Building an Alternative to Capitalism From the Ground Up

Do We Really Need a New Economy?

It’s hard to look at rising inequality and rising temperatures, shrug one’s shoulders, and say the present economy is fine as it is. But it’s one thing to critique the old, and another to actually build something new. Reformists see solidarity economy efforts as a way to ​“fix” capitalism; for some socialists, they’re a stopgap to help people get by until the Left seizes the state. But some enthusiasts see the solidarity economy as both the means and the end: a bottom-up, fully functioning economy outside of capitalism, eventually replacing it entirely.

So, Does It Work?

Plenty of individual worker co-ops (around 300 in the U.S.), community gardens and other solidarity economy institutions are flourishing. Many, too, struggle to take off in the capitalist marketplace — traditional funding sources aren’t always too enthused about the whole ​“people and planet over profit” thing. But various organizations are experimenting with alternative finance methods, and groups like the New Economy Coalition are trying to link these scattered efforts into a larger, more resilient movement. Nowhere has this vision been fully realized, but advocates from Jackson, Miss., to Cleveland to Barcelona are making progress.