Solidarity Economy in Brazil

One of our most stimulating meetings during the Latin American tour was at the social economy incubator (ITCP: Incubadora Tecnologica de Co-operativas Populares) at the Universidade de São Paulo. The incubator was established in 1998 by Paul Singer, who now works as the minister for social economy as part of the federal government. We met with Diogo Tsukumo, who will shortly be moving to Brasilia to work with Singer, and Reinaldo Pacheco da Costa, who is a professor in the engineering department.

ITCP is engaged in developing small businesses in the favelas along the lines of genuine auto-gestion, including the production of soap and herbs and services such as cleaning. They support the businesses with finance, capacity-building and networking. The history is that in 1998 a group of Singer's students discussed the economic situation with unemployment at 25% and suggested new forms of working, especially co-operatives. They explored the history of co-operatives in Brazilian agriculture and found that they were really consortia of producers and not economically empowering for the poor. They wanted to encourage the development of real grass-roots autonomous co-operativas and so set up the incubator.

Their well-meaning intention was to to do what they call 'extension work' in an urban context on the basis that, as a public university, USP has a duty to create knowledge in collaboration with society. An opportunity presented itself closer than they had imagined: one of the communities they work with is a favela right next to the university that was built by unskilled wokers who built the university! Once it was built they were out of work so the students worked with then to set up a restaurant and organised a grounds-maintenance service. They spread this model across the city and into the southern favelas.

Like many things in Brazil the scale of the solidarity economy is somewhat overwhelming. In 2007 there were 22,000 co-ops compared with 30,000 in 2011. Today there are more than SSE incubators in Brazil. They have recently worked to have a solidarity economy law passed through congress, and the level of support in terms of funding, fiscal advantages, and funded co-operative development work is also impressive.

The ideology of this grassroots economic empowerment is also somewhat unexpected. There are three main influences on the solidarity economy in Brazil:

• liberation theology;
• anarchism;
• communism.

In a synthesis that would seem impossible in any other society, in Brazil somehow they manage to create a positive synthesis between these three.

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Call to Freedom

Last night I attended the first proper meeting of Transition Wootton. Wooton-under-Edge is a delightful small town in semi-rural Gloucestershire. No doubt people there are as concerned as people everywhere about the reality of climate change. They would be willing to do their bit, make the necessary sacrifices, given the right political leadership.

But I must admit I came away from the meeting feeling alienated and depressed. The level of disempowerment amongst the 30 or so people attending was palpable. The two most enthusiastic discussions were about the technical aspects of energy generation (this is largely a displacement activity in my view) and a shared whinge about public transport.

A significant minority were for lobbying our local authority - around half of whose members are the Tory friends of big business who got us into this mess. My own suggestions for actually doing something - the something in question ranging from joining the car club to setting up a community farm and switching from buying a sofa to paying for a weekly massage - were dismissed as anarchism. Anarchism, it was pointed out as though this were holy writ, doesn't work.

Aside from my gloom at the self-imposed oppression of many of the people there I was hugely flattered to have been dismissed as an anarchist. What a noble tradition that is! From Kropotkin's ideal rural communities to Shelley's calls for non-violent action right up to Bob Marley's demand that we 'liberate ourselves from mental slavery' it is those who can shake off the shackles of received opinions who most powerfully change the world.

Shelley ends his rousing poem 'Call to Freedom' with these lines:

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.

You can find the whole poem on this blog.

Shelley is gorgeous. I first came across him in my teens when a boyfriend who is sadly no longer around to cause consternation to the bastions of authority gave me a book of his verse. I immediately learned Ozymandius by heart. Who could resist a poem that begins 'I met a traveller from an antique land' and includes the line 'two vast and trunkless legs of stone'?!

Of course it is anarchism that won't work. The system of authoritarian control, injustice and inequality is working very well. That is why we see children starving and the planet burning. What further evidence of success could we require? Tweet

The Final Frontier

I had the great pleasure last night of listening to Doreen Massey give a public lecture. She is an inspiring example of a public intellectual, an engaged academic, who is both analysing and changing the world. She took as her theme 'the politics of place'. The lecture was highbrow stuff of the kind I often struggle with and in my attempt to convey some of what I learned I am no doubt about to commit mental GBH, but surely that is better than holding back for fear of misrepresentation.

What I like about Doreen's work is her clear statement that the 'end of geography', propagated as what she might call an 'imaginary' by the proponents of this late and most corrupt phase of capitalism is an illusion and should be nailed as such. We are as much indicted in a process of international exploitation as we were in the days when we sent our best and brightest to administer the colonies and half the known world was coloured pink on our schoolroom maps.


Her question - to herself and others - is how we can live a positive response to the globalised world we find ourselves in. She made me question my own easy notion about the local and its safety. How easy it is to sit in Stroud and wrack my conscience in choosing between French organic apples and fair-trade Kenyan mangoes. Within our Transition Town process we have a theme called 'learning from the South' and a commitment to community-to-community trade between ourselves and the poor countries. This is the path towards the solidarity economy that is the 'alternative globalisation'.

But Doreen is right that our involvement in the lives of those in far-distant places goes beyond buying their crops and using their time to provide cheap holidays in warmer climes. London is the capital of the financial system that facilitates the global trade system. This makes our responsibility for challenging that system and its consequences especially acute.

I feel sure that building a strong local alternative economy is part of the answer, but it is not enough. However, the alternative on offer last night - and this was a point made by several questioners - is to be left in a dithering limbo of indecision. Ultimately, any consumption more complex than self-provisioning becomes uncomfortable. Any food we didn't produce ourselves becomes difficult to stomach. Tweet