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On the impact of Solidarity Economy in

Massachusetts community

Luis David Troya

History, Colegio Alberto Einstein

Master Eli Singer

Dec 14, 2022

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Throughout history, society has tried to find the perfect economic system, but this goal

has never been achieved. Capitalism started in the XVI century, with merchant capitalism and

relatively small urban workshops. There has always been at least one community that doesn’t

agree with the system’s ideals. This caused many people to try to innovate new economic

systems, involving other ideals that people considered relevant variables to take into

consideration when talking about a system that financially provides equity to all, like the

Solidarity Economy movement. To prove this is the case, I will talk about the ontological

background surrounding the SE movement. Then, I will talk about how this might be a more

effective economic system. For further explanation, there will also be an example. And finally,

there will be a counterargument that tries to refuse the idea of the SE movement being a morally

superior system, and it will be debunked. In order to prove how SE implemented morality into

the economy, the paper will use a variety of primary and secondary reliable sources. Primary

sources help to understand the growth that the SE movement has had, as well as its impact.

Secondary sources will help to thoroughly explain events and understand them in a better way.

Solidarity economy could be an effective transition from capitalism because it implements

morality, and searches for the community’s best interest without a narrow view for lucrative

purposes.

The social economy movement is based mainly on ontological politics, and it will be

discussed why this is of existential importance. SE is mainly related to ethical and cooperative

economic practices like local currencies, land trusts, community gardens, fair trade, and

cooperatives of all sorts. The practices are mainly associated with operation, sustainability,

justice, interdependence, and autonomy. SEI understands its change work in three dimensions:

shifting consciousness, building power, and creating economic alternatives (Loh and Agyeman
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2019). Many experts in the SE movement have traced back its origins, or at the very least, its

first appearance, to Latin America. Latin America is where people have struggled the most with

capitalism. So a movement like this tries to make it easier to survive and build collective power.

Much of life on Earth is based on ontological occupation, which means that it claims itself as the

one and only, true reality. This is what we call the One World World (OWW). The ontology that

the OWW occupies mainly has its foundations in Western dualism. In a society, there will be a

dominant force, a subject and an object, people and nature, or more clearly; us and them. Bodies,

minds, religion, relation, traditions, and any example anyone could think of for culture, is

defined by an onto-epistemic structure that dictates and shapes the desirable, the actionable, and

even the possible. This itself puts limits on social change. Furthermore, the history the Earth has

of inequalities and ecological destruction cannot be passed through with mere development, no

matter how sustainable it might be. Modern colonization could be easily represented as a power

that proposes a singular world, achieved through brute force and re-assembling of any culture,

making the world one singular movement of progress, growth, and development. This leaves

most cultures’ practices and traditions behind. Making it harder to resist incorporating into this

new world, to have a part of you that falls outside the dominant order.

In Massachusetts, the organization of the movement has been quite adept. Starting as a

green movement, the Solidarity Economy has grown at a great pace in the last decade. “SE can

be understood as a transformation towards a post-capitalist system” (Kawano 2016: 8). The SE

movement disrupts the centralized capitalist economy. Showing everyone that the economy can

be flexible, diverse, and changeable, while also incorporating values, culture, and relations in

their system. The Solidarity Economy movement can be described as a coherent alternative

economic system. Many would argue that it is an economic reform, while others could describe it
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as a radical transformation. The movement mainly focuses on politics that engage in economic

diversity and possibility. This would help to further advance relations, institutions, and practices

that bring rationalities and values that put people and the planet over profit to reality. There is a

shorter history of the SE movement in Massachusetts. Prior to the 2008 economic crisis, the SE

movement lacked community development, organizing, and activist circles. Nevertheless, after

spreading inequality, progress in ecological destruction, and a recognition of the limits in the

current state of politics and the economy, there has been an increasing amount of projects

covering this theme.

One great example of a cooperative that is implementing the SE movement in real life, is

the CERO COOP. CERO (Cooperative Energy, Recycling, and Organics) is an award-winning

commercial composting company based out of Dorchester, Massachusetts (CERO, 2022). The

main goal of the cooperative is a simple one: “Keep food waste out of landfills, save money for

our clients, and provide good, green jobs for Boston's hard-working communities”(CERO).

CERO is responsible for most reutilization of food scraps in the Boston area. This cooperative

works together with many farms and other local businesses to be able to use scraps to create

nutrient-rich compost to reduce prices, and in the process, they create green jobs. This is a great

example of what the SE movement provides. It creates diversity, autonomy, justice, and

sustainability. Projects like this are made with good intentions, not specifically for a lucrative

purpose behind it, just people wanting to do the right thing while they face the adversity of

dealing with the onto-epistemic system they are forced to live in.

SE economy is a relatively new economic system compared to many others, like

capitalism, and there is gray space to be filled with politics, but that shouldn’t undermine the

purpose and meaning of what it is and what it will convert into. “These pioneering developments
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have received attention from critical scholars who propose participatory and “people-centred

development” (Nieverdeen Pieterse 1998). This article tries to show us many perspectives

regarding the SE movement, but all of them essentially contradict each other. For example, the

paper states that “SSE-inspired policies often required the simultaneous commodification of

natural resources, the intensification of extractivism, changes in energy and agrarian policies that

are affecting rural livelihoods and indigenous communal life, on behalf of transnational

corporations.” Yet also states that “Under the “Alternative Development” (AD) paradigm, the

SSE offers a critique of the liberal vision of development, for it embraces the principles of

collective property, distribution of wealth to meet the needs of people rather than capital;

freedom of association and autonomous decision-making (Dacheaux and Goujon 2012). There

are very few of these papers, and yet, none of them truly try to engage face to face with the true

goal of the SE movement, a better moral aimed at the future. Every paper tries to tackle the weak

link of the new economic system. “SSE-inspired policies often required the simultaneous

commodification of natural resources, the intensification of extractivism, changes in energy and

agrarian policies that are affecting rural livelihoods and indigenous communal life, on behalf of

transnational corporations.” Every argument given as an attack towards the movement is very

circumstantial, and even more importantly, the arguments only work because of the limits put on

humanity by the onto-epistemic system society has agreed on. Every paper that tries to

discourage the path towards the Solidarity Economy feels the need to clarify that not everything

is bad because of the innate moral compass that guides a little part of them.

As shown in this paper, the Solidarity Economy movement will serve as a proficient

alternative to capitalism because it brings human values into the system, making it so that the

system itself searches for the community’s best interests without money as the top priority. In
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this paper, there has been a thorough analysis of the ontological background, an explanation of

why this would be a better economic system, a clear example of why this works, and finally, a

paper trying to prove the ineffectiveness of the Solidarity Economy, and its mistakes. This

concept needs to be understood for the immense impact it could, and will, have on society. The

movement will implement values into an onto-epistemic system with a power imbalance. The

Solidarity Economy is one of the best, not to say the best, alternatives for a system that limits the

desires and purpose of a community.

Bibliography:

UNRISD. (August 2014)The Hidden Side of Social and

Solidarity Economy. https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/183207/OP9%20Dinerstein.pdf

Loh, Penn & Shear, Boone. (25 June 2022). Fight and build: solidarity economy as ontological
politics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-022-01165-4

cero. (2022). CERO Cooperative, Inc.

Organic Waste Management Services. https://www.cero.coop/

Solidarity Economy Initiative. (February 2017). Solidarity Rising in Massachusetts.

https://tsne.org/downloads/SEI_SolidarityRising_Final.pdf