The untold story of the role of humanitarian NGOs in building the neoliberal order after empire

After India gained independence in 1947, Britain reinvented its role in the global economy through nongovernmental aid organizations. Utilizing existing imperial networks and colonial bureaucracy, the nonprofit sector sought an ethical capitalism, one that would equalize relationships between British consumers and Third World producers as the age of empire was ending. The Solidarity Economy examines the role of nonstate actors in the major transformations of the world economy in the postwar era, showing how British NGOs charted a path to neoliberalism in their pursuit of ethical markets.

Between the 1950s and 1990s, nonprofits sought to establish an alternative to Keynesianism through their welfare and development programs. Encouraging the fair trade of commodities and goods through microfinance, consumer boycotts, and corporate social responsibility, these programs emphasized decentralization, privatization, and entrepreneurship. Tehila Sasson tells the stories of the activists, economists, politicians, and businessmen who reimagined the marketplace as a workshop for global reform. She reveals how their ideas, though commonly associated with conservative neoliberal policies, were part of a nonprofit-driven endeavor by the liberal left to envision markets as autonomous and humanizing spaces, facilitating ethical relationships beyond the impersonal realm of the state.

Drawing on dozens of newly available repositories from nongovernmental, international, national, and business archives, The Solidarity Economy reconstructs the political economy of these markets—from handicrafts and sugar to tea and coffee—shedding critical light on the postimperial origins of neoliberalism.

"Sasson’s story is written for our times."---Susan Pedersen, London Review of Books
"Bold and ambitious. . . . [The Solidarity Economy] illuminates, with particular sharpness, the British left’s sustained engagement with the problem of economic inequality in the wake of empire."---Helen McCarthy, The Political Quarterly
"Provacative. . . . The Solidarity Economy traces the emergence of neoliberal thought to a surprising place: the universe of left-leaning reformers in postwar Britain, well before theneoliberal revolution under Margaret Thatcher."---Udi Greenberg, Boston Review
"Sasson presents a thought-provoking account of ideas coopted or diverted from their original high-minded, idealistic objectives."---Gordon Bannerman, The Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics

Tehila Sasson is assistant professor of history at Emory University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications such as the American Historical Review, Past & Present, and Dissent.