By HELENA SINGER*
Introduction to Paul Singer's Newly Released Book
“I don't think it's going to completely change society in less than a hundred years, for example. But the important thing is not knowing where it will go, it is not knowing what kind of socialism will be built: what is important is the trajectory. Because we don't know what kind of society will come out of it, but we know what we want now, and that's what's really important” (Paul Singer).
Paul Singer encountered the solidarity economy after the age of 60 and it was a definitive encounter, which would make him recover and reinvent several aspects of his intellectual production, as well as his trajectory as a public manager and his political militancy. Once, asked about how this turning point in his life was, he replied referring to the experience he had in the socialist Zionist youth movement, when he was still a teenager, and to his entire history as a militant and leftist intellectual.
In the 1990s, Brazil faced a continuation of a severe economic crisis, which left millions of workers without a job. In that context, Cáritas, an organization linked to the Catholic Church, encouraged the solidarity organization of workers and invited the then professor of Economics at the University of São Paulo (USP) to visit some cooperatives. The visit strongly impressed Paul Singer, who saw a clear way to face the crisis with principles that resumed socialist proposals.
Paul Singer had been Secretary of Planning in the Luiza Erundina administration in the city of São Paulo, between 1989 and 1992, after which he resumed his duties at the Faculty of Economics, but, as he always did, he maintained his militant role in the Workers' Party (PT). When he participated in the preparation of the government plan for Erundina's candidacy for a new management in the city, in 1996, he brought the idea of promoting the solidarity economy in articles that had a lot of repercussions. Luiza Erundina was not elected, but Paul Singer took the proposal forward, strengthening a circuit between the university and workers' organizations.
He began by assuming, along with colleagues from other universities in São Paulo, the coordination of the Solidarity Economy Working Group of the Unitrabalho Foundation, a national network of universities, which started to organize seminars in which the various actors of that incipient movement met and recognized each other: the National Association of Workers in Self-Management and Shareholding Companies (Anteag), the Technological Incubator of Popular Cooperatives of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (ITCP-UFRJ), the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), among others entities that organized the formation of cooperatives in various parts of the country. Paul Singer also provoked the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) to form an incubator to make cooperative projects viable, which gave rise to the Solidarity Development Agency (ADS), created in partnership with Unitrabalho and the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (Dieese).
At USP, interest in the solidarity economy was growing among students. The old professor's lectures excited the young students, who invited him to guide a study group, a practice that Paul Singer always encouraged and supported. Over time, the studies were formalized into a graduate course. Consistent with the content taught, Singer gives the course a democratic character, building with students the selection of texts to be studied and the organization of seminars, always in debate circles. In addition, the course connects the studies to the students' research and life projects, as narrated by the students themselves in the book Another economy is possible.
But it is not just young people who are transformed in these encounters: “I think that, along with generations of Marxists, I am evolving, I have not ceased to be exactly a Marxist, but I have completely reassessed the contribution of the utopians, practically Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and that thanks to my students. In my last years at university, from 1999 onwards, my students asked me why we didn't have a seminar on Proudhon. He was out of my horizon, but I agreed and we did it. I read Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and that broadened my vision. It is impressive how we are a bit slaves to the masters: I read these authors through the lens of Engels, and I was satisfied, but it was a mistake”.
In 1999, the Executive Coordination of University Cooperation (Cecae) at USP creates the Technical Incubator of Popular Cooperatives and invites Singer to assume the role of academic coordinator, an invitation promptly accepted. In the first years of activity, ITCP-USP dedicated itself to incubating workers' cooperatives living in neighboring neighborhoods, guiding the design of municipal solidarity economy policies in São Paulo and Guarulhos and supporting other university incubators in formation. The university incubators decide to form a network, which joins Unitrabalho.
The turn of the century is one of ebullition for organized civil society movements in the country and the solidarity economy is highlighted in these processes. The initiatives and articulation of their organizations multiplied in the recognition of their potentials and challenges and in the construction of a common agenda. Thus, the foundations of a national movement are organized. A decisive moment for this was the creation of a working group, the Brazilian WG on Solidarity Economy, based on the 1.500st World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, where more than XNUMX people were involved in solidarity economy activities, a number that would grow in the years to come. following forums.
When Lula, who had written the presentation of the book Introduction to solidarity economy, wins the elections for the presidency, at the end of 2002, the WG formulates a letter to the new government, suggesting the creation of the National Secretariat for the Solidarity Economy (Senaes). Subsequently, it organizes the XNUMXst Brazilian Plenary of the Solidarity Economy, in São Paulo, in which Paul Singer is appointed to lead the secretariat, to be installed at the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE). There, the professor who became secretary maintains and reinforces his style of acting, inviting all career civil servants to train in the subject they would deal with, creating many opportunities for debate and participatory management instances.
Democracy and solidarity to overcome capitalism
The nine texts that make up this second volume of the Paul Singer Collection were written between 2001 and 2013 and, as a whole, offer a broad view of the principles, concepts and history of solidarity economy in the world, using the Brazilian experience as a reference for committed public policies with overcoming poverty and heteronomy at work, strengthening democracy and achieving a better life for all.
Over the more than twenty years that Singer has dedicated himself to the solidarity economy, in addition to the book Introduction to solidarity economy, who opens this volume, has written many articles on the subject for books, magazines and newspapers and has given numerous lectures, several of which have been transcribed. On a conservative estimate, there are about fifty titles. The selection of articles that should compose this volume needed to follow some criteria.
In his last years of life, the author himself selected sixteen of his writings on the subject for the book Essays on solidarity economy, launched in Portugal, on the initiative of Professor Rui Namorado, in 2018. We then depart from this choice made by the author, prioritizing articles that were still unpublished for the Brazilian public or that were no longer in circulation here, and that complement or bring new aspects of the first work.
The foundations and field of solidarity economy
Em Introduction to solidarity economy, Singer delimits the field. It begins by presenting the foundations of the solidary mode of production as opposed to the capitalist mode, which celebrates competition, but allows the winners to accumulate advantages. The solidary mode of production, on the other hand, promotes equality between those who associate to produce, trade, consume or save. Under the principles of collective or associated ownership of capital and the right to individual freedom, in the solidarity economy “nobody commands anyone” (p. 9). In the solidarity company, the partners make withdrawals according to the income obtained. The leftovers are divided between an education fund and an investment fund, which can be partly divided among the partners and partly left as a legacy for the next generations of the cooperative and society.
As for management, in the capitalist company, the hierarchy dominates in search of economic efficiency, while, in the solidarity company, self-management is carried out through a democratic administration that seeks human development, hence the centrality of education in the proposal.
Following the book, Paul Singer traces the history of the origins of the solidarity economy, drawing an overview of its scope in the fields of consumption, credit, purchases and sales and production. In all these fields, the distinctive traits of cooperatives are relationships of trust and solidarity and self-managed organization. The historical analysis makes it possible to follow moments of expansion of cooperativism, in which it is a decisive element for development, and also moments of degeneration, when agents give up self-management through more bureaucratic and unequal processes. Often, both processes are related, with the principles being lost as cooperativism grows.
The growth of cooperativism happens mainly when its innovative character enables cooperatives to offer better solutions to the population than the capitalist competition.
For Paul Singer, fostering solidarity economy enterprises should be at the heart of projects by parties, governments and left-wing movements. The author recalls that the State supports capitalist companies with tax exemptions and favored credit.
But this support rarely extends to the production cooperative, seen by the conservative side of the political spectrum as an anomaly. Also the left, which bets everything on the seizure of political power as the only way of structural transformation, sees the production cooperative as a chimera, whose only effect is to waste strength and hope. (p.110)
Far removed from this view of the solidarity economy as a chimera, Paul Singer recognizes in it the real overcoming of capitalism. “The solidarity economy was conceived to be a superior alternative [to capitalism] by providing people who adopt it, as producers, savers, consumers, etc., with a better life. Better life not only in the sense that they can consume more with less expenditure of productive effort, but also better relationships with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, study colleagues, etc.; in the freedom of each one to choose the work that gives him the most satisfaction; the right to autonomy in productive activities, not having to submit to orders from others, to participate fully in decisions that affect them; in the security of each one knowing that their community will never leave them helpless or abandoned” (p.114-5).
Learning from history makes clear the agenda capable of transforming the solidarity economy, from an interstitial mode of production, inserted in capitalism due to the vacuums left by it, into a general way of organizing the economy and society. It “would have to generate its own dynamics instead of relying on the contradictions of the dominant mode of production to pave the way for it” (p.116). To do so, it is necessary to build a cooperative credit system and a system for generating and disseminating knowledge.
It is with this clear agenda that the professor closes the book and the following year takes over Senaes. The texts that follow have already been written by the secretary and make it possible, on the one hand, to deepen and review the foundations of the solidarity economy. On the other hand, knowing the challenges, limits and potential of public policies for the promotion of this alternative and superior way of organizing life in society.
solidarity development
In deepening his analysis of the solidarity economy, Paul Singer returns to the central theme of his work: development. “Economic development, as a process of structural change [was] the main focus of my theoretical interests”. It begins with the theme, still in the 1960s, seeking to overcome the traditional view that opposed a supposedly “modern” sector, formed by what we now call agribusiness and mining, aimed at the foreign market, to another considered “traditional”, characterized for subsistence production. For Paul Singer, both sectors would be part of the colonial economy, which development should overcome. In the following decade, when he was dedicated to the issue of work and employment in underdeveloped countries, he revised his understanding of development, describing a specific sector, made up of individual enterprises, whose product was intended for the market.
It seems clear that the author's dedication to the solidary economy leads him to qualify what development would be, differentiating the capitalist, dominated by big capital, free market, competition, individualism and the minimal State, from the solidary one. In the article “Capitalist development and solidary development”, from 2004, he describes solidary development as “a process of promoting new productive forces and establishing new production relations, in order to promote a sustainable process of economic growth, which preserves nature and redistribute the fruits of growth in favor of those who are marginalized from social production and the fruition of its results” (p.141).
Individual undertakings, which he had described in his works from the 1970s, when associated, can compose the set of those capable of overcoming capitalism. “If and when the solidary economy, formed by individual and associated family enterprises and by self-managed enterprises, becomes hegemonic, the direction of technological progress will be different, as it will no longer be a product of intercapitalist competition to aim at satisfying the needs considered priorities by the majority” (p.142).
Refusing the Manichean perspective, Paul Singer locates the debates involving new technologies in different scientific hypotheses on how to conduct human progress: “Solidarity development seeks new productive forces that respect nature and favor values such as equality and self-realization, without ignoring or rejecting scientific and technological advances beforehand, but submitting them to the permanent scrutiny of environmental values, social inclusion and self-management” (p.142).
“Economic anguish in capitalism and solidarity economy”, result of Singer's participation in a Psychology congress, brings subjectivity to the distinction between capitalism and solidarity economy, enabling the author to deepen the qualifications used in previous texts on “winners” and “losers”, as well as the analysis of the consequences, for employees, of the transformations in capitalist companies resulting from technological innovations.
“Is it possible to bring development to poor communities?”, an article written to be discussed internally at the Ministry of Labor, starts from a hypothesis: the poverty of the community is directly related to its degree of integration into the global market. But the way to promote this integration must be based on the principles of solidarity economy. That means it has to be for the whole community at the same time, with interest subsidized by long-term public funds. The path passes through goods that can be sold by communities abroad in increasing quantities, the so-called “market breach”. This must be sought in traditional products with quality, in the creation of products that meet new demands or in increasing the productivity of activities already present in the community.
To guide communities along this path, public policies must invest in development agents, who are professionals from the State or from civil society organizations in charge of training, supporting the process of granting credit and monitoring the ventures created. It is also necessary to organize local productive arrangements, which articulate communities with the same specialization for technological development, the purchase of inputs and the marketing of products. The conclusion of the article somehow contradicts the idea of the title, that development would be “taken” to poor communities: “Community development has been happening in Brazil for decades, so we are not starting from ground zero. The novelty would be the expansion of systematized and coordinated federal support, but without any intention of standardizing it” (p.178).
“The solidary economy in Brazil” presents the seven principles of the solidary economy as guiding public policies in the country: autonomy, self-management, open door (no one should be prevented or coerced to enter or stay in the cooperative), solidarity, transparency, access to scientific knowledge (education) and rotation in management positions. When presenting the principle of solidarity, Singer refers to the live well, a concept inspired by the ways of life of the Amerindian nations that questions the idea of development, proposing instead the harmony of human beings with themselves, with others and with nature.
The choice of the term dialogues directly with the presentation of Senaes' strategy for local development, that of ethnodevelopment, "that is, the development produced by the coordinated effort of the members of the community itself, without depending on external investments, coming from public sources or from private sources” (p.188).
The path of ethnodevelopment allows the expansion of solidarity economy policies for traditional indigenous and quilombola communities, women's cooperatives and youth collectives. Instead of relying on foreign investment, the focus is on solidarity finance, through community development banks, solidarity revolving funds and credit cooperatives.
Building policies with the social movement
“The solidarity economy as an innovation in Brazil at the end of the XNUMXth century” brings more elements to the proposition that the solidarity economy is not the result of programs developed centrally by governments, but of processes carried out by communities in facing social and economic challenges. This is the foundation of the concept of social innovation.
When reporting the history of the solidarity economy in Brazil from the 1980s onwards, Singer highlights all the elements of the conceptualization of social innovation and its technologies. From the Alternative Community Projects (PAC) led by Cáritas, which, over time, give rise to agrarian reform settlements, agricultural production cooperatives and urban services. “From all these innovations, the solidarity economy was born. There is no doubt that, in Brazil in the 1980s, labor cooperativism became an important social technology, hitherto unknown in the country” (p.194).
Social innovation is not necessarily unprecedented, but because it aims to address the challenges of specific contexts and is based on research and collective decision-making processes, it engenders the creation of new technologies that reflect the diversity of the cultures that create them.
Cooperativism was a social innovation in the passage from the 195th to the XNUMXth century, invented to face the degradation of the worker, proletarianized by the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, France and other European countries. Rediscovered in Brazil two centuries later, more social innovations were added to it, such as exchange clubs, which introduced the experience of social currencies in the country, today issued by community banks. (p.XNUMX)
As a social innovation, the solidarity economy is diverse and continually reinvents itself to become resilient.
The next two articles present the principles and strategies of public policies for the promotion of the solidary economy based on the experience of Senaes. In them, the line of continuity is evident between the intellectual who always opts for interdisciplinarity and plurality, the professor who connects the pedagogical methods with the studied contents and the public manager who guides the processes always by the intersectionality, the production of knowledge in the connection between the academy and the social movement and democracy at the basis of decision-making processes.
In “The Brazilian experience in public policies for the social and solidarity economy”, written in 2011, Paul Singer states that the promotion of the solidarity economy involves “disseminating among the working population the conviction that salaried employment is not the only or necessarily the best option to earn a decent living; that there are other options, among which stands out the exercise by groups of associated workers of activities on their own account” (p.204). One can imagine that this perspective was not easily assimilated in the Ministry of Labor, which led the secretary-teacher and his team to organize training processes for employees of the other departments of the ministry.
In addition to disseminating this other way of working and living with dignity, it is necessary to offer workers opportunities to acquire the means of production and professional skills for collective administration, and also to encourage solidary financial systems. The necessary knowledge for such an undertaking can be found in the dialogue between the academic and the practical.
“A solidary economy in the fight against poverty and for democracy” was written in 2011, in collaboration with the members of the Senaes Management Committee, as an agenda for the newly elected government of Dilma Rousseff, which defined the eradication of extreme poverty as its main task.
In that context, Senaes understood that it would have a great contribution to make. In her view, misery in Brazil is a remnant of what began to be reduced with the policies of the Lula governments. Therefore, to eradicate it, it would be necessary to continue innovating based on accurate diagnoses of its causes.
The experience of the solidary economy would be especially useful for this task. Social cooperatives, an Italian innovation of the 1970s brought to Brazil through a cooperation agreement between Senaes and the Ministry of Health, made it possible to lift asylum seekers out of poverty. The program, carried out in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, focused on young people interned in socio-educational institutions, convicts, former prisoners and their families. Another program, to support incubators involving XNUMX universities, made it possible to work with traditional communities, from the perspective of ethnodevelopment.
The social movement of the solidary economy remains strong, articulated and Senaes ends up playing a role sui generis as a state body that also responds to the movement. This is clear in this article, which references a letter addressed to the president requesting the creation of the Ministry of Solidarity Economy, signed by eighty entities of different natures. Even more forceful is the endorsement of criticisms of the government, made by the National Conferences on Solidarity Economy, in 2006 and 2010, for not prioritizing the solidarity economy.
The ambiguities of the PT government in relation to the space given to the solidarity economy may be related to the general difficulties of the left with this proposal.
The last article in this volume deals specifically with this subject: “The construction of the solidary economy as an alternative to capitalism”, written in the troubled year of 2013.
In it, Paul Singer reviews the disputes on the left between the proposal to centralize the labor struggle in the conquest of rights, based on State action, and the vision that favors overcoming the “tyranny of salaried work” and the growing achievement of participation in decision-making spaces and processes, that is, the struggle for democracy.
It is with this vision that he will rescue historical experiences, from the struggle of women for universal suffrage to the birth of the PT, passing through the African-American civil rights movement, the self-managed socialism of Yugoslavia under Tito, the student movements of the 1960s and O Solidarity in Poland.
The conclusion of the article refers to the “flourishing of a profusion of economies” that receive different names in the five continents, but that have in common the capacity to create viable alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.
Results
As a whole, the works that make up this volume make it possible to get to know the solidarity economy from the point of view of one of its greatest formulators. They also make it possible to observe how this vision is enriched with time, contact and experience with Brazilian diversity. Finally, they make up a historical record on the solidarity economy in the country, whose results are worth highlighting.
The first obvious result is the constitution of the solidarity economy, an articulated set of agents, initiatives, policies, institutions and narratives, with shared visions and common agendas, which were not recognized as such until the last decade of the last century. As a result, a national movement was articulated, which has been continuously strengthening, involving economic enterprises, civil society institutions, universities, unions, religious entities, traditional communities and collectives in forums, networks and associations.
Movement that is articulated in dynamic relationships with the most important social movements in the country, such as landless workers, women, youth, traditional peoples, for culture, environment, democracy, education. The constitution, permanence and strengthening of this movement is the basis for the other achievements of the solidary economy.
The second set of results to be appreciated refers to the economic relevance of this field. This could be measured by the number of existing economic enterprises and the number of workers associated with them. Senaes created the National System of Information on Solidarity Economy (Sies) and carried out some mapping on solidary economic undertakings, support and promotion entities and on public policies aimed at the solidary economy. The last of these mappings, published in 2014, showed around 20 enterprises, with 1,4 million workers.
But this number is insufficient to understand the real impact of the solidarity economy, if we consider the difference that Paul Singer makes between the interstitial mode of production, inserted in the vacuums in capitalism, and the new way of organizing the economy and society, the one capable of generate its own dynamics. Hence the importance of production chains, sectoral economic arrangements, production and marketing networks, the latter estimated in 2012 at two hundred spread across the country.
It is also necessary to analyze the availability of infrastructure, technologies and financial services. In this respect, revolving funds, credit cooperatives and community banks stand out. The Brazilian Network of Community Banks currently has 103 members.
Still regarding the economic impact itself, it is necessary to consider the power of the solidary economy to support people in overcoming poverty through productive inclusion. In this sense, the existence and resistance of cooperatives formed by former street dwellers, psychic sufferers, people in conflict with the law and other vulnerable social groups are particularly relevant.
The transversality of the solidarity economy in the various social fields is also an achievement to be registered in the sense of the transformation of society that Singer proposes, such as the expansion of cultural and related points, agroecological enterprises, community-based tourism, among many other initiatives that also favor environmental values, social inclusion and self-management.
Solidarity economy in education has special relevance, which extends from basic education, with the inclusion of the theme in the curricula of youth and adult education and in technical training, to higher education, in which technological incubators and courses are disseminated. at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, passing through the broad universe of popular education, undertaken by social movements and training programs for solidary development agents.
The institutionalization of the solidary economy is also an aspect to be observed. Public policies at municipal, state and national levels in Brazil are now a world reference. The structure that makes it possible is formed not only by specialized secretariats, but also by training centers, support and technical assistance, in addition to incubators. And perhaps the most complex conquest, from the point of view of the necessary negotiations both within the movement and with the representatives of opposing interests, the capitalists, is the legal framework of the solidarity economy.
Since 1999, there have been many negotiations and disputes around the approval and regulation of laws that allow the formal existence of enterprises and self-managed forms of organization and remuneration of workers. Singer has personally committed himself to this cause and several laws have been passed at all three levels of the federation.
All these results were not achieved without much effort and mobilization and continue to be limited in terms of the desired transformation dimension. It could not be different considering that these are profound changes, which aim at the end of capitalism. For this to become effective, it is necessary that, as Singer says, the State stops financing only capitalist companies, and that it increasingly also finances the solidarity economy.
In summary, we can see that, in twenty years, the solidary economy has been consolidated in the country, creating innovative parameters not only for economic organization, but for the organization of society in general. The commitment of the solidary economy to society, in the present and in the future, brought XNUMXth century European socialist thinkers closer to traditional peoples who have resisted in the Americas for centuries.
To recognize these approximations and the viable alternatives for a better world, it is necessary to overcome simplistic views about capitalism, as a totalizing bloc, and perceive the coexistence of different economies. Once again we remember what Paul Singer says: “the enterprises that make up the solidarity economy coexist with individual and family companies, with state-owned companies, private non-profit companies, organized crime, which grows in symbiotic relationships with national companies and multinationals. The transformation has to be understood and designed considering this complexity”.
Projecting the transformation of this complex reality is not an exclusive task of the economic field. People learn to obey and fear superiors in the educational process in the patriarchal family and at school. And they learn to overcome this submission in emancipatory struggles, which democratize institutions and advance politics.
It is therefore necessary to encourage processes of democratization, of participation, in the various organizations that form subjectivities, so that people start to desire change and know how to do it, assuming the management not only of their economic undertakings, but of their lives, and commitment to the good of all. What society will result from these processes, we do not know. But what matters is the trajectory.
* Helena Singer, doctor in sociology, is president of the Board of the Paul Singer Institute. Author, among other books, of Children's Republic (Letter Market).
Reference
Paul Singer. Solidarity economy: Introduction, history and Brazilian experience. Organization: André Singer, Suzana Singer & Helena Singer. São Paulo, Unesp\Fundação Perseu Abramo, 2022, 254 pages (https://amzn.to/3OVq6Ut).
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