Travel Many Paths

There is no one path to a solidarity economy. Creating different economic practices requires creativity, a willingness to experiment, and the humility to fail and try again.

When a solution is working, it can be tempting to think that it is the only way, and to stop believing in or supporting anything else. But there are no easy answers in this work. Just because something is working in one community doesn’t mean that it will work elsewhere. Nor does it mean that it’s the only—or even the best—way to solve a certain problem.

When we elevate one path above others, we can become overly invested in the success of that path and less open to critical feedback. This is a losing strategy. Every solution deserves our loving critique and patience, especially the ones with the most promise. Any beautiful solution should welcome this kind of scrutiny. If not, it will eventually fail to live up to its expectations anyway.

We need to weave many different strategies together to solve our biggest problems. Trying to create one grand solution is more likely to fail. Building multiple solutions that reinforce one another increases the resilience of the whole. As conditions change, diversity creates more opportunities for adaptation.

Part of practicing resilience is learning to be comfortable with seeing others do things differently. This requires humility, respecting that other people may have answers that we don’t. Communitiy approaches to this work will be impacted by local cultures and histories. Some will be more willing to use direct action. Some will be more likely to work with governments or enter into strategic partnerships with large companies. Everyone will use different words. As long as the choices they’re making are not a major threat to our people and our places, many different approaches are worth considering.

Even within a single community, individuals and groups may take different paths to achieve shared goals. This can produce competitiveness, especially in our capitalist context. But we can also recognize that experimentation contributes to the knowledge and experience of the community, which gets passed on and makes it stronger. As long as a path doesn’t actively get in the way of other paths, or oppose our values, we should give it the chance to grow and flourish. Some paths will succeed. Many will fail. The best will make more room for other solutions to be possible. Our job is to learn from all of it and apply that learning to the new paths we travel together.