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 Real Utopias Project, AlterNet, and the Vermont Progressive Party.

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

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:

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

2)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

"Real Utopia" seems like a contradiction in terms. Utopias are fantasies, morally inspired designs for social life unconstrained by realistic considerations of human psychology and social feasibility. Realists eschew such fantasies. What is needed are hard-nosed proposals for pragmatically improving our institutions. Instead of indulging in utopian dreams we must accommodate to practical realities.

The Real Utopia Project embraces this 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. We need "real utopias": utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian destinations that have accessible waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practical tasks of muddling through in a world of imperfect conditions for social change.

The Real Utopias Project is an attempt at countering this cynicism by sustaining and deepening serious discussion of radical alternatives to existing institutions. The objective is to focus on specific proposals for the fundamental redesign of basic social institutions rather than on either general, abstract formulations of grand designs, or on small reforms of existing practices.

In practical terms, the Real Utopias Project is built around a series of workshop conferences sponsored by the A. E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin. The general format of these conferences consists of selecting a provocative manuscript that lays out the basic outlines of a radical institutional proposal and then inviting 15-20 scholars to write essays that in one way or another address this document. These essays have ranged from short, point-by-point critiques of specific arguments to longer papers developing one or more of the themes of the focal manuscript. The essays are then circulated to all participants in the conference well in advance of the gathering so that the discussions of each paper at the conference are informed by the arguments raised by the entire set. After the workshop is over, participants have an opportunity to revise their essays before they appear as a collection in the Real Utopias Project series published by Verso. All royalties from the The Real Utopia Project books go into a fund to support future conferences and books.

As of 2010, eight conferences have been organized on this format:

1. Basic Income Grants (1991)

This conference was organized around a manuscript by Philippe van Parijs which explored the philosophical and economic foundations of the proposal to replace the income transfer programs of existing welfare states by a simple, universal unconditional income grant. The papers from this conference were not published as a collection in the Real Utopias Project series, although the themes are presented in the volume edited by van Parijs under the title Arguing for Basic Income (Verso, 1993)

2. Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance (1992)

This conference engaged a complex and important manuscript by Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers on the problem of democratic governance in capitalist societies. The central issue of discussion was the potential for enhancing both the effectiveness and the democracy of democratic capitalism by institutionalizing a pervasive governance role for nonstate, quasi-voluntary secondary associations. Some of the papers from this conference appeared in a special issue of Politics & Society (December, 1992). The entire set of papers appears as the first volume of the Real Utopias Project Verso series, Associations & Democracy (1995).

3. A model for Market Socialism (1994)

This was the first conference organized around a book rather than a paper: John Roemer's, A Future for Socialism (Harvard University Press, 1994). The conference explored Roemer's proposal to create a form of market socialism in which there were two kinds of money -- dollars for the purchase of commodities and coupons for the purchase of shares in firms. The core of the proposal is that (a) these coupons are initially equally distributed to all adults and then used to buy shares which are subsequently traded on a coupon-share market; (b) coupons cannot be sold for dollars, so that dollar wealth cannot be converted into coupon wealth and coupon wealth cannot be directly converted into dollar wealth; (c) share ownership, denominated in coupon values, gives people property rights in the dollar profits of firms in the form of dividends. A subset of the papers appears in Politics & Society (December, 1994), and the entire set as the second volume in the Verso series, Equal Shares (1996).

4. Efficient Redistribution in Advanced Capitalism (1995)

This conference was anchored in an essay written by the two economists, Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis. This essay argues that in order to revitalizehttp://wiki.dickinson.edu/skins/common/images/button_extlink.png an economic strategy on the Left, the Left needs to focus on the redistribution of a wide variety of assets rather than on state provision of services and redistribution of income. Properly designed systems of asset redistribution can both accomplish egalitarian goals and promote increased productivity. These arguments are elaborated for three main cases: a redistribution of assets in enterprises to the employees increases efficiency by reducing monitoring costs and improving incentives to work hard; a redistribution of assets in schooling in the form of a radically egalitarian systems of vouchers makes schools more accountable to parents and thus likely to more efficiently meet educational needs; and a redistribution of public housing assets by giving residents ownership rights in their housing will lead to improved maintenance of the housing stock. Such an approach, they argue, requires dropping the traditional leftwing aversion to using the market and institutions of private property in the service of democracy. A set of the papers from the conference appeared in Politics & Society, December 1996, and then entire set, with a new concluding essay by Bowles and Gintis, was published as the third volume in the Verso Real Utopias Project series, Recasting Egalitarianism (1999)

5. Deepening Democracy (2000)

This conference was a follow-up on the second Real Utopias Project conference on "Associations and Democratic Governance" held in 1992. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright wrote an introductory essay for the conference, which elaborates a particular conception of participatory democracy called "empowered participatory governance" and then lays out an inventory of problems and questions which can be used to analyze real world cases of institutional innovation in terms of this model. The conference itself was built around a number of on-going real-world experiments in participatory democracy that have been in place long enough for a serious discussion of their dilemmas and potentials. The core papers from the conference were published in Politics & Society in 2001, and the complete set of papers published in volume 4 of the Real Utopias Project Series, Deepening Democracy: institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance (2003)

6. Rethinking Redistribution (2003)

This conference in the Real Utopias Project examined two provocative proposals for radical redesigns of redistributive institutions: Universal Basic Income, as elaborated by Philippe van Parijs, and Stakeholder Grants, as elaborated by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott. While both of these proposals contain a range of complex details, they are both based on very simple ideas: In the proposal for Basic Income, every citizen receive a monthly stipend from the state which guarantees them a standard of living at a respectable, no-frills level. In a stakeholder grants proposal, all citizens upon reaching adulthood are given a sizable capital grant sufficient to have a significant asset stake in the society. A set of the papers from this conference appeared as a special issue of the journal Politics & Society in 2003. The entire set constitutes the fifth volume in the Real Utopias project series, Redesigning Distribution (2005)

7. Pensions and the Control of Capital Accumulation (2004)

This conference explored the question of whether or not large pools of capital that have a public or quasi-public character, especially pension funds, could be used as a mechanism for enhancing the social accountability of capital accumulation. The opening paper in the conference by Robin Blackburn, “Pension Provision: The Crisis and Outline of an Alternative,” explores alternatives models of pension provision – both public and private -- and their prospects for adequately contending with the impending crisis of pension systems in the 21st century, and then proposes a specific kind of strategy for both dealing with this crisis and using pensions as an instrument for enhanced democratic control of accumulation. Two of the papers from the conference were published in the journal Politics & Soicety.

8. Institutions for Gender Egalitarianism: Creating the Conditions for Egalitarian Dual Earner / Dual Caregiver Families (2006)

This conference examined the problem of how design of public institutions could facilitate egalitarian gender relations within the family over both caregiving and employment. The conference was anchored by Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers’ essay “Institutions that Support Gender Egalitarianism in Parenthood and Employment.” They argue that in order to reconcile in an egalitarian manner the interests of men, women and children within the emerging dualearner/ dual-caregiver model of the family, three clusters of institutional innovations are needed: 1) a generous mechanism of paid parental leaves for caregiving activities which is allocated to mothers and fathers individually, thus requiring fathers to “use or lose” their paid leave time; 2) effective working-time regulations that limit full-time work hours and raise the quality and availability of reduced-hour work; and 3) an expansive, universal program of early childhood education and care. The papers from the conference were published in the sixth volume in the Real Utopias Project series, Gender Equality: transforming family divisions of labor (2009).

The Real Utopias Project

Overview

<ref> hgy </ref>

AlterNet

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.

AlterNet 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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Theories and Reforms for Social Justice in the United States

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

"How does what they are trying to accomplish mesh with the reforms and ideals advocated by Alperovitz? In what way will they help us to reclaim our wealth, liberty, and democracy?"

G. William Domhoff

....

....

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 the groups working for Progressive Social Change mesh with Yates's ideas?

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>

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

Wiki markup cheatsheet

Linking Images to Pages

References

<references/>