Economia solidária X lutas de classes: a superação do capitalismo segundo Paul Singer

Abstract

We approach solidarity economy as a concept developed by Paul Singer in relation to the Marxist category of “class struggle”. We seek to understand part of the theoretical path followed by the author, path that led him to insert the type of cooperativism defined today by the expression “solidarity economy” as a way to “overcome” capitalism. Singer goes through the denial of the differences between reform and revolution, the denial of the political organization around the end of private property and the control of the state machine by part of the class surviving from their own work. When he puts the solidarity economy as a contemporary way to institutionalize “socialism”, the author not only denies the political organization action enclosed in a project for an alternative society but also gives a particular meaning to the socialism idea. He is grounded in a non-Marxist view of the antagonism amongst social classes, especially through the rejection of the category totality. On the other hand, we also recover part of the debate that is abandoned when it is presupposed that a radical transformation of society is only possible coming from the individual, of the individual consciences, when it is assumed that social classes are solely economic categories, mainly extinct by the productive restructuration of capitalism and neoliberal regulation model.