ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what people term the neoliberal pivot of the social economy regarding diverse efforts to construct a social and solidarity economy. It discusses the history of cooperativism in the region, relating it to both the capitalist development process and diverse experiences with workers' self-management and subsequent efforts to construct a social economy. The chapter describes the concept and various projects of a social and solidarity economy within a strategy of community-based local development. It explains the apparent vibrancy of the manifest efforts across the region to construct a social and solidarity economy derives from the fact that this economy is functional for both capitalismand the anti-capitalist movement. The neoliberal agenda based on the Washington consensus on the virtues of free market capitalism was short-lived. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the project of a social and solidarity economy under construction in Venezuela within the institutional and policy framework of the Bolivarian Revolution.
