Matt Noyes
@MNoyes

Luis Razeto Migliaro is a leading theorist and practitioner of solidarity economy in Latin America whose work is not widely known in the English-speaking world. Solidarity economy, a term coined by Razeto in the 1980s., is a form of economy -- production, distribution, and consumption -- in which relations of solidarity and cooperation are the basis of organization of enterprises and economic activity, with a different economic rationality than that which predominates in capitalism.

In this book Razeto writes for groups of people intending to create a solidarity enterprise – a business that will function in the real world – for whom he provides an educational and organizing framework for self-organization. There are no teachers here, the manual is designed for collective self-study. But it is not just a workbook or collection of forms to complete; it contains theoretical texts that address some of the most challenging problems of cooperative economic organizing. This is learning by doing, but also doing by learning, a form of economic practice that is simultaneously and self-consciously a learning process.

Razeto's work deserves to be better known. This book should be of use to community activists, labor organizers, social entrepreneurs, co-op developers, and others interested in developing social and economic justice.

Matt Noyes is translating Creación de Empresas Asociativas y Solidarias over the course of 2020, publishing one chapter at a time on the website of Grassroots Economic Organizing (https://geo.coop), available free of charge, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Donations will go to support Matt's translation work. The published chapters are here: https://geo.coop/articles/how-create-solidarity-enterprise

Matt Noyes is a long time movement educator based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. He has been a researcher and practitioner in worker education, union democracy, and worker cooperatives for over 20 years and received a Masters in Economía Social y Organización Cooperativa from Mondragón University.