Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Implications for Central and Eastern Europe

The author argues that while Central and Eastern Europe has a long tradition of informal mutual help and solidarity practices, these have historically functioned as 'bottom-up subsidies' to capital by absorbing the costs of social reproduction. The paper suggests that for a modern solidarity economy to be emancipative in this region, it must move beyond mere survival strategies and address the hierarchical, patriarchal, and extractive nature of existing informal networks.

• In Central and Eastern Europe, practices of mutual help and informal economy are not new post-2008 developments but are rooted in local traditions of survival during frequent crises and dispossessions.
• The region's history includes a 'semi-proletarian household' system during socialist industrialisation, where formal wages were supplemented by subsistence farming and informal sources to support industrial labour.
• Informal economic activities during the late stages of state socialism, often termed the 'second economy', functioned to absorb the costs of the global crisis of the 1970s rather than to facilitate a market transition.
• Post-1990 transition crises led to a bifurcated informal sector: grassroots solutions for everyday survival at the bottom and the localisation of multinational companies at the top.
• Existing solidarity practices, such as urban-rural food networks, can inadvertently sustain capitalist integration by reducing reproduction costs and optimizing family expenses for the benefit of capital.
• Informal and household-based exchanges in the region are often characterized by hierarchical and patriarchal relations, where unpaid labour is frequently divided by gender roles.
• Global capitalist accumulation relies on the fact that capital does not pay the full costs of labour reproduction, forcing people to create alternative subsistence sources that act as a subsidy to capital.

APA

Gagyi, A. (2019). Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Implications for Central and Eastern Europe. Green European Journal. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/solidarity-economy-and-the-commons-implications-for-central-and-eastern-europe/

Chicago

Gagyi, Agnes. Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Implications for Central and Eastern Europe. Green European Journal, 2019. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/solidarity-economy-and-the-commons-implications-for-central-and-eastern-europe/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gagyi |first1=Agnes |title=Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Implications for Central and Eastern Europe |publisher=Green European Journal |date=10 April 2019 |url=https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/solidarity-economy-and-the-commons-implications-for-central-and-eastern-europe/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gagyi2019solidarity, author = {Gagyi, Agnes}, title = {{Solidarity Economy and the Commons: Implications for Central and Eastern Europe}}, institution = {Green European Journal}, year = {2019}, month = apr, url = {https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/solidarity-economy-and-the-commons-implications-for-central-and-eastern-europe/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }