Economy featured

Protecting Our Common Home: A Green New Deal for Scotland

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Common Weal’s ‘Our Common Home’ plan might be the first fully costed, fully comprehensive Green New Deal plan anywhere in the world. Even the plans currently being floated by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are so far only dealing with more limited versions of bits of this plan. By adopting ‘Our Common Home’ policies, Scotland has both ability and opportunity to be a world leader on solving the most pressing issue of our time.

Defining a Shared Purpose for the Progressive Movement

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In this article I use the term ‘progressive movement’ to mean all the people and organisations that are working, or would like to work, on creating a world in which people and planet come before profit. If the term does not sit comfortably with you please substitute ‘solidarity economy’ or whatever term you prefer that encapsulates the widest possible breadth of ‘pro-positive-change’ people and organisations.

Against the Ecosystem

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Lately, I’ve been mulling over what I think is a better metaphor for the cooperative movement, or rather, a better metaphor for what I hope to see the cooperative movement become: not an ecosystem, but an organism. Not a collection of disparate entities occupying the same space, each working for its own survival, but rather a single entity with many parts and pieces that play different roles in the functioning and health of the larger whole; a whole which in turn supports each of its constituent parts.

The Role of Innovative Monetary Policies in Supporting a Green New Deal and a More Sustainable Future for Europe and the World

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Ideally, in the context of implementing a Green New Deal, the state would work with civil society and business and in partnership with other states to design, plan and activate the systemic transition to steady state sustainability. A culture and mindset that value sufficiency, limits, sharing, justice and care should be encouraged.

Trade Governance will Make or Break the Green New Deal

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‘The food that you buy will all be grown locally,’ says policy director at New Consensus, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, in a Vox video. This is stated simply, as an aspect of what it will be like to live in the time of a Green New Deal (GND). Yet it represents a fundamental challenge to international trade governance in ways that must be addressed if the GND is to be successful.

Another Europe is Possible

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My forthcoming book, entitled Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, asks the following questions: Could the world be non-capitalist or post-capitalist? Could we see humanism in action? What would it look like? What would socialist corporations look like? How would they function? How would democracy function?

Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth by Guy Standing: Review

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It is in the other English tradition – a tradition starting with the Charter of the Forest, later championed by the Levellers, later by the Chartists and the Co-operatives, the trade unions and the original Labour Movement that brought us the Welfare State – a tradition of resistance to autocracy and privilege – and a tradition that one that can be championed without being compromised by imperialism and militarism. Secondly his new Charter would be a set of principles which, if implemented, would block the politics of Singapore on Thames

Cultivating the Middle Ground: Enough in Action

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In the places where citizen-leaders come together, we can promote the idea of the great middle ground. The ‘middle ground’ refers to the masses of people all over the world whose way of living is between over-consumption and poverty; they live without making excessive demands on the earth.

New Bubbles, Mounting Debt: Preparing for the Coming Crisis

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The global economy is clearly headed for another recession after a decade of lukewarm recovery. The bailouts and loose monetary policy of the post-2008 world did nothing to fix the fundamental causes of capitalism’s latest systemic crisis. Instead, they papered over structural weakness while enabling another orgy of irresponsible lending and rampant speculation.

We Need to Talk About … Green New Deal and Other Necessary Vocabulary for our Times

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In this post, I reflect on the vocabulary we need to be familiar with if we are to raise awareness and develop widespread literacy and skills for responding to all our interrelated problems, from climate breakdown to soil erosion, species extinction, human suffering and inequality. The issue of language and vocabulary has arisen in a number of conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances in recent weeks, as we approached the School Climate Strikes on Sept 20 2019.

Post-Capitalists Must Understand the Role of Migration in Global Capitalism

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Fundamentally, migration has always been, and will always be, a part of human development. There is no use in casting it as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ phenomenon in itself: the notion of being ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ migration is a useless hook for popular debate and undermines the dignity of people who have migrated.