Archive for September, 2010

Richmond’s Green Party Mayor Signs ‘Letter of Intent’ with Spain’s Mondragon Coops

by Editors @ Thursday, September 23rd, 2010. Filed under Green Industry, High Road Economics

The Mondragon Cooperative Experience:

A Model for Richmond, California?

 

By Gayle Mclaughlin


Imagine a world where businesses derive their power from the people who work there and capital is used as a tool to serve the people, instead of the other way around, as is the case with conventional corporations.  A world of true workplace democracy, where each worker has an equal say in how the business is run.  A world where workers pool and leverage their resources to start new businesses and create new jobs.  A world where top managers earn no more than 6-7 times the salary of the lowest paid workers and everyone has a secure and decent standard of living.  A world where education, training and innovation are abundant.  A world without lay-offs.

 
I had the opportunity to immerse myself in just such a world last week in the Basque region of Spain, where I attended an intensive five-day seminar at the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, along with 25 worker cooperative enthusiasts and practitioners from all over the US and Korea.  The first Mondragon cooperative started 56 years ago with a few people under the visionary guidance of Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, and it has grown into an extensive network of 120 industrial, financial, retail and education cooperatives with over 16 billion euros in sales and employing about 100,000 people. 

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Mondragon Diaries: Five Days Studying Cutting-Edge People and Tools for Change

by Editors @ Sunday, September 19th, 2010. Filed under Economy
 

Mondragon Diaries: Day One

Why Humanity Comes First at Work:

Learning About Bridges to 21st Century Socialism

By Carl Davidson

Keep On Keepin' On

“This is not paradise and we are not angels.”

--Mikal Lezamiz, Director of Cooperative Dissemination, MCC

After a short bus ride through the stone cobbled streets of Arrasate-Mondragon and up the winding roads of this humanly-scaled industrial town of Spain's Basque country in a sunny fall morning, taking in the birch and pine covered mountains, and the higher ones with magnificent stony peaks, I raised an eyebrow at the first part of Mikel's statement.

The area was breath-takingly beautiful, and if it wasn't paradise, it came close enough.

I'm with a group of 25 social activists on a study tour organized by the Praxis Peace Institute. Our focus is the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a 50-year-old network of nearly 120 factories and agencies, involving nearly 100,000 workers in one way or another, and centered in the the Basque Country but now spanning the globe. We're here to study the history of these unique worker-owned factories, how they work, why they have been successful, and how they might be expanded in various ways as instruments of social change. Georgia Kelly, the Praxis Peace Institute's Executive Director, is our cheerful and helpful group leader, but Mikel is our MCC host in charge of teaching us what he knows.

The MCC reception center is part way up on a slope of a much larger mountain, but it offers a magnificent view of the town and the dozens of industrial and commercial cooperatives in and around it in the valley below. After watching a short film on the current scope of MCC, we move to a lecture room for Mikel's talk. The signs on the wall say 'Mondragon: Humanity at Work: Finance-Industry-Retail-Knowledge', in Basque, Spanish and English.

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China’s Peaceful Rise: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

by Editors @ Sunday, September 5th, 2010. Filed under China, Globalization, Socialism

Poster: 1989, Only Socialism Can Save and Develop China

 

Information and Analysis:

Towards a world for people not profit

How China Rises

by Noah Tucker

Nov 4th 2007

SolidarityEconomy.net via 21st Century Socialism

What lessons can be drawn from China's spectacular and sustained economic growth?

As Hu Jintau remarked at the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the period since the previous Congress five years ago has been extraordinary. China's economic achievements have been arousing not only astonishment and admiration but also some anxiety.
In the past twelve months alone, The People's Republic of China (PRC) has overtaken Canada as the biggest source of imports to the USA, and overtaken the USA as the biggest source of imports to the European Union. Concern about the low level of investment in Africa has been displaced by concern about the effects of the high level of Chinese investment in Africa; there is now even anxiety about the effects of investment by Chinese state-owned firms into the Western economies.

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Green Structural Reform Success: Maine’s Community Coop Ownership of Wind and Heat

by Editors @ Sunday, September 5th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Green Energy

Excess wind power finds home on Maine islands

Thermal storage heaters also offset

the area's high cost of petroleum

By Tux Turkeltturkel@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer, Porland Press Mail

Via SolidarityEconomy.net

The futuristic idea of heating buildings and powering cars with electricity from wind farms off the Maine coast is being tested on a small scale, on two islands that are home to a community-run wind project and some of the highest energy bills in the state.

More Power than needed, working on noise problem

Organizers of the Fox Islands Wind Project say the three turbines that began turning last fall on Vinalhaven generated more power this winter than residents needed, putting the community on a path toward stable energy costs. But attempts to lower noise levels that are disturbing some people who live near the towers have yet to make a difference, according to Cheryl Lindgren, one of the residents.


“They say it’s going to take time, and that may be,” she said. “We’re always hopeful.”


Remedies are still being studied, according to Bill Alcorn, who serves on the Fox Islands Wind board. Turbine speed has been turned down a bit at night to comply with state noise standards. Sound insulation may be upgraded around the turbines, and a sound engineer is analyzing data collected by neighbors, although some abutters have declined to return the logs, he said.

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