Abstract
This article traces the shift from the identity politics of the early worker, feminist, and antiracist movements to the solidarity politics embodied in a movement of movements, to the emergence of solidarity economy initiatives and organizing. It examines the important contributions which Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) and radical political economics (RPE) have made to these developments, and advocates that they become actively involved in analyzing and promoting the shift toward the solidarity economy.
Keywords
1. Introduction
As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), it is a good time to reflect on the history of URPE and the field of study it helped create, radical political economics (RPE), with an eye toward the present and future. What could we—URPE, the Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE), and radical political economists in general—be doing better?
The call for papers that produced this special issue posed some important questions about URPE’s relationship to social movements. Besides asking how URPE has intersected with social movements in the past, it also asked a challenging question about its future: At its founding, URPE filled a gap in current economic thought and the established left. The founders felt that the existing theory and body of work had not caught up to the movements of the times. Today, do we face a similar time period? Are URPE and RRPE in tune with the challenges and opportunities of the times? Could we connect more with the analytical needs of today’s activists? (Gunn 2015: 131)
In this paper, I provide a historical analysis, which offers one set of answers to these important questions focusing on a key issue: the question of system change. I look at the evolution of RPE’s analysis of system change over the past fifty years against the backdrop of recent economic history and suggest ways in which it needs to be further revised to apply to the current historical conjuncture. My hope is to help radical political economists situate ourselves and our research and teaching within the revolutionary process currently underway in the world economy.
Because it covers so much territory, my analysis is necessarily broad-brushed and incomplete. It also reflects strongly my own unique experience in URPE and as a radical political economist since 1973, when I attended my first URPE summer conference in West Virginia while studying RPE with Tom Weisskopf, and Marx with Daniel Fusfeld, as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. My standpoint has been dominated by a Marxist-feminist approach, to which I have added antiracism and ecology (Matthaei 1996), so my history emphasizes URPE’s and RPE’s relationship to feminism.
This article investigates URPE’s and RPE’s relationship to the question of system change, as affected by its connection with social movements. In the first part of the paper, I discuss the birth of URPE out of the social movements of the 1960s and its extension of Marxist class-based critique of the capitalist system into an anticlassist, antiracist, feminist, and ecological critique, which came to define RPE. Then, I look at how the development of these social movements based on identity politics, and the intellectual discourses surrounding them, dissolved the revolutionary subject of RPE, “the working class,” and contributed, along with history, to the steep decline of socialism as a utopian ideal—a process that left URPE and RPE bereft of a vision of and path toward a better economy. In the second half of the paper, I argue that a new revolutionary subject and a new vision of systemic economic transformation have indeed been emerging over the past decades: the “movement of movements” and the solidarity economy framework. I finish by pointing out some key contrasts between the solidarity economy framework and the traditional Marxist analysis of socialist revolution, and by encouraging fellow URPErs to consider using the solidarity economy framework in their research and teaching.
Before I begin, I would like to say, “Congratulations, URPE, for being alive and well after half a century!” We have survived fifty years in the belly of the beast. We have developed a field of study that is dynamic, interdisciplinary, and open to innovation. We have developed impressive and useful knowledge about the workings of the capitalist system. We have a fine journal, appointments in colleges and universities, and even a plurality of faculty in some economics departments. We have created, developed, and kept alive the critique of the advanced capitalist system and the vision of a better, next system, in spite of neoliberalism’s rise to dominance in the 1980s and the purported bankruptcy of the socialist/communist vision. Many, many people have contributed to keeping URPE and RPE active and dynamic, especially those who have served on its steering committee, editorial board, or staff, and deserve our deep gratitude!
2. The Birth and Early Years of URPE and of RPE
2.1. URPE’s founding: A flexible foundation allows for evolution
The last fifty years since URPE’s founding have seen a dramatic decline in the prevalence and power of unions; the rapid rise of the feminist, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and ecology movements; important developments, achievements, and setbacks in the antiracist movement; the shift from the Great Society to neoliberalism; and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. One of the most remarkable things about URPE has been its ability to evolve with the times, particularly in terms of its analysis of oppression and economic transformation.
URPE was formed in 1968 out of the ferment of the New Left, on the heels of the Civil Rights movement, and just before the explosion of the feminist, LGBTQ, and ecology movements. The New Left contrasted itself to the “Old Left,” which was Communist Party-centered and pro-Soviet Union. It rose out of the ashes of McCarthyism’s attacks on the CP, centered in a vibrant anti-Vietnam War movement. It was strongly connected to Hippie culture and its critique of consumerism and sexual inhibitions (Campbell 2012).
One of the most important aspects of URPE—perhaps as part of the New Left reaction to the Communist Party—was its “big tent” approach to its membership in terms of their theoretical and political identity. Early URPErs were deeply critical of mainstream neoclassical economic theory, especially its blindness to class and power, and its tendency to take capitalism as given and optimal. Many—or possibly even most—looked to Marx for a critical, revolutionary analysis of capitalism. However, unlike the Old Left, URPErs were nondogmatic both theoretically and politically. While Marx’s methodology of historical materialism and focus on class struggle predominated in the journal and at conferences, critiques of Marx were entertained, and other theoretical traditions, such as radical institutionalism (especially Thorstein Veblen), were explored and used. There were even some leftist neoclassical economists involved, such as Howard Wachtel (2015), working along with policymakers at this time when Lyndon Johnson’s administration was putting forward Great Society proposals for ending poverty and assuring full employment. No particular political party was endorsed by the group; some members were left Democrats or independents, while others joined socialist parties.
A second important aspect of URPE, reflected in its name, was a commitment to activist academics, epitomized by Marx’s eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, well-known at the time in URPE circles: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” (Smith and Cuckson 2002). Research and teaching were seen as ways to help bring social change to create a better, more just world. Thus, URPE has cared about popular education and been deeply interested in progressive social movements. Aware of the rapid evolving of the political economic landscape, URPE’s founders called on their members to “be sensitive to the needs of the social movements” and stated the objective of “develop(ing) new courses and research areas which reflect the urgencies of the day” (URPE 1968). As part of this commitment to popular education, URPE members went on to found Dollars & Sense in 1974, a popular RPE magazine and publisher of the Real World Micro and Macro textbooks, among others (see Mata’s paper in this issue). They also founded in 1979 the Center for Popular Economics, centered at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which has trained generations of political activists in RPE at its summer institutes.
2.2. Social movements transform URPE and RPE: From class to gender/race/class
Progressive social movements birthed URPE and RPE, and continued to transform them as they all co-evolved. A key shift that evolving social movements brought after URPE’s founding was the shift from a class-focused analysis of oppression and radical transformation to one focused on gender, race, and class. While it critiques racism in its prospectus, URPE does not mention women’s oppression or feminism, ecology or the environment, or sexuality in its list of key issues (URPE 1968). For its analysis of revolution, it looked to Karl Marx and showcased his historical materialist approach and focus on class struggle as the motor of history, and on workers as the revolutionary class that would transform capitalism into socialism. 1 However, URPE’s commitment to radical political economy, combined with its openness to progressive movements and nondogmatic views, allowed it to evolve with the sea changes that occurred in the following decades.
2.2.1. Combatting patriarchy and other forms of oppression in URPE’s organizational structure
Following the practice of the pre-feminist New Left, URPE was white-male dominated. All of the founders of URPE listed on its website are men, and I believe all were white; there were few women active at the time of the founding (Laurie Nisonoff in phone interview with author, December 12, 2014). In other words, URPE’s structure reflected the male and white dominance that was socially pervasive and accepted at the time.
However, during URPE’s first few years, the participation of women economists grew substantially, and many of these women were participating in the “second wave” feminist movement, which started to sweep the country in the early 1970s. At the 1971 summer conference, a core of ten to twelve women came together to form the URPE Women’s Caucus. Marilyn Power, Heidi Hartmann, Paddy Quick, Peggy Howard, Marianne Hill, and Laurie Nisonoff—their spokesperson—were among them. They decried the absence of women on URPE’s Steering Committee and Editorial Board as sexist and demanded that the Women’s Caucus be empowered to name representatives to each. When the business meeting voted down their demand, the women economists and social scientists walked out, along with the wives and partners of most of the men who were there. The business meeting reversed its decision, and they rejoined. 2 For a number of years, there was an informal Third World Caucus comprising immigrant and native-born people of color, and there was also, for a time, a Lesbian/Gay Caucus. 3 While both groups were small minorities in URPE and at the summer conference, these informal caucuses made it easier for members of both groups to support each other and develop demands for change.
In response to critiques by women and people of color, URPE created a rule to counteract the tendency for discussions to be white-male dominated. During discussions at URPE meetings or after URPE panels, chairs had to try to call on a person who was of color and/or a woman after a white male spoke.
In this way, in response to the presence of social movements operating within it, URPE created institutions and procedures that empowered women, people of color, and LGBTQ members within the organizations and helped give voice to their complaints. This helped break down gender and racial hierarchies within URPE. URPE developed an antioppression outlook in terms of realizing that it needed to take active steps to mitigate the reproduction of sexism and racism. While I cannot say that sexism and racism have completely vanished from URPE since then, URPE is committed to address them whenever they arise. URPE has become a supportive home for Marxist/socialist/left feminist economists and has continued to nurture the development of left feminist economics. For example, Laurie Nisonoff and Paddy Quick have served in leadership roles on the Steering Committee or Editorial Board almost continuously. While the organization has been committed to antiracism in principle, it has had more difficulty attracting US-born Black and Latinx people of color, as has the economics profession in general, but there is a significant and active presence of immigrant people of color. Interestingly, even though class has been a constant focus of RPE, I do not know of any caucuses or special provisions that have been made within URPE for “First Generation”/working-class academics.
2.2.2. Encouraging research on gender and other forms of nonclass oppression
The creation by URPE of processes and procedures that counterbalanced the domination of the group by straight white males was paralleled by the very significant integration of gender, race, sexuality, and man/nature inequality into the research showcased in URPE conferences and in the journal. Research on women was encouraged and disseminated through seven special issues on women. The conferences that URPE hosted, both in the summer and at the ASSA meetings, often had distinct tracks to study gender. Readers in radical political economy edited by URPE members, such as The Capitalist System (Edwards, Reich, and Weisskopf 1972, 1978, 1986), The Imperiled Economy (Cherry 1988), and Political Economy and Contemporary Capitalism (Baiman, Boushey, and Saunders 2000), showcased critical analysis of capitalism’s racist, sexist, and ecologically destructive aspects, and their intersection with class oppression and struggle. RPE grew to embrace critiques of all forms of oppression that were being identified and fought against by the social movements that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.
2.2.3. Bringing feminist politics to the American Economic Association and class analysis into Women’s Studies and Feminist Economics
While social movements came into URPE and RPE, diversifying its list of areas of research interest, URPE also played important roles in bringing multidimensional political economic activism into other venues. In 1971, URPE women took on the American Economics Association, meeting with its chair John Kenneth Galbraith and spearheading the formation of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. They also provided a Marxist/left/socialist voice in the newly emerging field of Women’s Studies. In 1973, they founded an interdisciplinary Marxist-feminist study group, which I joined soon after; at its height, it had expanded to three groups and included political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, historians, English professors, and lawyers, as well as economists. Because URPE women and our Marxist-feminist sisters were there in 1977 when the National Women’s Studies Association formed and were active in its early years, we played an important role in making class analysis and the critique of capitalism key to this field. URPE women were also present at the founding of the International Association for Feminist Economists in 1992 and formed its left wing (Laurie Nisonoff in phone interview with author, December 12, 2014).
In this way, Marxist-feminism moved out of URPE to help seed other groups as they were formed and become part of them, providing a valuable left counterweight to the predominant neoclassical economics narrative and its limited view of the liberation of women—and that of people of color—as equal opportunity to advance in capitalism’s class hierarchies.
In this process, feminist URPErs have played significant roles in the development of women’s studies, broadly speaking. URPErs Lourdes Beneria, Gita Sen, Nan Wiegersma, and Radhika Balakrishnan have played central roles in the Women and Development field; Nancy Folbre in the analysis of the care economy; and Randy Albelda, Marlene Kim, Rhonda Williams, Teresa Amott, and I in integrating race, gender, and class analysis and economic history, just to name a few of the URPE feminist economists and the areas of study we have worked to develop.
Last but not least, Marxist-feminist economists have played an important role in forming left feminist research institutes. Marxist-feminist economist Heidi Hartmann founded the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in 1987, while Radhika Balakrishnan took over as director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in 2009.
In similar ways, the study of racial domination, sexuality, and ecology was being brought and integrated into RPE and URPE. There was one special issue (17:3) of the RRPE on “Race and Class” in 1985, but none on these other types of inequality, although there have been numerous articles published on the topic in the journal and in the URPE readers. As with gender, URPErs were bringing these issues, along with systemic critique of the capitalist system and critiques of neoclassical economics, into newly forming organizations that focused on them, such as the National Economics Association (formerly the Caucus of Black Economists), which publishes the Review of Black Political Economy.
Interpenetrated as it was by the progressive social movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, URPE created a new way of doing economics: RPE. This new type of economics was built on a systemic critique of capitalism as racist, sexist, classist, and environmentally destructive. It became a subfield, of sorts, in economics, although it has yet to be listed as such by the American Economic Association. The existence of the RRPE allowed radical economists to have publications in a refereed journal, something required by many colleges and universities for promotion and tenure. Courses were developed in the academy that presented this new way of analyzing the economy, and RPE was also brought into mainstream economic theory courses by radical professors. RPE was overtly “radical” in the sense of problematizing capitalism and calling for systemic change. The creation of RPE represented (and continues to represent) a huge achievement for social movements. They created a type of economics that helped them critically analyze the ways in which inequalities were created and reproduced by capitalism, and which also believed that a better, more just economic system could be created.
3. Marxist-Feminism, Identity Politics, Intersectionality, and the Collapse of RPE’s Revolutionary Project
3.1. Marxist-feminist critiques of Marx, RPE, and socialism
While incorporating analysis of other key dimensions of inequality into its research and organizational structures allowed URPE to survive and evolve, class/race/gender analysis threw into question the radical vision of building a postcapitalist economy. While URPErs were by no means all Marxists, RPE relied heavily on Marx for its analysis of system change. Thus, revolution was envisioned as a process brought by worker struggles against capitalists, resulting in a planned socialist economy. Not only was women’s organizing against male domination and sexism not part of this vision, but it was viewed as counterproductive because it would divide the working class into women workers against men workers.
So Marxist- and socialist-feminists faced the challenge of revising Marxist theory of revolution, and Marxist theory itself. We did so in the midst of the blossoming of second-wave feminism around the country, forming its left wing and creating a feminist critique of the economy which went beyond the goal of gaining equal rights with men within an oppressive capitalist system. We joined with activists to create socialist-feminist women’s unions in a number of cities, through which we organized for revolutionary transformation of economy and society so as to eliminate women’s oppression and all of the oppressions that affect women (Berkeley-Oakland Women’s Union 1974). 4
To give you an idea of the centrality of systemic, revolutionary analysis to early URPE feminists and our sisters in other disciplines, two key edited collections of Marxist-feminist analysis were Zillah Eisenstein’s (1979) Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism and Lydia Sargent’s (1981) Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism. Their titles indicate our commitment to understanding and eradicating both class domination (i.e., capitalism) and patriarchy (i.e., male domination). In the following, I discuss some of the key questions related to feminism, Marxism, capitalism, and revolutionary change that were explored by Marxist-feminists, many of them URPE members.
What is the relationship between Marxism and feminism? This core question was explored in the lead essay for Women and Revolution, “The Unhappy Marriage between Marxism and Feminism,” by Heidi Hartmann and, originally, Amy Bridges (Hartmann 1981). The essay explored the treatment of “the woman question” in Marxist thought, pointing out the failure to address the systematic oppression of women by men in both private and public spheres. It also highlighted the sexist position that labor unions—the supposedly revolutionary expression of working-class movement—took in the late nineteenth-century in supporting women’s exclusion from higher-paid jobs and arguing for domesticity.
Can women’s oppression be analyzed with Marxist theory? Some Marxist-feminists extended Marx’s analysis of labor to women’s work in the home. Conceptualizing the latter as another form of labor, “domestic labor,” we debated whether or not it produced surplus value (Himmelweit and Mohun 1977; Matthaei 1992). Others analyzed women’s work in the home using the lens of Marxist historical materialism, as part of the “mode of production and reproduction” (e.g., Humphries and Rubery 1984), and organized a “Wages for Housework” movement (Dalla Costa and James 1973).
Can women be liberated within capitalism? Marxist-feminists embraced the Marxist critique of worker exploitation by capitalists and of the problem of capitalist control over the state. When women entered the labor force, as they were doing in increasing numbers, they were not just liberated from domesticity—they entered capitalist firms that exploited them as workers. This important insight from Marxist-feminism continues to be recognized in the field of Women’s Studies, even if the terms Marxist and socialist have gone out of style.
Does socialism liberate women (i.e., can women wait until after the socialist revolution to be liberated)? Having been told by our male Marxist comrades that our organizing against sexism (including theirs) would delay the socialist revolution, which would solve all of our problems, Marxist-feminists studied the experiences of women in socialist countries, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Hilda Scott’s (1975) book Does Socialism Liberate Women? answered with a resounding “no”: existing socialist states were patriarchal. So were left men. There was clearly work to be done now. Marxist-feminists were unwilling to accept RPE’s proposal of socialism as the exclusive way forward.
In this process, Marxist-feminists created dual-systems theory. We expanded the traditional Marxist analysis of revolution, adding an analysis of gender oppression to the Marxist analysis of class exploitation. Patriarchy and capitalism coexist, we argued, and both need to be overturned for women to be liberated. Both women’s organizing against patriarchy and workers’ organizing against capitalism are necessary parts of the revolution. This view of revolution incorporated Marx’s view of systemic change as fueled by organizing by members of an oppressed group but added a second revolutionary agent, women.
3.2. Intersectionality and the collapse of an identity politics of revolution
Dual-systems theory was short-lived because it suffered from the same weakness that Marxist theory had: it was incomplete. In the early 1980s, two books were published that forever changed feminism in the United States: This Bridge Called My Back by Cherie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (1981) and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, by bell hooks (1984). In these path-breaking books, which URPE feminists read and discussed in our multidisciplinary Marxist-feminist groups, feminists of color took white feminists to task. Just as (mostly white) women had critiqued the male domination of URPE and the blindness of Marxist theory to gender oppression, so these feminist women of color pointed out racial inequality within feminist movement and theory as well as the blindness of feminist and dual-systems theory to racial oppression. To further complicate the picture, lesbian feminists critiqued the heterosexism and homophobia that were also prevalent yet ignored. In response, our Marxist-feminist groups committed themselves to recruiting women of color and lesbians and transforming our topics of study to incorporate race and sexuality.
In this way, feminism started to evolve multidimensionally. Since women were oppressed not only by gender but also by class, race, and sexuality, a movement for women’s liberation had to be a movement against all of these forms of oppression, not just patriarchy or gender oppression. Different types of privilege and oppression intersected in the experience of a woman, and had to be recognized and addressed by feminism, both within the movement and in society at large. Furthermore, feminists and feminist theory began to understand that gender, race, and class are not independent processes. The social definition of womanhood, for example, differs according to one’s race and class. Women do not share a common oppression as women. The concept of intersectionality emerged to express this diversity of experience, created by inter-determining processes of oppression (Crenshaw 1991; Spelman 1988).
This learning about intersectionality, which emerged through the evolution of feminism, destabilized and transformed feminism. Like Marxism, feminism had been built on “identity politics”—the practice of deriving one’s political position from one’s socially determined identity. In Marxism, workers were oppressed by capitalists and, hence, were the revolutionary subject; Marxist revolution was the liberation of workers, by workers. In feminism, women were oppressed by men and, hence, were feminists: feminist transformation was the liberation of women, by women (or, for socialist-feminists, of women and workers, by women and workers!).
But the intersectionality of oppressions threw a wrench into feminist identity politics and into identity politics in general. Women came together to fight sexism—but then found that they were differentiated and polarized by other forms of oppression. Identity politics then caused feminist women to split along lines of race, class, and sexuality—in particular, because of the racism, homophobia, and classism they were enacting and experiencing in feminist groups. Black, lesbian, and working-class women formed separate groups in opposition to white, straight, and class-privileged women. Even these groups could and often did splinter further, based on differences in race, class, and sexuality. Instead of creating a united revolutionary subject like Marx’s working class, feminism and other social movements were pitting activists against one another, spawning in-fighting and divisiveness.
The way out of this quandary, which our movements found, was to expand our definition of feminism to oppose all forms of oppression that affect women. We came to see that feminists cannot be true and successful feminists if we do not simultaneously recognize and seek to eradicate the other forms of oppression that women face, both within our movement and in society at large. If feminists only focus on gender, we will not be seeking to liberate all women; we will only be seeking transformation that benefits race- and class-privileged women (Matthaei 1996).
The splintering of social movements during the 1980s and 1990s coincided with other developments that undermined URPE’s revolutionary vision. Neoliberalism’s attack on Keynesianism and the welfare state shifted the economic discourse to the right with their free market fundamentalism and assertions of TINA (There Is No Alternative!). Working-class power, centered in unions, declined precipitously. The Soviet Union, a model of the alternative to many, dissolved. It seemed that maybe capitalism had indeed won, as Francis Fukiyama (1992) triumphantly proclaimed in The End of History. In 1995, The Boston Globe published an article in the Sunday magazine section titled “The Last Marxists,” with photos of Sam Bowles and me below (Roche 1995)!
URPE, RPE, and the US Left in general are still reeling from these theoretical and historical assaults. However, capitalism’s failures are more and more evident, from the life-threatening effects of climate change to rapidly escalating income and wealth inequality, to the deadly effects of the prison-industrial complex on our African American population, to the capture of political power by billionaires. URPErs, RRPE, and RPE provide excellent analyses for all of these failures, but we need more than this: we need to provide progressive social movements with a theory of a superior economic alternative and a method for achieving it.
The good news is that a new revolutionary actor has emerged on the world stage—and along with it, a new vision of systemic economic transformation. In the remainder of this paper, I present this revised theory of revolution, discuss URPE and RPE’s roles in its development, and argue that this new way of thinking about systemic economic change should become an integral part of RPE.
4. From Identity Politics to Solidarity Politics: A New Revolutionary Actor, the Movement of Movements
Radical organizing against capitalism is not dead; it has simply morphed into a different kind of politics. One of the origins of this shift was the evolution of feminist theory and practice, in which Marxist-feminists were actively involved. As we have seen, feminists began to transcend a woman-centered identity politics and adopt a values-based, anti-all-forms-of-oppression politics.
At the same time, struggles against various forms of oppression were being brought together in a different way—as the different social movements began to come together in a “movement of movements.” The first big expression of the movement of movements in the United States was the “Battle of Seattle” anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations in 1999, in which women’s, ecology, worker’s, and other movements came together multinationally to protest neoliberal globalization policies, something that continues to this day (Brecher, Costello, and Smith 2000). Another platform of the movement of movements is the Social Forum movement, born in 2001, focused on the affirmation that “Another World Is Possible,” and based on a shared commitment to end all forms of exploitation and oppression (Fisher and Ponniah 2003). 5
As a revolutionary actor, the movement of movements, simultaneously, is grounded in and goes beyond the identity politics of revolution that Marx conceptualized and the social movements had adopted. In a capitalist world economy, which is based on multiple, interdependent forms of inequality and oppression, those oppressed by a particular inequality—be they workers, women, people of color, LGBTQ people, or people with disabilities—come together against that particular inequality and those privileged by it. Their organizing, in the first instance, is directly “against” those in the “privileged” group—capitalists, men, whites, heterosexuals, temporarily able-bodied. But to stay together and vital, such identity-based movements have to deal with intersectionality and take on the other oppressions that are affecting the members of their group. Otherwise, they will subordinate, alienate, and drive away subsets of their group who are oppressed—within and outside of their movement—by other inequalities. The ability to understand an issue from the point of view of all of the oppressed—not just a privileged subgroup—developed in this process has provided an important boost to the issue-oriented organizing that emerges out of and through social movements.
As this type of transformative sensibility has spread, progressive social movements are beginning to adopt solidarity politics, based on an anti-all-oppression value system, an ethics that opposes inequality in general. Even though activist groups prioritize particular forms of oppression or issues, they do their work with the awareness that all forms of inequality (gender, race, class, etc.) are problematic and need to be addressed within their groups, organizations, and society at large. Solidarity politics includes adopting the practice of placing members of oppressed subgroups in positions of power. It also means shifting from organizing in opposition to the privileged group (i.e., men, whites, capitalists) toward working across gender, race, and class divisions to eradicate sexism, racism, and class oppression, and transform “the system.” Men are welcome at the “Women’s March” and whites in “Black Lives Matter.” Finally, solidarity politics involves the construction of broad coalitions both among different parts of a movement and across different movements. As more and more progressive groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) adopt solidarity politics, the possibilities for such coalitions are multiple and the potential for unifying vast swathes of people is great, as was experienced in Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign.
So what we see emerging as a transformative actor in the twenty-first century is a diverse set of movements, each focusing on a particular issue or form of oppression, that are in increasing solidarity with each other and committed to eradicating all forms of inequality and oppression. The solidarity stance is so powerful that people in these movements begin to adopt an open-minded “growth mindset” (as one of my students called it) toward learning from others different from themselves about the latters’ experiences of oppression or about aspects of one’s own behavior—or the behavior of one’s own organization—that are being experienced as oppressive. The emerging solidarity politics is based on compassion for all people: it respects and cares about all human beings, values their experiences, and stands for and seeks a world that really achieves “liberty and justice for all,” in the words of the much-recited Pledge of Allegiance.
5. From Solidarity Politics to the Solidarity Economy
You will be wondering what all this has to do with revolutionary economic transformation, URPE, and RPE. The solidarity politics which has been developing in the United States and around the world over the past fifty years, and which URPE has helped articulate, is beginning to provide the foundation for a new economics: a solidarity economics. This provides URPE and RPE with a new vision of revolutionary transformation to replace or complement analyses of socialist revolution: the project of building the solidarity economy. By shifting our emphasis from identity politics to solidarity politics and adjusting our conceptual lenses away from traditional Marxist categories, it is possible to realize that we are actually on the path to a twenty-first-century kind of socialism, as it is called in Latin America. Not surprisingly, URPE members, radical political economists, and URPE-related institutions have played a key role in researching, teaching about, and organizing the solidarity economy in the United States.
There is space for only the briefest introduction to the solidarity economy here. For more, readers can find good US-centered overviews of the solidarity economy in the two edited collections of papers from solidarity economy sessions at the first US Social Forum (Allard, Davidson, and Matthaei 2008) and from the first US Forum on the Solidarity Economy (Kawano, Masterson, and Teller-Elsberg 2010). Peter Utting’s (2015) edited collection Social and Solidarity Economy: Beyond the Fringe provides an excellent overview and grounding, and socioecon.org has a large collection of articles, as does RIPESS.org, the website of the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy (in French, Réseau Intercontinental de Promotion de l’Économie Social Solidaire [RIPESS]).
The Marxist view of revolution, which has dominated RPE, presents capitalism as a monolithic system, characterized by the practice of worker exploitation in capitalist-owned firms. Revolution comes when workers, organized in unions, overthrow capitalists and seize control of the means of production, the country’s productive wealth. Thus, while there has always been some interest among radical economists in worker and consumer cooperatives and other cooperative and community-based institutions, they were generally ignored and not seen as revolutionary. However, in the 1980s, Luis Razeto of Chile and Jean Luis La Ville of France simultaneously but separately put forth a view of economic transformation that placed these already existing alternative economic institutions at its center. They coined the term solidarity economy to represent existent noncapitalist practices, many of them indigenous, as well as newly emerging ones, which embody solidarity values, and argued that the project of building the solidarity economy constitutes a revolutionary road beyond capitalism (Matthaei and Allard 2008).
The solidarity economy concept has spread and is now used to refer to a diverse array of economic practices and institutions around the world. It is connected to grassroots social movements, sometimes supported by government policy, and organized by a global network of networks, RIPESS. Other similar concepts being used include “new economy,” “social economy,” “community economy,” “social solidarity economy,” and “next system.” Institutions have been identified in every economic sector, and maps, such as solidarityeconomy.us, are being generated to make participants visible to one another and the public. It bears noting that solidarity economics is often undertaken without self-conscious alignment with the “solidarity economy” descriptor; indeed, a main aspect of solidarity economy organizing is raising awareness about the existence of solidarity economics and its potential for economic transformation.
By the 1990s, solidarity economy organizing and networking were already starting to flourish in Latin America, largely in response to the devastation wrought by neoliberalism. Key solidarity economy institutions and practices include peasant resistance to proletarianization, such as Villa Campesina, and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement), which occupies vacant land and uses it to form cooperative farming communities; the creation of worker cooperatives, often through factory takeovers; popular economic organizing to fill basic needs; and resistance to corporate encroachment, especially among indigenous peoples. Popular organizing has succeeded in incorporating solidarity economy into the Ecuadorian constitution and a similar concept, “Buen Vivir” or “Sumak Kawsay” (Good Living), into the Bolivian constitution, both based in cooperative sustainable indigenous economic values and practices (Poirier 2016). The Brazilian government under Lula and Rousseff actively promoted the solidarity economy through a national secretariat, Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária (National Secretariat for Solidarity Economy), and financial support for the Brazilian Forum on the Solidarity Economy, while the Venezuelan government under Chavez took active steps to grow worker-owned cooperatives and do democratic, community-based development (Aponte-Garcia 2010).
In the North, initiatives viewed as part of the solidarity economy have included some similar tactics, such as antieviction organizing; the occupying of vacant buildings and of land for community gardens, and an occasional factory take-over; and projects developing worker, consumer, and producer cooperatives. There is also a strong focus on social responsibility to others and to the earth, including fair trade, simple living, social entrepreneurship, socially responsible investment, the sharing economy, and corporate watch-dogging. Public policies that establish economic human rights to education, health care, and jobs, won through popular struggle in the Scandinavian countries, can also be seen as solidarity economy policies.
In the United States, URPE members and URPE-related institutions have played key roles in researching and promoting the solidarity economy. I only have space to note a few of these here. In 2006, a special issue of Dollars & Sense on the solidarity economy brought it to the attention of many RPE types, including me (Dollars & Sense and Grassroots Economic Organizing 2006). Emily Kawano, former URPE steering committee member and Director of the Center for Popular Economics, brought together a group of activists and activist academics to organize a track of sessions and meetings on economic alternatives and the solidarity economy at the first US Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007; those assembled founded the US Solidarity Economy Network (SEN). Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, a PhD RPE economist from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and I were both part of that group and have served on the SEN board, which Emily has coordinated. Emily and I each coedited (with others) the first two books in English on the solidarity economy, collections of papers and proceedings of the solidarity economy meetings in 2009 and 2007, respectively (Allard, Davidson, and Matthaei 2008; Kawano, Masterson, and Teller-Ellsburg 2010). Jessica’s book on solidarity economy practices and institutions in African American history, Collective Courage (Gordon-Nembhard 2014), has inspired solidarity economy organizing among low-income communities of color. And the Center for Popular Economics’ Summer Institutes have taught many activists about the concept of the solidarity economy.
While certain economic forms are widely viewed as part of the emerging solidarity economy—such as worker, producer, and consumer cooperatives; community currencies; community development credit unions; open-source software initiatives; community-supported agriculture programs; intentional communities; and fair trade—there are vast differences among the progressive economic practices and institutions being developed on the ground in communities around the world and advocated by solidarity economy analysts and activists. However, and significantly, rather than creating endless tensions and splintering as was the case in the old-school Left, different definitions and experiences of the solidarity economy are accepted, becoming a source of discussion and creative cross-fertilization within solidarity economy meetings, conferences, and writings. This is because those studying and promoting the solidarity economy focus their attention on the values embodied by particular economic practices, institutions, or policies, not the particular form they may take. Taking their cue from the World Social Forum movement, whose gatherings have played a major role in developing the solidarity economy framework and movement, those in the movement share the view of the solidarity economy as a rejection of, and alternative to, the neoliberal process of globalization from above and propose, instead, the globalization of solidarity from below. As the Zapatistas say, “Un solo NO, un million de SI” (only one “no” [to neoliberalism], a million “yeses”). Furthermore, they share an anti-all-oppressions value system that has been emerging from the movement of movements and the World Social Forum movement, which we have referred to as “solidarity politics.” The core values of the solidarity economy express the solidarity politics which has been developing over the past thirty years, along with RPE:
The
While very few solidarity economy practices and institutions embody all of these values, all embody at least one of them. Participation in solidarity economy networks and movements facilitates the adoption of more solidarity economy values and goals.
In sum, in the midst of our crisis-ridden world, constructed on an embattled and flailing economics of inequality, competition, and domination, a rich blossoming of solidarity economics—based in an emergent value system rooted in progressive social movements against inequality in all its forms—is happening under our noses all around the world. People involved in this new economics are beginning to find each other, link together, and cooperate in the solidarity economy movement, facilitated by interconnecting networks of NGOs. A recent example of this cooperation is the “Social Solidarity Economy Recommendations for the Post-2015 Development Agenda.” This statement, promoting solidarity economy strategies for the achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, was organized and put forward by RIPESS, which generated it through broad consultation with its membership. It was endorsed by thirty-nine global networks and organizations, thirty-nine continental or regional networks and organizations, and more than two hundred national networks and organizations (RIPESS 2014).
While the United States lags behind others in the development of the solidarity economy, especially Latin America and Europe, there are promising signs. In 2011, the Occupy Movement set up encampments in three hundred cities and made the concentrated wealth and power of the 1 percent common knowledge. In his 2016 presidential campaign, self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders gained widespread support, especially among younger voters, for his anti-all-oppression (gender, race, and class) and economic human rights platform. The Democratic Socialists of American (DSA) is growing rapidly and has created a working group on the solidarity economy, of which I am a member. Currently, the city of Jackson, Mississippi has adopted the solidarity economy as a framework for economic development (Akuno, Nangawaya, and Cooperation Jackson 2017), and the cities of New York and Cleveland have initiated development projects based in the creation of worker-owned and worker-run cooperatives (Community-Wealth.Org 2018; NYC Business 2018).
6. Looking Forward: Toward a Twenty-First-Century Theory of Economic Revolution
The solidarity economy framework, like Marxist theory, provides a revolutionary path forward, beyond capitalism, based on peoples’ struggles against oppressive economic practices and institutions. But it clearly differs from the Marxist view of revolution in a number of ways that reflect the influence of feminist, antiracist, and ecology movements and of the movement of movements, as well as learning from history. In the remainder of this article, I put forward some basic propositions about economic revolution in the twenty-first century, using the solidarity economy framework, and contrast them with Marx’s propositions. 6 My goal in doing so is to highlight the shifts that I am proposing to RPE’s understanding of systemic change, which has been dominated by the Marxist framework.
Proposition 1: From inequality to solidarity
It is helpful to look at the various forms of inequality together without attempting to privilege any of them as “the” primary one or any liberatory movement above the others, as Marx did with class. Race, class, gender, and other inequalities have common, interconnected roots in the “inequality paradigm” of economic and social life. The intersectionality of the various forms of oppression means that none can be properly addressed and transformed on its own. Together, though, systemic inequalities are generating a movement of movements for solidarity that is transforming every aspect of economic and social life.
Proposition 2: Capitalism as a hybrid between inequality and solidarity
While capitalism is deeply rooted in the inequality paradigm, it is also based on a radical attack on one aspect of the traditional inequality paradigm—the ascription of class position through birth—through its assertion of equal opportunity to compete for wealth in markets. Capitalism’s radical attack on ascribed difference and inequality by class is also progressive in that it has birthed other movements for equality, especially antiracism and feminism, which have questioned the very concepts on which race and gender inequality are based. It is important to realize that antidiscrimination/equal opportunity forms of struggle—which tend to take the capitalist class system as given—are necessary and transformative. They challenge key aspects of the inequality paradigm—ascription and the creation of difference and inequality between groups. But they do not go far enough.
Proposition 3: Equal opportunity organizing as necessary but not sufficient for transformation
As important as equal opportunity struggles are for social movements, radical political economy must point out that true liberation requires a much deeper overhaul of our economy, including of its core motor of narrow, competitive self-interest and profit-only motivation. Equal opportunity movement takes as given the class hierarchy itself, a hierarchy that also reproduces male and white privilege. Equal representation within an unequal and oppressive structure of production aimed at maximizing profits for owners and managers at the expense of workers, consumers, democracy, and the environment—with a wealth distribution based in a history of racial domination and an income distribution that devalues or simply does not value women’s traditional caring work—cannot and will not satisfy our need for a just and sustainable economy.
Proposition 4: The transformation of consciousness and values is key to revolution
Marx’s historical, dialectical materialist framework prioritized changes in the forces of production (i.e., technology) and the relations of production (i.e., ownership), viewing revolution from capitalism to socialism as workers taking control of the means of production from capitalists. Ideas and consciousness itself were “superstructural,” reflecting the base, which had primary importance in any transformation. Turning Marx and Hegel sideways and integrating ideas and materiality, I find it useful to conceptualize capitalism both as a worldview and stage of consciousness, and as a way of being, doing, and producing.
Capitalism is based on the social creation of co-determining systems of difference, inequality, dominance, and oppression between classes, genders, races, countries, parents and children, religions. . . and more. Ideas and concepts are key to this process. The solidarity paradigm is an intention, a direction, toward social justice, equality, freedom, and diversity. The emergent multiplicity of forms of the solidarity economy share, at their core, a set of egalitarian, cooperative, sustainable values, centered in compassion for one another and the earth, that are being generated and evolved by the movement of movements. This new solidarity consciousness rejects narrow, competitive self-interest and the profit motive. It calls all of us, privileged or oppressed by the various inequalities, to do what we can both individually and through organized movement to transform our economy toward solidarity. The anti-Trump movement expresses this shift in consciousness from inequality to solidarity as “build bridges, not walls” and “love, not hate.”
Proposition 5: From revolution to r/evolution
The solidarity economy framework recognizes that the development of an economy based on solidarity values cannot happen through a discrete, revolutionary event whereby the oppressed gain power. The emergence of this new, needed economy requires a paradigm shift: a transformation in every sphere (i.e., family, economy, and state) and on every dimension of oppression (i.e., race, class, gender, man/nature, etc.). It involves changes in our basic ways of understanding ourselves and in our relationships to others and to society. These changes require a process of societal learning and evolution over time, a process that has already been underway for fifty years, fueled by social movements (and learning from our mistakes!). The Boggs Center in Detroit uses the concept of r/evolution to capture this gradual, incremental, but ongoing qualitative transformation, which contrasts sharply with the traditional Marxist notion of revolution as an abrupt rupture from capitalism to a higher, socialist economy. We do not have to wait for the revolution—we are in the process of making the r/evolution.
An inequality-solidarity spectrum is a useful tool for conceptualizing and assessing such r/evolutionary change as it occurs unevenly across the world. Progress in eradicating each dimension of oppression—class, race, gender, man/nature—can be highlighted and compared among countries, cities, firms, economic sectors, or across time. The r/evolution and spectrum approach visibilizes significant differences that can serve as inspiration for all and put pressure on those who are “behind.” Bernie Sanders’s platform promises of guaranteed economic human rights to health care, education, childcare, and jobs available in Scandinavian countries are an example of such a r/evolutionary framing.
The concepts of r/evolution and paradigm shift are important to counteract the isolation and cooptation of individual reform efforts. Just as the movement of movements calls on its members to support one another’s intersectional struggles, so the solidarity economy progresses best if those building it are inspired and interconnected by the awareness that they are part of a larger movement for transformation.
Proposition 6: Markets are not the problem
I want to highlight another key way in which this analysis of transformation differs from that of Marx: its view of markets. The solidarity economy, r/evolution approach is based on highlighting qualitative progressive changes already occurring within market economies, alongside and sometimes even within capitalist institutions. These include the development of socially responsible forms of consumption, production, and investment; the development of solidarity institutions like worker-owned cooperatives, public banks, and community currencies; and the evolution of economic human rights.
Proposition 7: We build the roads as we travel
While the values that undergird the process of r/evolutionary transformation from inequality to solidarity are clear, it is equally clear that RPE cannot impose the particular forms of the developing solidarity economy—nor should we want to, if we could! These forms have and will come out of liberatory efforts and struggles to build economic institutions that meet our needs. As we can already witness, they vary widely depending on cultural and historical context, the primary inequalities being addressed, and the particularities of those inventing them.
7. Conclusion
In the words of Argentinian solidarity economist and organizer Jose Luis Coraggio (1997, cited in Miller 2006), “The viability of social transformation is rarely a fact; it is, rather, something that must be constructed.” This construction of social/economic transformation, I propose, needs to be an important part of URPE’s and RPE’s work going forward.
Fifty years ago, URPE came into existence as an expression of the vibrant social movements arising in the 1960s. It helped incorporate the perspectives of these movements and those that came after into a new kind of economics, RPE. This economics brought a sophisticated, multidimensional critique of capitalism, which has filtered back down to progressive social movements and helped lead to the development of solidarity politics and the solidarity economy in the United States, which URPE economists have then helped organize and visibilize.
Now, even more than in 1968, our country and world are in crisis, calling out for a way forward from greed to compassion, divisiveness to unity, inequality to solidarity, and environmental degradation to sustainability. And there is indeed an economic way forward, out of capitalism, that is being constructed in front of our eyes: a mature, globally interconnected but locally based movement of movements addressing every dimension of oppression, and a broad flowering of solidaristic economic initiatives, which are working to bring the values of those movements into the task of building an economy that can serve us all. URPE and RPE have the opportunity and challenge of bridging this gap between crisis and constructive response, connecting “critique” to “alternative,” and “resist” to “build.” It is a time that we can use our knowledge and positions to literally save the world. Just as all aspects of our economy need to be remade to express solidarity values, so do we all need to shift the context and content of our teaching and research to contribute to the shift from inequality to solidarity.
There is much work to be done, and current URPErs, RPE academic activists, and others working on the solidarity economy are stretched thin. The academic literature on the topic is still limited, especially in English. Much of the writing is in edited collections, or e-publications of activist nonprofits, and much of it is in Spanish, Portuguese, or French—so there is a real need for English-language research and writing on the solidarity economy, especially in academic journals. Since 1999, there have been only nine articles in RRPE that mention the solidarity economy—compared with 310 that mention socialism—and five of them were book reviews! There still is important work to be done in mapping the US solidarity economy and identifying newly emergent solidarity economy “best practices” both here and abroad that can be copied by others and adjusted to fit their needs. Another important research task is to evaluate solidarity economy practices and institutions critically and constructively from the perspective of solidarity values, impact, and feasibility.
Meanwhile, in the classroom, I urge every URPE faculty member to counterbalance their powerful critiques of capitalism with study of the hope-creating solidarity economy alternative practices and institutions, which exist in every sector of the economy.
By researching and teaching about the solidarity economy, URPErs can dispel the prevalent TINA view of economics, inspire our students and readers to become part of the r/evolution, and, in doing so, help make it happen. A fitting charge for our next half century!
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Lane Vanderslice for asking me to present a paper for the Union for Radical Political Economics’ retrospective session, “Thinking about the History of Radical Economics: Working People and the Organization of Production” at the 2015 Boston ASSA meetings (
), upon which this paper is based; Laurie Nisonoff and Paddy Quick for the invaluable help they gave me in constructing the history of women in URPE’s early years and of Marxist-feminism; Marianne Hill, Nan Wiegersma, June Lapidus, Sharon Leder, Paddy Quick, John Miller, Sing-Huen Morgan, Tesfatsion Medhanie, and Susan Reverby for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper; Germai Medhanie for his ongoing contribution to these ideas; Marlene Kim for her encouragement, patience, and advice; Shaianne Osterreich and Mark Klinedinst for their helpful suggestions; Enid Arvidson for her patience and support; Rebecca Pyeon for her excellent research assistance; and Marxist-Feminist I (MF1) for its key role in helping me develop these ideas, as well as providing ongoing sisterhood and support, for more than forty years.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
See, for example, the widely used radical economics textbook in the 1970s and 1980, The Capitalist System, edited by Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) economists Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and Thomas Weisskopf.
2
I have put this account together from somewhat differing information shared with me by Laurie Nisonoff, Marianne Hill, Nan Wiegersma, and Sing-Huen Morgan, some of it at the URPE at the ASSA’s session where I presented an early draft of this paper (Matthaei 2015). See also Nisonoff’s memoir in this issue.
3
I participated in a number of Women’s Caucus meetings and one summer in a caucus of three gay/lesbian URPErs. Germai Medhanie (personal interview and conversations with author), former URPE coordinator, remembers being in a Third World Caucus with Emily Kawano and Radhika Balakrishnan; Marlene Kim (personal correspondence with author) recalls that Anwar Shaikh and Lourdes Beneria were also members of this caucus.
4
Again, I know this through experience. While a graduate student at Yale, I helped organize the New Haven Socialist-Feminist Union, and attended the National Socialist-Feminist conference at Antioch in 1975.
6
I develop this argument in much more detail in my forthcoming book, From Inequality to Solidarity: Co-Creating a New Economics for the 21st Century.