Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Symbiosis, an expanding network of revolutionary organizers and local initiatives, is assembling a confederation of democratic community institutions across North America. This project has been gathering support over the past year and will be launched at a continental congress in Detroit from September 18-22.
The [future] economy will depend for its existence on a deep foundation in culture. It is possible to live without it, but only for a time, like holding your breath under water. Or as one of his readers put it – when productivity improves, “in our system you have a problem; in Fleming’s system you have a party.”
It is delusional, and anti-intellectual, to believe that charity can be a meaningful solution to what is ultimately a pathology of power. We need to be smarter than that.
The beauty of the commons paradigm is that it can emerge and flourish in areas of life that no one suspects could possibly host it…..such as live theater.
When we say “solidarity economy” we are asserting the necessity of introducing solidarity into the economy, incorporating solidarity into the theory and practice of economics.
Nowhere in Escaping Growth Dependency is it assumed that ending fractional reserve banking is the only option for positive change. But the report does claim that monetary reform is often overlooked as a viable area of work for the ecological project.
I just want to see a culture, both economically and politically, and in the community, where people are encouraged to come forward with new ideas and they’re listened to.
A burgeoning save-the-climate effort called the Green New Deal, explains Vox’s David Roberts, “has thrust climate change into the national conversation, put House Democrats on notice, and created an intense and escalating bandwagon effect. … everyone involved in green politics is talking about the GND. … But WTF is it?”
Hence, if degrowth is to remain an emancipatory concept, there is the need to both advance research on theories of transformation, as well as evaluate context-relevant strategy and policy proposals.
In recent years, many researchers and social activists from very different countries, like myself, have rediscovered the notion of the commons as a key idea to deepen social and environmental justice and democratise both politics and the economy.
This article calls for ‘community’ to be led back to its origins and to defend the values that social justice organisers have fought for throughout history.
In part two of Riccardo Mastini’s interview with Giorgos Kallis and Tim Jackson at the Post-Growth 2018 conference at the European Parliament, they trace the history that led to growth being prized above all else and discuss how to conceptualise a future beyond growth.
