Aslıhan Aykaç, Dayanışma Ekonomileri: Üretim ve Bölüşüme Alternatif Yaklaşımlar, Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2018, 280 pp. ISBN: 978-605-316-144-8.
Aslıhan Aykaç’s Dayanışma Ekonomileri is a study that examines the possibilities and limitations of alternative economic practices that reorganise production and distribution on the basis of solidarity in the face of the globalisation of capitalist production. Addressing alternatives that have emerged in different parts of the world against globalisation’s claim that “there is no alternative,” the book approaches them not as a single, complete model intended to replace capitalism, but as plural forms of organisation arising from different social and local conditions. Rather than describing an ideal economic system for the future, the study therefore investigates how existing and emerging practices of solidarity function and to what extent they can be transformative.
One of the book’s fundamental points of departure is the idea that other forms of economic and social organisation are possible beyond the binary of the capitalist market and the state. Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s approach to the social consequences of the market and the “double movement,” Aykaç discusses the limits of a cycle in which inequalities and crises generated by the market are addressed solely through state intervention. Solidarity economies, by contrast, are considered as alternatives that reconnect production and distribution, proceed from local needs and social relations, and create possibilities for participation and democratic organisation.
Aykaç develops this discussion around the axes of production, distribution, workplace democracy, and labour solidarity. Examining the consequences of neoliberal globalisation, from global value chains and economic crises to increasing inequalities, the privatisation of social services, and austerity policies, the book does not restrict the question of economic alternatives to different forms of ownership. How production is organised, how the value created is distributed, how workers participate in decision-making processes, and how new forms of solidarity can be established in response to changing labour relations are all treated as parts of the same analytical framework. The organisation of the book’s chapters around production, distribution, workplace democracy, and labour relations also reflects this approach.
Within this framework, workplace democracy emerges as an important political and organisational dimension of solidarity economies. Rather than limiting democracy to institutions of political representation, Aykaç shows that economic life and the workplace must also be regarded as spheres to be democratised. Horizontal organisation, local representation, and workers’ participation in decision-making processes are considered not only as means of resolving workplace problems but also as elements of a broader democratic practice. At the same time, the traditional divisions between the sociology of work and industrial relations are questioned, and the book argues for considering together the fragmentation of workplaces, changing employment relations, the transformation of trade-union organisation, and emerging forms of labour solidarity.
The book connects its theoretical discussion with concrete experiences of solidarity economies and organisation in different parts of the world. Experiences ranging from the Zapatista movement and Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) to factories occupied by workers and transformed into cooperatives in Argentina and various forms of community economies are incorporated into the discussion. The book’s case studies examine Mondragon, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, New Labor in the United States, and Pankobirlik in Turkey. It thus demonstrates that the solidarity economy cannot be reduced to a single institutional form or to cooperatives alone, but can take different forms ranging from workers’, women’s, and producers’ organisations to local solidarity networks.
Dayanışma Ekonomileri is significant because it discusses alternative forms of economic organisation without romanticising them, considering together their position in relation to the capitalist market and the state, their transformative potential, and their limitations. From the perspective of workers’ control and self-management, its discussions of the democratisation of production, workplace democracy, and new forms of labour solidarity are particularly noteworthy. The book thus provides a comprehensive framework for understanding solidarity economies not merely as initiatives that mitigate the negative consequences of the market, but as plural practices that explore how more democratic, participatory, and solidaristic relations can be established across different spheres of economic life, from production and distribution to labour relations and decision-making processes.