Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

Integral Capitalism?

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Edward Berge

There’s a new discussion on the above topic at the IPS pod at Gaia. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

This weeks Integral Life audio offering is one of the more interesting ones lately.

The official statement here seems to be: We have to live with the Capitalist system right now, yes we know it has got failures and shortcomings, but if we try hard and meditate daily, we can improve the system into green and beyond. All we need is faith and patience.

But what if this is not true? What if the “small problems” of capitalism are sort of ‘built in’ the system and just won’t go away? What if a green capitalism won’t change a thing about the inequalities and injustice of the world?

Posted in Economy, Integral Metatheory, Politics | 1 Comment »

America Beyond Capitalism: What a “Pluralist Commonwealth” Would Look Like

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

The title of the above is a book written by Gar Alperovitz, a University of Maryland political economist and president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives. This is an extension of an earlier thread here called “Emerging economic structures.” I think it’s a vital project to explore, promote and develop a political-economic expression of an evolving consciousness. The following is from a review of the above book in dollars & sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice

The schematic model outlined here is termed a “Pluralist Commonwealth”—”pluralist” to emphasize the priority given to democratic diversity and individual liberty; “commonwealth” to underscore the centrality of new public and quasi-public wealth-holding institutions.

At the heart of this model is a robust vision of community democracy as the necessary foundation for a renewal of democracy in general. The model prioritizes a variety of strategies to undergird local economies, thereby creating conditions favorable to the growth of local civil society associations and an increase in the power of local government to make meaningful decisions.

The model also projects the development over time of new ownership institutions, including locally anchored worker-owned and other community-benefiting firms, on the one hand, and various national wealth-holding bodies, on the other. These ultimately take the place of current elite and corporate ownership of the preponderance of large-scale capital.

At the national level, a major new institution—call it a “Public Trust”—is projected to oversee the investment of stock on behalf of the public as state and other pension boards commonly do today. The proceeds could flow to individuals, to states, to municipalities, to the federal treasury—or perhaps to fund such basic public services as education or medical care for the elderly.

A fundamental shift in the ownership of wealth over time slowly moves the nation toward greater equality: directly, for instance, through worker-owned enterprises, and also indirectly, through a flow of funds from the large-scale public investments. (Capital would likely be assembled both by the taxation of elite income and wealth and through new loan guarantee strategies to finance the broadened public ownership of new investments.) Over time, these flows of funds are allocated to finance a reduction in the work week so as to permit more free time, which in turn bolsters both individual liberty and democratic participation. In addition, ownership structures and strategies that stabilize the local economy strengthen the traditional entrepreneurial foundations of liberty while also enhancing individual job security.

Finally, the emerging model implicitly moves in the direction of, and ultimately projects, a radical long-term devolution of the national political system to some form of regional reorganization and decentralization. The region is the most logical locus for economic planning aimed at securing jobs in particular communities and for handling ecological, transportation, and other issues in a rational and democratic fashion.

Posted in Economy, Politics | 5 Comments »

Emerging economic structures

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

In the Mackey thread I asked if capitalism, as an emergent socio-economic structure, could embody the values that Mackey represents, which seem to arise at a higher level of development. I used the analogy of trying to fit a more developed value peg into a less developed structural hole. If capitalism is the wrong hole for the job, then what is?

Michel Bauwens has been exploring the very real socio-econmic developments in peer-to-peer (P2P). This form of exchange has been happening for some time and Michel has attempted to theorize it in his popular essay “P2P and Human Evolution.” Below are some excerpts of summary points from Michel’s 7/13/07 blog entry “What P2P means for the world of tomorrow“:

Our current world system is marked by a profoundly counterproductive logic of social organization: it is based on a false concept of abundance in the limited material world; it has created a system based on infinite growth, within the confines of finite resources

…we need to base our physical economy on a recognition of the finitude of natural resources, and achieve a sustainable steady-state economy

Markets, as means to to manage scarce physical resources, are but one of the means to achieve such allocation, and need to be divorced from the idea of capitalism, which is a system of infinite growth.

Peer to peer as the relational dynamic of free agents in distributed networks will likely become the dominant mode for the production of immaterial value; however, in the realm of scarcity, the peer to peer logic will tend to reinforce peer-informed market modes, such as fair trade; and in the realm of the scarcity based politics of group negotiation, will lead to reinforce the peer-informed state forms such as multistakeholdership forms of governance.

The world of physical production needs to be characterized by:
a) sustainable forms of peer-informed market exchange (fair trade, etc..);
b) reinvigorated forms of reciprocity and the gift economy;
c) a world based on social innovation and open designs, available for physical production anywhere in the world.

The best guarantor of the spread of the peer to peer logic to the world of physical production, is the distribution of everything, i.e. of the means of production in the hands of individuals and communities, so that they can engage in social cooperation. While the immaterial world will be characterized by a peer to peer logic on non-reciprocal generalized exchange, the peer informed world of material exchange will be characterized by evolving forms of reciprocity and neutral exchange.

We need to move from empty and ineffective anti-capitalist rhetoric, to constructive post-capitalist construction. Peer to peer theory, as the attempt to create a theory to understand peer production, governance and property, and the attendant paradigms and value systems of the open/free, participatory, and commons oriented social movements, is in a unique position to marry the priority values of the right, individual freedom, and the priority values of the left, equality. In the peer to peer logic, one is the condition of the other, and cooperative individualism marries equipotentiality and freedom in a context of non-coercion.

This is the truth of the peer to peer logical of social relationships: 1) together we have everything; 2) together we know everything. Therefore, the conditions for dignified material and spiritual living are in our hands, bound with our capacity to relate and form community. The emancipatory peer to peer theory does not offer new solutions for global problems, but most of all new means to tackle them, by relying on the collective intelligence of humankind. We are witnessing the rapid emergence of peer to peer toolboxes for the virtual world, and facilitation techniques of the physical world of face to face encounters, both are needed to assist in the necessary change of consciousness that needs to be midwifed. It is up to us to use them.

Posted in Business, Economy, Politics, Values | 21 Comments »