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Archive for the 'Economy' Category
21st Century Socialism: Eleven Talking Points
Eleven Talking Points
On 21st Century Socialism
By Carl Davidson
May 1, 2009
The current discussion around socialism in left and progressive circles in the U.S. needs to be placed in a more substantive arena. This is an effort to do so. I take note in advance of the criticism that the following eleven working hypotheses are rather dry and formal. But in light of the faux ‘socialisms’ bandied about in the headlines and sound bytes of the mass media in the wake of the financial crisis, especially the absurd claim in the media of rightwing populism that the Obama administration is Marxist and socialist, I felt something a little more rigorous might be helpful. Obviously, criticism and commentary is invited.
1. Socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in US society. The means of production, for the most part, are fully developed and in fact are stagnating under the political domination of finance capital. The US labor force, again for the most part, is highly skilled at all levels of production, management, marketing, and finance. The kernels of socialist organization are also scattered across the landscape in cooperatives, socially organized human services, and centralized and widespread mass means of many-to-many communication and supply/demand data management. Many earlier attempts at socialism did not have these advantages. (more...)
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Can Worker Cooperatives Build a Bridge to Socialism?
Gramsci, Economic Theory of
Worker Cooperatives and the
Transition to a Socialist Economy
By Bruno Jossa
Economics, University of Naples
1. Introduction
In this paper we intend to discuss the problems arising in connection with the transition from capitalism to a system of producer cooperatives, i.e. to a system of self-managed democratic firms. This subject will be addressed against the backdrop of the ideas of Gramsci, a major theorist of workers' councils and probably the one Marxist thinker whose work has outlived the collapse of state socialism in the Soviet Union (see Buttigieg, 1995, p.105 and Baratta, 1999, p. 3).(1)
The problem is interesting because in the literature on possible forms of market socialism, the intermediate period between capitalism and socialism has received little attention right to this day. This is all the more surprising if we bear in mind that analyses of the transitional period used to occupy centre-stage in most of the debates on classical issues such as state socialism and the viability of the socialism-in-one-country option. Preliminarily, we wish to point out that, in our opinion, the transition must come about by democratic means and that we will lay particular stress on the query why Gramsci did not accept the idea that the market is a necessary option in the long-term transition to communism. Traditionally, the term 'transition' is used to describe a "shift from one production mode to another". (more...)
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Lights. Camera. Action. Das Kapital. Now
Thoroughly
Modern Marx
By Leo Panitch
May/June 2009
The economic crisis has spawned a resurgence of interest in Karl Marx. Worldwide sales of Das Kapital have shot up (one lone German publisher sold thousands of copies in 2008, compared with 100 the year before), a measure of a crisis so broad in scope and devastation that it has global capitalism—and its high priests—in an ideological tailspin.
Yet even as faith in neoliberal orthodoxies has imploded, why resurrect Marx? To start, Marx was far ahead of his time in predicting the successful capitalist globalization of recent decades. He accurately foresaw many of the fateful factors that would give rise to today’s global economic crisis: what he called the “contradictions” inherent in a world comprised of competitive markets, commodity production, and financial speculation.
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‘Solidarity Economy’ Emerging in North Carolina
The 'Plenty':
Local Currency Is One Tool
of Local Coop Economy
From Democracy Now
April 9, 2009:
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to look now at how one North Carolina town is trying to become more self-sufficient by moving towards, well, being able to feed, fuel and finance itself. The town of Pittsboro, North Carolina—we just passed it yesterday—it houses the nation’s largest biodiesel cooperative, a food co-op, a farmers’ market and, most recently, its own currency, the Pittsboro Plenty. Pittsboro is one of a number of communities across the country printing their own money in an attempt to support local business.
We’re joined right now by community activist, entrepreneur and author Lyle Estill. He is also the author of Small Is Possible: Life in a Local Economy, and he’s founder of Piedmont Biofuels. He is also author of another book, as well.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! It’s good to have you with us, Lyle.
LYLE ESTILL: Thanks.
AMY GOODMAN: Plenty—where is that currency? I had it here somewhere. How could I lose that? Ah, here it is. Here it is. This is a—looks like—a little bit like Monopoly money. And tell us about Plenty. What does it stand for?
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Economic Justice from the Bottom Up
The Solidarity Economy Movement
Emerges in Its First U.S. Conference
By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net
Nearly 400 organizers and activists gathered at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst March 19-22 for the first national gathering of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, exceeding the expectations of its organizers.
The deepening economic crisis made the meeting quite timely. The overall theme was 'Building Another World,' and drew participants from the East Coast, South and Midwest of the US, even Alaska and Puerto Rico. Internationally, delegations came from Quebec, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. People represented economic justice and green jobs projects, food coops and credit unions, worker coops and labor unions, and peace and justice organizing efforts.
"Our diversity was very dynamic and creative," said Julie Matthaei, a USSEN coordinating committee member. "It served us well in affirming our unity, discussing differences, and helping us reach a deeper understanding of the solidarity economy in our context."
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Mike Davis on the Crisis, Obama, FDR and Socialism Today
Bill Moyers Talks
With Mike Davis
on the Economic Crisis
March 20, 2009
BILL MOYERS: For all the talk on the cable channels and in the blogosphere, you would think Washington has been invaded and conquered. Remember that scary movie from the 1950’s, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS? MALE VOICE: Everyone! They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!
Many film scholars believe the movie is a paranoid parable, warning of a Communist takeover of America. But today, the body snatchers are you ready for this? Socialists! That’s right. Socialists, reportedly swarming over the city and making off with the means of production, namely the Federal budget. I’m not making this up. Newsweek was the first to spot the aliens a month ago and it was us. Here’s the headline of a recent article on Salon.com. Newt Gingrich, reincarnated once again as himself, sounds as if Obama ate his Contract with America for lunch and coughed it up as “European Socialism.”
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Looking for Support in Hard Economic Times?
'Common Security Club' as an Organizing Form for the Solidarity Economy
By Chuck Collins
OnTheCommons.org
The common security club model was born out of work done in the last few years by people struggling with overwhelming indebtedness. Participants spend some time discussing the root causes of the economic crisis, drawing on readings and materials provided by the network. But they mostly focus on what they can do together to increase their economic security and press for policy changes.
“What becomes clear to participants is we are facing some major economic and ecological changes,” said Andree Zaleska from the Boston office of Institute for Policy Studies, who is coordinating clubs in the Northeast. “We are not going back to some golden age of economic growth based on empire, unfettered capitalism, and cheap energy -- nor do we want to! We have to prepare ourselves and our communities for transformation.”
As theologian Walter Brueggemann writes we need to shift from “autonomy to covenantal existence, from anxiety to divine abundance, and from acquisitive greed to neighborly generosity.” Common security club participants are experimenting with ways to make the practical, political, and spiritual changes this entails.
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Dynamic Duo: Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy
Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy:
A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World
A Review of 'Green Collar Economy:
How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems'
By Van Jones, Harper-Collins, 2008
By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net
It's time to link the newly insurgent U.S. Green Jobs movement with the worldwide efforts for the solidarity economy. Both are answering the call to fight the deepening global recession, and both face common adversaries in the failed 'race to the bottom,' environment-be-damned policies of global neoliberalism.
That's the imperative facing left-progressive organizers with connections to these two important grassroots movements. It's even more important in the wake of the appointment of a key leader of one of these movements, Van Jones of 'Green For All', to a top environmental and urban policy post in the Obama administration.
Jones is a founder of an urban-based campaign focused on low-income young people, multinational and multicultural, that first developed as a progressive response to police repression, gang killings and all-round "criminalization of youth." He saw the exclusion of this sector of the population from living-wage work and other opportunities as a key cause of the violence and destruction. Putting young people to work at low-to-medium skill levels retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency seemed like a no-brainer, so the demand for 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' was raised.
The slogan found deep resonance as it spread across the country. Its all-round implications were spelled out in Jones' widely acclaimed book, "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems." It spells out a string of ingenious, interconnected programs aimed at resolving the savage inequalities of structural unemployment and the global dangers of climate change rooted in carbon-based energies systems.
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Green Jobs 2009: Steelworkers, Hip-Hoppers and Tree Huggers Get It On at DC Conference
Blue-Green Insurgency
Gets Fired Up at the DC
Green Jobs Conference
By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
When you walk into a large Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people-half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal-you know some special is happening.
This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathers for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others. (more...)
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Anti-Immigrant in Black Face?
The picture in the ad immediately caught my attention. The photo was of a very dignified older African American man looking into the camera, very determined and equally pensive. Underneath his photo was a caption giving his name—T. Willard Fair—and the fact that he was the veteran of 40 years of struggle in the Civil Rights Movement.
This was certainly enough to pique my interest.
Beneath the caption was a statement declaring that the alleged threat to African Americans comes from documented and undocumented immigrants. He went on to suggest that any notion of legalizing undocumented workers was a slap in the face of African Americans. The ad is associated with a group called the “Coalition for the Future American Worker.â€
Fair’s attack is not surprising, although the virulence and historical nature of it is very unsettling, particularly because it is bound to strike a chord among many African Americans.
Black America has been taking a prolonged economic hit since the mid 1970s. The economic reorganization which many people call de-industrialization has had a devastating impact on the (more...)email2friend
Global Notes #26
by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net
.US hegemony rapidly disappearing
US economic and political hegemony has degraded further in the rapidly globalizing world. At the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz has lost control through his own corrupt crony capitalism. But his problems stem as much from Iraq as his current missteps. Globalists who fill the bureaucracy at the World Bank never were comfortable with the US unilateralist coming to their home and Wolfowitz opened the door for their attacks. That the US can no longer control the internal politics at the World Bank is a good indicator of how far its political influence has fallen. (more...)email2friend
Global capitalism now has no serious rivals. But it could destroy itself
[Note from SolidarityEconomy.net Editors: This article is significant because of its source. Timothy Garton Ash is no Leftist. He’s a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford (where Milton Friedman held forth until his recent death). He’s always been fiercely anti-communist.]
Our planet cannot long sustain the momentous worldwide embrace of the manufacture of desires
by Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does (more...)email2friend
The Time Lords
by Graham Bowley, Financial Times
Andy Hines is stuck in traffic. Predictable enough for Houston at rush hour, but frustrating none the less. The 44-year-old gesticulates with a wiry, tattooed arm at the lines of red tail- lights forecasting a slow drive ahead, but focuses most of his ire on something less immediately tangible: the future. Or rather, the role of futurology - his chosen profession - in the corporate world.
"I should have just gotten an MBA," Hines says, explaining that futurists are seldom given credit for their ideas within the big organisations where (more...)email2friend
“In Venezuela, Conditions for Building Socialism of the 21st Century Have Been Created”
Interview with Heinz Dieterich
By Cristina Marcano, Rebelion.org
Q. Professor Dieterich, did you invent the concept of "Socialism of the 21st Century"?
A. Yes. I developed it, beginning in 1996. It has been published with its corresponding theory in book form, from 2000 on, in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Central America, Brazil, and Venezuela, and, outside Latin America, in Spain, Germany, the People's Republic of China, Russia, and Turkey. Since 2001, it has been appropriated all over the world. Presidents like Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa use it constantly, and so do labor movements, farmers, intellectuals, and political parties. (more...)email2friend
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