thinking of a different economy

[the_future_modernes]

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US and they are playing his I have a dream speech on repeat. But Martin had opinions on many other things, and one of them was working towards a fair and just economy

The Martin Luther King who’ll be on our screens is a memory filtered of its radical light. Particularly in his later life, King had a sharp diagnosis about how the evils of militarism, racism and poverty had a root cause. That cause? Capitalism. Will we hear about that on CNN, from the President, on the news? Not likely.
In his last speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1967, quoted below and available in full here, he said:

One day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.

The FBI, in a trope that we see in South Africa today, explained King’s rejection of capitalism through the fact that he’d been brainwashed by the dangerous white folk around him. One of those friends, Stanley Levison, explained this simply as a function of the FBI’s

“racist contempt for the intellect of the black man. No one with a modicum of sense … could have concluded that a man with the force of intellect and fierce independence that Martin King had could have been dominated by anybody…”

King wasn’t anyone’s dupe – and that means that he was critical of the Soviet Union too, as you’ll see in the excerpt below, and from the line:

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.”

MORE

In recognition of that...


BRAZIL: Solidarity Economy Thriving

A number of other collective initiatives based on cooperation and self-management, and free of the employer-employee relationship, have networked at the World Social Forum, whose annual editions were held in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where it first emerged.

The Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum (FBES) emerged at the 2003 WSF, which coincided with the start of the government of leftwing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who established a National Secretary of the Solidarity Economy (SENAES) under the Labour Ministry.

The movement in Brazil differs from those of other countries, because it combines three dimensions, said FBES executive secretary Daniel Tygel. Besides the economic aspect, which comprises self-management and the creation of cooperatives and networks, it includes a cultural dimension, related to consumption, gender relations and areas like free software, as well as a policy of social transformation.

In the long term, "we want to change the model of production and the direction of development, towards a model that is not harmful to life," said Tygel.

Brazil's solidarity economy ranges from agricultural production, which accounts for 60 percent of the groups linked by the FBES, to crafts, apparel, microcredit cooperatives, bankrupt companies that have been salvaged by workers' cooperatives, community church projects and university incubators of solidarity businesses.

Although the solidarity economy currently represents a "paltry" share of the national economy, as Tygel acknowledged, it is growing fast, despite the scant government resources dedicated to supporting its development. MORE

DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Solidarity Economy Combats Exclusion

Producing sugar in this location "costs a little more than in Sao Paulo (a southern state that accounts for over half the national output), but our model makes the project viable," Lenivaldo Lima, a technical adviser at Catende-Harmonia, as the project is also known, told IPS.

The model Lima mentioned is cooperative, self-managing, and based on economic solidarity, with a large proportion of sugarcane plantation and industrial refinery workers also growing cassava, fruit, maize, potatoes and even raising livestock, "in a family farming system based on agricultural cooperatives."

The local terrain does not allow mechanised harvesting, as in Sao Paulo, but this creates more jobs, "fulfilling the goal of social inclusion" and better income distribution, which benefits the municipalities and boosts the local economy, Lima said.

Catende-Harmonia is an excellent example of private companies which have foundered, but have been rescued and put back on their feet by their workers. There are about 200 of these in Brazil, according to Fabio Sanches, Assistant Secretary for the Solidarity Economy at the Labour Ministry.

The sector is made up of about 22,000 solidarity-based economic enterprises (EES), comprising nearly two million workers, according to official figures. That’s not much in a country with over 188 million people, half of whom are of working age, but it is a new phenomenon that is expanding rapidly, Sanches told IPS.

The EES are collectively managed businesses involved in productive activities, services or credit cooperatives. They emerged in Brazil in the 1980s, in response to "the crisis in waged employment, the growth of the informal economy, and the high levels of unemployment and job instability," he said.

Small-scale agriculture is the main occupation, but fishing, handicrafts, rainforest products, mining, small-scale workshops, waste recycling, retailing, credit cooperatives and other services all have a place in the solidarity economy.
MORE

INDIA: Hill Women Form Cooperative, Turn Entrepreneurs

UTTARKASHI, India, Jan 18, 2010 (IPS) - Women in Uttarkashi district of the hill state of Uttarakhand in India, traditionally sidelined from the developmental processes, are forming their own cooperative and producing processed food items, giving big multinational brands a run for their money in local markets.

From garlic, ginger, chili, mixed vegetable and mango pickles to fruit jams and chutneys, all packaged in attractive little plastic jars, women like Damayanti Devi of Kaleshwar village are the new face of business in Uttarakhand.

...


Initially, a single group started making pickle, and each woman managed to get a net profit of 500 rupees (11 dollars) in the first round of production. After this, the women were encouraged to set up agro-eco-based income- generation activities by trading surplus pulses, millets, spices and some processed items they prepared from locally available raw material. This helped to enhance local incomes, but at the same time the women realised that they suffered from a lack of marketing skills.

"Our biggest challenges were to improve and maintain the quality of our products given the tough competition in markets," observes Jagdamba Parwar of Mungra village.

These issues were discussed at monthly meetings, and the need was felt for a more effective trading regime. "There was a federation for male farmers that dealt with the production and marketing of fruits and vegetable. However, we wanted a separate federation for women’s groups," says Parwar, 37, who has spearheaded the income-generating activities in her village and is secretary of her SHG.
MORE

DEVELOPMENT: India Holds Public Meetings on GM Food Crop

NEW DELHI, Jan 14, 2010 (IPS) - As India's central government begins a series of public meetings across the country this month on the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) brinjal – or eggplant - in this country, activists and farmers’ groups are mobilising to oppose such a plan.

The meetings are a response by Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh to a storm of protests generated by the approval issued by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in October last year for the commercial cultivation of the genetically modified ‘brinjal’ – also called ‘aubergine’ – to resist pests with a gene from the soil bacteria ‘Bacillus thuringiensis’ (Bt brinjal).

The environment ministry’s first hearing, held Wednesday in the eastern city of Kolkata, ended up in a shouting match between Ramesh and the scientists, activists and local citizens present, who were opposed to the introduction of Bt brinjal.

While Bt brinjal is the first GM food crop to be introduced in India, the South Asian country already grows GM cotton spliced with insect-resistant genes form the same Bt bacterium, which has been blamed for serious crop failures and mass suicides by farmers in the cotton-growing belts of Vidarbha (Maharashtra state) and Andhra Pradesh.

Leading the resistance to the introduction of Bt brinjal is international food security campaigner Vandana Shiva, a biosafety expert who helped develop the Biosafety Protocol, an international treaty that became operative in September 2003 under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. MORE

MALAWI: Green Belt Initiative Taking Shape

BLANTYRE, Jan 11, 2010 (IPS) - Let the rains fail, even for several successive seasons, and Malawi should still be able to produce enough to feed itself.


This is the motivation for the country's green belt concept. It is strengthened by painful memories of the severe drought beginning early 2002 which triggered three years of hunger. By 2005, five million people were affected by famine, all while large quantities of water flowed out of the country to the oceans of the world.

Local agriculture experts explain that two districts in the southern tip of the country could feed the entire country all year round if the Shire River, which cuts through the length of this southern plain, was utilised for intensive irrigation farming.

Yet, the two districts, often troubled by floods, are among the most desperately poor in Malawi, and their inhabitants survive on food handouts from government and donors.

The programme seeks to make Malawi independent of rain-fed agriculture. For all the much-publicised success of subsidies for small-scale farmers over the past four years, Malawi must also thank good rains for the increased production. MORE

CHILE: Eliminating Slums

SANTIAGO, Jan 7 , 2010 (IPS) - Chile, touted as Latin America's great economic success story, has gone a long way towards reducing poverty and eliminating the country's slums. But a new study shows that disadvantages are still faced by 50,000 children living in shantytowns.

According to the records kept by the Fundación Un Techo para Chile (A Roof for Chile Foundation), a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1997 by Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos, there are currently just over 20,000 families living in slums, often without basic services, in this country of nearly 17 million people.

That is down from 29,000 families in 2007 and 126,000 families in 1997.

And official figures indicate that the poverty rate was reduced from 38 to 13 percent between 1990 and 2006.

The main aim of A Roof for Chile is to "structurally" eradicate slums by Sept. 18, 2010, the 200th anniversary of Chile's independence from Spain - meaning that only a tiny proportion of families would still be living in shantytowns, but with concrete plans to move into decent housing. MORE