By RENATO DAGNINO*

That the State's purchasing power be allocated to expand solidarity networks

1.

The networks of production, consumption, distribution and solidarity finance, despite the very little government support they receive when compared to that provided to privately owned networks, have shown how much they can contribute to a better future.

Members of the solidarity economy movement have been pointing out, using arguments of a socioeconomic and environmental nature, simulations based on empirical evidence, historical experiences, statements from supranational organizations, etc., the need for public agents responsible for such support to speak out on the matter.

Unlike what I have done in several articles published in the left-wing media,[I] This work, with a focus more on politics than on policy, aims to engage in dialogue with a portion of these public agents, political leaders and left-wing intellectuals.

Its starting point is what the solidarity economy movement has suggested regarding the allocation of the almost 18% of GDP that the State currently buys from private property networks to provide the goods and services to which we are entitled in exchange for the taxes we pay. More specifically, the possibility of part of public purchases being directed towards what solidarity economy networks are capable of producing.

In other words, the State's purchasing power, similar to what is happening all over the world and increasingly among us with Nova Indústria Brasil, which is adding 1% of the annual GDP to the already considerable support that private networks receive, is allocated to expand solidarity networks. 

This work takes this “cue” by entering delicate terrain for the left and which the right cynically likes to prevaricate.

This area, although focused on “entrepreneurship” (and not on the solidarity economy), on individual entrepreneurs who can provide services to government agencies, is beginning to be explored by those public agents.

They seem to have assimilated the idea that I am addressing here. They demonstrate that they have understood the role that the State's purchasing power can play in creating favorable conditions for the implementation of their political project. Given that it is unlikely that Brazilian capitalism will be able to employ more than the 40 million (out of the more than 150 of working age) that it needs, they recently launched the Contrata+ Program that I referred to in an article on the website. the earth is round.[ii]

2.

Continuing with the intention of reducing the risk associated with the decrease in the current government coalition's capacity to govern (or governability), I seek to complement this platform program by presenting an operation that Carlos Matus would call emergency.

It encompasses a much larger audience than the approximately 6 million individual entrepreneurs among whom the coalition intends to gain supporters with this Program. This complement seeks to encompass a contingent an order of magnitude larger: the 80 million who have never had and probably never will have the jobs and salaries that the owning class has promised workers for centuries.[iii]

Given that the “operation” is based on the trivial notion that governability depends on obtaining the support of the poorest in the 2026 elections, and that for this it is necessary to allocate public resources to government actions that benefit them, I begin, to provoke its conception, by indicating some of its boundary conditions.

The first is that these resources cannot come from the budget, which is limited by the fiscal adjustment agreed with the right and by parliamentary amendments. These amendments, and this is important for what follows, will tend to be used by the right to attract the votes of the poorest in 2026.

The second boundary condition is that public procurement, which is currently entirely oriented towards companies, largely results from actions that are not conditioned by these limitations. Most of them are limited to decisions that can be taken at various levels of the Brazilian State by public agents who are members of the coalition. And it is possible, as has been exhaustively demonstrated, that allocating public procurement to the solidarity economy can attract the votes of the poorest.

All of this allows us to continue outlining the “operation” of directing part of public procurement towards the acquisition of goods and services produced by solidarity economy networks with the aim of winning this vote. What I am doing, as a “first guess”, is based on what my generation of engineers called “napkin math”.

To get an idea of ​​how much the public purchase of solidarity networks currently represents, I took as a reference the fact that, if not the only one, the best-known government program derived from this objective is the one that says that 30% of school meals must be purchased from family farming.

Although it is known that a portion of it does not fall into the category of solidarity economy and that this percentage has not been achieved, I start from the fact that it represents 30% of the 5,4 billion reais annually allocated to the National School Feeding Program (PNAE); that is, 1,8 billion. In other words, something that does not reach 0,1% of the almost 2 trillion reais that make up public purchases or, just (as we used to say), 0,05% of the GDP.

3.

I also worked on another aspect of the “planning” of the “operation”. To do this, I tried to estimate how much resources those public agents should make available to each potential voter to be involved in solidarity networks. In other words, how much should be subtracted from the amount currently allocated to the purchase of private networks?

Resigning myself to a realistic stance and attentive to the current correlation of forces, I did not consider that the class that owns these networks already benefits from around 7% of the GDP in public debt service, 5% in tax waivers and 10% in tax evasion, and knowing that this “operation” must be much better designed, I dare to start the process…

On the one hand, I start from the information that the Bolsa Família program cost approximately 0,5% of GDP and allowed 30 million people to escape poverty. And from the hypothesis that 1/3 of these (10 million) could, if they accepted the existence of a causal relationship between the fact of owning a house and the existence of a left-wing government, vote for the coalition. On the other hand, I start from the assumption, based on the currently available inferences, that an additional support of approximately 10 million voters would give the coalition a victory.

And I would like to mention a coincidence: the amount that appears “on the napkin” as being the share of parliamentary amendments (around 0,5 billion reais) is also approximately 50% of GDP. Those amendments that, as I wrote above and by all indications, will tend to be primarily allocated to vote-buying by the right.

We know that this is only a fraction of what the property-owning class, which benefits from resources that do not even enter the public budget, will allocate to this end. What their agricultural, industrial and financial production networks, etc., usually allocate to elect the businessmen and farmers who make up 72% of our parliament is much larger. 

But, to estimate how much it would be “feasible” to make available to each of the 10 million potential voters in the coalition through the reorientation of public procurement based on the search for a kind of “equipotency” with the right, it is interesting to take that 0,5% of GDP as an estimate.

It implies a monthly remuneration corresponding to the production of goods and services acquired through the State's purchasing power of 5 thousand reais per voter (50 billion reais/10 million people). Which means, Machiavellianly assuming that these purchases begin to occur one year before the election, 416 reais per month (5 thousand reais/12 months).

In other words, each potential voter in the coalition involved in the public purchase “operation” proposed here should receive an amount equivalent to what, according to what I saw in an interview with a reporter, was received by a flag bearer at the last rally of the unspeakable on Paulista.

I would like to ask public agents and activists sympathetic to the solidarity economy who have followed me so far to start listing the thousands of activities that could be, immediately, before it is too late, the object of the public purchase of solidarity networks.

Without underestimating the importance of having public resources for training activities, qualifications, etc., I emphasize how much the virtuous circle of awareness, mobilization, organization, participation, and empowerment of the working class can be boosted with the immediate allocation of 0,5% of GDP for the public purchase of solidarity networks.

* Renato Dagnino He is a professor at the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The defense industry in the Lula government (Popular Expression). [https://amzn.to/4gmxKTr]

Notes

[I] Among which I highlight https://jornalggn.com.br/politicas-sociais/por-que-os-candidatos-de-esquerda-as-eleicoes-de-2022-devem-prestar-atencao-a-economia-solidaria-por-renato-dagnino/,

[ii] https://aterraeredonda.com.br/contratabrasil/.

[iii][iii] It is inspired by the provocation I launched as a question two weeks ago in https://fpabramo.org.br/2025/03/26/evento-debateu-economia-solidaria-como-modelo-de-desenvolvimento-para-o-brasil/, which a colleague nicknamed “Dagnino’s 0,5%”.

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