21/11/2025
AI Translation from original text in Portuguese
with minor adjustments.
The contemporary crisis of capitalism is not conjunctural but structural, derived from the contradiction between the accelerated development of productive forces (automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence) and the social relations of production based on wages and private accumulation.
This contradiction progressively reduces the wage mass, contracts solvent demand, and forces the system to adopt mechanisms for socializing value for its own survival.
The article analyzes two possible responses: the artificial maintenance of demand, through unsustainable debt, and the social distribution of produced value, through public funds and associative forms—particularly cooperatives and Solidarity Economic Circuits (SEC).
It demonstrates that countries advancing the transition towards associative, self-managed, and solidarity-based relations achieve greater resilience and economic prosperity, in contrast to those resisting transformation, which experience a deepening of the crisis, unemployment, and organized crime.
Finally, it proposes the progressive demonetization of solidarity interchanges through blockchain platforms and the conscious expansion of the gift economy as concrete and contradictory paths to advance in overcoming capitalism, allowing a growing part of production and use-values to be distributed according to socially determined needs, instead of being subordinated to the logic of capital valorization.
The current crisis of capitalism can result both in its systemic reconfiguration — through its adaptation to the new stage of development of productive forces marked by automation based on artificial intelligence and robotics — and in a transition to an associative, self-managed, and solidarity-based economic regime, in a process of real economic liberation for societies as a whole.
In this exposition, we will address only some aspects of this crisis, dealing with some systemic cracks in capitalism, showing that countries that resist this transition face increasing difficulties, while those open to change are achieving better results.
We will see how alternatives of social, popular, and solidarity economies can advance in processes of liberating productive forces, interchange [intercâmbio] 1, and credit for the realization of good-living for all — that is, to ensure the exercise of public and private freedoms exercised ethically, with the fair participation of all in the use of material (economic and ecological) means, power (political and social), and knowledge (information, communication, and education).
We will analyze the crisis of capital from the contradiction between capital and wage labor. The development of productive forces corresponds, to a large extent, to the incorporation of living labor skills into fixed capital (machinery). As this occurs, less living labor is needed for production and, therefore, capital reduces the amount of wages paid per unit produced, decreases the value of commodities, and displaces labor. Available labor time becomes non-working time for the worker, that is, it becomes unemployment time.
By reducing wage distribution, the solvent demand for commodities falls. The dispute for markets lowers prices and profit margins, deepening the crisis of value realization. Thus, capitalist social relations of production end up restraining the very productive potential of the productive forces, accentuating the historical contradiction which, according to Marx, forces the system to transition to an associated mode of production.
At the present moment, this contradiction advances to an extremely high level because, with robotics and artificial intelligence, a large part of human capacities is being transferred from living labor to dead labor — to machinery — whose last frontier is the development of humanoid robots. The more these robots manage to reproduce human capacities for work, interpretation, and reaction in different contexts, the less capital will depend on living labor for its reproduction, and the greater the volume of living labor that will be excluded from the productive process whenever the costs of maintaining robots are lower than paying wages to perform the same task or function.
This has a fundamental implication for the worsening of the crisis in the relationship between capital and wage labor, as it leads to a drastic reduction in wage labor. In fact, since the payment of wages is the main form of sustaining society's consumption – that is, the purchase of produced commodities –, the less wages are distributed, the lower the solvent demand for the products created by capital. Consequently, by the immanent laws of capitalist production and circulation, competition for markets puts even more pressure on prices and profit margins; products tend to fall in value and price; and the volume of distributed wages is reduced even further, accentuating the same contradiction that generates it.
This is the central point of the contradiction we will analyze. We will see how the mechanisms it engenders impel capitalism to transition to new social relations of production and circulation, in which the contradiction between capital and wage labor, as the dominant social relation, is progressively dissolved, being progressively abolished — negatively — by the force of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, that is, by competition based on productivity gains with cost reduction. And, on the other hand, we will examine how this systemic crack in capitalism can be positively faced and overcome by the social and solidarity economy, with its self-managed forms of production and solidarity interchange.
The current crisis of capitalism presents two possible exits: a systemic reconfiguration, through the system's adaptation to new productive forces — such as artificial intelligence and robotics —; or a transition to an associative, self-managed, and solidarity-based economic regime.
In this argument, we will see that there are two divergent models for facing the crisis.
The first seeks to maintain demand for commodities through the indebtedness of society. However, this mechanism finds its own limit: when the capacity to pay is exhausted, people's income is directed, to a greater extent, to servicing past debts — unproductive expenditures — and not to purchasing new goods. Thus, the logic of indebtedness without a production and social distribution of value that allows it to be paid off ends up restraining the development of productive forces, as it increasingly hinders the realization of value by productive capital.
The second model is based on the social distribution of produced value, through various mechanisms: public transfers in minimum income programs; corporations that socially return the surplus generated in highly robotized production systems; or cooperative forms of production, circulation, and credit in which the reduction of living labor allows for the progressive reduction of the working day and, at the same time, a fair distribution of productivity gains. This model gradually overcomes the capital-wage labor relationship and gives rise to social relations of production, distribution, and appropriation that are solidarity-based, associative, and self-managed — effectively advancing towards the construction of socialism.
The crisis, therefore, deepens systemic cracks: countries that resist the transition face growing difficulties, while those advancing towards associative models show better economic and social results.
The central axis of the exposition consists of: analyzing the crisis of capital reproduction; presenting alternatives of social, popular, and solidarity economies capable of liberating productive forces, circulation, and credit; showing how these models can advance towards the realization of good-living, understood as the ethical exercise of public and private freedoms, sustained by the fair appropriation and use of material means, power, and knowledge.
With the development of productive forces, capital incorporates skills from living (human) labor into dead labor (machinery/fixed capital). In the current phase, robotics and artificial intelligence replace ever-larger portions of living labor, and the "last frontier" is the production of humanoid robots that incorporate – as machinery – broad human cognitive and operational faculties. The result is a lesser need for wage labor and, consequently, a reduction in the distributed wage mass. Less employment of living labor implies fewer wages paid (smaller distributed wage mass), less value incorporated into commodities, reduction of realizable surplus-value, increased unemployment, and decreased solvent (i.e., with money) demand to acquire the produced commodities. This leads to a crisis of value realization: surplus-value, although smaller, still fails to be realized.
From the point of view of economic flows, the value received by the worker — as wages in a capitalist enterprise or as withdrawals in an associative enterprise — returns to the economic circuit mainly in the form of consumption. Part may become savings, generate credit, and receive interest; however, the largest portion of the worker's income is directly dedicated to sustaining their consumption.
As new technologies reduce the necessary labor time employed in the production and circulation of commodities, the volume of paid labor decreases proportionally. With the reduction of paid labor, the distributed wage mass is smaller, and the value of commodities per unit produced is lower. Thus, the fall in wage distribution implies an equivalent fall in the volume of available income to consume the produced commodities.
If we suppose, for example, that 50% of the labor involved in production and circulation were automated — thanks to robots, drones, and artificial intelligences capable of performing tangible and intangible tasks in multiple stages of value chains —, and that this corresponded to an elimination of 50% of the wage mass paid in these activities, this would imply a potential reduction of approximately 50% of consumption sustained by such wages. Therefore, the more living labor is replaced by the dead labor of AIs, robots, and drones, the more the solvent demand for final consumption is reduced, intensifying the crisis of value realization.
The fall in prices in the dispute for markets compresses profit margins and leads to stagnation. Added to this are increased unemployment and indebtedness. Less distributed wages imply less consumption and, therefore, a deepening of the crisis of value realization. Capitalism thus approaches its own structural limits, through the action of its immanent laws: the contradiction between productive forces and social relations of production becomes acute. Capitalist relations of production and distribution end up restraining the development of the already existing productive potential within the productive forces, forcing the historical overcoming of these very social relations of production, distribution, and appropriation.
Thus, the transition from the capitalist mode of production to a socialist mode of production is driven by the immanent laws of capitalist production itself. Faced with these laws, capitalist society has no alternative but to adopt mechanisms for socializing wealth to ensure the sustenance of the capital accumulation model itself, even if this is achieved through increasingly unequal distribution, as we will see throughout this exposition. Precisely for this reason, the working class and organized communities must assume a central role in overcoming the economic circuits of capital with solidarity economic circuits as a hegemonic mode of production, circulation, and appropriation.
This model sustains demand through the expansion of monetary credit, a structurally unsustainable strategy. As families, businesses, and governments approach their debt ceiling, the value received from work, sales, or taxes is increasingly directed towards paying off past debts — and not towards consumption, investment, or financing present expenditures —, which ends up restraining the development of productive forces. The result is recurring crises of default and insolvency.
| Sector | 2000 (% of GDP) |
2024 (% of GDP, Est.) |
Change (p.p.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Households | 50 | 58 | +8 |
| Government | 60 | 93 | +33 |
| Non-financial Corporations | 77 | 98 | +21 |
| TOTAL | 187 | 249 | +62 |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: DOBBS et al, 2018; LOMBARDI, et al, 2023; IMF, n.d.a; IMF, 2024; IMF, 2025b; IIF, 2024; IIF, 2025. Margin of error due to coverage interval: ±10%.
The second model is based on the social distribution of produced value and operates through a heterogeneous set of mechanisms. Among them are redistributive public funds — such as universal basic income, non-contributory benefits and pensions, and social protection systems — which allow transferring part of the social surplus to the majority and sustaining demand without resorting to unproductive indebtedness. It also includes cooperative forms typical of the Solidarity Economy, in which self-management and associative ownership of the means of production, circulation, and credit enable an equitable distribution of results and the collective appropriation of productivity surpluses.
Added to this set are corporations that incorporate mechanisms for the social sharing of surplus, such as profit sharing, employee funds, employee stock ownership, or various forms of social dividends. Likewise, public enterprises — whether fully state-owned or mixed economy with an explicit social mandate — constitute another vector for socializing the value realized in strategic sectors.
Together, these mechanisms produce convergent structural effects: they contribute to progressively overcoming the contradiction between capital and wage labor; they allow for a sustained reduction of the working day without loss of well-being; they favor the social appropriation of productivity surpluses; and they promote a growing socialization of the economy. This socialization, paradoxically, is driven by the immanent laws of capitalism, which, through their effects, create conditions that favor the expansion of associative and solidarity-based forms of social reproduction.
The expansion of automation in tangible and intangible production, as well as in circulation and credit, impacts the entire value circuit. This process leads to a significant reduction in the wage mass and, consequently, to an equivalent decrease in final consumption based on market purchases.
In countries where the transition of social relations of production has not advanced, this fall in the wage mass relative to GDP is persistent and contributes to lower domestic solvent demand. On the contrary, in countries that are advancing in the transformation of their social relations of production, the relative share of wages in GDP increases, strengthening both domestic demand and the dynamics of economic growth.
Recent data confirm this divergent trend: while the proportion of the wage mass in GDP falls worldwide — and does so more sharply in the United States and moderately in the Eurozone —, China registers a significant increase, reflecting the success of its ongoing transition.
| Entity | 2000 (%) | 2024 (or most recent) | Change (p.p.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| World | 53.8% | 51.9% (2023) | -1.9 |
| USA | 62.1% | 56.3% (Q2 2024) | -5.8 |
| Eurozone | 59.3% | 56.8% (2023) | -2.5 |
| China | 48.2% | 58.1% (2023) | +9.9 |
Source: Author's elaboration, based on: FRED, n.d.a; FRED, n.d.b; FRED, n.d.c; ILO, n.d.; ILO, 2016; WEKSLER, 2023. Margin of error due to coverage interval: ±3%
Thus, the fall in the wage mass in countries with a stagnant transition implies an accumulated reduction in solvent demand sustained by wages between 2000 and 2024 (USA: –5.8 p.p.; Eurozone: –2.5 p.p.). In contrast, where the transition advances — as in China — solvent demand grows significantly (+9.9 p.p. over the same period). In summary, redistribution stimulates the economy and sustains the corresponding domestic demand.
From the market's perspective, the decrease in the wage mass relative to Gross Domestic Product causes a crisis of capital reproduction, by making it particularly difficult to realize surplus-value. Faced with insufficient solvent demand, the economy is pushed towards increasing levels of private and public debt. Conversely, when the wage mass expands, sustained domestic demand strengthens, which in turn drives productive investments and favors the growth of the gross domestic product.
In the context of the current crisis of capitalism, a structural contradiction emerges between the development of productive forces and the social relations of production: the latter, by distributing ever smaller proportions of the generated value, prevent the existing productive forces from fully realizing their potential. This contradiction drives a historical transition from the capitalist mode of production to a socialist mode of production.
If we understand socialism — from the point of view of economic flow — as a system of social relations of production, distribution, and social appropriation of value, mediated by various political and social mechanisms (including associative business forms, redistributive public funds, and the provision of goods and services for free appropriation), and articulated under a mixed property regime that combines individual property with common ownership and public property, then there are several relevant empirical indicators to assess the progress of this structural transition.
The reduction in the wage mass contracts domestic demand, increases household and state indebtedness, and increasingly hinders the realization of surplus-value. By restricting solvent demand, the system is forced to introduce compensatory socialization mechanisms — direct or indirect — to maintain the expanded reproduction of capital.
As large sectors of the population become excluded from wage income, the search for alternative sources of livelihood intensifies. A minority fraction, lacking institutional opportunities and formal integration, ends up pushed into illegal activities. This process generates a feedback loop: precariousness expands the potential recruitment pool for organized crime, and in turn, the expansion of these illegal networks consolidates parallel economies based on illicit production and circulation.
In summary, the crisis of income distribution not only weakens economic reproduction but also creates structural conditions that favor the expansion of organized crime as an alternative — albeit perverse — path to accessing means of subsistence.
Public funds act, in the systemic transition, as mechanisms for socializing socially produced wealth. However, their scope and application vary between countries that resist this transition — where they help sustain minimum levels of demand in contexts of shrinking wage mass — and those that advance in it, in which these funds play a decisive role in accelerating it.
Faced with the demand crisis, capital resorts to state transfers to provide additional income to sectors whose income or access to credit falls below a minimum threshold, with the aim of ensuring basic consumption for them.
Thus, redistributive income complementation policies, expanding globally, allow large social groups to guarantee minimum consumption. Even in the United States, about 41.7 million people receive approximately 199 dollars per month in food stamps, totaling around 100 billion dollars per year in federal transfers (USDA, n.d.).
However, such minimum transfers only partially compensate for the structural insufficiency of solvent demand. They fail to unlock the realization of the potential value generated by the productive forces, while unsustainable growing indebtedness diverts a significant part of income to interest payments. This process reduces present consumption and contracts future consumption even further, in direct proportion to the interest rate that must be paid.
In fact, the minimum transfer, by sustaining only a basic level of solvent demand, allows only a very limited realization of value, far below the potential of the productive forces trapped by this unsustainable reproduction mechanism. Consequently, the expansion of progressive taxes on large fortunes and high incomes — capable of substantially enlarging public funds — becomes a necessary condition to sustainably strengthen domestic demand, as illustrated by universal basic income programs. Thus, capitalism itself, by adopting such measures, advances towards socialist-style mechanisms to face one of its deepest systemic cracks.
In countries advancing this transition, the expansion of redistributive taxes strengthens public funds and favors a growing socialization of wealth. These funds finance not only monetary transfers for basic consumption and food security, but also universal public services in health, education, and social assistance, whose quality tends to improve gradually. Likewise, they allow for strengthening scientific and technological development, building, expanding, or improving the infrastructure necessary for industrial and commercial development — reducing production and logistics costs — and providing low-cost productive credit, lowering barriers to investment and stimulating innovation, production, and the circulation of new goods and services.
In short, public funds not only allow the State to universalize access to goods and services that, by market logic, would be inaccessible to large sectors excluded from wages; they also allow the implementation of public policies that facilitate investment and help companies to develop and sustain wage mass levels capable of maintaining expanded solvent demand, in line with the actual economic growth achieved by these companies.
There is a global trend of increasing spending on pensions and retirements, which are republican mechanisms for redistributing socially produced value. In China, this increase is especially significant and contributes directly to expanding domestic solvent demand. In contrast, in the United States, the stagnation of pension spending reflects a resistance to the distributive transition, which limits the sustained expansion of its domestic demand. In general, countries that advance in this transition tend to raise the proportion of GDP allocated to these mechanisms in order to sustain the solvent demand of the inactive population.
| Region/Country | 2000 (%) | 2024 (est.) (%) | Change (p.p.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| World | 6.2% | 7.6% | +1.4 |
| USA | 5.1% | 5.1% | 0 |
| Europe (EU average) | 11.8% | 12.1% | +0.3 |
| China | 2.1% | 5.6% | +3.5 |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: STATISTA. n.d.d; STATISTA. n.d.g; EUROPEAN COMMISSION, n.d.a; EUROPEAN COMMISSION, n.d.b; EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2002; FANG and FENG, 2019; CEIC DATA, n.d. Margin of error due to coverage interval: ±2%
Based on the logic that the distribution of value for consumption stimulates productive chains and generates multiplier effects on economic activity, the countries that advance most in this transition allocate a growing proportion of resources to retirements and pensions in relation to GDP expansion. In this way, they also sustain the expansion of domestic solvent demand through this redistributive mechanism.
Based on solidarist principles, what present generations receive from previous generations must be fairly shared to promote greater equality, freedom, and solidarity among all in the following generations.
Based on various indicators, it is observed that socialist-style mechanisms — founded on republican solidarity and redistributive principles according to which those who receive more have a social debt to those who receive less — tend to expand in countries that advance the transition. Without these mechanisms, the predictable trajectory is growing indebtedness of families, businesses, and governments, leading to potentially insolvent situations that block the development of productive forces and favor the expansion of criminal networks as a perverse form of access to income.
In this framework, given that those who receive the most from previous generations assume greater redistributive responsibility, the private appropriation of knowledge accumulated by humanity carried out by artificial intelligence companies constitutes a process of social plunder of use-value. These companies transform social knowledge — produced collectively and historically by previous and present generations — into exchange-value, by using it as input to generate responses, services, and products that are commercialized.
Therefore, the private capture of this cognitive wealth is equivalent to a unilateral transfer of value from society to technological capital. Facing this plunder requires that companies appropriating this common heritage contribute through specific taxation destined for public funds, in the same way that taxes on large fortunes finance programs like universal basic income.
This solidarist principle of value transfer thus operates as a mechanism for transition towards social relations of appropriation closer to socialism — a society in which socially produced values are shared according to the common good — even when a complete structural change in the capitalist mode of production has not yet occurred.
Marx argues that corporations (joint-stock companies) and cooperatives represent the two initial forms of internal overcoming of the capitalist mode of production itself.
The capitalist joint-stock companies, as much as the cooperative factories, should be considered as forms of transition from the capitalist mode of production to the associated mode of production, only that in the first case the contradiction is overcome negatively, and in the other, positively (Marx, 1964, p. 456).
The corporation negatively overcomes the figure of the individual capitalist by replacing it with socialized property among shareholders. However, it does not eliminate the capital/labor relationship: management and control remain separated from the workers, and the appropriation of the surplus maintains the capitalist logic.
The cooperative, in contrast, constitutes the form that positively overcomes the contradiction between capital and labor, as self-management eliminates the separation between those who own the means of production and those who perform the work and collectively appropriate its results.
Elsewhere, Marx emphasizes that cooperative enterprises in England obtained a profit — that is, they realized a surplus — higher than the average market profit obtained by capitalist enterprises:
From the public accounting records of cooperative factories in England it is seen that [...] the profit was greater than the average profit, although in some cases they paid a much higher interest than private manufacturers. The cause of the higher profit in all these cases was a more economical use of constant capital. [...] Since here the profit was greater than the average profit, the entrepreneurial gain was also greater than usual (Marx, 1964, p. 401-402).
Cooperatives, therefore, realized an extraordinary surplus-value (Extramehrwert), obtaining a profit higher than the average profit thanks to a more efficient use of constant capital.
In this sense, for Marx, both forms express a historical tendency of transition, not a fully constituted alternative mode of production, but partial stages in the transition from capitalism to an associative mode of production.
This transition occurs according to the interplay of the immanent laws of capitalist production — related to the expropriation of values through the realization of extraordinary surplus-value in inter-capitalist competition for markets —, which leads to the concentration and centralization of capital, the bankruptcy or absorption of competitors, and the progressive socialization of productive processes. Finally, these same immanent laws, according to Marx, lead to the overcoming of the capitalist mode of production itself:
Who will be expropriated, now, is no longer the worker [...], but the capitalist who exploits many workers [...]. This expropriation is consummated through the interplay of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself [...] (Marx, 1962, p.790).
In light of this analytical framework, the recent evolution of global capitalism shows that the transition pointed out by Marx has not stopped. The expansion of corporations with diffuse ownership, cooperative economies, public enterprises, sovereign wealth funds, public funds, and various forms of social property expresses the same convergent historical tendency: a growing socialization of economic functions previously exercised exclusively by private capital; the expansion and diversification of forms of social and public appropriation of products, services, and economic results; and the expansion of associative and public modalities of management and social allocation of surpluses.
At the same time, the advance of current technological development deepens competition and favors the realization of extraordinary surplus-value by sectors that advance more intensely in the systemic transition.
Based on this criterion, it is found that not only are corporations responsible for about 60% of global GDP, but that cooperatives, state-owned enterprises, and third sector and popular and solidarity economy initiatives together generate a product equivalent to around 23% of the world's real GDP.
The expansion of the popular and solidarity economy constitutes a concrete reaction to contemporary capitalism's inability to generate sufficient jobs and distribute income in the form of wages. This sector advances in the formation of new social relations of production, distribution, consumption, and credit in meeting the economic needs of large social groups.
| Form of Ownership | USA | China | BRICS+ | European Union | World |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporations 1 | 65% | 35% | 40% | 48% | 60% |
| Individual Firms/SMEs/Ltda. | 20% | 20% | 22% | 25% | 20% |
| State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) | 1.5% | 40% | 28% | 11% | 13% |
| Cooperatives/Mutuals | 0.8% | 4.5% | 3.5% | 6% | 4% |
| Third Sector | 12% | 0.5% | 1% | 10% | 3% |
| → ACCOUNTED SUBTOTAL | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Popular and Solidarity Economy (PSE) | 1.5% | 1.2% | 4.0% | 3.2% | 3.2% |
| Informal Economy (non-PSE) | 8.0% | 15.0% | 35.0% | 10.0% | 25.0% |
| → UNACCOUNTED SUBTOTAL | 9.5% | 16.2% | 39.0% | 13.2% | 28.2% |
| → TOTAL GENERATED (EXPANDED GDP) |
108.80% | 116.2% | 133.50% | 113.2% | 128.2% |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: WORLD BANK, 2023; WORLD BANK, 2024; ZHANG, 2019; HUANG, 2023; INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 2024; WORLD ECONOMICS, n.d.; ILO, 2024; ELGIN et al, 2001; UNCTAD, 2023; FORTUNE, 2024; MALOUCHE, 2023; OECD, 2024; ICA, 2023; INDEPENDENT SECTOR, 2023; ANHEIER, 2023; JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR CIVIL SOCIETY STUDIES, 2021; ILO, 2023; PUBLICATIONS OFFICE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, 2023; U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, 2023a; U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, 2023b; EU SME CENTRE, 2025; WORLD BANK, 2025; IMF, n.d.b. Margin of error due to coverage interval: ±7% official and ±20% unaccounted.
The examination of the relationship between markets and contemporary productive processes shows that countries that promote income distribution policies — whether through direct transfers or sustained increases in the minimum wage — achieve superior economic results. The experiences of Brazil and China are particularly illustrative that this distribution of resources activates the entire set of productive chains related to expanded final consumption.
That is, income distribution stimulates the productive chains of final consumption, but also those of intermediate consumption, generating multiplier effects on production and employment. This is explained because, as Marx emphasizes, the circuit of one commodity is integrated into the circuits of many others: its production requires the productive consumption of multiple inputs, intermediate goods, and services. And, in fact, all these circuits are interconnected.
Therefore, the increase in final consumption not only activates the chain of the purchased good but reactivates a broad network of interconnected sectors. The redistributed value that enters at one point in the circuit irrigates — with its effects — the entire productive system, stimulating investment, the expansion of solvent demand in countries advancing the transition, and general economic activity.
The popular and solidarity economy constitutes a concrete response to structural unemployment and advances in the creation of new social relations of production, appropriation, distribution, and credit. Its economic contribution is significant: it produces a volume equivalent to 3.2% of global GDP, although a large part of this activity remains outside official records.
If we examine how countries face the transition in social relations of production, circulation, credit, and consumption, we observe — in continuity with the trends pointed out by Marx — a sustained growth of the cooperative sector on a world scale. Workers excluded from formal employment seek solidarity-based alternatives that allow them to participate productively in self-managed initiatives. In many countries, cooperativism constitutes a strong and consolidated sector; alongside it, within the associative sphere, the solidarity economy not formalized in cooperatives is also expanding, with multiple forms of production, distribution, credit, and consumption.
On the other hand, when the formal labor market reactivates and the wages paid by capitalist enterprises increase, many workers transition from these associative economies and their self-managed activities to jobs subordinated to capital, motivated by the income improvement they offer.
Notwithstanding this oscillating dynamic, and beyond the solidarity-based or not character of part of the cooperatives, the number of cooperatives and cooperative members continues to grow consistently throughout the world.
From 2000 to 2024, the number of cooperatives quadrupled — going from 760,000 to about 3 million — and the number of cooperative members increased by 55%, from 800 million to 1.24 billion. The proportional growth in the number of cooperative members in this period was higher than the increase in the world population, with a global penetration rate rising from 13.0% to 15.3%. This percentage share tends to increase in the coming decades, driven by automation processes in the production of tangible and intangible goods and in distribution systems.
| Indicator | 2000 | 2024 | Observation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Cooperatives | 760 thousand | 3 million | Quadrupled (3.95x) |
| Number of Cooperative Members | 800 million 2 | 1.24 billion | Increase of 55% |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: ICA and EURICSE, 2025b; AGWAY INCORPORATED,1992; PRAKASH, 1999; LAO NEWS AGENCY (KPL), 2001. Margin of error due to coverage: for 2000 (±9.4%); 2024 is projected based on 2023 (+2–3% growth).
| Indicator | 2000 | 2024 | Absolute Growth | Relative Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of Cooperative Members | 800 million | 1.24 billion | +440 million | +55% |
| World Population | 6.14 billion | 8.12 billion | +1.98 billion | +32% |
| Penetration Rate | 13.00% | 15.3% | - | +2.3 p.p. |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: ICA and EURICSE, 2025b; WORLD BANK, n.d.a; AGWAY INCORPORATED,1992; PRAKASH, 1999; LAO NEWS AGENCY (KPL), 2001. Margin of error due to coverage: for 2000 (±9.4%); for 2024, projection from 2023 (+2 to 3% growth). Penetration rate may vary considering active vs. total members.
For its part, the turnover of the world's top 300 cooperatives experienced a growth of 45% in just six years, between 2017 and 2023. This dynamism is also reflected in the aggregate expansion of the sector: the cooperative and solidarity economy as a whole represents approximately 7% of global GDP.
TOP 300
OVER THE YEARS Top 300 enterprises by revenue in US dollars [in billions of dollars] - 2023 average interchange rate |
Source: ICA and EURICSE, 2025a, p. 5
Within the framework of the transition from the capitalist economy to the associative economy, cooperatives and the solidarity economy today produce the equivalent of approximately 7% of global GDP.
If we look at some BRICS countries, we see that the number of cooperatives continues to expand consistently:
China:
India:
Brazil:
These data show that the volume of associative and cooperative work continues to grow worldwide. This occurs both because these initiatives ensure forms of occupation for populations excluded from the capitalist labor market, and because they expand their purchasing power through cooperative credit mechanisms and guarantee access to basic goods and services. With this, the sector strengthens domestic solvent demand and the economic resilience of communities.
However, these cooperative sectors remain subordinated to the economic circuits of capital. Part of what they produce enters as a productive input and another part enters directly as a product into the circuits of capital. Whether as input for the productive sector or as product for the commercial sector, in both cases, the values generated in a non-capitalist economy — in an associated mode of production, without boss or employee — end up entering the capital circuit and allowing the realization of values.
Solidarity production still depends on capitalist circulation for the distribution and realization of value. Cooperative production enters the CEC as inputs and other productive means, or as final products.
In the dispute over the appropriation of surplus-value, the interchange price and the place where the interchange occurs (SEC or CEC) determine whether it will be appropriated in the SEC or in the CEC.
In fact, the value of a product is composed of its production costs and the surplus-value created by labor.
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Value
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Surplus-value |
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Costs |
The selling price, in circulation, relative to the value of the product, can be lower, equal, or higher.
When a product made in a fully solidarity-based manner leaves a Solidarity Economic Circuit (SEC) and enters the Capital Economic Circuit (CEC), four cases arise in the relationship between cost, value, and interchange price:
From these scenarios, it becomes evident that the way in which circulation is organized — and, in particular, the determination of prices, i.e., the terms of interchange — directly conditions the SEC's capacity to retain or lose surplus-value to the CEC.
Overcoming the structural subordination of the Solidarity Economic Circuit (SEC) to the Capital Economic Circuit (CEC) requires a strategy capable of retaining, realizing, and expanding the surplus-value generated by associative initiatives. The most consistent way to achieve this is through the organization of collaborative SEC networks that integrate their productive chains broadly.
To the extent that cooperatives and other associative forms produce goods and services that must circulate to realize their value, the fact that such circulation remains within the SEC itself, or is carried out in the CEC under interchange terms determined by the SEC, allows that:
With this, surplus-value, which would escape the associative sector, is realized under its control and allows investments that result in more efficient productive chains, with productivity improvements for cooperative enterprises in their competition with capitalist enterprises.
In other words, networking allows integrating production, distribution, credit, and consumption in an economic circuit based on self-management, where surplus-value circulates and expands internally. Thus, each cooperative unit ceases to operate in isolation — exchanging value with the CEC under unfavorable conditions — to become part of an integrated cooperation chain, capable of producing and realizing value within its own sphere and developing technologically.
Thus, the formation of collaborative SEC networks presents itself not only as a defensive action but as an active strategy of systemic expansion, which allows solidarity initiatives to increase their capacity to generate, realize, and accumulate surplus-value in favor of the producing and consuming communities themselves.
To the extent that cooperatives integrated into them develop technologically, they create conditions to realize extraordinary surplus-value (Extramehrwert) in their competition with capitalist enterprises, which cease to exist in these sectors, as capitalist production is gradually replaced by cooperative production.
Considering the aspects already analyzed and examining how to take advantage of the systemic crisis of capitalism to liberate and potentiate the productive forces, interchange, and credit, it is possible to point out a strategy aimed at deepening the systemic transition:
Overcoming the crisis of capitalism through self-management leads to the transition to the associative system, consolidated as a solidarity-based mode of production, appropriation, interchange, credit, and consumption, as well as a democratic social formation that promotes the free development of individualities and human communities. This requires a progressive strengthening of the solidarity economy against its subordination to capital, articulating its flows of materials, powers, and knowledge, which can be achieved through the construction of Solidarity Economic Circuits (SEC).
The technological and organizational development of cooperatives increases their competitive capacity against capitalist enterprises. As they consolidate in certain sectors, cooperative production tends to displace and replace capitalist enterprises, which cease to exist in those areas of economic activity.
The construction of SEC implies the integration of cooperative productive chains in an articulated manner, in order to prevent value leakage to the Capital Economic Circuits (CEC). This integration allows internally realizing surplus-value, establishing interchange terms favorable to the solidarity sector, and potentiating productive linkages, which translates into higher levels of efficiency, wealth expansion, and structural strengthening of the associative system.
In the economic sphere, two elements are decisive for the transition to the associative system: control over the realization of value and the determination of the place where such realization occurs.
Whoever sets the price in the interchange controls the realization of value, the appropriation of surplus-value, and the resulting accumulation.
The first aspect, therefore, is the self-managed control of value realization: operating in collaborative solidarity networks, cooperatives and other associative initiatives, by setting their own prices, can realize value on favorable terms, retain surplus-value, and accumulate it for the strengthening of their own circuit.
The second element is the ability to determine in which economic circuit — SEC or CEC — surplus-value is realized. Even when prices are identical, realization in one or the other circuit produces completely different effects.
To illustrate, consider the same product with equal cost, value, and price in two scenarios:
The result differs structurally:
SECs can supply inputs and intermediate means to capitalist enterprises at a low price, but above production costs. Thus, although part of the ordinary surplus-value objectified in the solidarity product continues to flow to the CEC, another part, which has been realized, remains and accumulates in the solidarity economy, strengthening its commercial and productive sector.
On the other hand, when SECs manage to realize extraordinary surplus-value — selling above value and below the average market price — they capture value produced by capitalist enterprises that fail to realize it. That is, they apply in practice what Marx called "expropriation of the expropriators" through the immanent laws of production regulated by market competition.
This double movement — internal retention of ordinary surplus-value and appropriation of extraordinary surplus-value — generates a growing expansion of the cooperative sector and a structural reduction of the capitalist sector, driving the transition to a new systemic pattern based on self-management.
The transition to an Associative Economic System requires understanding how interchange flows structure the reproduction of value in any economic system. Based on this recognition, Solidarity Economic Circuits (SECs) present themselves as a strategy capable of reorganizing consumption, production, circulation, and credit to strengthen economic practices based on cooperation, self-management, and social and ecological sustainability. This section sets out the foundations, advantages, and modalities of this strategy, as well as a concrete example demonstrating its viability.
The strategy proposed here for the transition to an associative economic system — based on Solidarity Economic Circuits (SEC) — starts from the recognition that interchange is the necessary condition for the simple or expanded reproduction of value.
Given that all production requires circulation to realize the produced value, the first step consists of reorganizing the flows of final household consumption (final goods and services), productive consumption of enterprises (means of production), and government consumption (public goods and services acquired through public procurement), progressively orienting them towards solidarity networks to realize the value of eco-solidarity production.
The strategy begins with the organization of consumer cooperatives, which establish their own commercial enterprises both for supplying final household consumption and for providing means of production intended for the productive consumption of cooperative or associative enterprises. Added to this is the pursuit of public procurement policies, aimed at ensuring that governments acquire eco-solidarity products, given their social and environmental superiority over commodities from CECs.
From this base, SECs reorient material and monetary flows towards self-managed processes.
The adoption of eco-solidarity products offers direct and indirect benefits of a social and ecological nature, because in their production, circulation, and consumption:
Thus, the SEC affirms an alternative economic rationality to the accumulative logic of CECs, in contrast to the practices of exploitation, expropriation, plunder, exclusion, and degradation intrinsic to capitalism, which generate profound negative impacts on ecological and social levels.
The viability of this strategy can be seen in the case of Coop – Cooperativa de Consumo do ABC paulista (Brazil). Founded in 1954 by organized workers of a company in Santo André, it opened its social base to the entire region in the 1970s. According to its 2024 balance sheet (Coop, 2024, pp. 16, 20, 32), it has:
In Brazil, the "surpluses" distributed by cooperatives in 2024 reached R$ 51.4 billion (about US$ 10 billion), returning to communities and financing new projects (SOMOS COOPERATIVISMO, n.d.).
In SECs, realized surpluses can be allocated, under community self-management, to territorial development: based on consumption demands and the offers that satisfy them, strategies are developed to strengthen local chains and expand productive capacities, combining different modalities of interchange.
SECs integrate different modalities of interchange, suited to needs and different community cultures:
Transactions in these three interchange modalities can be recorded on blockchains, which facilitates community self-management, local and global, of economic value flows.
The objective is to progressively liberate interchange from the scarcity of money, advancing towards the partial demonetization of circulation.
The organization of digital platforms to mediate these interchanges, using blockchain-based applications, projects a strong growth potential for this movement, considering that the rate of cooperative penetration in the world population — which went from 13.0% to 15.3% in 24 years — tends to accentuate given the impacts of global automation processes. The current expansion of the cooperative sector can be significantly accelerated by overcoming monetary scarcity in the economic circulation of the solidarity economy for value realization, thanks to the use of these technologies along with methodologies strategically designed for this purpose.
It is observed that countries implementing effective income redistribution mechanisms — such as minimum income, real wage increases, and real increases in retirements and pensions — experience a solid feedback dynamic in their economies. This generates a process of sustained demand, based not on indebtedness but on the real distribution of value, which fosters economically sustainable growth.
Economically sustainable growth occurs in countries that promote income distribution, not only expanding the economy through demand sustained by real payment capacity, but also ensuring the capacity to absorb additional debt. In contrast, the debt crisis manifests in countries whose household, business, and government consumption is anchored in growing indebtedness — like the United States — where wages, business profits, and tax revenues are increasingly committed to paying off debts incurred in the past.
In 2024, global debt reached approximately 249% of world GDP (IMF, 2025a). Of this total, only around 30–35% could be considered productive debt (financing production and the effective realization of value in goods and services), while between 65% and 70% (or even up to nearly 85%, depending on the criteria adopted) could be classified as unproductive, that is, it does not generate enough growth to cover its cost and requires constant refinancing of interest.
The numbers between 2000 and 2024 clearly demonstrate this (in trillions of USD):
That is, in aggregate terms, for every additional dollar of GDP, three dollars of new debt were created. From this perspective, only 33% of this additional debt was effectively productive (served to produce real goods and realize their value through sale); the remaining 67% can be considered unproductive, essentially destined for interest payments and refinancing of previous financial debt, or for activities that did not generate equivalent real returns in the period.
Additionally, if one adopts the average unproductiveness threshold suggested by part of the consolidated literature — about 85% of GDP for governments, 90% for non-financial corporations, and 85% for households (CECCHETTI et al., 2011, p. 1), with the caveat that the threshold for households is estimated very imprecisely —, and we hypothetically adopt a single threshold of 85% of GDP for total aggregate debt (public + private), considering that total global debt in 2024 (excluding debt of financial organizations) reached about 249% of GDP, then its unproductive portion would be 249% − 85% = 164% of GDP. Expressed as a percentage of total debt itself, this would correspond to 65.9%. With more conservative thresholds (90% to 100% of GDP), the unproductive proportion would be 63.9–59.8%, and with stricter criteria (40% to 50% of GDP), it would reach 83.9% to 79.9% of total debt.
Although there are methodological divergences in the definition of "unproductive" and "productive" debt and their magnitudes in the global economy, the evidence suggests a significant prevalence of indebtedness that does not directly contribute to sustainable economic growth (CECCHETTI et al, 2011; SUEPPEL, 2020).
In fact, in economies that stimulate the consumption process anchored in widespread indebtedness, the population ends up heavily in debt, committing an important part of their income to paying unproductive debt, i.e., interest to the financial system, reducing spending on final consumption of goods and services, which activate the economy.
Moreover, as the process of rapid current technological development further reduces occupied labor time, generating available labor time and unemployment, a large part of the population does not receive sufficient resources for all their needs and, by not receiving resources, cannot pay their debts, seeking complementary informal activities, such as app drivers and delivery workers, among others.
The mechanism of productive debt for economic development only maintains its solvency when there is economic growth and value distribution greater than the indebtedness. If, for example, in an economic cycle, people, governments, and companies become indebted by five percent — because they did not receive enough in wages, taxes, and net surplus for payments —, then, if all value flows from non-capitalist economies were cut off, the only way to settle this debt would be through growth greater than five percent in the next cycle, accompanied by the social distribution of added value among people, governments, and companies sufficient to cover the previous debt. In that scenario, wages, taxes, and accumulated net surpluses would increase by five percent in real value, allowing everyone to pay their debts from the previous cycle. It would be growth leveraged by the financial system, which would remain solvent as long as growth and distribution exceeded indebtedness.
However, as the interest rate is usually higher than both the profit rate and the rate of value distribution, a growing part of the indebtedness becomes unpayable. Consequently, the economy becomes increasingly unproductively indebted and becomes unsustainable, because people, governments, and companies allocate a growing proportion of their wages, taxes, and net surpluses to interest payments, to the detriment of final, government, or productive consumption.
In summary, debt becomes unsustainable and unproductive when: the average real interest rate exceeds the profit rate (surplus realization rate); the total debt service exceeds the distributive flow in wages, taxes, and accumulated net surpluses; and, therefore, the contracted debt cannot be paid with the distribution of the generated value. Conversely, debt is sustainable and productive only when: the profit rate (surplus realization rate) exceeds the average real interest rate; the distributive flow in wages, taxes, and accumulated net surpluses exceeds the total debt service; and, thus, the contracted debt is fully paid with the distribution of added value.
When large sectors of the population become heavily indebted and excluded or precarious in the wage relation to obtain their means of consumption — with stagnant real wages, unstable jobs, or directly without access to the formal labor market —, a significant part of these people resort to informal activities or, to a lesser extent, illegal activities to obtain income.
In the absence of public policies promoting cooperative, associative, or solidarity economy forms, many individuals end up entering the informal economy or, some of them, in illicit activities of higher relative profitability, such as drug trafficking, smuggling, or extortion.
In the United States — a country that has resisted advancing in a systemic transition —, massive household indebtedness (student, medical, and credit card debt), along with stagnant real wages for decades, pushes vulnerable people to supplement their income through informal or even illegal activities. Existing income transfer programs prove insufficient, leaving millions of people without an effective social safety net.
In this context, marked by the distributive crisis and household over-indebtedness, the criminal economy does not constitute a mere marginal anomaly, but a structural response to exclusion from the formal circuit of accumulation and distribution of value, characteristic of contemporary capitalism.
In the absence of policies aimed at fostering the cooperative or solidarity economy, a part of indebted workers is pushed into informality or precarious labor insertion, and the supply of illegal work becomes a subsistence alternative with a diffuse presence in American society.
On the contrary, if there were broad and consistent income transfer and solidarity economic organization programs aimed at vulnerable populations, they would not need to resort to illegality to pay their debts or to ensure basic living conditions, such as food, clothing, and housing.
In summary, if the United States decided to advance in a systemic transition — acting based on the immanent laws of economic production itself —, it would be possible to ensure, on the labor market side, mechanisms for producing and circulating goods and services adequate for the expansion of good-living for people and communities, through cooperative associations, solidarity economy initiatives, and other self-managed forms. Such activities would become economically much more attractive for people than the production and sale of illegal goods.
When objectively examining the phenomenon of narcotics criminal networks from the economic factors explaining their existence and persistence, it is observed that, driven by the law of the market — of labor supply and demand —, a part of vulnerable, indebted, and socially excluded people find in the demand for illegal labor the minimum necessary to pay off debts or simply survive, either by producing and selling drugs or participating in other illicit activities.
Thus, what drives the easy hiring of workers in production and circulation within this sector is the crisis in wage distribution and labor supply by capital, which leaves a part of the population without the means to survive and pushes them to seek illicit economic alternatives.
Thus, the crisis in value distribution consolidates and professionalizes the criminal economy. Former local and rival groups — in the sphere of production and distribution of illicit products — have merged or progressively coordinated into increasingly larger and more complex structures (cartels, consortia, territorial franchises), which operate with logics of concentration and accumulation similar to those of legal capital, guided by identical immanent laws of production and distribution: pursuit of monopoly, economies of scale, reduction of production and circulation costs, territorial expansion, diversification of activities, product innovation and marketing, or capture of the regulator, among others. Some of these organizations function as true international holdings, with factions from different countries integrated into temporary joint operations and sharing profits.
If the systemic transition does not advance in a country, the criminal economy — especially that associated with drug trafficking — tends to prosper. To structurally confront it, it is necessary to implement an articulated set of economic and public health measures that affect the entire chain of production, distribution, consumption of narcotics, as well as money laundering and capital accumulation by criminal organizations. These policies can be summarized in three fundamental axes:
This approach weakens the economic power of criminal organizations by drastically reducing the demand they serve.
As Milton Friedman argued, state regulation allows dependent individuals to obtain the substance at a lower cost and with less risk through legal channels, which weakens and replaces the criminal competitor through market mechanisms. At the same time, by removing users from the illegal circuit, more favorable conditions are created for their integration into public health, treatment, and recovery policies. In this logic, organized crime tends to be structurally reduced due to lack of demand, by virtue of the very laws of the market.
In summary, these three measures — decent income alternatives, health regulation of supply and consumption, and defunding of organized crime — simultaneously attack the structural causes of labor supply for the illegal sector, the demand sustaining illicit markets, and the accumulation capacity of criminal organizations. By acting on the very economic determinations that structure this sector, such measures make it possible to combat it effectively and sustainably, without relying exclusively on repressive strategies.
Given that capital systematically seeks the highest profitability rates, the United States and other advanced economies have increasingly directed their investments towards high-tech and high-margin sectors, relegating to the background the development of technologies aimed at producing food, clothing, and other final consumer goods, as well as basic industry sectors — such as steel and metallurgy. Such goods and products began to be increasingly imported. Concurrently, they externalized a significant part of the production of technological consumer goods, as it was more profitable in terms of production costs and return on invested capital.
By attributing greater strategic importance to the military-industrial complex, the United States continues to develop weapons technologies internally, but not those oriented towards the daily reproduction of life in lower profitability sectors.
For their part, countries developing technologies aimed at raising productivity in the production of basic consumer goods and capital goods operate under significantly more favorable conditions than the United States in many areas, managing to substantially reduce their production costs. While they lower the value of commodities through technological development, these countries moderately increase the tax burden on production, circulation, and productive and final consumption. This allows redistributing productivity gains, by feeding public funds with the collected values, making it possible to expand welfare policies and improve infrastructure for development itself, while containing an excessive fall in final product prices in the domestic market. The taxes obtained finance, in particular, income distribution policies that sustain domestic solvent demand and activate their own productive chains.
The production of these countries, aimed at satisfying people's final consumption needs and providing more efficient means of production to companies, achieves significant productivity increases in these sectors. As a result, their products — both consumer goods and means of production — are manufactured at much lower costs than in nations that neglect these technological developments, such as the United States.
From the perspective of international trade, the products of these countries — more efficient and lower cost — enter markets like the American one at prices notably lower than those of equivalent locally produced goods and services.
Marx explained that, in the advanced phase of capitalism, its overcoming would occur based on the immanent laws of the capitalist mode of production itself. When a company reduces its costs and sells the product at the average market price — higher than its individual value — it obtains an extraordinary surplus-value (Extramehrwert): it not only realizes the surplus-value it itself generated, but also part of the surplus-value produced by less efficient competitors. In Marxist terms, profit is the realization of surplus-value, that is, the realization of a surplus value that was necessarily produced somewhere.
Therefore, when one company realizes extraordinary surplus-value, another company that produced that surplus-value but fails to realize it — because market prices tend to be regulated by an average price lower than the value of its product — tends to go bankrupt if it cannot reverse this situation.
In summary, companies that reduce costs and sell at the average market price, but above the individual value of their product, realize as profit both the surplus-value they produce and a part of the surplus-value produced by their competitors. In the medium term, these competitors tend to go bankrupt. As Marx (1964, p. 188) points out:
If the supply of commodities at the average value, that is, at the intermediate value of the mass situated between the two extremes, satisfies the habitual demand, then the commodities whose individual value is below the market value realize an extra surplus-value [Extramehrwert] or supplementary profit [Surplusprofit], while those whose individual value is above the market value fail to realize a part of the surplus-value contained in them.
This process favors the formation of oligopolies and monopolies and forces the conversion of companies into corporations as a means of capitalization and expansion. However, concurrently, a process of positive overcoming of capitalist production relations gradually develops through the expansion of cooperatives. As Marx pointed out, based on the balance sheets of English cooperative factories, their "profit was higher than the average profit," which implies the realization of extraordinary surplus-value margins and demonstrates the superiority of associated production over capitalist production in terms of efficiency, production, realization, and distribution of surplus-value.
In international trade, this same process of realizing extraordinary surplus-value is reproduced on a global scale: the most efficient countries in producing goods and services in certain sectors realize extraordinary surplus-value by selling above their individual value, but at the average market price. Thus, they capture part of the surplus-value generated by less competitive producers — as occurs with certain American industrial sectors — that cannot fully realize it and end up weakening or going bankrupt.
This phenomenon explains the structural ineffectiveness of trade wars waged by the United States: customs barriers do not reverse the loss of technological competitiveness in the affected sectors, but rather make products more expensive for domestic buyers — whether final consumers or processing and trading companies — without solving the underlying structural problem, whose overcoming requires advancing the systemic transition.
The undeclared objective of the tariffs is to prevent the realization of extraordinary surplus-value by foreign exporters, forcing them to reduce their sales prices to compensate for import tariffs and not lose access to the American market, and, at the same time, promote the country's reindustrialization by favoring American companies that produce at higher costs.
However, the effective result is that the State appropriates a larger portion of the surplus-value realized internally, as buyers — people and companies — pay higher prices for imported products.
The ineffectiveness of the mechanism is evident. The increase in domestic prices raises costs for national consumers and companies, negatively affecting production and consumption. Tariffs do not, by themselves, create a competitive national productive infrastructure in deficit areas. American companies, instead of modernizing and reducing costs through innovation and automation, often continue operating with obsolete technological structures and high, less competitive prices. In short, tariff policy does not make American industry more globally competitive.
What is observed today in the United States, with the tariffs imposed during Donald Trump's government, seems to be the "last gasp" of the old American capitalism. Because, with these tariffs, what is sought is to prevent the realization of extraordinary surplus-value by companies exporting to the country, forcing them to lower sales prices to the importer, to compensate for the price increase with the tariffs. And with this, the State would appropriate a portion of the extraordinary surplus-value. However, this portion of surplus-value was not produced abroad, but internally, by the very American companies that lost competitiveness against international competition.
As a result, besides foreign exporters still realizing a part — albeit smaller — of the extraordinary surplus-value, domestic prices increase without there being a national productive base capable of producing these goods at equivalent costs. Although the rise in price of imported products makes locally produced goods relatively more attractive in the domestic market, this does not make them more competitive in the world market.
Furthermore, to the extent that the State appropriates a larger part of the surplus-value realized through the sale of imported products at higher prices, domestic companies using these inputs not only remain limited in their capacity to produce with more suitable technologies, but must also pay an additional levy that further increases the prices of their products in the domestic market for consumers.
Thus, instead of reducing the costs of American companies, stimulating the domestic market — which would require reducing household and corporate debt — and activating the economic indicators that would allow the growth of the US economy, raising tariffs operates as a mechanism that seeks to protect national industry and stimulate domestic investment, under the expectation of a strategic redevelopment aimed at "making America great again."
However, in practice, this mechanism tends to fail, since, instead of promoting the necessary technological development, it ends up prolonging the survival of an obsolete productive structure, incapable of producing locally at lower costs than companies operating on a global scale. Through artificial price control, it tries to regulate supply flows to induce the purchase of more expensive national products, replacing imports that would be cheap were it not for the tariffs.
Even if wages were equal in national and external production in these sectors, imported products would still be cheaper, because foreign competitors use more productive constant capital, operate on a larger scale, have integrated productive chains, and have a lower unit cost of capital per commodity. Indeed, external competitiveness is not mainly explained by labor cost, but by the systemic superiority of the organization of constant capital.
In the import flow, the tariff mechanism partially reduces the extraordinary surplus-value realized by exporting countries — either through price reduction or through a decrease in the volume exported to the United States —, which pushes them to seek other markets. However, the structural problem remains: the modernization of the American productive park requires importing a wide range of capital goods not produced internally, which decisively limits the effectiveness of trade wars as a strategy to overcome the crisis.
The United States has a structural dependence on imports in key sectors where they have lost competitiveness or lack significant national production. Imports of final consumer goods represent between 25% and 30% of the total in recent years, while imports of capital goods reach 30-35% (BEA, 2025).
In 2024, imports of capital goods amounted to approximately 969 billion dollars, which represents about 30% of total goods imports (around 3.3 trillion dollars). Final consumer goods also occupy a relevant portion and contribute significantly to the trade deficit.
The chronic deficit in the goods trade balance intensified in 2024, reaching a record of 1.21 trillion dollars. Within this, final consumer goods and capital goods are responsible for a substantial part: consumer goods drove about 45% of the total deficit, while capital goods contributed approximately 27% (about 323 billion dollars).
This vulnerability is explained by the loss of global competitiveness in final product sectors and, especially, in capital goods — durable equipment such as machinery and essential industrial instruments for production. The American economic model, sustained by chronic indebtedness and the privilege of the dollar as a reserve and world trade currency, has allowed financing persistent trade deficits for decades through the issuance of Treasury bonds.
Without the hegemonic status of the dollar, this model would be unviable, as it could not absorb massive imports without a competitive internal production in the real economy.
In fact, raising tariffs does not solve these deep structural problems: it only makes products more expensive for American consumers and businesses, without reversing deindustrialization or recovering technological competitiveness in basic consumption and production sectors.
The expansion of the cooperative economy, organized in Solidarity Economic Circuits, can be strengthened with the demonetization of economic transactions between cooperative actors.
The scarcity of money restricts economic interchange even when there is idle productive capacity and unsatisfied real needs. Although cooperatives and communities can produce demanded goods and services, the lack of monetary means prevents their circulation and realization.
The expansion of the cooperative and solidarity economy can be accelerated in the transition through the progressive demonetization of interchanges among its actors. For this, Solidarity Exchange Systems are proposed, with blockchain records, based on value credits calculated — with controlled fluctuation margins — according to the socially necessary labor time for the production and circulation of the interchanged goods and services, as an alternative modality to monetary transactions.
Through digital platforms, cooperatives place their products in globally interconnected solidarity economic circuits. In doing so, they receive credits or exchange dots equivalent to the value of the offered goods, which they can use to obtain products from any other cooperative integrated into the system. Thus, money is replaced by an international non-monetary clearing system.
These platforms organize the circulation of goods and services through three catalogs:
All transactions are recorded on blockchain, ensuring traceability, transparency, and system balance. The development and liberation of economic forces allows progressively transitioning, in the sphere of circulation, from transactions based on purchase and sale mediated by money to transactions based on the gift, with the registration of material flows that preserve the feedback between consumption and production through the catalog itself and inventory control.
Marx proposed the use of labor certificates as a means of interchange under socialism. Products were valued in hours of socially necessary labor. Producers received vouchers for their labor, which allowed them access to equivalent goods in social warehouses, after deducting the contribution to the common fund.
Today, this proposal can be updated using blockchain technologies, which allow decentralized and global management of cooperative interchanges. The production of the cooperative, popular, and solidarity economy can circulate among communities in different countries without monetary mediation, expanding the scale and efficiency of solidarity circuits. With solidarity economic circuits globally connected through digital platforms, products entering — on demand — the exchange catalogs of solidarity emporiums anywhere in the world generate exchange credits for the cooperatives. With these, cooperatives can obtain goods and services offered anywhere in the same network. Products entered into emporiums operate as backing for the issued credits. When these are used in emporiums to withdraw products, they are eliminated, ensuring the balance between the real supply of goods and services and the exchange credits in the solidarity interchange system.
With technological advancement, increased productivity, and the liberation of productive forces, the demand for human labor also tends to decrease in the cooperative sphere. This opens the possibility of a progressive transition to a gift economy, in which growing portions of use-values (whether means of consumption or means of production) are distributed without mediation by either money or exchange credits.
Digital platforms based on blockchain technology allow progressively demonetizing the solidarity interchange system and ensuring the realization of surplus-value in an international non-monetary clearing system, which enables people and companies to obtain goods and services from anywhere in the world.
In this model, productive units withdraw goods and services according to their needs and contribute to the system according to their capacities, replenishing in the common catalog a volume of value equivalent to what they receive, added by additional productivity and achieved surpluses. As unsold surpluses are incorporated into this circuit, the volume of freely available goods increases.
Thus, by the very immanent laws of the development of productive forces, a progressive historical transition from socialism — based on interchange by value — to communism — founded on the gift economy — is configured.
Although it may seem paradoxical, the very immanent laws of the development of the forces of production, interchange, and credit — and the liberation of these forces by human communities connected in collaborative networks — make the transition to gift economies possible. In fact, capitalist enterprises themselves, driven by these same laws, already deliver ever-larger volumes of products and services for free to the final consumer.
Competition among capital actors — driven by the immanent laws of capitalist production and realization — forces them to reduce costs and prices, as well as to deliver part of their products for free (samples, limited uses, freemium versions) or to offer free goods financed by advertising.
This dynamic generates a capitalist paradox: expansion of offers for free appropriation, that is, the sustained increase of use-values — digital and tangible — distributed for free. In fact, within capitalist economies, the quantity of use-values — especially of a digital nature — distributed for free is growing rapidly. Obvious examples are free samples, YouTube, Facebook, artificial intelligence platforms, and other digital services.
From an economic point of view, the value of this free consumption is significant – as can be seen in Table 7. What is obtained for free by the final consumer has production and distribution costs, and a real economic value. Based on various estimates, its magnitude can be placed between 11.68% and 14.26% of global GDP, a volume larger than entire sectors such as world agriculture or the automotive industry – as can be seen in Table 8.
This phenomenon is not accidental: technological development — driven by the immanent laws of capitalism — engenders a dispute among capital actors that forces the free delivery of products and services as a mechanism of competition, attention capture, and indirect valorization.
Considering the set of digital products legally accessed and used without direct payment by consumers (platforms like YouTube, Facebook, AI services, among others), the value of this consumption is estimated, very conservatively, between 3.2% and 4.2% of global GDP, a figure comparable to or even higher than the production of the pharmaceutical industry or global mining, which hovers around 1.4% to 2.1% of global GDP. Other studies, considering the consumer surplus (perceived well-being value) generated by these services, estimate this figure at around 6% of the GDP of the countries studied — equivalent to more than 2.5 trillion dollars annually in a sample of 13 nations (COLLIS, 2023).
| Category | Estimated Value 2024 (US$ tri) |
% of Global GDP |
|---|---|---|
| Digital advertising spend integrated into free products | 0.77 | 0.70% |
| Consumer Surplus on Free Platforms | 2.0 – 2.5 | 1.8 – 2.3% |
| Free or generously capped video conferencing | 0.10 – 0.20 | 0.09 – 0.18% |
| Productivity from Free AI Tools | 0.5 – 1.0 | 0.45 – 0.91% |
| Creator Economy (ad-supported free UGC) | 0.19 | 0.17% |
| Free and Open Source Software (financed by companies) | 8.0 – 9.0 | 7.3 – 8.2% |
| Tasting and free samples (food, cosmetics, perfumes, etc.) | 0.20 – 0.35 | 0.18 – 0.32% |
| Content under Creative Commons licenses | 0.032 – 0.055 | 0.03 – 0.05% |
| Loss leaders in physical retail (rice, diapers, milk, meat, etc.) | 0.40 – 0.60 | 0.36 – 0.55% |
| Free shipping in e-commerce | 0.20 – 0.30 | 0.18 – 0.27% |
| Free-to-air commercial TV (100% free, 100% ad-financed) | 0.15 – 0.20 | 0.14 – 0.18% |
| Commercial Radio (100% free for the listener) | 0.09 – 0.12 | 0.08 – 0.11% |
| Free refills + Free Wi-Fi + Physical gifts + Permanent coupons | 0.12 – 0.20 | 0.11 – 0.18% |
| Other free tangibles (bags, parking, carts, etc.) | 0.10 – 0.15 | 0.09 – 0.14% |
| TOTAL | 12.85 – 15.63 | 11.68 – 14.26% |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: BUCHANAN, 2023; BRYNJOLFSSON et al, 2003; BRYNJOLFSSON et al, 2023; IDC, 2024; NIELSEN, 2024; STATISTA, n.d.a; STATISTA, n.d.b; FUTURESOURCE CONSULTING, 2024; CORRIGAN et al, 2018; KOETSIER, 2025; DEAN, n.d; HOFFMANN et al, 2024; OSI, n.d.; OPTIMUM RETAILING, 2024; FORREST, n.d.; STATISTA, n.d.f; YAQUB, 2024; GRAND VIEW RESEARCH. 2024; CHIEF MARKETER, n.d; CHANDUKALA et al, 2017; GORE, 2025; STIHLER, 2023; UNCTAD, 2024; DE CREMER, 2023; GOLD et al, 2024; BANTON,2025; SELLERSCOMMERCE, 2025; CAPITAL ONE SHOPPING, 2025; CAMPAIGN ASIA, 2024; McNALLY, 2024; HERREN, 2024; STATISTA. 2025; NIELSEN, 2024; MARKETRON, 2024; INSIDERADIO, 2024; THE KRAZY COUPON LADY, n.d.; ZION, 2024. COWEN, 2025; FORTUNE BUSINESS INSIGHTS, 2025; MALDONADO, 2025; CHIEF MARKETER, n.d., BRYNJOLFSSON et al, 2019a; COLLIS, 2023. Estimated margin of error due to coverage interval: ±35%
| Entire Sector | Gross Value Added (US$ tri) |
% of Global GDP |
|---|---|---|
| All world agriculture, livestock, and fishing | 4.8 | 4.4% |
| Global automotive industry (vehicles + parts) | 3.1 | 2.8% |
| Global pharmaceutical industry | 1.5 | 1.4% |
| All global mining | 2.3 | 2.1% |
| Free consumption (tangible + intangible) | 12.85 – 15.63 | 11.68 – 14.26% |
Source: Author's elaboration based on: WORLD BANK, n.d.b; IEA, 2024; AUSTRIAN FEDERAL MINISTRY OF FINANCE, 2023; INDEX MUNDI, n.d.; STATISTA, n.d.e; PRECEDENCE RESEARCH, 2025. Estimated margin of error due to coverage interval: ±5% official and ±35% free consumption.
In summary, the value that capitalist enterprises deliver for free each year to attract and retain consumers or indirectly monetize their attention already exceeds that of entire sectors of the global economy. This trend, far from reversing, is accelerating, revealing that the very laws of capitalism engender, in a contradictory manner, growing forms of circulation based on free access and materially anticipate elements of a gift economy.
In the transition process, mediated by Solidarity Economic Circuits (SECs), this free delivery of use-values — understood as a negativity generated by market competition — can be positively overcome and consciously reappropriated and reoriented as a gift in relations of community reciprocity. Through platforms based on blockchain technology and self-managed community management, unsold surpluses can be progressively incorporated into the donations catalog. The increase in productivity, the reduction of necessary labor time, and the expansion of material abundance would allow moving from interchange based on value to distribution according to needs.
Here, gratuity is not a lure for capturing value or attention (as in capitalism), but the expression of social reciprocity and a community ethic. It is the path to the full realization of good-living, where the free development of each individual and each community becomes the end and the means of the economic process.
The current crisis is not conjunctural, but structural: it derives from the immanent laws of capitalist production itself. The development of automation, with robotics and artificial intelligence, replacing living labor broadly and generally, makes the reproduction of the system based on wages as the main distribution mechanism unviable. Faced with this, capitalism in crisis is forced to adopt partial forms of value socialization: expansion of public funds, income transfer policies, support for subsistence solidarity economies, basic income, and new associative forms.
Countries that strengthen income distribution mechanisms and consolidate cooperative, solidarity, and public sectors manage to preserve a sustained solvent demand, expand investment, and increase their systemic resilience. In this framework, a strategy that accelerates the transition consists of organizing Solidarity Economic Circuits (SECs) integrated into collaborative networks, with a progressive demonetization of solidarity interchanges through global digital platforms and the use of blockchain technologies. The economic transition to socialism — understood as the socialization of production, circulation, credit, and appropriation of value — is not an abstract horizon, but an ongoing process. The structural way out of the crisis passes through the central role of the public, popular, solidarity, and cooperative economy in the systemic transition.
From the point of view of the immanent laws of capitalist production, what is observed today is an objective tendency of transition from capitalism to socialism, driven by the crisis of the mode of production. This phenomenon is expressed paradigmatically in the case of the United States.
The more quickly capitalist economies adopt income redistribution mechanisms to activate the consumption of the poorest layers, and the more they strengthen their cooperative, solidarity, social, and public sectors, the more quickly they can exit the crisis and advance in the transition to an associative and solidarity economy.
On the other hand, the contemporary process — through which growing volumes of use-values begin to circulate for their free appropriation within capitalism itself — materially anticipates, albeit in a contradictory, negative, and subordinate way to the logic of capital valorization, some aspects of a gift economy. In Solidarity Economic Circuits, this tendency can be consciously reappropriated and positively reoriented in a non-market manner: the rise in productivity, the reduction of necessary labor time, and the expansion of unsold surpluses allow a growing part of production to be subtracted from monetary logic and redistributed according to socially determined needs.
Unlike capitalism, where gratuity operates as an instrument of competition and value capture, in SECs gratuity is founded on community self-management and social reciprocity, articulating production, circulation, and consumption without monetary mediation. Thus, through the expansion of productive forces and the immanent laws of solidarity production and circulation, the historical possibility opens up for an effective transition from socialism — still regulated by forms of value equivalence — to communism, understood as a system of social reproduction in which access to goods is increasingly organized according to the articulation between the capacities to produce and the needs to consume, oriented towards the good-living of all, ensuring the free development of individualities and human communities, in a continuous process of communal liberation.
1 Throughout this text, 'interchange' is employed as a technical term translating the Portuguese intercâmbio. It denotes the general category of economic flows between actors, including monetary transactions (buying and selling), non-monetary exchanges mediated by value credits, and reciprocal giving based on needs and capacities.
2 For corporations with minority state participation, see: OECD (2024, p. 16).
3 The number of cooperative members in the year 2000 is an estimate. At the time, AGWAY INCORPORATED (1992, p. 7) reported 700 million; PRAKASH (1999) reported 850 million; and LAO NEWS AGENCY (2001, p. 9) reported 800 million.
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