What we need are more social enterprises

The Gross Domestic Product of the Third Sector has had a rebound close to 7% this year. It would seem that nothing bad, but if we contextualize it, it is a sector that barely represents a percentage close to 4% of the national GDP. The fall that it entailed in 2020 was greater than the total decline in GDP of 8.3%, above the decline in the economy as a whole. The economy of the Third Sector in Mexico barely manages to serve 2 million people, when close to 60 million live in poverty. Is civil society guilty of its own failure? Has the López Obrador administration helped in its decline? Neither of the two hypotheses. Let’s see why.

Mexico has little tradition in philanthropic activity, unlike countries like the United States. The Mexican tax framework for non-profit organizations is not very generous. There are multiple pitfalls that hinder the operation of companies in the third sector. In addition, as María Luisa Lara points out (Creating impact, an effective approach to reduce poverty, Conecta, 2014), Mexican society is not very generous. Philanthropy is not a quality of most Mexicans. Many corporate social responsibility programs are self-referential. They are more interested in publicizing their practices than lifting people out of poverty.

And this is not all: quite a few NGOs subsist thanks to donations from their US counterparts, and López Obrador has made it difficult -due to a misunderstood sovereignty- the access of these organizations to financing, alleging foreign interference in Mexico. If we were a developed country, perhaps we could agree with this vision, but this is not the case. What’s more, AMLO has not only made it difficult for these companies to operate, but has also put obstacles in their way by reducing the concepts of their tax deductibility.

However, we believe that there is a deeper reason why the non-profit sector has shrunk in this six-year term. We are referring to López Obrador’s personal style of governing. For AMLO everything is political; There is only a market inherited from the neoliberals and the State, which is the body that should help overcome poverty, not civil society, which is the sector that needs to be developed to achieve the common good. We have to add the social aid system established by the president, which tends to perpetuate people in handouts.

We are not saying anything new either. Numerous scholars, such as Etzioni, the Canadian philosopher Taylor, or José Pérez Adán in Spanish-speaking literature have made numerous contributions to what we could call a third way beyond the limits of the market and the State. We refer to communitarianism.

The community, beginning with the family, is the authentic social space for the development of people. It implies giving, not receiving, sharing some codes of moral values ​​of higher hierarchy than others. In times of polarization between neoliberals and cuatrotéros, this seems impossible, but it is necessary to try. The country is on it. A greater community approach would more successfully help fight crime; to create jobs; would discharge part of its responsibility to the State, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. The key word is not Mexican humanism. It is solidarity, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos says in Lefts of the world, unite (Icaria, Barcelona, ​​2018). It is, as I already pointed out, a third way, the way of good society, which operates beyond the market and the State, in that of society. Here we must focus our efforts, in the absence of successful public policies and an unfair and unequal market.