Latin America

This chapter offers a framework for analyzing the “ecological problem” that should be useful to those seeking to make sense of the economic aspect of the current planetary crisis. Razeto summarizes the crisis, considers the importance and insufficiency of existing approaches at the level of the State and Civil Society, and the difficulty of controlling nature and then offers a “theory of the ecological question” that focuses on the economy and its “mode of action and organization.”

In this chapter Razeto examines a question that has been central for the vast majority of people in the world: the question of development. Like many before him, Razeto questions the meaning of development and the objectives sought, opposing an alternative “desirable development” to the dominant model centered on industrialization, capital accumulation, and structural inequality.

Having previously identified the participation of workers in decision-making as the key to the emergence of solidarity in labor and the recuperation of work’s “rich meaning and content,” Razeto deepens and expands his analysis of participation and self-management. A “bottom-up” analysis of management, power, and authority – understood as a gift the subordinated make to those in power – enables a powerful critique of centralization, bureaucracy, delegation, and co-optation.

In this chapter, Razeto explores the human meaning of work and its social organization, showing how this fundamental creative process has been impoverished and expropriated under a regime of dependency and wage labor.

In this chapter, which should be of special interest to activists and organizers working in non-profit organizations aiming to contribute to social justice and transformation, Razeto addresses the role of charitable donations, foundations, and the “intermediary organizations” – typically non-profits – that transform grants and donations into goods and services for the beneficiaries.

In this chapter, Razeto introduces the first solidarity economy road, which starts with the self-organized economic activities of people living in poverty, on the margins of the dominant economy. After describing the reality of poverty and marginalization, Razeto defines the term “popular economy,” traces its structural causes, and explains its relation to solidarity economy.

The need for a solidarity economy. Translated from Spanish.