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Social/Solidarity Economy Program
Solidarity Economy Organization in the U.S. Context:
A Think-Paper Towards First Steps
Questions are asked about the appropriate scale of Parecon, and about the possibility of creating large-scale movements and experiments.
Michael answers the second round of questions, advocating for non-capitalist experiments that build towards a long-term alternative vision, enumerates current Parecon experiments, and argues that social movements need non-hierarchical internal dynamics, as well as vision, in order to attract large-scale support.
David answers the second round of questions, discussing the process by which a community could decide where to allocate its resources, and arguing that the concept of a democratic workplace has widespread resonance.
Questions are asked about incorporating the higher education system into these models, about changing consumption patterns, and the Santi Asok Buddhist movement in Thailand is posed as a possible example of good markets.
David answers the third round of questions, talking about the capitalist problem of job insecurity, and discusses the potential of reducing consumption by working less, and argues that, as a movement-building strategy, the key is not to tell people that they will consume less, but to focus on the non-democratically controlled surplus. He differentiates between the injustices inherent in capitalist labor and capital markets, but does not see the same exploitative potential in exchange markets, and, further, does not think there is currently a better mechanism than exchange markets for “getting prices right”.
Michael answers the third round of questions, discussing how the current educational system vamps down capacities of the “non-coordinator class” while engaging the privileged coordinator class, arguing that movements cannot hope to build an alternative system out of a crisis, but rather must have already done the bulk of their organizing work before the crisis occurs, and defines markets as a structure based on competition rather than mutual aid. He finishes by telling an anecdote about how voting alone does not necessarily lead to a participatory society.