Progressive Social Change SP10

Economics -> American Capitalism and Social Justice Spring 10

There are many groups working toward progressive social change, or the creation of a just world. These groups believe that the current economic system of American capitalism can no longer maintain equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy. In fact, they argue that capitalism is a system that creates and feeds off of inequality and domination. One group must always exploit another in order for this system to function. The majority is exploited while the power elite maintain control over the means of production and profits. It is a vicious cycle in which those with power become more and more powerful, and the voice of the majority is lost. There are billions of people living below the poverty line because of this economic system and the inequality gap continues to increase. The groups working toward progressive social change are working to fix this disparity, and to improve the quality of life for all people. Some of these groups include: Community-Wealth.org, the Positive Futures Network, the The Real Utopias Project, AlterNet , and the Vermont Progressive Party.

<ref>Image borrowed from progressohio.org </ref>

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. -Barack Obama

Models for Change

The following groups are each providing a model for change in order to work toward community and economic development, increasing the voice of the majority in politics, and social justice in general. Their goals include closing the inequality gap, decreasing poverty, and increasing the employment rate. They support those working for change by providing examples of alternative ways to distribute profits such that they benefit the entire community. They provide databases connecting to various companies and communities that have successfully organized themselves as sustainable alternatives to the current system. They also provide statistics about the economic value and contribution of these companies and communities. These groups work to inform people about the problems that exist and inspire them to do something about it. Generally, they work toward deep social change so that we can live in a world in which quality of life is more important than money.

Community-Wealth.org

Community-Wealth.org is an organization that seeks strategies for democratic, community-based economic development. The website that they have created contains directories, breaking news, and examples of cutting-edge intiatives from cities, states, community-development corporations, employee-owned firms, land-trusts, non-profit organizations, co-operatives, and universities. It provides information and links to many companies that are using different community-based economic development strategies.

These diverse institutional strategies have two goals:

• To change the nature of asset and wealth ownership in a manner which serves the community.

• To offer new ways to provide and maintain local jobs and to finance community services.

Community-wealth.org hopes to serve several purposes. First, it hopes that the website facilitates conversation and collaboration among the field and encourages support for these new community wealth strategies, policies, models, and innovations. Second, it aims to broaden and deepen information about this field, and includes many statistics including the number of institutions, their economic value, their actual and projected growth, their contributions to democratic practice, etc. Next, it hopes to explain how communities (especially low-income) can address the economic challenges they face. Finally, the organization hopes the website will lay the groundwork for policy changes. <ref> http://www.community-wealth.org/about/vision-mission.html </ref>

Video Overview of Community-Wealth.org

Positive Futures Network

Yes! Magazine

The Positive Futures Network is an organization with the belief that we need deep change if we are to avoid the breakdown of society and the natural world. It was founded by David Korten and Sarah van Gelder. It works to raise awareness for an emerging society in which life, not money, is what is important.

This organization publishes YES! Magazine, a nonprofit, ad-free magazine that is printed on recycled paper and archives all of its articles online. Each issue of the magazine focuses on a theme of social justice, working to show possibilities and practical steps people can take for change. There is also YES! for Youth, which is designed to inpsire and empower students. This magazine is widely distributed and encourages all of its readers to become part of a global community of change-makers.

The Positive Futures Network has also published two books that discuss possibilites for social transformation. The organization focuses on sustainability and social and economic justice. <ref> http://www.yesmagazine.org/ </ref>

The Real Utopias Project

alt text

“The Real Utopias Project embraces a tension between dreams and practice. It is founded on the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. The fulfillment of such a belief involves a "real utopias": utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials for redesigning social institutions. In its attempt at sustaining and deepening serious discussion of radical alternatives to existing social practices, the Real Utopias Project examines various basic institutions - property rights and the market, secondary associations, the family, the welfare state, among others - and focuses on specific proposals for their fundamental redesign. The books in the series are the result of workshop conferences, at which groups of scholars are invited to respond to provocative manuscripts.” <ref> http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/RealUtopias.htm </ref>

To read more, visit:

The Real Utopias Project

Overview

AlterNet

alt text

A project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, Alternet is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month. The site publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources. AlterNet states that its mission is to "inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues." <ref> http://www.alternet.org/ </ref>

Their Mission

AlterNet is an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources. AlterNet’s aim is to inspire action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, health care issues, and more. Since its inception in 1998, AlterNet.org has grown dramatically to keep pace with the public demand for independent news. We provide free online content to millions of readers, serving as a reliable filter, keeping our vast audience well-informed and engaged, helping them to navigate a culture of information overload and providing an alternative to the commercial media onslaught. Our aim is to stimulate, inform, and instigate.<ref> http://www.alternet.org/ </ref>

Strong Content

AlterNet publishes grassroots success stories and inspirational narratives alongside hard-hitting critiques of policies, investigative reports and expert analysis. We emphasize workable solutions to persistent social problems. Our editorial mix underscores a commitment to fairness, equality and global stewardship, and to making connections across generational, ethnic and issue lines. In order to provide deeper coverage on today’s key issues, AlterNet features 12 Special Coverage Areas, each with its own hub site, editor, and weekly newsletter. <ref> http://www.alternet.org/ </ref>

Connecting Readers to Opportunities for Action

AlterNet provides its readers with pathways to action. We help connect our readers to opportunities to make change, be it through specific action campaigns, signing petitions, or by learning about the grassroots efforts of groups engaged in the work. <ref> http://www.alternet.org/ </ref>

Visit their site at: AlterNet

Vermont Progressive Party

Vermont Progressive Party, or VPP for short, attempts to assert itself as a major third-party in the United States Democrat-Republican political system. The VPP claim to be the most successful third party, having more than half of the current third party elected legislators come from their party. <ref> VPP welcome page </ref>

The self-stated purpose of the VPP is "to promote economic, social and environmental justice and sustainability through electoral and other democratic political activities, and to become the majority political party, while protecting minority and individual rights and opportunities." <ref> VPP purpose statement </ref>

The VPP pursues social justice and takes a specific stance on the following issues: universal healthcare, livable wages, progressive taxation, sustainable local economies, and affordable housing. "We fight for labor rights, environmental protection, safe power, reproductive rights and marriage equality." <ref> http://www.progressiveparty.org/2010/welcome-vermont-progressive-party</ref> They outline exactly what the VPP goals are in their platform.

The main focus of the VPP is to help Vermonters, however they believe their small party model can be used to lead a nation.

Other Models

Evergreen Cooperative Initiative

Overview of the Mondragón Worker Cooperative Model

Theories and Reforms for Social Justice in the United States

Many books have been written regarding various theories and reforms to obtain social justice. Some of these authors include Gar Alperovitz, G. William Domhoff, and Michael D. Yates.

Gar Alperovitz

In America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, And Our Democracy (2005), historian and political economist Gar Alperovitz argues that in order to have equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy in the United States, there needs to be fundamental and radical systemic change, or as he puts it, "evolutionary reconstruction." <ref> Alperovitz, Gar (2005).

America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, And Our Democracy. Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 235. ISBN 0471790023. </ref>

Alperovitz proposes the Pluralist Commonwealth model as a way to address issues standing in the way of reclaiming wealth, liberty, and democracy. For greater equality, there needs to be new institutions that hold wealth.The conditions of smaller scale, local democracy needs to be nurtured in order to rebuild the country's overall democratic system. There needs to be radical decentralization to handle the 400 million and growing population of the United States. Lastly individual economic security and greater amounts of free time need to be attained and that neither can be without a change in the ownership of wealth.<ref> Alperovitz, Gar (2005). America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, And Our Democracy. Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 233-34. ISBN 0471790023. </ref>

Videos

Alperovitz speaks on Change in America

Reclaiming our Wealth, Liberty, and Democracy

Community-Wealth.org, the Positive Futures Network, the The Real Utopias Project, AlterNet , and the Vermont Progressive Party all outline changes that fit the Pluralist Commonwealth model. These groups and organizations believe the disproportionate arrangement of wealth needs to be addressed and that there needs to be ways for those not of the top one percent of U.S. citizens to accumulate wealth. They believe in fixing and strengthening local democracy first by giving everyone an equal amount of influence over their lives in order to effect the federal democratic level of politics. They understand that so many U.S. citizens hold little to no wealth or have economic stability and therefore spend the far majority of their time working, essentially making it impossible to utilize free time as they say fit or have the time to participate in democratic politics. These are the issues Alperovitz attempts to solve with his Pluralist Commonwealth model and the groups and organizations listed above are striving for the same goals in a similar fashion.

G. William Domhoff

Who Rules America? , written by William Domhoff, presents detailed original information on how power and politics operate in the United States. He discusses class and power in America and what citizens and social scientists mean when they talk about it. According to Domhoff, there are two kinds of power: economic and social. He believes that a small elite (which is both an economic and social class) rules America. He writes that there are three different types of power indicators and they are revealed by who benefits, governs, and wins. The book provides evidence for the existence of a nationwide corporate community that includes Wall Street banks, military contracts, agribusinesses, accounting firms, and corporate law firms as well as large and well-know corporations. Dumoff states that “large American businesses have always been owned and controlled by groups of well-to-do people who share common economic interest and social ties” <ref> Domhoff, William G. (2010). Who Rules America: Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance. McGraw-Hill. pp. 28. ISBN 9780078111563. </ref> He exposes that the corporate community and the upper class are closely intertwined. Domhoff uses alumni lists, club lists, and memberships to other social organizations (such as the Junior League, sororities, and debutante balls) to demonstrate that owners and top-level executives in the corporate community form a socially cohesive and clearly isolated lifestyle. He that in addition to being an economic and social class, the upper class is also a capitalist class. He states that members of this interwoven corporate community and social upper class who finance, provide a variety of free services, serve as the trustees, and take part in the daily activities of a network of foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups are part of the power elite. These instruments, in concert with the large banks and corporations, “provide the organizational basis for the exercise of power on behalf of the owners of all large income- producing properties.” <ref> Domhoff, William G. (2010). Who Rules America: Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance. McGraw-Hill. pp. 115. ISBN 9780078111563. </ref> It is through involvement in the policy-planning network that corporate leaders gain insight behind general matters beyond the confines of their own narrow business problems, discuss policy alternatives that are in their interests as a class, and come to know and work with specialists and experts on a wide variety of topics.

Domhoff also reveals how several of the organizations in the policy-planning network link with public relation firms, the public affairs department of large corporations, and middle-class voluntary groups in an effort to strengthen the individualistic and anti government aspects of the American value system, thereby trying to influence public opinion on certain issues. He explains the nature of the American electoral system and why it is sometimes not as responsive to the preferences of the general public as the electoral systems in other democratic countries and also provides insight on the major corporate fundraisers for President Obama and shows that like other successful political candidates, his victory was strengthened by wealthy contributors. Most elected officials come from inside the very wealthiest of circles, many times are lawyers, have extreme ambition, tend to stay neutral on highly emotional social issues, and are pro-business conservatives. Laslty, he illustrates how the power elite dominate government. It examines the network-based processes through which corporate leaders are able to dominate the federal government in Washington on issues of interest to them and explains the labor policy and argues that it is reasonable for the corporate community to be fearful of losing its power, and outlines the limits of corporate domination.

Michael D. Yates

Michael D. Yates, an economics professor and labor educator whose earlier books focused on workers' legal rights (Power on the Job, South End, 1994), seeks to cover a much broader canvas in his novel, Why Unions Matter (2009). He explores how labor unions work, the victories they have won on the battlefields of sexism and racism, and provides an argument for unions as the sole means by which working people can obtain dignity, equity, and power. <ref> http://www.amazon.com/dp/0853459290 </ref> Yates analyzes the continuing decline in union membership and density, the growing importance of immigrant workers, the rise of worker centers, the impacts of and labor responses to globalization, and the need for labor to have an independent political voice. <ref> Yates, Michael D. (2009). Why Unions Matter. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 9781583671900. </ref>

Ideas and Reforms

Yates explains that unions have always been features of capitalist economies, given the inherent conflict between workers and employers. He writes that "unions provide workers with a more permanent and formal power at work." <ref> Yates, Michael D. (2009). Why Unions Matter. Monthly Review Press. pp. 185. ISBN 9781583671900. </ref> He continues by explaining that unionization has a positive independent effect on wages and benefits of employees, and gives employees a voice in workplace decisions. He states that unions actually benefit all workers, not only those who are organized, because higher wages stimulate the economy and lead to higher rates of employment. Also, unions reduce inequality in incomes and work toward unemployment compensation and universal health care, which benefit all workers. Next, Yates states that unions that use aggressive organizing models can build strong unions despite laws that make it difficult to organize workers. He writes that collective bargaining is a primary function of a union and should be viewed as an extension of organizing. It should include such tactics as strikes, corporate campaigns, and civil disobedience, in a continuation of the war between capital and labor. Also, Yates discusses the fact that unions alone can achieve many things for their members, but concedes that some aspects of working life must be addressed politically. Finally, Yates writes that "the U.S. labor movement, at its best, has shown that it is possible to overcome the deepest divisions within the working class, most notably those of race and gender." <ref> Yates, Michael D. (2009). Why Unions Matter. Monthly Review Press. pp. 187. ISBN 9781583671900. </ref> Yates argues that, despite some corruption, the labor movement may offer workers their best opportunity to achieve liberation from their oppressive work lives and demeaned social and political circumstances. <ref> Yates, Michael D. (2009). Why Unions Matter. Monthly Review Press. pp. 185-87. ISBN 9781583671900. </ref>

How do groups working for Progressive Social Change mesh with the ideas of Yates and Dumhoff?

Yates has several goals for a labor-centered society:

• Employment as a right (lower unemployment)
• Meaningful work
• Socialization of consumption (society should provide basic needs like education, health care, etc)
• Democratic control of production
• Shorter hours of work
• An end to discrimination
• Wage and income equality
• A clean and healthy environment <ref> Yates, Michael D. (2009). Why Unions Matter. Monthly Review Press. pp. 205-7. ISBN 9781583671900. </ref>

Unlike Yates, Domhoff does not directly suggest any specific ideas to achieve a labor-centered society, but rather illustrates the pitfalls in our current social and economic system. He reminds readers that it is easy to be naïve and ignorant about the United States government. Countless Americans believe that our democracy is based on equality of all citizens and this is both idealistic and incorrect. By providing empirical data for his argument, Domhoff proves this. He encourages readers to think critically about the power structure in American society and its implications for our democracy.

AlterNet, The Real Utopias Project, Community-Wealth.org, the Positive Futures Network, the Vermont Progressive Party, and the authors all advocate for social disruption. After gaining knowledge about our current system through books like Domhoff's, Yate's and Alperovitz's, and from the organizations listed above, it is crucial that we then decide whether or not we agree with the current methods that are occurring. If we do not, we need to try to make changes, but in order to do so it is necessary that we understand how those in power get power. In order for transformations to occur, it is vital to have a complete grasp on how the system originated, works, and continues to grow. Simply, you have to understand and recognize the problem before any changes can be made.

Social Justice and Capitalism?

In order to determine the answer to the question of social justice being compatible with capitalism, a better understanding of how capitalism fundamentally works must be achieved. In Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change (2005), Samuel Bowles, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt expose the shortcomings of capitalism. First, they explain the three-dimensional approach to political economy and emphasize some facts relating to life in a capitalist economy. Next, they develop a microeconomic thoery of the firm and of markets, including the labor market. Most important, they include an analysis of profits and the profit rate that integrates the principle of three-dimensional economics and establishes the link between micro- and macroeconomics. Bowles, Edwards, and Roosevelt also discuss the macroecnomic workings of the economy as a whole. They examine inequality both within and among nations, focusing on uneven development on a global scale. They explain the concept of aggregate supply and demand and explain why unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalist labor markets. Also, they discuss inflation and the government's role in the economy. Finally, the authors explore the future of capitalism, raising questions about the adequacy of today's institutions to address tomorrow's problems, including environmental degradation, global inequality, and intellectual property rights and incentives in the new information-based economy.<ref> Bowles, Samuel, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt (2005). Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195138658. </ref>

Shortcomings of Capitalism

The shortcomings of capitalism discussed by Bowles, Edwards, and Roosevelt include:

• Wealth inequality
• Unequal chances
• Racial inequality
• Gender inequality
• Conflict in the workplace (conflict between workers and employers)
• Poverty
• Uneven development
• Unemployment
• Inflation
• Too much money and too few goods
• Environmental degradation
• Global inequality <ref> Bowles, Samuel, Richard Edwards, and Frank Roosevelt (2005). Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195138658. </ref>

Overcoming Problems to Achieve Efficiency, Fairness, and Democracy

Groups working toward progressive social change, including Community-Wealth.org, the Positive Futures Network, the The Real Utopias Project, AlterNet , and the Vermont Progressive Party, are working to fix the problems listed by Bowles, Edwards, and Roosevelt. All of these groups are working to achieve greater equality for all people. They aim to increase employment and give all people more equal power and opportunities. They are trying to achieve these goals through various community and economic development strategies. Many of these groups, especially the Positive Futures Network, are also concerned with environmental degradation and improving the earth's sustainability.

The goals these groups are trying to accomplish are consistent with the ideals of social justice discussed in our American Capitalism and Social Justice course. Both the authors and the groups discussed above acknowledge the conflicts and shortcomings of the capitalist economic system that we have explored in class. The groups on this page all have initiatives to try to improve the state of these problems and achieve a more just society and a more just world.

Links

Community-wealth.org

Video Overview of Community-Wealth.org

YES! Magazine

The Real Utopias Project

AlterNet

Vermont Progressive Party

Alperovitz speaks on Change in America

Evergreen Cooperative Initiative

Overview of the Mondragón Worker Cooperative Model

References

<references/>