The Solidarity Economy is an alternative to capitalism and other authoritarian, state-dominated economic systems. It is a method for naming and conceptualizing transformative monetary qualities, practices, and foundations that exist in the U.S. and everywhere throughout the world. It is an alternative framework that is allowing for different forms in different contexts, open to continual change. These incorporate, yet are not constrained to, egalitarian and participatory monetary conduct by people, laborers, and makers, for example, by a person who is a moral shopper, specialist, and additionally financial specialist, or by a specialist co-op, reasonable exchange business, or dynamic association. The producers in a solidarity economy develop economic processes that are intimately related to their realities, preservation of the environment, and mutual cooperation.
The social solidarity economy is an ethical and values-based approach to economic development that prioritizes the welfare of people and the planet, over profits, and blind growth. It is an economic formation that seeks to improve the quality of life of a region or community on the basis of solidarity, often through local business and not-for-profit endeavors. It mainly consists of activities organized to address and transform exploitation under capitalist economics and the large-corporation, large-shareholder-dominated economy and can include diverse activities. It isn’t a blueprint but a framework that includes a broad range of economic practices that align with its values: solidarity, participatory democracy, equity in every dimension including race, class and gender, sustainability, and pluralism, which means that it can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. The social and solidarity economy (SSE) is a viable solution to re-balancing economic, social, and environmental objectives.
Since the 1990s, there has been an increase in solidarity-based monetary practices far and wide because of a range of reasons:
- First, an expanding number of individuals all through the world are encountering weakening living conditions and developing neediness.
- Second, with the rationale of free enterprise, individuals and society become assets to be misused. Their incentive as work or social connections is decreased to their value in expanding benefits.
- Third, the profound natural debasement, incited by an extractive, serious, and broad straight monetary model, prompting across the board contamination and environmental change.
Solidarity economy practices exist in every sector of the economy: production, distribution and exchange, consumption, finance, and governance/state. The idea of the solidarity economy is to build on and knit together all of these practices in order to transform capitalism by lifting up and encouraging the ‘better angels of our nature. Solidarity economic principles serve as the new basis – principles based on the solidary exchange that connects individual needs with those of the community.
