The uniqueness of solidarity entrepreneurship in the fight against social exclusion

The paper aims to bring evidence that the solidarity economic undertakings, based on voluntary association, productive cooperation and self-management, employ a singular rationality, different from the capitalistic one. Due to this, the solidarity economy can be considered an alternative to generate income, face poverty and break the social logic of inequalities, since it promotes the protagonism of the poor, needed by political interventions in this field to achieve efficiency and generate decent work. The paper discusses this subject by analyzing evidences brought up by qualitative researches and by the final data of the first Brazilian national mapping of Solidarity Economy. Comparing the general characteristics of Brazilian companies registered in the national statistics with the solidarity economy enterprises, certain singularities stand up, such as the tendency of the solidarity enterprises to protect jobs and hold equalitarian principles regarding income and benefits arising from their economic activities. Despite their weaknesses and limitations, these experiences reveal the existence of a particular associative kind of entrepreneurship, guided simultaneously by economic and social objectives. This provides convincing empirical arguments as to adopt a specific approach about the entrepreneurship in the context of the solidarity economy and, under certain aspects, in the broader context of the small enterprises. The paper underlines that the role played by self-management and cooperation must be considered, as it leads to an alternative model, contrasting from the conventional patterns in terms of understanding and fullfiling the needs of the popular economy and its capacity to generate income and welfare.