commons has become a prevalent theme in discussions about collective but decentralized control over resources. This paper is a preliminary exploration of the potential linkages between commons and cooperatives through a discussion of the worker cooperative as one example of a labour commons. We view the worker coop as a response at once antagonistic and accommodative to capitalism. This perspective is amplified through a consideration of five aspects of an ideal-type worker cooperativism: associated labour, workplace democracy, surplus distribution, cooperation among cooperatives, and, controversially, links between worker cooperatives and socialist states. We conclude by suggesting that the radical potential of worker cooperatives might be extended, theoretically and practically, by elaborating connections with other commons struggles in a process we term the circulation of the common

Beyond the Cold War: New Directions for Labor Internationalism

[Excerpt] Achieving real solidarity across national borders and around the globe is a difficult undertaking, one which little in our experience has prepared us for. Language barriers, differences in cultures and political traditions, very different styles of unionism — all these make simple communication, let alone real understanding of foreign workers\u27 interests and concerns, difficult. Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO\u27s official agency for helping us sort through these difficulties — the Department of International Affairs (DIA) — is not much help in doing so. In fact, as I argue here, the DIA is often an obstacle to building real solidarity. After making this case, I will make some suggestions for how U.S. unions can move toward solidarity by avoiding the DIA structure — through direct participation in the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs), like the Metalworkers Federation mentioned above, and through forming sister union relationships with relevant unionists in other countries. But, eventually, the DIA must be opened up to reflect the broad and diverse interests of labor\u27s rank-and-file rather than the narrow sectarian face it has shown the world for the past several decades

Innovation and Collective Entrepreneurship

This paper examines different forms of innovation including social innovation, and why innovation and social innovation have become important themes in public policy in a context of the increasing and diverse demands on welfare regimes, and in an era of constrained budgets. It will review different perspectives on innovation and social innovation and the dynamic interaction through collective entrepreneurship in the social and solidarity economy; bringing out process and outcome dimensions of innovation. And it will develop an understanding of the drivers and barriers to innovation, including the role of the institutional and policy framework. It will set this analysis within the context of public policy, demonstrating their role in enabling such innovations in the social and solidarity economy

Going Global

[Excerpt] What power can counter the growing strength of MNCs and the forces of globalization? National governments have an important role to play, singly and together, as do international institutions of regulation such as the European Commission, the World Trade Organization, and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Equally important, we would suggest, is the countervailing power of modernized labor movements working actively at local, national, and transnational levels. Further, we suggest that in the current era, the renewal of national and local labor movements may in fact depend greatly on increased coordination with the labor movements of other countries. Transnational collaboration will be—and should be—an increasingly important feature of tomorrow\u27s global economy

Debate: The Case Against Worker Ownership

[Excerpt] Let\u27s not underestimate the problem we face. American employers may not have a solution to the long-term crisis of the world economy, but they have developed a coherent strategy to weaken the labor movement. Through a combination of concessions bargaining, plant shutdowns, capital mobility, and probusiness government policies, they have succeeded in intimidating unions and dividing workers. As a result, the labor movement grows weaker, and workers lose what little protection they now have for their standard of living and basic rights. Unions will become a marginal force in society unless the labor movement develops a viable strategy for responding to these employer attacks. The current program and policies of most sections of the trade union leadership are clearly inadequate. The labor movement urgently needs a new strategy

The study of solidarity and the social theory of Alain Touraine

This chapter is a critical assessment of the study of Solidarity carried out by Alain Touraine and his research team in 1981 and first published in French in 1982 and in English in 1983. The book (Touraine et al. 1983) has drawn a mixed response from critics. Some have tended to regard the study as providing rich, detailed and important insights into the early history of the movement (Bauman 1985; Kennedy 1991; Law 1984; terry 1984; Watson 1984). Others – especially those whose principle concern has been to evaluate Touraine’s wider social theory – have seen Solidarity as manifesting the contradictions, inconsistency and opacity said to be characteristic of his work (Goldfarb 1989; Scott 1991). What is curious, given both the historical significance of Solidarity and the controversy surrounding Touraine’s work, is that there has been no previous attempt - in English at least – to make the Solidarity study itself the central object of investigation. We will begin by locating the study and outlining its central findings. Then we will analyze the extent to which the study fulfils its internal objectives and how it relates to concepts and categories found in Touraine’s work. We will argue that Solidarity is a comprehensive, illuminating and important piece of work and that some criticisms have been misdirected. There are, though, problems in the study caused by instances of both continuity and discontinuity between the Solidarity study and Touraine’s wider social theory. In particular there is an unresolved tension between the findings in respect of the evolutionary development of Solidarity and Touraine’s understanding of a social movement; and, as a result of a eliance on preconceived categories in the sociological ntervention, Touraine et al. fail to account properly for the potential development of neo-liberal and reactionary nationalist currents in Solidarit