1.3 Resourcing the solidarity economy For many years, impassioned activists have been making reasonable arguments about the need for a Green New Deal, or pointing out how the Military industrial complex does not increase the security of ordinary people.
But no argument seems to divert the constant flow of money towards what Buckminster Fuller called life-sustaining projects from war, bureaucracy, decadence, and propping up insolvent banks. Governments who used to provide essential infrastructure now expect private companies to build everything with private capital. Private capital flows on the basis of profitability alone, its dearth of ethics being applauded by neoliberal fundamentalists.
The assumption that the market will meet all needs, means the ones who can’t even get to the market are discounted, left to charities and do-gooders. Similarly environmental, spiritual, cultural, and humanitarian projects with no intention to make a profit are regarded as marginal, more so in an economic ‘downturn’.
The situation is further hindered by laws which prevent the unemployed from volunteering, and nonprofits from taking unpaid volunteers. Not to deny the importance of money, many organisations are failing to tap into a wealth of resources lying idle in their communities. Pensioners, lonely and bored, people on sick pay who can work but maybe not take responsibility, and even unemployed could be engaged discreetly. What is lacking is the organisation to put volunteers in useful work the emotional hooks to motivate them, and the means to reward volunteers, whether it be a sense of ownership or entitlement, or the ability to access goods and services.
In short, as the formal economy shrinks, valuable labour and all kinds of resources are left idle as need grows. The solidarity economy can grow by matching the unmet needs and unused resources, which is one of the core messages of timebanking. Insofar as money is NOT used, producers own their produce, and need submit neither accounts nor tax returns, nor repay debt nor comply with all kinds of legislation. We have some examples, some templates and tools, mostly not very modern, of what such an economy can look like. The cooperative movement has been huge. Great solidarity is witnessed in the aftermath of natural disasters. There are ecovillages, social enterprises, charity also has a role to play. But all the pieces are scattered
To conclude this section I invite you to consider Chilean economist Manfred Max Neef’s vision of a bottom up financial system:
The financial institutions that may be concerned with local financing of Human Scale Development must state goals and forms of operation going far beyond conventional principles. In the first place, these institutions must promote local creativity and support community initiatives that are organized through solidarity, horizontal and equitable relationships. Second, they must encourage the greatest possible circulation of money at the local level. This means attracting locally generated surpluses and making them circulate as many times as possible within the local space, thus increasing the multiplier effect of a given level of deposits and savings. Third, these institutions must adjust themselves so that the savers, or the generators of surpluses, may decide on the use of their resources, thus allowing for a greater transparency in the relationship between saver and investor that may, in turn, promote greater participation in activities devoted to making development alternatives in the local space more viable. Fourth, these financial institutions must be managed in a cooperative way by people in the community itself, which means that the management should also be local in origin. Finally, if the local financial institution is to gain credibility, it must be protected against any potential liquidity crisis. Who among us even knows how to build a financial institution? Before that we need to re-learn how to trust and cooperate, how to give and receive, how to put down our own projects to move further, faster with others’.