How do we move beyond incremental reforms to real changes that transform the system?

Our solutions need to meet the scale of the problems our communities are facing. But how? These problems are so immense and interlinked that it can seem like fixing something in one area just creates another problem somewhere else. One of the most frequent critiques of the solidarity economy is that anything we build won’t be powerful enough to contend with the economic power of multinational corporations burning the planet and exploiting workers.

It’s true that a single project—or even all of our projects put together—won’t bring about the solidarity economy our communities need. But the point is not to add up all of our projects or deploy a single global solution. The point is to cause a sea change, a shift in culture that can transform the world. We are not alone in this. As builders and cleaners, teachers and artists, healers and scientists, planners and engineers, we can channel our collective brilliance into imagining and creating a livable future. We are growing our solutions within and alongside powerful movements that are mobilizing millions of people to put an end to oppressive regimes and claim sovereignty over their land and livelihoods. We are connecting and weaving our solutions, creating networks where our cooperatives and community projects can work together and support one another. If we do all this, we can create a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

We feel pressure to compromise and accept policies that improve things for some without addressing root causes. Or we replicate solutions from elsewhere without considering the specific context that allowed the solution to thrive in the first place. How do we resist the impulse to compromise and demand what we actually need? How do we create solutions that are both visionary and designed to confront the root causes of harm in our communities?

We need to discern between what moves us closer to the world we want and what might co-opt or undermine our vision. Some solutions are ready to be tried elsewhere. Some compromises are worthwhile. Some political reforms might not get us to where we need to go but change something about the underlying rules of society, making transformative change more possible. The philosopher André Gorz spoke of “non-reformist reforms”—seemingly small achievements that point toward, not against, more radical change. On the other hand, some projects might have all the right intentions—and even look transformative from the outside—but in reality make problems worse, contributing to gentrification and displacement, exploiting the people they are meant to serve, or setting communities up for disappointment by having unrealistic expectations. We must turn our attention to the details of the projects we are building, while simultaneously thinking bigger. We must get better at learning from the times that our projects don’t live up to their commitments, or even cause harm.

Transformative change requires us to envision thriving local economies in relationships of balance and reciporcity with each other and the rest of the living world.