Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Similarities abound between today’s declining civic ethos and mid nineteenth century, pre Civil War era human flesh markets starting with America’s contemporary desperation class composed of minimum wage workers toiling in America’s most praised corporations (e.g. Wal-Mart & McDonalds) who need public sector-funded food stamps to make basic ends meet.
Let me offer three concrete, somewhat controversial and possibly enlightening cases of “planning” for consideration as models, and then ask whether they are, or could be, acceptable as “participatory” and/or as “centered within the co-op movement”.
Certainly co-ops should meanwhile engage with government on some essential tactical projects (e.g. tax issues); however, we must avoid strategic entanglement – being unable to part ways with processes that no longer meet the needs of co-ops and their members.
“Know your enemy” has always been central to winning any struggle.
Land is part of the global commons like water, air, language, knowledge and culture.
The cooperative movements represent large, diverse alternatives to the dominant private-ownership model and the cooperative ideal has resurfaced many times during the history of modern industrial development.
New Tech… explores the untapped potential of an alternative economy to dismantle and supplant the Moloch Capitalism of our current economic arrangement with a federation of cooperatives and networked open-source micro-manufacturing.
A vexing problem for many potential commons is the lack of startup capital to get a project going while nurturing the social structures to organize participation and work.
Faced with spiralling social, economic and environmental problems, many people are turning to economic democracy for solutions. But what shape should this democracy take?
The Emilia Romagna region in northern Italy gives an insight into how a republican economy might look in practice. The whole infrastructure is significantly geared towards cooperative production without any sign of lost efficiency.
In the 1950s Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, the village priest of Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain, inspired the development of a series of cooperatively owned industries to employ youth in his parish. His vision was that, through ownership by the workers, the wealth created by new industries would be distributed to the workers and to the larger community that nourished and supported them.
Many of us have resigned ourselves to domination in the workplace. This is an outrage. ‘Meaningful work’ is not only an achievable goal for all, a socialised mutual economy is beginning to emerge that may be one step towards this ideal.
