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Gar Alperovitz: If You Don't Like Capitalism or State Socialism, What Do You Want?
"...if you are interested in systemic change, you must ask not only who owns capital but what it might look like if the system were democratized, were American in content, and were to give rise to the principles and nurture the principles of democracy, ownership, community, and ecological sustainability."
"What's going on in Cleveland draws to some extent on the Mondragón federation of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. In the Cleveland model there will be a series of worker-owned cooperatives."
The full text of the lecture is available here.
Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Among his most recent books are America Beyond Capitalism and (with Lew Daly) Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back.
78 Comments so far
Show AllWe don't have capitalism in this country. We have cronyism quickly morphing into fascism. Capitalism is an economic system and democracy is a political system. We have been brainwashed into thinking they are the same thing. They are not. The economic system is a tool that can allow a people to accomplish its goals and forward its purposes. Government's role ought to be to make sure that the economic system is supporting those goals and purposes. We have a government that is now subservient to the economic interests of a ruling elite, their corporations, and their capital. The system is broken and the people who occupy the White House and the Congress, having been bought and paid for by the ruling elite, will not and cannot fix what's wrong.
These people... all of them except for a very few... need to be replaced and as soon as possible, or the Great Experiment will end in total failure. No system can work if the people running it and living in it lack the character, integrity and consciousness to keep their oath of office and their values straight. http://www.gpln.com/reflecting_on_soros.htm
"These people... all of them except for a very few... need to be replaced and as soon as possible, or the Great Experiment will end in total failure."
Mark,
You correctly point out that the government is controlled by the ruling elite. (Private capital interests) Exactly how would replacing those who "occupy the white house and the congress" change matters? (How could we accomplish such an undertaking?) Would these new individuals negotiate a better deal on our behalf with the actual rulers? (Rulers do not give up power peacefully) Do you not think it would make more sense to overthrow the actual ruling elites? (the controlling private capital interests)
As to the notion of saving "the great experiment" (whatever that is) from failure;.. do we not have enough evidence to conclude that this failure has occurred?? Your premise seems to be that somehow this "great experiment" is worth saving. Why?
Thomas Gilbert-
Dante, your second paragraph says it all. Why?
Fennec,
Yes, it always comes back to that question...... why? Why should we continue to support that which constantly works against our (collective) interests?
I am starting to think too much. No answers and too many questions.
Take care,
Thomas Gilbert-
On a nit-picking technical note, non-scientists often misuse the word "failed experiment" - and this usage belies a serious misunderstanding of how science works.
A failed experiment is an experiment that due to faulty procedures, equipment, contamination, data collecting, etc, must be halted with no conclusion drawn. A failed experiment is NOT an experiment that does not produce results that produce a desired result. Any scientist devising an experiment to test a hypothesis had better not be looking for "desired result" - or better not admit it anyway.
So if the hypothesis was this: "private ownership of the means of production, pursuant to the accumulation of private wealth without legal limit, will produce a society with the greatest numbers of individuals being free from misery and sharing power equally in their society". Then, the experiment was not a failure, it was a smashing success, because it has soundly rejected this hypothesis.
PJ,
Your comment is excellent. Nit-picking and all.
Thomas Gilbert-
P.S. I wear a iron ring on my right little finger. Been wearing it for over thirty years. Société des Sept Gardiens...
Gosh, Gar! An economic system or mode of production is a histroically specific manner of producing and distributing means for satisifying society's members' needs and wants, not as you define it above. Goodness gracious, this is elementary!
MG, we agree that the US is fast becoming a fascist country. Unfettered capitalism leads inevitably to fascism. However, you're off the mark on whether there's capitalism. Fascism is capitalism on steroids. Capitalism exists in the US and around the world.
The capital social relation exists when one small class in society privately owns and controls the means of production and another large class in society owns labor power. The capitalist class is the small segment of society privately owning and controlling the means of production. This immediately implies another large class in society that doesn't privately own and control the means of production. These people own a single commodity known as labor power. Labor power is defined as the capacity to work. This is the working class. Capitalism exists as long as the capital social relation exists regardless of the amount of government involvement in the economy.
Marx clearly states that the essence of capitalism is there's no consious social regulation of production. He means by this that capitalism has an unplanned social division of labor. A social division of labor is society's total labor allocated to qualitatively different productive activities in specific quantities and proportions. In capitalism, produciton decisions are make by innumerable private capitalists or capitals without conscious regard of how the labor at their disposal contributes to the material productions of life of society's members.
I agree. We have an oligarchy of for the rich by the rich. It is like the royals are back in power doing what ever they want.
The Queen and our Congress do insider trading and everyone looks the other way. That is not a free Capitalistic system since they are manipulating the markets. Innovation, competition, and advancement can't happen with this and the huge, international monopolies.
We learned this all in HS remember? Don't need a degree in economics to know this.
It is plain fraud and corruption.
As a people we can decide what we need and why. Why do we need labels? Every time something is wanted by the people the elite puppets like Carl Rove, Lumbaugh, etc. scream Socialism or Communism.
Not one ever says...Reaganomics was a disaster is not working. Trickle Down Economics does not create jobs but homelessness and despair.
I say what the few want is clearly Fascism. They wanted labels well there it is. Wear it billionaire Koch Brothers, Gov.Walker, Gates, Murdoch, the Queen, Republicans...all of them, military defense profiteers, Petraus, Cheney, Bush family, Gates, etc
You don't see the protests in the street of the ME and allow them to attack their own. But hey Libya (who has oil and fresh water) that is a different story. The leaders are all our guys gone bad. Or good guys we just gave power too.
In the end the British get the Iraq oil leases, Alaska,Gulf, Great Lakes...and our Niagara Falls Power, rails, gold, rare minerals, etc, etc., etc. In London there are all the international banks which we bailed out with our tax dollars twice now.
You rebuild iraq and go to war, pay for bases to protect corporations interests. We are broke. As Colin Powell said. You broke it now you fix it. We want you gone after that.
The full text of the lecture is =here=. The subtext and context of the lecture is elsewhere, in halls remote from the dismal science of Economics, whose mantra is the following:
"Life is about STUFF and its DISTRIBUTION. This is the only proper metric of the success of the H. sapiens species. Once we get the problem of distributing STUFF fixed (managing the poor) then our world population can safely grow to 200 billion happy creatures without war."
What Alperovitz has to say is more polished than Franklin D. Roosevelt's =chicken in every pot= but it comes down to the same thing. Today we want pot in every chicken.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat all his life."
Give a man a few common stock in the company of his employer, he will feel a sense of participation in ownership for a month. Teach a man to follow the stock market; let the mathematical principles of reward at variable interval and variable ratio apply to his speculation, you will turn him into an addicted gambler (capitalist) who - when he manages to pull the lever and many coins fall loudly into the metal cup - will stare at you - and tell you he EARNED these coins in the same way that any person earns income from rendering services for money. If you tell him that's self delusional bullshit, he will then make every effort to gain power over you. He'll buy a politician, a judge, a cop, a thug, an army if necessary to prevent your Naked Emperor Perception getting any or much Press. The natives are revolting.
Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist, wrote of a tribe that had an annual event. They came to a central gathering place, each one with all his STUFF. Some had lots of STUFF and got a smattering of applause, while others came with comparatively little STUFF. The social ceremony involved the re-distribution of the tribe's STUFF so that each member began a new year with the same amount. This egalitarian system had the psychological flaw that there could be no equal re-distribution of dignity and self respect. Next year, the individual-to-STUFF product moment correlation would probably be over 90 percent. Blame the bell curve.
Further, we H. sapiens are stuck with Great Ape DNA, in which the development and maintenance of stable power hierarchies is frequently maintained by posture of sexual submission and eyes cast to the ground - in order to escape physical harm. This case is not taught in any school of Economics, and individual economists can rise to the status of upper atmosphere Stuff Guru but have no idea whatsoever that what a =poor person= wants is sanctuary from the economic equivalent of sex abuse.
Trylon
Outstanding! Yours is one of those posts I fervently wish I'd written.
Once upon a time I was having a friendly chat with an economist. He patiently explained to me that the real cost of brushing my teeth included the reasonably expected return if in stead I had invested the money I paid for the damn brush and toothpaste. "What is the real cost of dentures?" I asked him.
When my father was young - and carried a slide rule even to the bathroom - he became a proponent of universal adoption of Infinite Compounding. He went on to join others in founding the American Association of Cost Engineers. He then edited a university textbook on the topic. These sixty years later nobody knows what a cost engineer does. Including me.
Trylon
Actually, cost engineering is very important. The Cost Engineering branch was an important part of the Corps of engineers district office where I worked.
Whenever, a right-winger opposes, say, a billion dollar public transit improvement, it is the cost engineer who explains that the whole reason the project is being undertaken is because in their benefit-cost analysis, they found the the future dollars-and-cents costs to greater society of _not_ doing it is higher.
Back in engineering school in the late 1980's early 90's, I used the book "Principles of Engineering Economy" by Grant, Leavenworth, (and someone else). Any of them your dad?
One of the best comments I've read here Trylon. Although you might be careful stating that revolutionary view point too broadly on this site. The DNC thought police who troll the conversations, have a hair trigger when they get a whiff of a real leftist on board. It also reminds me of something Bell Hooks might say. Well done and hope you hang around as a counter balance to the two party nut jobs who stick their nose in everything not status quo.
Trylon is a long-time poster here, with a distinctly incisive, cynical and pained realism, tempered by stories from his and his family's engagement in politics and society.
This is one of his sharpest most densely concise posts.
=the two party nut jobs who stick their nose in everything=
Binasal rhinofuckers!
Trylon ------ "The Joy of Lex"
Post it again and see if it stays. I'd like to read it.
they flagged my post and had it removed
==============
Maybe not -- the Drupal software that runs this site is quite awful. It's not impossible that it simply lost your post.
hmmm. Well, I'm not pro-general-strike (practicality, not principle), but I am pro-RKBA, and so far no one has stood me up against the wall.
Just another data point.
Well, I'm a member of a credit union and a co-op, and we have the co-op checking account at the credit union. Does that count?
I would love to see more worker-owned businesses. Don't have the answer as to how that gets going. If you have ideas, try them and let us know. Not being snarky, just emphasizing that it may be worth a try if you feel strongly about it.
As to disappearing posts - the messaging system here is not good. I suggest a complete overhaul, but it's not my site. It is hard to trust sometimes when "funny" things happen.
Tightly written.
"...Stuff Guru but have no idea whatsoever that what a =poor person= wants is sanctuary from the economic equivalent of sex abuse."
Poor people are not alone in wanting sanctuary. This system hurts us all. It's just that the richer one is, the more drugs are available.
There have been people throughout the ages who have tried to teach us the way out of this abusive cycle. Yet, it seems almost impossibly hard to do. Not complicated, just hard. Maybe we need to be asking ourselves why we make it so hard. Fear of change? Probably.
What an illusion. Change is coming anyway.
Very interesting talk. Alperowitz talks about Argentina, but not Venezuela, where people are struggling on an even bigger scale with exactly these problems. I won't try to list the many experiments and problems to be found there, as Venezuelans try to discover how 'socialism of the twentieth century' can work. See venezuelanalysis.com for ongoing news, and a book called Build It Now by Michael Lebowitz for some analysis, especially the chapter 'Seven Questions..' in which Lebowitz analyses how it was that Yugoslavia set up worker owned coops throughout the country, only to see the whole Yugoslav system collapse into an economic basket case. This is not to say that worker owned coops won't work, but only to say that they need to avoid the mistakes that were made in Yugoslavia.
Why Alperowitz doesn't mention these efforts is anybody's guess, but Venezuela is really worth learning about. Of course the State Department and the mainstream media simply vilify President Chavez and the movement he leads, but progressive people should take that as a recommendation. The information blackout around Venezuela is intense--don't let them keep you in the dark, find out for yourself.
Terrific talk to share with people looking for reason for resolve for the long term systemic change and the need to find a basis for the fundamental love necessary for the energy of dedication for the decades long engagement to turn things around.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with where your feet are.
Parecon, participatory economics is one solution. Democratizing the workplace. Democratizing budgets. Any other people empowering, democratic, and life enhancing ideas should be welcomed and instituted so we can have the highest possible quality of life. What we have now needs to become obsolete so we can move forward with our lives.
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This is a real softball question to any reasonable person who has given the question any serious thought. You can have a mixed system with most of the economy being capitalistic with important exceptions such as health care. Capitalism with very strong unions and very strict regulations forcing corporations to be more socially responsible in return for having the advantage of being in a very stable environment.
I'm afraid that "any reasonable person who has given the question any serious thought" would arrive at a different conclusion than the one you seem to have reached in your post.
The "serious thought" part would expose the fact that trying to regulate Capitalists (who are, by nature, greedy and willing to go to any lengths to gain and keep power) is a lot like trying to regulate a poisonous snake that performs rodent control in your house.
With such a reptile in your house, you have to do everything right _all the time_ because the snake only needs one slip-up on your part. Once you realise that, it's more or less not possible to explain --without sounding demented-- why you haven't replaced the snake with a couple of friendly tabbies.
Thalidomide makes a good point.
Comparing it to a poisonous snake is not so good.
No, he doesn't make a good point, and the poisonous-snake comparison is quite apt for the reasons I stated.
I'm with you Mairead. Except that a poisonous-snake is just being a good snake, a species that has survived for millions of years, in balance with the rest of the planet. We are apes, and need to find out why some of our species need to act in an aggressive and greedy manner, thus threatening the survival of our species and whole ecological systems. Evidently large brained intelligence and cleverness is not enough. We do have the capacity for compassion. As far as economic and political systems go, democratic socialism is the best representation of compassion, while capitalism is the format for greed and opportunism. I see compassion as an evolutionary step foreword for homo sapiens. If we can't grow past our greedy natures we are doomed as a species.
Thanks for your support, George!
I'd argue (and the literature supports me) that ~98-99% of us don't really have a greedy nature, but rather an adaptive one. If we must adapt to a pathological system, we do. But very few of us adapt so well that we're happy to run the ovens.
Almost all the subjects in Milgram's experiment who continued to obey to the end endured great emotional suffering during the test. Which is why Milgram took so much care in debriefing them, so that they could leave afterwards knowing that no harm was done, and that their behavior was the normal result of their upbringing. Very few were unmoved by what they thought they had done ("Pasqual Gino" was one of those few exceptions).
That tells me that, when we once take over government and change the rules, the vast, healthy majority will adapt to our non-pathological system with alacrity! (If we don't take over, of course, and Pretty Damned Soon, too, well, nothing will matter much)
Regarding your last paragraph, I agree, but we also have to take over and democratize our mass media, or the healthy but effectively brainwashed majority not adapt to our system very well.
Regulating big business is considered a socialist Idea in most of the world.
If you are talking about who is doing the regulating with the people in power instead of big business, that is a point in this article and I agree.
If you want to eliminate big business, how would you do that and where in the world has that happened.... besides Cleveland?
But Seriously, The voter suppression laws pushed by big business interests now is something that needs to be eliminated, and that is a real poisonous snake to me and maybe you too.
My argument is that allowing private-profit capitalism ("Capitalism") for the sake of whatever benefits we think it provides is as crazy as hosting a poisonous snake for whatever benefits we think _it_ provides.
There is absolutely nothing that Capitalism - or any feudal system - can provide that cannot be provided by a non-feudal system at less cost and with less danger to us. The only thing a feudal system provides is a cushy life for the "nobility".
As to where in the world it has happened - have you looked at Mondragón? The network is enormous and diverse, and the whole thing was created and built up from nothing in about 60 years. It started in the '50s with a one-eyed socialist priest who'd barely escaped being shot by Franco, 5 young out-of-work engineers, and a shed. The nodes in the network now do everything from basic research through providing university-level education, operating a merchant bank, and selling retail groceries.
And yes, the voter suppression laws are just one manifestation of the Capitalism-snake's poison, and does have to be eliminated. But until we evict the snake itself, there'll always be some other attempt to bite us tomorrow. Voter suppression is only the symptom; the disease is feudalism.
Yes, I just looked up Mondragón and like the cooperative corporation model, very much what this article is about.
Keep in mind this is not a national or top down model, this is prospering under the system of Spain which is not into eliminating Private property or capital at all.
Here is a helpful organization for the USA which you may already know about.
They are making some progress in local governments.
http://movetoamend.org/
My understanding is that the Mondragon cooperatives have over time become fairly "mainstream" and are increasingly hard to distinguish from capitalist corporations - similar to the union-busting "East End Food Co-Op" in my town.
But someone may correct me on this - or perhaps I'm being too picky.
I'm not sure how fair that is, PJ.
They believe they've had to make some changes because of Capitalist pressure (e.g. increase the allowable salary multiple for management from 7X to, iirc, 10X). And they're finding that the legacy employees at some of their acquisitions, eg the retail grocery chain, resist becoming owner-members, which throws things out of whack. But the basics --fully distributed ownership and profits (to everyone who wants it, at least), and an annual general assembly to set the direction for the following year-- have stayed the same.
Do you have different information?
Apropos the East End Co-op, have you considered mounting a revolt and taking over the board?
This issue is a few years old now. We did stage a revolt and got a few sympathetic poeple on the board, but the employee who spearheaded the effort left the store and eventually found a "good lawyer" job and the rest of the generally youthful employees gave up the union organizing effort (the original effort was with the IWW). Don't underestimate the anti-union sentiment among young people. Of course, the EEFC is a consumer co-op, not an employee co-op.
As far as the Mondragon, it think it was an impression from business-ese language in an English-language website of theirs a while back. I know, probably unfair.
the Mondragon low-to-high wage spread rules are similar to the low-to-high pay spread at a US government agency. For example, the lowest to highest pay in the Dept of Labor, say a GS-5 clerk to Secretary Hilda Solis, is a factor of just 9. The upper management make a good bit less than private industry, but the clerks and technicians make somewhat more than private industry.
And indeed, when I moved from a private firm to federal government, it was a positively liberating experience. The federal workplace is vastly more egalitarian and "free".
Maybe this is why the US right attacks federal workers - especially low-level ones, with such rabid viciousness.
pjd412,
Would you consider an organizing effort to place before the consumer-owners of EEFC, re-incorporation as a multi-stakeholder cooperative that is owned by both the consumers and the workers? Weaver's Way in Philadelphia is structured like this.
i'd like to see one of the existing consumer food co-ops in the USA successfully re-organize as a multi-stakeholder co-op owned by both consumers and workers. This could serve as a model for other consumer food co-ops to do the same thing.
It would be a long-term effort with no guarantee of easy success, but if successful would be significant, both for the people at EEFC but also for the food co-op sector overall. i'm pretty sure that, if presented well, many of the consumer-owner bodies at food co-ops around the country would vote affirmatively to re-incorporate as multi-stakeholder co-ops with the workers.
Please LMK if you might consider such an effort.
The technical challenges sound daunting. I know nothing about business organizing or incorporation, and it would seem to me such an initiative needs to come from the employees.
I believe that the workers are already required to be co-op members - they get the $100 refundable membership fee (EEFC does not pay dividends) deducted from their first few paychecks. But what does it get them? A small discount on groceries bought there and a vote for board members.
And, the overall consumer base of the EEFC is largely the apolitical me-oriented urban liberal bourgeois of that side of town (even though the EEFC borders predominantly poor, black, Homewood and Wilkinsburg too). Indeed our original consumer-side "Support East End Workers" effort (still have some buttons) largely fizzled because most of the store patrons are largely just consumers and didn't want to get involved.
I have even noticed that the EEFC no longer even has their mostly non-organic B.A.G. (basic affordable goods) items in the bulk section, which was a nod to the needs of the people in Homewood and Wilkinsburg.
Thanks for the reply.
The initiative would have to come from the owners, from the consumer-owners. Only the owners can re-draft the articles of incorporation. You're the one on the ground there, with a feel for what the consumer-owners might be open to. If the owner base would not be open to such a proposal, it would likely be a waste of energy to try to organize it.
---"why you haven't replaced the snake with a couple of friendly tabbies."---
Why tabbies? Everyone wants tabbies!
As a consequence many thousands of lovable black/white, tuxedo and especially black cats (wonder why, to ask a rhetorical question...) get condemned to death at the "animal shelter".
I just wrote "tabbies" because I was thinking of the f. silv. lybicas who, unlike dogs and horses, or for that matter any other non-human, voluntarily chose to live with humans.
The ones I've supported: 2 tuxes, 2 tabbies, a ginger tom, and a half-Siamese. No color prejudices here :-)
Are you sure about that, Mairead? I think dogs also voluntarily chose to live with humans. An excerpt:
"...transition in diet could well have been partly due to the beginnings of a relationship between humans and dogs, although the relationship might have been as tenuous as animals following human hunters to scavenge, rather like the behavior that is believed to have existed between humans and cats. You could argue that cats never have been domesticated, they just take advantage of the mice we attract."
http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/dogs.htm
I can't find the original of an article I saved on a now-defunct hard disc, so I can't offer a pointer. But if I recall the argument correctly, it was based on a number of characteristics still extant.
Lybicas are the only race of the only species who, as adults, voluntarily bring us food and try to take care of us (washing us, etc). It's the voluntary part that's significant, if I recall correctly: it's the same behavior identified by a rather comprehensive ethological study that was reported a few years ago.
The study found that, contrary to conventional wisdom about how cats are solitary creatures, unrelated females will choose to live together in community --new ones gaining acceptance after a sort of 'courtship period' where they watch one another closely, the candidate taking care always to stay visible to at least one community member-- and share food, grooming, and health/childcare.
Lybicas behave the same way toward us, so this particular theory posits that they likely came for the rich hunting and the scraps, but were petted and cuddled by children and found themselves staying for the companionship, which is something most want but can otherwise only get if they're accepted into a community.
Dogs, on the other hand, subordinate themselves to us as long as they perceive us to be dominant, but, although they (or their wolf ancestors anyway) bring food to their pack, they don't try to bring food to us. Nor do they try to take care of us (when they lick us, it's a greeting), and while they will defend us from outsiders, some will also turn on us or our children under certain conditions. Taken together, that suggests their relationship to us isn't truly voluntary on their part except at an individual level, where it's conditional on our maintaining dominance.
That's as much as I can remember, anyway. That, and the observation that the half-joking claim (which you quote) that cats have never been domesticated should actually be applied to dogs.
Here's a site you'll appreciate, PJ. I'd to smile with pleasure when I ran across it:
http://www.retronaut.co/2011/11/black-cat-auditions-in-hollywood-1961/
The problems with health care are mostly due to the health care industry being a government enforced monopoly. Prior to 1938, we didn't have prescription laws. People could buy the medicine they needed from their local drug store (just like you can buy electronics, what not) from places like Wal Mart. You didn't need anyone's "permission" to buy medicine back then. Naturally doctors didn't make lots of money because people didn't need their "permission" to buy medicine. But the AMA working with the FDA got the Roosevelt administration in 1938 to pass prescription laws. Prescription laws mean you have to get "permission" from a doctor to purchase medicine. Naturally the doctor is free to charge you whatever he or she wishes for this "permission". And since this "permission" expires with time, the doctor effectively controls your life because without his or her "permission" you can't legally buy the medicine you want. The doctor can have you come to his or her office whenever he or she wishes since he or she has the implicated threat that if you don't do as he or she wishes, he or she will not renew your prescription. In effect he or she may well hold the power of life or death over you. This is really why health care costs so much today. You are the "slave", the doctor is your "master". They "own" you. Then the insurance company will sell you an insurance policy because the doctor can charge you so much for his or her services. The insurance company forces you to pay a "premium" for this "insurance policy". However, if you do the math, you will find on the average that you are effectively paying $100 to obtain $80 worth of benefits. The only $20 goes to the insurance for "overhead" and "profit". Nice deal if you can get it. Now if you are covered by Medicare instead of private insurance, you get $95 worth of benefits for the $100 that the taxpayers are sending in through the payroll tax. In the rest of the developed world this is the way your health insurance is provided. However, in these countries the doctor's ability to charge high prices for his or her services is strictly limited. So while the US doctor might get $100 for an office visit, the doctor elsewhere might get somewhere between $35 and $50 for the same services. This how these countries can provide their citizens with about the same level of health care as Americans get, but for half the price. The only thing "exceptional" about the USA is how our social order rips people off. This is because the USA is a "plutocracy". It is not a Democracy or a Republic. When the Founding Fathers wrote the "operating system" for the United States of America, they wrote it so that the wealthy would rule. To do this only those who owned enough property to support themselves by the labor of others were allowed to vote. Everyone else was not permitted the vote. If you study American history you will see that this is true. In the first few decades this was exactly how things were done back then! You will also note that the Republican Party (the political party of the 1%) wants to make it so people who are likely not to vote Republican won't be allowed to vote. The Republican Party is floating the "Red Herring" of "voter fraud". For all practical purposes voter fraud is non-existant. But most people don't know that. Nor do they know that true voter fraud is far easier to do by the people who actually count the ballots. We saw this in Florida in 2000. Plus with electronic voting machines it is possible to write "malware" that will alter the results by a few percent. Anyone really competent with software can write programs that will be almost impossible to detect. And of course paper ballots can be miscounted, "lost", and so forth. Say someone "turns" just 1% of the ballots. Or you count a vote for a Democrat as a vote for a Republican. This isn't uncommon in some countries. The Republicans want to make more difficult for people likely to vote Democratic to vote. In a close election if the Republicans can prevent 1% of possible Democratic voters from voting, they might well "win" even if the popular vote went the other way as it did in 2000. They feel that if they can't win an election honestly, then "cheat". This is really what the fuss about "Voter Picture ID" amounts to. Remember, in a close election you don't have to "cheat" that much to swing an election one way or the other...
"So I think the underlying problem we're talking about here is: If you don't like capitalism and you don't like socialism, what the hell do you want and how do you get there? That's where I'm coming from—just to lay my cards on the table."
But some of us do like socialism, professor, a fact you seem to overlook, and I think the real solution to our pressing problems.
Any positive change to the corrupt and degenerate status quo will be a step toward socialism.
Your advocacy of cooperatives is positive. Cooperatives are an intermediate step between capitalism and socialism, and if we must attain socialism gradually, then cooperatives are acceptable.
I don’t think he said he didn’t like socialism period but pointed out the problem with State Socialism or Top Down systems.
Remember he said the guy who wrote Small Is Beautiful was a Socialist.
Replacing one cronyism with another is not the answer for me and he is trying to appeal to various ideologies and cultures because it will take all kinds of people to create a better world.
In reality all systems are mixed so we might start with that Reality if we want to move forward without getting stalled in just one idea about a political system, economy and culture.
Yes, Jim, Alperovitz does agree that "Private ownership of large-scale industry is an absurdity". But he goes on to say "...—linking worker ownership to a design of this kind [community cooperatives], you would have a design that doesn't look like corporate capitalism and doesn't look like state socialism but begins with community as the dominant principle and works backward from there."
"with community as the dominant principle" the system is open to devastation and destruction by the dominant capitalists - as was done to the much of the cooperative movement in the US shortly after WWII.
In a properly run socialist state, the central government, not the community as Alperovitz advocates, controls the entire economy. The central government then has the option of permitting cooperatives, capitalism, local economic autonomy, or anything else that they believe will better the lives of the people. We see these deviations from ideal socialism in China, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua just to name a few. The point is, some of these central governments have the option of starting up or closing down these different economic activities as they choose, whereas if each community is the dominant controller of its own economy, each is at the mercy of much stronger corporations and savage capitalists.
Until we arrive at socialism, we have no alternative but to chip away at capitalism as best we can, while trying to convince a majority of the population that capitalism is the source of most of their problems. For this reason I would go along with Alperovitz's local cooperatives - or anything else that might help, however slightly, to defeat capitalism.
Fine, just one question, where is your "properly run socialist state”.
As Mairead just pointed out mondragon prospers in Spain and Spain is not doin too well as a properly run socialist state.
Spain is not destroying it as you fear, they may even save Spain with fresh Ideas.
Small is Beautiful and it Works.