Economia solidária, o novo espírito do capitalismo e o governo das subjetividades: uma análise do discurso dos trabalhadores do assentamento Coqueirinho

Abstract

This work aims to understand how discourses of workers of solidarity collective enterprises help reproduce the social order characteristic of the last capitalism (since 1970). According to the New Sociology of Capitalism, each version of the model of capitalist production has been accompanied by an ideology that justifies it. This ideology, called the "spirit of capitalism", is transformed by the criticisms that it receives. A new spirit, then, arises, as a result of the relationship between the former spirit and the criticism that is only partially met, and, hence, loses its demanding power. The new spirit of capitalism arises in response to criticism from the 1960s and is based on networking, flexibility and the incentive for the empowerment of individuals. From the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, the new spirit of capitalism is an order of discourse that constrains the discourse of social actors whilst being constrained by it. This order of discourse can, thus, be incorporated into the discourse of the subjects in its various roles, be it of representation, of inter(action) or identification, and this is what allows its reproduction. Solidarity Economy has been adopted by the last governments (2002 - 2013) as a strategy for solving the "social issue". Considering the close link between the State and the maintenance of hegemonic orders, it is clear that these incentives from the Federal Government to solidarity collective enterprises have been presented as one of the manifestations of the incorporation of elements of criticism that benefit capitalist restructuring. Our argument lies in the response to three working hypotheses: the first concerns the correspondence between the discourse of Solidarity Economy and the criticism to the second spirit of capitalism, since they share the claims developed by both the labor movements of the nineteenth century and the social movements of the 1960s; the second advocates the closeness between the speech of solidarity economy workers and the ideologies that have justified the new spirit of capitalism; and the third consists in the understanding of Solidarity Economy as a strategy for the government of subjectivities, once it promotes the feeling of empowerment in the solidarity worker that ceases his motivation for criticism. We conducted an ethnographic approach in an association of farmers settled in the state of Ceará, which functions along the lines of Solidarity Economy. The research corpus was obtained from field diaries, made from participant observation and interviews, and analyzed through Critical Discourse Analysis. It was concluded that the State ambiguously engages in overcoming poverty and unemployment and in neoliberal forms of management that generate inequality. The relationship between the solidarity worker and the State is contradictory because, while the first develops productive activities aimed at autonomy regarding the latter, their speech points to the dependence on the incentives granted by it. Lastly, there is inconsistency between the workers’ precarious condition and their feelings of autonomy, freedom and security.