On 18 October 1995, the document Pour l’économie solidaire (For Solidarity Economy) was published in the French national daily newspaper Le Monde.
On the morning of October 18, I was in France on a France-Quebec collaboration mission in the field of employment. Before boarding the train (or the metro), I bought the edition of the day. I had a very pleasant surprise when I saw this article.
For me, it was the first time I read a text on the solidarity economy. When I read it, I understood that it corresponded to my vision, and that of many other actors I knew, in Quebec and in France. I knew some of the individuals or organizations that signed endorsed the document..
This is most likely the first time that the solidarity economy as a concept has been published in a major national daily, whether in France or elsewhere.
As it is a very important document that marks the origins of the solidarity economy, which part of the Social and Solidarity Economy movement supports, it is relevant to republish this text, with a translation into English and Spanish.
Since the copy I had was from a microfilm (I had lost the original copy), this version is transcribed in document format for translation, excerpts, etc.
Yvon Poirier
RIPESS
Original
For solidarity economy
Published in Le Monde, October 18, 1995
The reference to the solidarity economy is spreading in the speeches. We are primarily concerned by this phenomenon as members of networks, which, despite their heterogeneity, seem to us to be part of this solidarity economy perspective. In our actions, we concretely confront the problems they raise and the progress it makes through the creation and operation of children-parents-professional collectives for young children, places of expression and artistic activities, multicultural neighborhood restaurants, neighborhood job initiatives for young people, and many other solidarity enterprises and services in various sectors of activity. All the achievements emanating from these networks that have emerged in the last twenty years now represent tens of thousands of employees and volunteers. The gradual spread of the concept of solidarity economy is a source of joy because it helps to publicize thousands of experiences whose action is little publicized. But this enthusiasm comes at the price of confusion: it can have serious consequences by maintaining the vagueness of an approach which, for us, refers to a choice of society.
The solidarity economy is first and foremost the refusal to consider that the only solution would be to allow a market economy to flourish freed from as many constraints as possible, while broadening the scope of corrective social actions to heal the wounds.
In other words, the solidarity economy would not be dressed up in a more dignified term than the measures for the social treatment of unemployment which have been used in recent years on a massive scale (let us remember that there were more than 600000 employment-solidarity contracts in 1994), nor the measures aimed at employing people who would be declared unemployable in a so-called normal economy. Nor would the solidarity economy be confused with other forms of economy in a kind of catch-all sector that would legitimize the “wage condition”: whether it is with the charity economy – which presents the possibility of substituting solicitude for law – taking us back more than a century when philanthropy wanted to relieve misery by moralizing the poor, or with the integration economy when the latter, conceived solely as a tool for transition and as a gateway to the market economy, is in fact constituted as an autonomous sector; or the informal economy which only allows the survival of the most disadvantaged without allowing them to regain a foothold in the life of the city. In short, the solidarity economy can in no way constitute a “broom economy ” that would pick up those left behind by competitiveness. On the contrary, it shows the desire to reconcile initiative and solidarity, whereas these two values have very often been separated: the economy, the enterprise and the social sector, sharing. The purpose of this text is therefore to propose a definition of the solidarity economy likely to capitalize on its achievements and to specify its challenges. Indeed, it seems to us that reflection on practices is the only way to arrive at a relevant conception of the solidarity economy, which prevents it from appearing as a « gadgetized » expression, arousing a passing craze and quickly replaced by another mode just as ephemeral.
Common characteristics
Solidarity economy initiatives are very diversified, driven by actors from different socio-professional backgrounds, but they nevertheless have converging features:
People freely join in to carry out joint actions that contribute to the creation of economic activities and jobs while strengthening social cohesion. The entrepreneurial spirit shown by the promoters involved in it cannot be explained by the expectation of a return on investment but is based on the search for new relationships of solidarity and quality through the activities carried out;
The economic activities created cannot succeed within the framework of “all liberalism”, nor in that of an “administered economy”. In fact, success stories show that they are sustainable and consolidated under good conditions when they are based on a balanced combination of different resources (market resources obtained from the proceeds of sales, non-market resources from redistribution, monetary resources from voluntary contributions), and when they succeed in establishing a complementarity between professionalized companies and forms of voluntary commitment. Such achievements therefore have a scope that goes beyond job creation alone. It is a process of recompositing between the economic, social and political spheres;
On the economic level, they suggest a “plural” approach. By promoting the hybridization of market and non-market economies, monetary and non-monetary, these achievements go against the dominant one-dimensional logic that leads to the compartmentalization of the different registers of the economy. Their code of ethics commits them to refuse the systematic use of intermediate statuses or the trivialization of domestic jobs, synonymous with “odd jobs”. Their creativity leads them to structure activities in a collective framework organized to guarantee the quality of services and jobs;
On the social level, these achievements allow the production of local, voluntary, and chosen solidarity. They have the virtue of activating networks that are all the more important because they are part of a world where the phenomenon of isolation, anomie, withdrawal or withdrawal into identity is multiplying. In this way, they escape a community model under the tutelage of imposed traditions and customs and bearers of solidarity. On the contrary, they are the result of a solidarity committed and freely chosen, where personal relationships go hand in hand with the equality of the participants in collective action;
At the political level, they contribute to making democracy more alive, by seeking the expression and participation of everyone, regardless of their status (employee, volunteer, user, etc.), which is not opposed to citizenship of delegation and representation, but on the contrary reinforces it. The political dimension of the solidarity economy, too often forgotten, is not the least important. This initiative constitutes local “public spaces”, i.e. places where people can speak, debate, decide, develop and implement economic projects in response to concrete problems they encounter. In this regard, we can speak of a contribution to the civil bond, to democratic sociability and everyday citizenship.
Thus, at a time when the market dynamic is no longer sufficient to provide work for all, the initiatives of the solidarity economy making it possible to make the economic sphere more accessible and to “re-embed” it in social life while avoiding the solution of an “occupational” sector for the unemployed or that of job creation at all costs in a sector whose criterion of social utility would be defined centrally, with the risk of arbitrariness that this entails. The social utility of the activities or jobs thus created is validated and legitimised by a real local debate involving all the stakeholders. The solidarity economy can thus contribute to being one of the components of the modern economy. This is one of the possible paths of modernity, that of the reconstruction of lived and public spaces and solidarity around the choice of economic activity that are based on the plurality of economic registers.
THE CONDITIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT
Calls for a reformulation of employment and social policies are multiplying. The emblematic policies of the 80s, whether they concern the city or integration, are in search of a second wind. But the blockages persist. On the one hand, the question of employment is always thought of separately, without articulating it with the reconstruction of social and political ties. On the other hand, while there is a broad consensus on the need to renew policy, methods are lacking.
In fact, we are unable to get out of a deadlocked situation: on the one hand, programmes that go down to target audiences, which apply uniformly regardless of the territories concerned, and on the other hand, local activity projects, which are not considered only as singular and unproductive attempts, and as such could not give rise to real recognition by the institutions. This divide is sterilizing major programs are expensive for finance because, while they induce the well-known windfall and substitution effects, projects anchored in reality do not find appropriate support because the desire for autonomy generates the mistrust of funders and their characteristics never fit into the delimited “administrative boxes” that are finite nationally. Programme logic and project logic are most often opposed. Our conviction is that, in the face of the problems our country is experiencing, it is time to stop this mess.
If the achievements of the solidarity economy have been established over the past two or three decades despite a largely unfavourable context, it is because they are the bearers of collective dynamics, new modes of organisation and innovative proposals. All that remains is for them to come together to explain, synergize and amplify their respective advances. It therefore leads to finding new modes of collective action that would not proceed from political action alone, but from a new social pact encouraging cooperation between the public authorities and civil society. The redeployment of the intervention of the welfare state and the affirmation of the collective purpose of projects go hand in hand.
In this perspective, it seems urgent to find ways of recognising solidarity economy initiatives and networks that both preserve their autonomy – a guarantee of their productivity – and provide them with support commensurate with their contribution to social cohesion and job creation. This text is the first collective expression from various networks that wish to give themselves the means to speak publicly in a way that respects their identity.
This is why we call on the actors who recognize themselves in the solidarity economy to meet, to consult each other in order to get to know each other better and to develop, on the basis of the acquired experiences and obstacles encountered, proposals that can be submitted to the public authorities.
This appeal is signed by: Josette Combes, Solange Passaris (Accep); Children-Parents-Professionals Collective (Acepp); Madeleine Hersent (ADEL); Multicultural activities developed by women; Agostino Burrini (ADSP); Local relay, Burgundy region; Jean Fregnac; Guy Michel; Yvon Trémel, first vice-president of the Côte d’Armor general council; ADSP; Development Assistance Network for Community Services; Annie Berger, Regional Association for the Development of the Solidarity Economy Lower Normandy; France Joubert (CFDT), regional secretary general of Poitou-Charentes; Charles Bouzols (Cnrlq), network of neighbourhood initiatives (régies de quartiers); Jacques Gautrat, council of Le Flamboyance, Picardy plateau; Bernard Eme; Jean-Louis Laville (Crida), Community Futures Development Network, Christian Tyrgat (Giepp); network of solidarity companies in the North region, Bruno Collin (Opal); structures of artistic practice and dissemination; Jacques Archimbaud, alternative and solidarity economy network RÉAS); Françoise Giret, Poitou-Charentes children-parents collective (Gicep).
