By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SolidarityEconomy.net via NYTimes

Feb. 4, 2012 - A BATTLE between a class of fourth graders and a major movie studio would seem an unequal fight.

So it proved to be: the studio buckled. And therein lies a story of how new Internet tools are allowing very ordinary people to defeat some of the most powerful corporate and political interests around — by threatening the titans with the online equivalent of a tarring and feathering.

Take Ted Wells’s fourth-grade class in Brookline, Mass. The kids read the Dr. Seuss story “The Lorax” and admired its emphasis on protecting nature, so they were delighted to hear that Universal Studios would be releasing a movie version in March. But when the kids went to the movie’s Web site, they were crushed that the site seemed to ignore the environmental themes.

So last month they started a petition on Change.org, the go-to site for Web uprisings. They demanded that Universal Studios “let the Lorax speak for the trees.” The petition went viral, quickly gathering more than 57,000 signatures, and the studio updated the movie site with the environmental message that the kids had dictated.

“It was exactly what the kids asked for — the kids were through the roof,” Wells told me, recalling the celebratory party that the children held during their snack break. “These kids are really feeling the glow of making the world a better place. They’re feeling that power.”

The opportunities for Web naming-and-shaming through Change.org caught my eye when I reported recently on sex traffickers who peddle teenage girls on Backpage.com. I learned that a petition on Change.org had gathered 86,000 signatures calling for the company to stop accepting adult ads.

My next column was about journalists being brutalized in Ethiopian prisons. A 19-year-old college freshman in Idaho, Kelsey Crow, read the column and started a petition to free those journalists — and in no time gathered more than 4,000 signatures.

Does that matter? Does Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, care what a band of cyber citizens thinks of him? Skepticism is warranted, but so far Change.org petitions have seen some remarkable successes.

Ecuador, for example, used to run a network of “clinics” where lesbians were sometimes abused in the guise of being made heterosexual. A petition denouncing this practice gathered more than 100,000 signatures, leading Ecuador to close the clinics, announce a national advertising campaign against homophobia, and appoint a gay-rights activist as health minister.

The masterminds of the successful campaigns aren’t usually powerful or well-connected. Mostly, they just brim with audacity and are on a first-name basis with social media.

Take Molly Katchpole. Last fall, as a 22-year-old nanny living in Washington, D.C., she was peeved by a new $5-a-month fee for debit cards announced by Bank of America, with other banks expected to follow. She took an hour to write a petition, her first.

“After a month it had 306,000 signatures,” Katchpole told me. “That’s when the banks backed down.” Bank of America and other financial institutions withdrew plans for the fee.

Soon afterward, she started a second petition, protesting a $2 charge imposed by Verizon for paying certain bills online. In 48 hours it had attracted more than 160,000 signatures — and Verizon withdrew the fee.

Katchpole parlayed her successes into a job with a new advocacy group, Rebuild the Dream, which seeks to improve the economic well-being of middle-class families.

As for Change.org, it is growing explosively. Founded in 2007, it is a B Corporation — a hybrid of a for-profit company and a charity, seeking to make profits for social good — and began to soar a year ago. It is now growing by one million members a month.

“We’re growing more each month than the total we had in the first four years,” said Ben Rattray, 31, the founder. He said that 10,000 petitions are started each month on the site, and that each success leads to countless more copycat campaigns.

Change.org has grown from 20 employees a year ago to 100 now, in offices on four continents. By the end of this year, Rattray plans to have offices in 20 countries and to operate in several more languages, including Arabic and Chinese. He recognizes that the site may be blocked in China, but shrugs.

“If ultimately we’re not getting leaders to ban our site, we’re not doing our job,” he said.

Meanwhile, what about those 14 kids in Wells’s fourth-grade class? I asked them what their next initiative on Change.org would be. They are still discussing options, but one possibility is to reduce waste by calling on companies to stop bombarding the public with telephone books and instead distribute them only to people who request them.

It’s absurd to think that 14 fourth graders could accomplish anything so sensible. But then again, they’ve already shown that the Web can turn the world upside down.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

More in Opinion Sun. 8pm (8 of 24 articles) Editorial: Politics and the Supreme Court

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Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow

By Noam Chomsky
SolidarityEconomy.net via AlterNet.org

Nov 1, 2011 - It's a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way, something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the groundwork. It would have been the fulfillment of a dream for him to be here with you.

The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development -- even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s, although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that we're going to get out of it, even among unemployed people. It'll get better. There was a militant labor movement organizing, CIO was organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we're going to get out of it.

It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense of hopeless, or, I think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American history and it has an objective basis. In the 1930s unemployed “working people” could anticipate realistically that the jobs are going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today -- and the unemployment level in manufacturing today is approximately like the Depression -- if current tendencies persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come back. The change took place in the '70s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying reasons, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Bernard, who has done a lot of work on it, is a falling rate of profit. That, with other factors, led to major changes in the economy -- a reversal of the 700 years of progress towards industrialization and development. We turned to a process of deindustrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued, but overseas (it’s very profitable, but no good for the workforce). Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise, producing things people need, to financial manipulation. Financialization of the economy really took off at that time.

Before the '70s, banks were banks. They did what banks are supposed to do in a capitalist economy: take unused funds, like, say, your bank account, and transfer them to some potentially useful purpose, like buying a home or sending your kid to college. There were no financial crises. It was a period of enormous growth; the largest period of growth in American history, or maybe in economic history. It was sustained growth in the '50s and '60s and it was egalitarian. So the lowest percentile did as well as the highest percentile. A lot of people moved into reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called here “middle class” (working class is what it’s called in other countries).

It was real. The '60s accelerated it. The activism of the '60s, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent. They’re not changing. The '70s came along and suddenly there’s sharp change to industrialization and the offshoring of production. The shifting to financial institutions, which grew enormously. Also in the '50s and '60s there was the development of what became several decades later the high-tech economy. Computers, Internet, the IT revolution was mostly developed in the '50 and the '60s, and substantially in the state sector. It took a couple of decades before it took off, but it was developed then.

The 1970s set off a kind of a vicious cycle that led to a concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector, which doesn’t benefit the economy. Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power, which, in turn, arrives to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The physical policies such as tax changes, rules of corporate governance, deregulation were essentially bipartisan. Alongside of this began a very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives the political parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporate sector.

A couple years later started a different process. The parties dissolved, essentially. It used to be if you were a person in Congress and hoped for a position of committee chair or a position of responsibility, you got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, you started to have to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector and increasingly the financial sector--a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the literally top 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.

Meanwhile, for the general population it began an open period of pretty much stagnation, or decline for the majority. People got by through pretty artificial means -- like borrowing, so a lot of debt. Longer working hours for many. There was a period of stagnation and a higher concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There’s always been a gap between public policy and the public will, but it just grew kind of astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.

Take a look at what’s happening right now. The big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on is the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not much of an issue. The issue is joblessness, not a deficit. Now there’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, if you want to pay attention to it, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls and the public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply during this stagnation period, this period of decline. The public wants higher taxes on the wealthy and to preserve the limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. Either they’ll reach an agreement, which will be the opposite of what the public wants, or else it will go into kind of an automatic procedure which is going to have those effects. Actually that’s something that’s going to happen very quickly. The deficit commission is going to come up with its decision in a couple of weeks. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger in the heart of the country, and having negative effects.

Without going on with details, what’s being played out for the last 30 years is actually a kind of a nightmare that was anticipated by the classical economists. If you take an Adam Smith, and bother to read Wealth of Nations, you see that he considered the possibility that the merchants and manufacturers in England might decide to do their business abroad, invest abroad and import from abroad. He said they would profit but England would be harmed. He went on to say that the merchants and manufacturers would prefer to operate in their own country, what’s sometimes called a “home bias.” So, as if by an invisible hand, England would be saved the ravage of what’s called “neoliberal globalization.”

That’s a pretty hard passage to miss. In his classic Wealth of Nations, that’s the only occurrence of the phrase “invisible hand.” Maybe England would be saved from neoliberal globalization by an invisible hand. The other great classical economist David Ricardo recognized the same thing and hoped it wouldn’t happen. Kind of a sentimental hope. It didn’t happen for a long time, but it’s happening now. Over the last 30 years that’s exactly what’s underway. For the general population -- the 99 percent in the imagery of the Occupy movement --it’s really harsh and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1 percent, or furthermore 1/10th of 1 percent, it’s just fine. They’re at the top, richer and more powerful than ever in controlling the political system and disregarding the public, and if it can continue, then sure why not? This is just what Smith and Ricardo warned about.

So pick Citigroup, for decades one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations. It was repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer over and over again starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through all the corruption. You probably know it, and it’s astonishing. A couple of years ago they came out with a brochure for investors. They urged investors to put their money in what they call the “plutonomy index.” The world is dividing into a plutonomy, the rich and so on. That’s where the action is. They said their plutonomy index is way outperforming the stock market, so put your money into it. And as for the rest? We set them adrift. We don’t really care about them and we don’t need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state to protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but they essentially have no function. It’s sometimes called these days the “precariat,” people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. It’s not the periphery anymore; it’s becoming a very substantial part of the society in the United States and indeed elsewhere.

This is considered a good thing. For example, when Alan Greenspan was still “St. Alan,” hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this is before the crash for which he is substantially responsible for), he was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years explaining the wonders of the great economy. He said much of this economy was based on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re “precariat” and living precarious existences, then they’re not going to make demands, they won’t make wages, they won’t get benefits and we can kick them out if we don’t like them, and that’s good for the health of the economy. That’s what’s called a healthy economy technically and he was highly praised for this.

Well, now the world is indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat, again in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The plutonomy is where the action is. It could continue like this, and if it does, then this historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. The Occupy movements are the first major popular reaction which could avert this. It’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to go on and form structures that will be sustained through hard times and can win major victories. There are a lot of things that can be done.

I mentioned before that in the 1930s one of the most effective actions was a sit-down strike. The reason was very simple: it’s just a step below a takeover of the industry. Through the '70s, as the decline was setting in, there were some very important events that took place. One was in the late '70s. In 1977, US Steel decided to close one of its major facilities, Youngstown, Ohio, and instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from US Steel and hand it over to the workforce to run and turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win, but with enough popular support they could have won. It was a partial victory because even though they lost it set off other efforts now throughout Ohio and other places.

There’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of not-so-small worker owned or partially worker-owned industries which could become worker-managed. That’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place. It’s happening here, too. In one of the suburbs of Boston something similar happened. A multi-national decided to shut down a productive, functioning and profitable manufacturing company because it was not profitable enough for them. The workforce and union offered to buy it and take it over and run it themselves, but the multi-national decided to close it down instead probably for reasons of class consciousness. I think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like this movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.

There are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them were major. Not long ago, Obama took over the auto industry. It’s basically owned by the public. There were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done. It could be reconstituted so it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership and continue on its traditional path. The other possibility was they could have handed it over to the workforce and turned it into worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a major part of the economy and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need. We all know or should know that the US is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation. That’s very serious. It affects people’s lives and it affects the economy. It’s a very serious business.

I have a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple months ago and ended up in southern France and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to the airport in Paris and it took two hours. That’s the same distance as Washington to Boston. It’s a scandal. It could be done; we have the capacity to do it, like a skilled workforce. It would have taken a little popular support. That could have been a major change in the economy. Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rails for the United States. This could have been done right in the Rust Belt, which is being closed down. There’s no economic reason this can’t happen. These are class reasons and the lack of political mobilization.

There are very dangerous developments in the international arena, including two of them which are kind of a shadow that hangs over almost everything we discuss. There are, for the first time to human history, real threats to peace and survival of the species. One has been hanging around since 1945 and it’s kind of a miracle we’ve escaped it and that’s the threat of nuclear weapons. That’s a threat that’s being escalated by the administration and its allies. Something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble. The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Every country in the world is taking at least halting steps toward trying to do something about it. The US is also taking steps, namely to accelerate the threat. The US is now the only country that’s not only not doing something constructive…it’s not climbing on the train. It’s pulling it backwards.

Congress is right now reversing legislation instituted by the Nixon administration. (Nixon was really the last liberal president of the United States, and literally, this shows you what’s been going on!) They’re dismantling the limited measures the Nixon administration took to try to do something about what’s a growing and emerging catastrophe. This is connected with a huge propaganda system, perfectly openly declared by the business world, that it’s all just a liberal hoax. Why pay attention to these scientists? We’re really regressing back to the Medieval period. It’s not a joke. If that’s happening to the most powerful and richest country in history then this crisis is not going to be averted and all of this we’re talking about won’t matter in a generation or two. All of that’s going on right now and something has to be done about it very soon and in a dedicated and sustained way. It’s not going to be easy to succeed. There are going to be barriers, hardships and failures along the way. Unless the process that’s taking place here and around the world, unless that continues to grow and kind of becomes a major social force in the world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Q&A

Q: What about corporate personhood and getting the money out of that stream of politics?

A: These are very good things to do, but you can’t do any of these things or anything else unless there’s a very large and active base. If the Occupy movement was the leading force in the country then you could move it forward. Most people don’t know that this is happening or they may know about it and not know what it is. Among those who do know, the polls show there’s a lot of support. But that assigns a task. It’s necessary to get out into the country and get people to understand what this is about and what they can do about and what the consequences are of not doing anything about it.

Corporate personhood is a good point, but pay attention to what it is. We’re supposed to worship the Constitution these days, but the 5th Amendment of the Constitution says no person shall be deprived of rights without due process of law. The founding fathers didn’t mean “person” when they said “person.” For example there were a lot of creatures of flesh and blood who were not persons. The entire indigenous population was not considered persons. They didn’t have any rights. There was a category of creatures called 3/5 human -- they weren’t persons and didn’t have rights. Women were not entirely persons, so they didn’t have full rights. A lot of this was somewhat rectified over the years. During the Civil War, the 14th amendment raised the 3/5 to full humans at least in principle, but that was only in principle.

Now over the following years the concept of person was changed by the courts in two ways. One way was to broaden it to include corporations, legal fictions established by the courts and the state. These “persons” later became the management of corporations; the management of corporations became “persons.” Of course, that’s not what the 14th amendment says. It’s also narrowed to undocumented workers. They had to be excluded from the category of persons. That’s happening right now. So legislation like this goes two ways. They defined persons to include corporate persons, which by now have rights beyond human beings, given by the trade agreements and others. They exclude people who flee from Central America where the US devastated their homelands, flee from Mexico because they can’t compete with the US’s highly subsidized agro-business. When NAFTA was passed in 1994, the Clinton administration understood pretty well that it was going to devastate the Mexican economy, so they started militarizing the border. So we’re seeing the consequences. So these people have to be excluded from the category of persons.

So when you talk about personhood, that’s right, but there’s more than one aspect to it. It ought to be pushed forward and it ought to be understood, but that requires a mass base. It requires that the population understands this and is committed to it. It’s easy to think of a lot of things that should be done, but they all have a prerequisite – namely a mass popular base that’s there that’s committed to implementing them.

Q: What about the ruling class in America? How likely is it that they’ll have an open fascist system here?

A: I think it’s very unlikely frankly. They don’t have the force. About a century ago, in the freest countries in the world, Britain and the United Sates at the time, the dominant classes came to understand that they can’t control the population by force any longer. Too much freedom had been won by struggles like these, and they realized it. It’s discussed in their literature. They recognize that they’re going to have to shift their tactics to control of attitudes and beliefs instead of just the cudgel. It can’t do what it used to do. You have to control attitudes and beliefs. In fact that’s when the public relations industry began. It began in the United States and England. The free countries where you had to control beliefs and attitudes, to induce consumerism, to induce passivity, apathy and distraction. It’s a barrier, but it’s a lot easier to overcome than torture and the Gestapo. I don’t think the circumstances are any longer there to institute anything like what we call fascism.

Q: You mentioned earlier that sit-down protests are just a precursor to a takeover of industry. Would you advocate a general strike as a tactic moving forward? Would you ever if asked allow for your voice to relay the democratically chosen will of our nation?

A: You don’t want leaders; you want to do it yourself. We need representation and you should pick it yourselves. It should be recallable representation.

The question of a general strike is like the others. You can think of it as a possible idea at a time when the population is ready for it. We can’t sit here and declare a general strike, obviously. There has to be approval and a willingness to take the risks on the part of a large mass of the population. That takes organization, education and activism. Education doesn’t just mean telling people what to believe. It means learning yourself. There’s a Karl Marx quote: “The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” There’s a variant of that which should be kept in mind, “If you want to change the world in a certain direction you better try to understand it first.”

Understanding it doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that is helpful. It comes through learning. Learning comes from participation. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. You have to gain the experience and understanding which will make it possible to maybe implement ideas as a tactic. There’s a long way to go. This doesn’t happen by the flick of a wrist. It happens from a long, dedicated work. I think in many ways the most exciting aspect of the Occupy movements is just the construction of these associations and bonds that are taking place all over. Out of that if they can be sustained can come expansion to a large part of the population that doesn’t know what’s going on. If that can happen, then you can raise questions about tactics like this, which could very well at some point be appropriate.

*This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity. To read the full address, click here.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152933/ [w1]

How the Common Good

Is Transforming Our World

By Douglas LaBier

Huffington Post

In my previous post I wrote about a rising social psychosis that's visible in three areas of our society. It's likely to prevail for some time, but I think it's like a wave that's crested and will crash to the shore. The reason is that the social psychosis is a backlash against a steadily growing consciousness and behavior that refocuses personal lives and public policies towards promoting the common good.

By the "common good" I'm referring to a broad evolution beyond values and actions that serve narrow self-interest, and towards those guided by inclusiveness -- supporting well-being, economic success, security, human rights and stewardship of resources for the benefit of all, rather than just for some.

It's like a stealth operation, because it hasn't become highly visible yet. But polls, surveys and research data reveal several strands of change that are coalescing in this overall direction. I describe each of them below. They may appear to be unrelated, but I think they're driven by an underlying perspective that we're all like organs of the same body, and the body doesn't thrive if any of the organs is neglected or diseased.

It's an awareness of interconnection of all lives on this planet, and a pull towards acting upon that reality in a range of ways. They include rethinking personal relationships, the responsibility of business to society, and the role of government in an interdependent world.

A 21st-Century Mindset

The rise of the common good reflects a sense of global citizenship and an obligation to be a good ancestor to future generations who inhabit this planet. In fact, it embodies behavior and policies that fit the needs for effective functioning -- both personal and political -- in our post-9/11, post-economic meltdown world.

That is, in previous posts I've argued that this new era of unpredictable change in a non-equilibrium world requires new criteria for psychological health and resiliency, beyond just effective stress management and coping. Others have emphasized the new mindset that's needed for effective business and leadership strategies in this interconnected era.

For example, Matt Bai has described in the New York Times that "[n]ow we live in an integrated world where American jobs rely on the economic policies of governments in Asia or Latin America, while our security is subject to the whims of a cleric living in a cave," and, "[w]ith global interdependence comes a certain lack of control, a vulnerability to disparate influence."

Similarly, CUNY professor and blogger Jeff Jarvis refers to a "great restructuring of the economy and society, starting with a fundamental change in our relationships -- how we are linked and intertwined and how we act."

And Umair Haque writes in his Harvard Business School blog about the new principles of a new economy "built around stewardship, trusteeship, guardianship, leadership, partnership," adding that "[a]s interaction explodes, the costs of evil are starting to outweigh the benefits." In effect, transparency will become the antidote to evil.

Let's look at some of the seemingly disparate themes of the massive shift underway that has spawned the current social psychosis.

The New Norm of Racial-Ethnic Diversity

As you read these words, the country is becoming more diverse. Some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be non-white. Already, five states have a majority non-white population. New York Times columnist Charles Blow captured a slice of this at the time of the passage of health care legislation, writing that "[a] woman [Nancy Pelosi] pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill's most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man [Barney Frank] and a Jew [Anthony Weiner]. And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It's enough to make a good old boy go crazy."

Nearly 20 percent of counties in the U.S. have, or are close to, a nonwhite majority. This shift is steadily changing the social landscape. The trend is towards movement in the direction of tolerance, acceptance and valuing -- rather than fearing or hating -- the increasingly diverse composition of American society. And that includes the rising numbers of those with multi-racial/ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, research finds that the latter group tends to be open-minded and more oriented to inclusiveness and openness.

Volunteer Service

Data show that the number of volunteers is steadily growing among all age groups. During 2009, about 64 million Americans did volunteer work (defined as unpaid volunteer activities through an organization.) That's nearly 27 percent of the populations and reflects a steady year-by-year increase, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report. And a rapid rise of volunteerism has occurred in the last decade among men and women in their 30s and 40s. Today, people describe volunteerism as part of their sense of responsibility to help others in need, not something for padding their resume.

Donations of Organs by Living Donors to Strangers

That number is steadily rising. For example, kidney donations from living donors have outnumbered those from deceased donors since 2003. Some states, such as Wisconsin, offer tax deductions for expenses related to living organ donations.

Hands-On Philanthropy

This trend is towards wanting contributions to have visible, direct impact upon people's lives. More are turning away from writing checks to well-heeled organizations like universities or cultural centers. This trend is visible among venture capitalists who bring a high-impact perspective to venture philanthropy as well as among average citizens, who increasingly contribute to international organizations that help people become more self-sufficient in daily life -- for example, through micro finance (providing small loans to individuals starting businesses in impoverished countries), or purchasing a goat for a family that relies on small farming for their livelihood, or paying the salary of a schoolteacher in an impoverished part of the world.

Responsibility for a Healthy Planet

Despite the continued denial of the reality of climate change and the human contributions to it by the GOP, a denial unmatched among major political parties around the globe, pressure continues to build, both politically and on a grassroots level, for actions that reverse or halt climate change and promote sustainable living. Among the latter are groups like 350.org, the Alliance for Climate Protection and community alliances of citizens, businesses and government such as Bethesda Green, in Bethesda, Md. This trend is underscored by the steadily rising financial contributions to environmental organizations.

Support For Human Rights

Data show a steady increase of both financial contributions to and membership in such organizations as Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, Amnesty International, Mercy Corps International and others. Even in the absence of effective action, consciousness continues to build around the perspective that violations of rights to safety, dignity and personal freedom for another -- anywhere in the world -- affect oneself, as well. In addition, the view of security and human rights is expanding to include not only freedom from violence and terrorism, but also the rights to health care, support of older citizens, rights to adequate housing, food, fair wages and other conditions. A recent U.N. report examines these issues with respect to responsibilities and actions of member nations.

Personal Success

I've written previously that men and women increasingly want a "4.0 career": one that provides more than personal recognition, power and financial reward. They want meaningful work, opportunities for continued learning and growth, a positive management culture and a team-oriented, ethical environment. They want to have impact on something larger than just their own personal success. These themes are especially pronounced among younger workers.

The Social Impact of Business

Business leaders have already bought into the need for sustainability, and many are contributing to the rise of a new business model, one that addresses social problems and serves the common good as well as achieving financial success. The "green business" movement reflects this shift, along with the concept of the "triple bottom line." Related trends include sustainable investing, social entrepreneurialism, corporate social responsibility, building a psychologically healthy management culture, and transparency via open access to information and corporate disclosure policies.

Acceptance of Gay Relationships and Gay Marriage

Acceptance of gay relationships has steadily increased, while opposition to gay marriage has steadily decreased, when tracked over the last several years, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Between one-quarter and one-third of gay and lesbian couples are raising children, a steadily rising number. And the most current surveys indicate that about half of all Americans support gay marriage.

Families And Relationships Are Transforming

A majority of Americans now say their definition of family includes same-sex couples with children, as well as married gay and lesbian couples. Regarding intimate relationships, surveys by the Gallup organization and other groups find that the quality of the relationship is more important to people today than simple allegiance to the institution of marriage. Census statistics and other data confirm this, showing, for example, a steady decline in the marriage rate over the last several decades, while cohabitation has steadily risen in each of those same decades. About half of all households today are headed by people who are single. And unmarried couples are as likely as married couples to be raising children: it's currently approaching 50 percent.

Some surveys report that at least 30 percent of those polled admit to having had an affair. Whether that's accurate or not, the upshot is that affairs are no longer viewed as immoral in today's culture. Moreover, attitudes towards prostitution are also shifting towards greater acceptance and focus on the rights of sex workers.

So, these are just some of the pervasive shifts underway. My read is that they link around an underlying theme that our culture is evolving in both consciousness and action, and that evolution will grow and strengthen over time. That's why the current social psychosis will fade. That's not only hopeful but important: The rise of the common good is both a necessary path for survival and security on an interdependent planet and the path towards personal psychological health, success and well being in this new world era.

Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., a business psychologist and psychotherapist, is Director of the Center for Progressive Development, in Washington, D.C. You may contact him at dlabier@CenterProgressive.org.

Solidarity as Economic System

for Dealing with Social Crisis

In Haiti, sharing communities are proving more shock-proof in the wake of disaster than market-based economies.

By Beverly Bell
posted Mar 26, 2010

“If it weren’t for solidarity, Haiti wouldn’t be alive today,” is an expression commonly heard here since the earthquake of January 12.

Haiti’s history is based on sharing and cooperation—expressed with gifts and solidarity toward those surviving on the margins. These displays usually go unnamed and unnoticed.

Some are formalized systems. One is called konbit—collective work groups in which members of the community labor without any expectation of compensation or even return. Konbit is the equivalent of a barn-raising, an option for those without enough hands to accomplish the task by themselves or enough money to hire labor. The cooperation of konbit has allowed farmers to harvest their fields and engage in other major work projects from time immemorial.

In sòl—revolving loan funds—a group of women puts a certain amount of money into a common pot each week or each month; the total is given to a different member each time. That way, each woman can, at some point, have enough capital to allow her to make a significant expense: hospital care for a sick mother, a carton of soap bars that she can buy on discount and sell for profit, a new cooking pot for a fried dough business on a street corner. She doesn’t return the allotment and there is no interest to pay; no one profits off of anyone else. The exchanges are based on trust and human relationships.

Sabotaj, practiced among market women, is like sòl but occurs each day. The term implies sabotaging poverty.

Mèn ansanm, hands together, is another system of community-generated financial assistance. Unlike sòl and sabotaj, which occur among individuals, mèn ansanm occurs through organizations. Here, everyone contributes money to a common pot on a schedule that they determine, and then lends it to one member. That person keeps it for a period to bolster his or her income-generating activities. He or she then returns the principal, but keeps the profit. Again, no one makes a profit from another member.

Trok is another common form of exchange which does not involve currency. It happens informally, with a woman giving milk from her cow for another woman’s baby while the other gives back beans from her garden.

Some organizations say that solidarity should be recognized as an explicit part of an alternative economy, and that the mutual aid—without expectation of return—creates a model of what domestic and international economic policy could look like. Ricot Jean-Pierre of the Platform to Advocate Alternative Development in Haiti (PAPDA) says, “Our work is to show that we can enter into another development logic that’s not just via the market but that is through the community, especially with a solidarity economy.”

During the ten weeks since the earthquake, solidarity has formed a critical part of the international rescue, recovery, aid, and support operations. Community organizations, peasant farmers, churches, and townspeople are housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of homeless and displaced people. They are relying on their own resources, contributing their own slim reserves of food, income, and time, since very little outside help has come to underwrite the initiatives.

Judith Simeon, an organizer of women’s and peasants’ groups, shared this analysis: “People are in solidarity in their misery. They are also in solidarity with their capital."

Inuit elders, photo by John HasynWe Are Hard-Wired to Care and Connect by David Korten
Our brains are made to support caring, cooperation, and service.

One example of gifting and solidarity systems at work is emerging in the earthquake-damaged town of Jacmel and surrounding villages. In one of those villages, Cap-rouge, the peasant organization Long Live Hope for Development of Cap-rouge (VEDEK) sent out a call to others to help survivors and brought it to Jacmel’s general hospital to buy basic medicines and water for the wounded.

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 displaced Haitians were pouring into Cap-rouge from Port-au-Prince and Jacmel. In response, peasants brought roots and fruits from their gardens to feed the survivors.

Cap-rouge farmer families also did trok with fisher families. They exchanged grains and vegetables for seafood to substantiate the food that they could offer to the displaced.

In the midst of the Cap-rougeoises’ mobilization of generosity, the villagers were also trying to address the damages and losses they themselves incurred. Research led by the youth of VEDEK found that 155 houses had been leveled, 602 houses were damaged, and 150 water reservoirs were destroyed. To clear the land and demolish the houses that posed a danger, they organized konbits of about 40 people each.

VEDEK also mobilized a campaign to get bean seeds and organic compost so the farmers could produce and even increase their yield, both to help themselves get back on their feet and to help them feed their guests. VEDEK members contributed 9 kilos of bean seeds and 800 sacks of organic compost, which they distributed to 1,400 families.

A statement by 17 progressive Haitian organizations read, "These spontaneous organs of solidarity must now play a central role in the reconstruction and planning of our national space… [A] collective approach in seeking common responses to our problems" could "build a real and viable alternative based on popular democracy."

Beverly Bell bio picBeverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Thanks to Jean Jores Pierre, who provided research on VEDEK.

Interested?

Report from the 1st Solidarity Economy

Social Forum & World Fair, Santa Maria

and Porto Alegre, Brazil - Jan 22-29, 2010

By Emily Kawano

Center for Popular Economics
and US Solidarity Economy Network

Santa Maria, in the southern-most state of Brazil, likes to call itself the solidarity economy capital of the world.

There's some truth to that. I recently had the privilege of attending the 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum and World Fair at the invitation of  the FBES (Brazilian Forum on the Solidarity Economy),  SENAES (National Secretariat of the Solidarity Economy) and Marist Solidarity. The invitation was extended to the RIPESS* Board, and five of us were able to make the trip: Carlos Amorin (Uruguay), Ana Leighton (Chile), Eric Lavillunière (Luxembourg), Nancy Neamtan (Canada) and myself from the U.S.

For 15 years they have been hosting a Solidarity Economy Fair. This year it drew an estimated 150,000 people who came to shop for handicrafts, wine, cheese, sausages, pastries, bread, cookies, fruit and vegetables that are produced by solidarity economy enterprises. Many of these are worker cooperatives, while others are family-owned and run small businesses.

There were coops from the Amazon region like Polo Pro Bio, that sold lovely leaf shaped hot mats made out of sustainably harvested and processed rubber, and women's cooperatives selling jewelry made out of colorful locally harvested seeds and other natural materials.  Local vendors sold cold, freshly squeezed juices, sweet pastries, and hot turnovers with meat and cheese. There were many stalls selling the popular regional tea erva mate, which is sipped through a silver straw tipped with a strainer. Many people carried along a thermos of hot water to keep their tea topped up. Vendors were mostly from Brazil, but some traveled from other Latin American countries. At times it was hard to move because the aisles were so crowded.

Here's a link a video that provides a general overview of the Fair and Social Forum.

http://www.wsftv.net/Members/jnardi/videos/FSM10_SMaria_240110_imgs.mp4/view

Cultural performances livened up the Fair throughout three days. Obù Oja, a youth group of Afro-descendents performed a dance that drew on their cultural roots and Raizes Americanas of Chico Sosa showed off their hip-hop moves. You can see a video of these performances  at this link:

http://www.wsftv.net/Members/jnardi/videos/FSM_SMaria_240110_dance.mp4/view

Solidarity Economy Social Forum

Solidarity Economy in the Opening March, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre

Running alongside the Fair was the first Solidarity Economy Social Forum that kicked off with a march of energetic chanting, drumming, singing and dancing from a local church to the fairground. For the next 3 days, hundreds of people from around the world, though mostly from Latin America, exchanged their views and experiences, debated and strategized. There were five themes:

"    Building a Solidarity Finance System
"    International Workshop on Education, Culture and the Solidarity Economy
"    Building Economic Integration based on Solidarity
"    Building solidarity production, marketing and consumption
"    Building sustainable, healthy food sovereignty

Despite the ferocious heat that even the locals complained about, the workshops were well attended and good spirited. Over the course of the next couple of days participants forged a set of proposals in each of these five areas.

On the 25th the Solidarity Economy Forum moved to Porto Alegre to join up with the World Social Forum (WSF), which was marking its 10th anniversary with reflections on accomplishments and challenges over the past decade and thinking about the future. Daniel Tygel, the Executive Secretary of the FBES (Brazilian Forum on the Solidarity Economy) reflects on the development of the solidarity and WSF over the last 10 years: Interview.  On January 29th, the final day of the WSF, the five sets of proposals on the solidarity economy were presented.

The summary of proposals is not yet available, but we will circulate them when they are.

I was particularly inspired by the innovative thinking and experimentation with initiatives to scale up the solidarity economy. I will focus on the following two areas: 1) education and training and 2) mapping and economic integration.

SE Education and Training

There was an emphasis on the importance of education and training which takes a number of forms and is provided in various ways. In Brazil, one of the most effective sources of seeding SE initiatives is through the University-based SE incubators. The government-supported PRONINC (National Programme for Popular Cooperative Incubators) provides competitive funding for university programs. These programs provide local groups with the training and support that they need to start up cooperatives or other social enterprises, similar to business incubators in the U.S. It is significant that there is an explicit intent to change the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and expertise into one of mutual respect and exchange between academic 'scientific knowledge' and 'popular knowledge.' The role of scientific knowledge is to systematize popular knowledge born of practice and experience, thereby improving and helping to spread successful practices. In the process the university transforms itself into a community partner that contributes to public well being through practical and concrete research, training and application.

Mapping and economic integration

Many of the discussions focused on how the solidarity economy can scale up through economic integration. Again and again, speakers and participants spoke of the importance of meeting people's needs through solidarity economy production and distribution. In order to do this we need better integration amongst solidarity economy producers, marketing, finance and trade.

Justo Trama is an example of a solidarity economy supply chain in which every stage of production is done by a collectively managed enterprise. Justo Trama is a network of cooperatives that employs 700 workers to produce beautifully printed t-shirts and bags. Justo Trama links up organic cotton farmers, designers, dye-makers, cloth manufacturers, and garment workers. This is the kind of economic integration that we need to be supporting on a much larger scale. 

In order to develop SE supply chains we need good data on who is producing what and what inputs they need. We also need tools that enable producers, suppliers, distributors and consumers to connect with one another. There are a number of web-based platforms that help make these connections.

In Brazil, the Brazilian Forum on the Solidarity Economy (FBES) has created a Solidarity Economy Map of over 20,000 SE enterprises with information about what they produce as well as their key inputs. So for example a cooperative of rice farmers could search the Rio de Janeiro area for businesses that buy rice.

What was included in the Brazilian solidarity economy map? One of the criteria of inclusion was  worker or collective self management. Other important dimensions such as gender equality and sustainability are tracked through survey questions, although these are not criteria for inclusion or exclusion. The SE movement in Brazil is broader than what is included in the mapping project and the boundary is relatively fluid and organic. However, for the purpose of mapping and research they decided after many lengthy discussions to use this self-management criteria.

A complementary system called Cirandas enables businesses to connect through a social networking platform. Each SE enterprise can create its own page with pictures and information about their products, prices, location, history and mission. In addition, organizations, networks and individuals involved in the solidarity economy can connect through similar pages. A search engine enables SE enterprises to locate suppliers and customers. IBASE and University of RJ are collaborating.

Cirandas is working to improve its categorization of SE enterprises. They have adopted the idea of a tree of products, each of which will have a unique ID. It will integrate route sharing for delivery, an ordering system for consumer organizations and they are working on SE certification and labeling. The local SE forums would be responsible for certifying their local enterprises. The One challenge is that of the 22,000 SE entprises that have been mapped, only 2000 actually use email.

REAS has pledged 1000 euros to support an automatic aggregator for the international projects: Cirandas, ZOES, Solidarius.

ZOES, in Italy, is another platform that integrates mapping with the social networking. They are in still in the process of improving the site and fixing bugs, but already have 6,000 users registered including individuals, organizations, networks and businesses/enterprises. They use a self mapping process in which users must be in agreement with a set of principles and also must be introduced by another user. Users also validate the enterprises and there is space to comment on whether or not it is a good fit.

ZOES does not use exclude enterprises that are not collectively self managed, but they do include information about the businesses' environmental practices and worker involvement in decision-making.

Their next steps are to internationalize the site to enable solidarity enterprises, organizations, networks, and movements from all over the globe to self map. They also will give users the ability to engage in e-commerce through this platform.

Solidarius is an international web-based platform for network building and for the development of local economic networks. It integrates an ecommerce tool as well as its own system of money.  Solidarius also has developed other tools for building up a business plan, which have financial, economical, ecological sustainability. The methodological approach about the sustainability in these 3 dimensions. Solidarius is in dialog with ZOES, CIRANDAS.

One of the main challenges is for the different platforms around the world to be able to talk to one another. Solidarius has been working on developing SIS methodology so that it can communicate with other platforms and also be scalable. Solidarius changed the language to java and a developed a better database for big movements and transactions.

Towards a common frame of reference

Due to the youth of the solidarity economy framework and its commitment to de-centralized and pluralist development, it is not surprising that there are multiple definitions of the same terms as well as multiple terms for the same thing. Solecopedia is like a wikipedia to develop a common frame of reference for key concepts and terms, without necessarily having to all adopt the same definitions. Take for instance the term solidarity economy. It comes with a whole history and cultural context in different countries, regions and even communities. In cases like these, it is important that at least we know what it means in Brazil, versus Italy, versus the U.S. We do not have to agree to the same singular definition. At the same time it is good to nurture convergence where possible and Solecopedia seeks to encourage and bridge building between the different experiences.

Solidarity economy trade

Eduardo Letelier discussed the Espacio Mercosur Solidario which was created in 2006 to bring together countries, consolidate experiences, discuss challenges, and promote an understanding that the construction of a new world needs to adopt the concepts and practices of solidarity economy. It works to foster regional economic integration in Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina. Various Solidarity economy networks and movements meet once a year in Uruguay to coordinate is joint construction of SE economic policies and hope to start having a second annual meeting in Santa Maria, Brazil. One of the major challenges is to defend our concept of solidarity economy so that it does not get 'captured' by governments that would seek to use it to address social problems in a way that has little t o do with the principles of the solidarity economy.
There is also an interesting discussion about fair trade that is consistent with SE values. Issues include how much of the profits are being reaped by the northern fair trade businesses, how much of fair trade is dominated by transnational corporations, how much decision making power do the producers have, what about local and regional fair trade (as opposed to North-South)?

Wrap-up

In summary, the 1st Solidarity Economy Social Forum and World Fair was a great success in  terms of advancing thinking about how to grow the solidarity economy in scale and scope. What I covered here is just a fraction of the many invaluable discussions and exchanges that took place. As always, we all made new connections and strengthened old ones. It was an experience of collective inspiration to see all the vibrant work and experimentation that is going on throughout the world, but especially in Latin America.

Finally, this event was significant in raising the visibility within the World Social Forum process. Clearly, the solidarity economy has benefited from the open space that the WSF provides, but at the same time, the WSF has benefited from the concrete and positive vision of the solidarity economy. We look forward to continued integration between the WSF and solidarity economy movements. Onward.

The challenges facing 21st century socialism in Venezuela

``In Venezuela the biggest threat to the revolution does not come from the right-wing political opposition but from the so-called `endogenous' or `Chavista' right wing, in that chunks of the revolutionary bloc, including state elites and party officials, will develop a deeper stake in defending global capitalism over socialist transformation''' -- William I. Robinson

Interview with William I. Robinson, professor of sociology, University of California at Santa Barbara, by Chronis Polychroniou, editor of the Greek daily newspaper Eleftherotypia

February 1, 2010 -- ZNet

Chronis Polychroniou: There are scare stories coming from Venezuela. The border is heating up, infiltration is taking place, a new Colombian military base near the border, US access to several new bases on Colombia and constant subversion. Is the regime concerned about a possible invasion? If yes, who is going to intervene?

William I. Robinson: The Venezuelan government is concerned about a possible US invasion and certainly an outright invasion cannot be ruled out. However I think the US is pursuing a more sophisticated strategy of intervention that we could call a war of attrition.

We have seen this strategy in other countries, such as in Nicaragua in the 1980s, or even Chile under Allende. It is what in CIA lexicon is known as destabilisation, and in the Pentagon's language is called political warfare -- which does not mean there is not a military component. This is a counterrevolutionary strategy that combines military threats and hostilities with psychological operations, disinformation campaigns, black propaganda, economic sabotage, diplomatic pressures, the mobilisation of political opposition forces inside the country, carrying out provocations and sparking violent confrontations in the cities, manipulation of disaffected sectors and the exploitation of legitimate grievances among the population.

The strategy is deft at taking advantage of the revolution's own mistakes and limitations, such as corruption, clientalism and opportunism, which we must acknowledge are serious problems in Venezuela. It is also deft at aggravating and manipulating material problems, such as shortages, price inflation and so forth.

The goal is to destroy the revolution by making it unworkable, by exhausting the population's will to continue to struggle to forge a new society, and in this way to undermine the revolution's mass social base. According to the US strategy the revolution must be destroyed by having it collapse it in on itself, by undermining the remarkable hegemony that Chavismo and Bolivarianismo has been able to achieve within Venezuelan civil society over the past decade.

US strategists hope to provoke Chavez into a crackdown that transforms the democratic socialist process into an authoritarian one. In the view of these strategists, Chavez will eventually be removed from power through any number of scenarios brought about by constant war of attribution -- whether through elections, a military putsch from within, an uprising, mass defections from the revolutionary camp, or a combination of factors that can not be foretold.

In this context the military bases in Colombia provide a crucial platform for intelligence and reconnaissance operations against Venezuela and also for the infiltration of counterrevolutionary military, economic sabotage, and terrorist groups. These infiltrating groups are meant to harass, but more specifically, to provoke reactions from the revolutionary government and to synchronise armed provocation with the whole gamut of political, diplomatic, psychological, economic and ideological aggressions that are part of the war of attrition.

Moreover, the mere threat of US military aggression that the bases represent in itself constitutes a powerful US psychological operation intended to heighten tensions inside Venezuela, force the government into extremist positions or into "crying wolf", and to embolden internal anti-Chavista and counterrevolutionary forces.

However, it is important to see that the military bases are part of the larger US strategy towards all of Latin America. The US and the right wing in Latin America have launched a counteroffensive to reverse the turn to the left or the so-called "pink tide". Venezuela is the epicentre of an emergent counter-hegemonic bloc in Latin America. But Bolivia and Ecuador and more generally the region's burgeoning social movements and left political forces are as much targets of this counteroffensive as is Venezuela.

The coup in Honduras has provided impetus to this counteroffensive and emboldened the right and counterrevolutionary forces. Colombia has become the epicentre regional counterrevolution -- really a bastion of 21st century fascism.

Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" has been very popular with the poor. Could you describe out how the Venezuelan society has changed since Chavez came to power?

First of all, let us acknowledge that the Bolivarian revolution has placed democratic socialism back on the worldwide agenda. We went through a period in the 1990s where most were scared to even talk of socialism, when it seemed that global capitalism had reached the apex of its hegemony and when some on the left even bought into the "end of history" thesis.

The Bolivarian revolution has given the poor and largely Afro-Caribbean masses their voice for the first time since the war of independence from Spanish colonialism. The Chavez government has reoriented priorities to the poor majority. It has been able to use oil revenues, in particular, to develop health, education and other social programs that have had dramatic results in reducing poverty, virtually eliminating illiteracy, and improving the health of the population. International organisations and data-collecting agencies have recognised these remarkable social achievements.

However, as someone who visits Venezuela regularly, I would say that the more fundamental change since Chavez came to power is not these social indicators but the political and socio-psychological awakening of the poor majority -- a broad process of popular, grassroots mobilisation, cultural expression, political participation and empowerment. The old elite and the bourgeoisie have been partially replaced from the state and from formal political power -- although not entirely.

But the real fear and resentment of the old dominant groups, the panic and their hatred for Chavez, is because they have felt slip from their grip the ability to exercise cultural and socio-psychological domination over the popular classes as they have done for decades, nay centuries. Of course, there still plenty of other mechanisms through which the bourgeoisie and the political agents of the ancien regime are able to wield their influence, particularly through the mass media that is still largely in their hands ... and this is why the "media battles" in Venezuela play such a prominent role.

That said, there are all kinds of problems and contradictions internal to the Bolivarian revolution.

How widespread are nationalisation plans under Chavez and is there any evidence so far that they bring the desired results?

The obvious major economic change has been the recovery of the country's oil for a popular project -- and even at that there is still a PDVSA [state oil company] bureaucratic oligarchy. Other key enterprises, such as steel, have been nationalised. And the cooperative sector -- with all its problems -- has spread. Nonetheless, let's be clear: economic power is still largely in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Let us recall that the Venezuelan revolution is unique in that the old reactionary state was not "smashed" as it was in other revolutions. The strategy of the revolution has been to set up new parallel institutions and to also try to "colonise" the old state. But the Venezuelan state is still largely a capitalist state. The key question is how can a transformative project move forward while operating through a corrupt, clientalist, bureaucratic and often inert state bequeathed by the ancient regime?

If revolutionary and socialist forces come to power within a capitalist political process how do you confront the capitalist state and the brakes it places on transformative processes? In fact, in Venezuela, and also in Bolivia and elsewhere, prevailing state institutions often act to constrain, dilute and coopt mass struggles from below.

In my view, in Venezuela the biggest threat to the revolution does not come from the right-wing political opposition but from the so-called "endogenous" or "Chavista" right wing, in that chunks of the revolutionary bloc, including state elites and party officials, will develop a deeper stake in defending global capitalism over socialist transformation.

The revolution has been going on for over a decade now. Is it maturing or is it reaching a stage of decline and deformation?

I would not say that the revolution is in "decline" or "deformation". Rather, we need to be more expansive in our historical analysis and even theoretical reflection on what is going on at this historical juncture of 21st century global capitalism and its crisis. The turn to the left in Latin America started out as a rebellion against neoliberalism. The post-neoliberal regimes undertook mild redistributive reform and limited nationalisations, particularly of energy resources and public services that had previously been privatised. They were able to reactive accumulation. But post-neoliberalism that does not now move towards a deeper socialist transformation runs up against limits.

The Bolivarian process faces contradictions, problems and limitations, as do all historic projects! I would say that both the Venezuelan revolution and also the Bolivian and Ecuadoran processes, may be coming up against the limits of redistributive reform within the logic of global capitalism, especially given the crisis of global capitalism. Anti-neoliberalism that does not challenge more fundamentally the very logic of capitalism runs up against limitations that may now have been reached.

It may be that the best or the only defence of the revolution is to radicalise and deepen the revolutionary process, to push forward structural transformations that go beyond redistribution. The fact is that the Venezuelan bourgeoisie may have been displaced in part from political power but it is still very much in economic control. Breaking that economic control implies a more significant change in property and class relations. This in turn means breaking the domination of capital, of global capital and its local agents. Naturally this is a Herculean task. There is no clear way forward and each step generates complex new contradictions and Gordian knots. Of course these are matters the whole global left must contemplate.

Let us recall the lessons of the Nicaraguan and other revolutions. Multiclass alliances generate contradictions once the honeymoon stage of easy redistributive reform and social programs reach their limit. Then multiclass alliances begin to collapse because there are fundamental contradictions between distinct class projects and interests. At that point a revolution must more clearly define its class project; not just in discourse or in politics but in actual structural transformation.

At a more technical level, we could say that the contradictions generated by trying to break the domination of global capital are not the fault of the revolution. Venezuela is still a capitalist country in which the law of value, of capital accumulation, is operative. Efforts to establish a contrary logic -- a logic of social need and social distribution -- run up against the law of value. But in a capitalist society violating the law of value throws everything haywire, generating many problems and new disequilibria that the counterrevolution is able to take advantage of. This is the challenge for any socialist-oriented revolution within global capitalism.

Poster: Oppose hegemonism, uphold world peace - maintain a foreign policy of independence and own initiative, 1983

'Three Strategies'

to Tackle the

'Three Challenges'

By Zheng Bijian

It is far from easy for a country of 1.3 billion population to achieve peaceful rise. During the first half of the 21st century, in particular, China faces a period of both "golden opportunity for development" and "standing out contradictions". The latter, in the field of economic and social progress, can be boiled down to "three major challenges".

The first challenge comes from resources, particularly energies. China lags behind the world in terms of per capita hold of resources; meanwhile, due to a fast developing speed yet low technical level, China's manufacturing industry is among the most energy-consuming ones in the world. The huge consumption is intensified by a large-scale shift of manufacturing bases to China. As a result resources, including energies, have been in tight supply.

The second challenge is from ecological environment. A spoiled environment caused by serious pollution, worsened ecological conditions, huge consumption of resources, and low reclamation has become a bottleneck in the sustainable development of the Chinese economy.

The third challenge is posed by a string of "balances" in economic and social development. For example, we have to balance rapid, continuous GDP growth against social construction; to balance the strong momentum in eastern regions against development of central and western areas; to balance equality and gaps to be narrowed down against vigor and efficiency; to balance the deepening of various reforms against social stability... to deal with these dilemmas we need a set of combined measures to realize fast and high-quality development.

Facing the "three major challenges", China's answers can also be summed up in "three major strategies".

The first is to shake off the old industrialization pattern and go on with a new industrial road. It would be a dead end for China to follow the old pattern of high input, high consumption and high pollution. So, the country is determined to open a new path featuring high technological content, high economic returns, low resource consumption, low environmental pollution and full use of its labor advantage.

The second is to leave aside the traditional development pattern of big powers that only rose in modern times as well as the Cold War mentality that drew an ideological line between oneself and his enemies, but continuously take an active part in economic globalization. China refrains from taking the approach of Germany during the WWI and that of Germany and Japan during the WWII who looted resources by force in pursuit of global dominance; nor will it take the road of cold confrontation and power struggle after the WWII. In this way China leapfrogs the old industrialization process that inevitably leads to the rat race for resources, as well as the Cold War mindset that puts ideological differences above peace and development. China will never seek and struggle for hegemony; nor will it take the lead or depend on other countries. We are bravely on our way of reform and opening up, that is, in a course related with economic globalization, we will independently build socialism and head for a rise through learning and introducing various achievements of human civilization.

The third strategy is to transcend obsolete social management pattern and continue to build a socialist harmonious society. Facing new problems cropping up during the reform and opening up that vitality coexists with disorder and efficiency runs alongside imbalance, the Chinese government, in an effort to improve governance capability and social management, is committed to constructing a social network in which governmental and non-governmental forces interconnect with, interact with and complement each other in regulating, governing and managing the society.

The three major strategies, in a word, indicate adherence to peace and harmony, peace with the outside world and harmony at home, with the two factors helping each other. The key is to lead China's 1.3 billion people to brace up for challenges and strike win-win deals with the rest of the world for a better life and bigger contribution to the mankind. That is my understanding of China's development road of peaceful rise.

This article by Zheng Bijian is carried on the first page of the Overseas Edition of People's Daily, June 22, and is translated by People's Daily Online

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?

LYLE ESTILL: It’s an acronym for Piedmont Local Economy Tender. And it was started by a group of activists in Carrboro, North Carolina back around 2001. And it is predicated on the idea that by having a role in our own monetary circulation, we’ll all be better off. Our local economy will be better served.

AMY GOODMAN: Who prints this? What is it? It says “one quarter.”

LYLE ESTILL: That’s an old Plenty. One Plenty used to be $10, and so a quarter-Plenty was $2.50. The new Plenties are at par, so they’re coming out with a new one, five, ten, 20, 50.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does it work? How do you get it? How do you spend it?

LYLE ESTILL: You get it down at Capital Bank, which is a locally owned bank in Pittsboro, North Carolina. They issue it. So if you show up with Federal Reserve notes, they’ll give you Plenties in exchange.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Lyle, you haven’t had any inflation problems with the currency?

LYLE ESTILL: Not at all.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about the eco-industrial park. What is that? And what is the community attempting to do there?

LYLE ESTILL: Piedmont Biofuels bought an abandoned industrial park back in 2005. It’s a fourteen-acre campus, where we started with a biodiesel plant. We had some extra buildings, and we filled them up with Eastern Carolina Organics, which distributes organic vegetables. Piedmont Biofarm has formed a sustainable agriculture project and farm in the side yard. We have ECO Blend, which is a bio-herbicide and bio-pesticide company. There are about eight businesses inside the fence. And there seems to be a lot of interlocking relationships, where one is selling products to the other or living on the co-products of other, etc.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Have you gotten much support from local government leaders in these activities?
LYLE ESTILL: Moral support, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain how businesses and people work with the local currency. I mean, how does it really help local economy?

LYLE ESTILL: OK, so one measure of the vitality of an economy is monetary circulation, that is, how many times a dollar goes around before it leaves town. So if you buy a book at our locally owned bookstore, they’re going to take that dollar, and they’ll spend it on the local bookkeeper, and they’ll buy an ad in the local newspaper, and someone will go out to dinner at the local restaurant, and the dollar will go round and round and round before it leaves town. If you take that dollar and send it directly to Amazon, it leaves town immediately, never to be seen again. The nice thing about the Plenty is you can’t spend it in China. So the only place that it circulates is in our local economy. And so, the more circulation there is, the more enriched we all are.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how many firms within the community take, accept the tender as—in place of money?

LYLE ESTILL: Today, there’s a smaller number. This is a revitalized effort. There’s probably a dozen places. You can buy your fuel and your internet service and your groceries and lunch at the general store cafe. Now that Capital Bank has agreed to exchange Plenties for Federal Reserve notes, I don’t think it will be long before every merchant in town starts taking Plenties.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the overall sustainability community, Lyle. Who is involved in it?

LYLE ESTILL: We have a—

AMY GOODMAN: Don’t worry about that.

LYLE ESTILL: Don’t worry about that. We have a bunch of people from our—let’s see, at our Central Carolina Community College on the edge of town, we have a sustainable agriculture program, which is instrumental to our community, and it graduates a new crop of sustainable farmers every semester. They also run a biofuels program, and the biofuels program graduates a bunch of biodiesel activists every semester. So you have the farming community, and you have the fuel community, and then you have Chatham Marketplace, which is our co-op grocery store. And the co-op grocery store is really a hub to Pittsboro. You know, it’s funny. The co-op grocery store is located in an abandoned textile mill on the edge of town. And sort of, globalization cost us our mill. And it’s—

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

LYLE ESTILL: Well, I guess if you can make a woven label cheaper in Malaysia, then you don’t need North Carolina textiles. So you’ve got a big empty mill, and it’s local businesses that are bringing the mill back to life. And that includes Chatham Marketplace.

AMY GOODMAN: Anything else you’d like to tell people around this country and around the world on this global broadcast that very much is about grassroots community media all over the country linking together?

LYLE ESTILL: Well, I think that self-reliance is important. And what we have been working on is trying to explore ways of being a self-reliant community. And that includes how would we fuel ourselves and feed ourselves and finance ourselves. The less dependency we have on the rest of the world, I think the better off we are.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Lyle Estill, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His latest book is called Small Is Possible: Life in a Local Economy. Can I get a copy—can I get one Plenty? Is that alright?

LYLE ESTILL: Oh, dear, it’s supposed to circulate. You’re not supposed to put it on your bulletin board. Sure, you can have one.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you very much for joining us, as we bring out the voices of the grassroots.

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 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.

"Let's be clear," says Jones in the opening pages of his book, "The main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun. Hundreds of thousands of green collar jobs will be weatherizing and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States."

He doesn't leave the matter there, but makes use of this picture to point out what's "shovel ready," to use the lingo of debate around stimulus spending. Green jobs span the entire range of occupations, with a special focus on high-tech manufacturing in emerging alternative energy industries.

"Green Collar Economy" was instantly a powerful voice in policy circles. It gained a wider and deeper significance in light of the financial crises that hit the fan soon after it reached the bookstores.  Just as the voter revolt against Wall Street helped lift Obama to the Oval Office, so too was Van Jones's urban policy monograph raised into a "What Is To Be Done" manifesto for deep structural reforms capable of busting the onset of a major depression. 

"The best answer to our ecological crisis also responds to our socio-economic crisis," Jones explains. "The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities are not more police and prisons, but ecologically sound economic development. And that same path can lead us to a new green economy."

How does it connect with the solidarity economy? This parallel movement with even earlier roots is widely known throughout the Global South, especially Latin America, as well as Europe and Quebec. It has been comprised of a range of projects where social capital is partnered with worker, community, consumer and peasant cooperative ownership structures. These were designed to fight back against the economic devastation wrought by neoliberal IMF-imposed "solutions" that left people without a safety net or means of survival. People turned to each other at the grassroots in common efforts, hence the term 'solidarity economy.'

Both the solidarity economy and the green economy are "value centered" schools of economic thought. They are in the classical tradition of political economy, which in turn is rooted in moral philosophy. They are not simply descriptive of supposedly objective economic processes, but are prescriptive. At full throttle, they are organizing principles for shaping the future, locally and globally, via local organization and mass mobilization. For its part, the solidarity economy stresses the values of cooperation and mutual aid, especially in governance structures of productive, consumer or financial units. The green economy emphasizes ongoing sustainability and harmony between people and the eco-system of which they are a part. 

The solidarity economy is about how people relate to each other, while the green economy is about how people relate to their wider environment. Naturally, there is considerable overlap between the two. Both see the current order as destructive of people and planet, and are working to turn things around.

"Equal protection of all people, equal opportunity for all people, and reverence for all creation."--these are what Jones terms the "three pillars" of the new green global economy.

Neither economic vision is monolithic. Both schools of thought span a range of views, some of which are in contention. In the Green Jobs movement, for instance, there are debates on nuclear power and "clean coal," and what role, if any, these might have in a low-carbon future. In the solidarity economy movement, there are discussions on the place of markets and government, and whether cooperative structures can use either or both to their advantage. There is also debate over the importance of "high road" allies within the business community, "high road" meaning traditional business structures that bring wider community and environmental responsibility into their business plans, rather than simply short-term shareholder profit.

Where Van Jones' approach to both the green and solidarity economies most compels our attention is that he starts where the need is greatest, the millions of unemployed and underemployed inner city youth. The structural crises of neoliberal capitalism has long ravaged this sector of our society through deindustrialization, environmental  racism and a wrecking ball approach to schools in favor of more prisons. To borrow from Marx, these young people are bound with radical chains, and when they break them with the tools suggested in 'Green Collar Economy,' they free not only themselves, but the rest of us are set in a positive direction as well. 

"The green economy," Jones explains, reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, "should not be just about reclaiming thrown-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not be just about recycling materials to give things a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance. Formerly incarcerated people deserve a second shot at life-and all obstacles to their being able to find that second chance in the green sector should be removed. Also, our urban youth deserve the opportunity to be part of something promising."

Jones is a strategic thinker who gives definite answers to the question, "Who are our friends, who are our adversaries?" He narrows the target to speculative capital with roots in carbon-based energy industries and the militarism needed to secure their supplies. He seeks close allies in the wider working class of all nationalities, especially in the Blue-Green Alliance formed on the core partnership of the United Steelworkers with the Sierra Club. He also looks for allies among faith communities, environmentalists in the suburbs and rural populations suffering at the hands of anti-ecological agribusiness, offering a vision of wind farms and solar arrays for sustainable rural development.  He sees the importance of cutting back defense spending and opposing unjust wars abroad.

Finally, he holds out a hand to green businesses in alternative energies, the current and future manufacturers of clean power:

"Our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs-and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed."

Jones is not talking just about mom and pop operations here, but an important and growing sector of productive capital. These will range from small upstarts to T Boone Pickens-type investors wanting to create giant wind farms and large coastal arrays of wave generators, along with the manufacturing firms that build their equipment. Some on the left who want to see a clean renewable energy future will have to make adjustments in their "anti-corporate" strategies if they want to pursue this goal effectively with these high-road allies. Dan Swinney of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council explains his current project, the Chicago Green Manufacturing Network, as a case in point:

"CMRC is working with the Cleveland-based Great Lakes Wind Network/WireNET and the City of Chicago in building the capacity of local manufacturing companies to become the supply chain for the explosive wind turbine industry.  Illinois and other states currently have ambitious Renewable Energy Portfolios that create a huge market for wind turbine companies and others in the renewable energy field.  Currently the components for these companies are principally made by European and Asian suppliers.  We will rise to the challenge of building the capacity of local companies to supply the high quality components for wind turbines and other renewable energy companies.  This will be a means to diversify the markets for some of the 12,000 manufacturing companies in our region and an opportunity to create hundreds if not thousands of new permanent, full-time jobs in manufacturing."

But Green Collar Economy's core mass base remains a united Black and Latino community in close alliance with organized labor, the same engine of change that put Obama in the White House. And by asserting the interests and needs of that base, the green jobs and infrastructure proposals in Obama's stimulus package serve to drive the entire recovery effort in a progressive direction.

"We want to build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty," says Jones, 'We want this green wave to lift all boats…In the wake of Katrina, we reject the idea of 'free market' evacuation plans. Families should not be left behind to drown because they lack a functioning car or credit card…In an age of floods, we reject the ideology that says we must let our neighbors 'sink or swim'."

The nature of the Green New Deal's adversaries--the carbon-based energy speculators and the military industries defending them--is the key reason Jones' strategy requires a massive mobilized base. The structural reforms needed to dislodge and displace them are going to require a great deal of popular power from below. The petroleum-coal industrial nexus alone is subsidized to the tune of $1 trillion annually, according to Congressman Robert Kennedy Jr. in his foreword to Jones' book. Some are outright opposed to any "New Deal," green or otherwise, as the GOP in Congress reveal with their votes against the Recovery Act. The Green Jobs components were often cited by the right as "pork" or "the road to socialism." Others want to destroy the Green New Deal from within, via "greenwashing." These are politicians who take their lead from some corporations that have become skilled at changing their ads to "green" but continue producing toxics and other waste from the polluter's agenda. 

Jones singles out Newt Gingrich, the GOP's neoliberal-in-chief, as particularly devious: "He has skillfully used rising fuel prices to stoke public support for climate-destroying measures…Their new tactic is to spread confusion about the real solutions by deliberately blurring distinctions between themselves and the champions of genuine answers." Jones has to take the battle into the government and electoral arenas. The resources of state power are required to bring the green economy to scale, even if it requires a gut-wrenching struggle with polluters who have a good number of politicians on their payrolls and with revenue streams long fused to the public trough.

The solidarity economy faces these battles as well. For the most part, it overlaps with the green economy at the grassroots. Its mission can be summarized as generating new wealth in a green way, but with a worker-community ownership or control component built into a project's agenda from the start. As a major finance capitalist and former oilman who wants to invest in wind farms in a major way, T Boone Pickens is clearly part of the green economy, but not part of the solidarity economy. A wind farm on an Indian reservation cooperatively owned by the tribe and employing its members and selling power both locally and regionally would be very much part of the solidarity economy.

But the picture is more complex. "Stakeholder" solutions are not quite as clear-cut. For instance, GAMESA, a Spanish high-tech firm and a leading European manufacturer of wind turbines, recently opened a plant in Bucks County, PA. To do so, it formed stakeholder partnerships with the county and state governments, getting tax allowances and land-use easements to refit and old closed steel mill. The United Steel Workers union was brought in as a partner: 1000 new union jobs were created, hiring many of the unemployed steelworkers. The "solidarity" here is between high-road capital, the USW, local government and the unemployed of the area, but it's a stretch for some who might want to reserve 'solidarity' strictly to cooperative ownership structures. 

The stakeholder solidarity offers practical flexibility in the wider struggle to bring both movements to scale. Cooperative structures that evolve out of deeper structural reforms have the quality of altering the relations of power in production and local governance. Even if on a small scale, they can point to a future of wider economic democracy, acting as a bridge to new socialist relations.

In any case, a powerful high-road alliance opens the door to those on its left wing who want to take it farther. Van Jones himself has no problem with either form; his book celebrates the stakeholder green jobs alliances implemented by the Green Party mayor of Richmond, CA, as well as the Green Worker Cooperatives in building salvaging businesses in the South Bronx, NY.

At one point in his book, Jones uses a metaphor of two ships to sum up the current crossroads facing the American people, the Amistad and the Titanic. The latter carried the wealthy elite indulging in idle pleasures, and a proletarian crew labored below in an unsound structure. The former had been taken over by insurgent slaves, taken to safe harbor, but still lacked wider resources for the crew's future. The folly of reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic has long been a metaphor for doomed tinkering at reforms in a closed system. The Amistad, however, offers a more open future. Those familiar with the story know it involves further complex struggles, with new allies, high born and low, against a dying system. But it offers hope and change, both of which are in high regard these days.

[Carl Davidson is a member of the coordinating committee of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, and a national committee member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,  and currently webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama.' He is co-author of 'CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age,' and co-editor of 'Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet,' both available at http://lulu.com/stores/changemaker. If you like this article, go to http://progressivesforobama.net and make use of the PayPal button.]