One thing this recession, and this election cycle, has made brutally clear is the imperative for progressives to promote an alternative economic vision. Without a clearly articulated vision of a positive economic alternative to the vicious inhumanity of capitalism, large chunks of the righteously outraged public is all too vulnerable to the lure of right-wing populism. We should have learned this lesson long ago, from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and from right-wing anti-immigrant movements in the US extending at least as far back as the Know Nothing party, if from nowhere else.
With this in mind, I was encouraged to see the article "Innovation Isn't a Matter of Left or Right"
in the business pages of the New York Times of all places, proclaiming that most of the best innovations of the last few centuries have come, not from capitalism, but from open collaborative networking.
Unfortunately, however, Steven Johnson wrote this piece, out of faux or real obliviousness, as if there hasn't been a long tradition of radical democrats and anarchists making exactly this point for centuries.
Steven Johnson, the author, clearly identifies what I believe is a central dilemma of our times (meaning the last couple of hundred years), namely "The choice shouldn’t be between decentralized markets and command-and-control states."
Forty-eight years ago, the Students for a Democratic Society issued the Port Huron Statement, declaring that the solution to these dilemmas lies in the practice of participatory democracy. It's worth quoting an extensive section describing this idea:
As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his (sic) life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.
In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles:
• that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings;
• that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations;
• that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life;
• that the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices and facilities the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to related men (sic) to knowledge and to power so that private problems -- from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation -- are formulated as general issues.
The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:
• that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; selfdirect, not manipulated, encouraging independence; a respect for others, a sense of dignity and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics;
• that the economic experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination;
• that the economy itself is of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic social regulation.
Like the political and economic ones, major social institutions -- cultural, education, rehabilitative, and others -- should be generally organized with the well-being and dignity of man as the essential measure of success.
In social change or interchange, we find violence to be abhorrent because it requires generally the transformation of the target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative that the means of violence be abolished and the institutions -- local, national, international -- that encourage nonviolence as a condition of conflict be developed.
More recently, to cite just a few examples, the folks at Z Magazine and Znet, including Michael Albert, have championed participatory economics, which would involve rotated job roles within organizations and iterated democratic planning between consumer and producer cooperatives to facilitate large scale democratic decision making.
People centered in the cooperative movement (see the superb Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter) have advocated that we move towards a Solidarity Economy, particularly inspired by the blossoming of thousands of coops in latin america in the last decade. For more coverage of activism and ideas along these lines, see articles from Peacework Magazine on large scale and small scale initiatives for economic democracy.
With Steven Johnson, I'm excited about the open source movement as a paradigm for advancing alternative economics. I believe the Open Source movement is one of the most exciting global anarchist developments since the astounding growth of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I just wish, with the forum that Steven Johnson had in the New York Times, he articulated more of an awareness of the long tradition and vibrant contemporary examples of the theory and practice of anarchism, participatory democracy, economic democracy, and the solidarity economy.
I'm not used to quoting from this book, but without a prophetic vision, the people perish.
More useful resources on critiquing capitalism, state socialism, and other domination-and-extraction-based economies, and on current efforts to develop practical alternatives, are available at:
the Community Wealth matrix of alternative economic initiatives in the US;
Dollars and Sense Magazine, economic analysis from a left-progressive perspective;
United for a Fair Economy, advocates a vision of, "a global society where prosperity is better shared, where there is genuine equality of opportunity, where the power of concentrated money and corporations neither dominates the economy nor dictates the content of mass culture. We envision communities and nations without disparities of income, wages, wealth, health, safety, respect, and opportunities for recreation and personal growth.";
the Alliance for Democracy, trying to create a new progressive populism based on systematic critiques of corporate abuse;
The Institute for Policy Studies Inequality and the Common Good Program, a program of the progressive think tank focusing on "the dangers that growing inequality pose for U.S. democracy, economic health and civic life.";
the Institute for Social Ecology, advocating a Green participatory economy;
Green Jobs, Based in Oakland, advocating re-orienting the US economy around green enterprise;
Starhawk's Permaculture Resource Page, an eco-feminist perspective on economic sustainability;
Open Democracy, an e-zine from Britain focusing on democratic struggles worldwide;
and
Macroscan, alternative economics perspectives from India.