Occasionally there comes a news series that is so well written, so very important, that it speaks for itself. Back in 2005 Mother Jones published a special project on global warming titled “As the World Burns”. In it they documented how corporations are funding special interest groups to spread disinformation denying the reality of global warming and are working to stop legislation to combat it. This series is a must read for everyone.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/world_burns.html
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Corporate Factory Farming
Not too long ago the majority of American food came from family farms. Gradually over time, with help from the US government, the family farm was forced out and replaced with big corporate factory farms. According to sustanabletable.org today as much as 40% of all farm animals are now raised on just 2% of the livestock farms in the US. And 62% of all agricultural products come from just 3% of the farms.
Technically known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) these corporate owned factory farms are massive operations. On a large CAFO one may find 1,000 cattle, 2,500 hogs, or 125,000 chickens. To manage the massive amount of waste they use a liquid manure system mixes the animal's urine and feces with water. Often this is held in huge open air lagoons.
It’s important to understand the seriousness of the threat CAFOs provide.
Pollution: CAFO’s produce large amount of liquid waste, which leaks into local water supplies. In addition, the greenhouse gases generated by such facilities are suspected as being one of the contributing factors to global warming.
Disease: Because so many animals are enclosed together in small places the animals raised in CAFOs are more susceptible to disease. As a result Big Agra has to pump them with antibiotics, which increases the chances of an epidemic of antibiotic resistant disease.
Pesticides: CAFOs use large amounts of pesticides, which run off into the creeks and rivers and contaminate local water supplies. The effects of such run off go far beyond the local area. The Gulf of Mexico has a reoccurring dead zone every summer due in part to the massive amount of pesticides dumping into it from the Mississippi.
Slaughterhouses: Today just a few corporations dominate the US meatpacking industry. We see the results of this near monopoly every time there is a recall of beef or chicken. The political power of these corporations is seen in the impotent food inspections by the USDA.
Workers: Just as the slaughterhouses use their political power to castrate the USDA they’ve also helped make OSHA a joke. The working conditions in CAFOs along with large corporate slaughterhouses are highly dangerous to the employees, many of whom are undocumented workers.
Treatment of Animals: The list of suffering that animals on CAFOs undergo is extremely long and is morally unjustifiable. Just as C.S. Lewis said in his condemnation of animal testing the same can be said of the suffering of the animals on CAFOs, “In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level.”
To learn more about the dangers of corporate farming visit http://www.sustainabletable.org/ (Source for majority of this article.)
Technically known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) these corporate owned factory farms are massive operations. On a large CAFO one may find 1,000 cattle, 2,500 hogs, or 125,000 chickens. To manage the massive amount of waste they use a liquid manure system mixes the animal's urine and feces with water. Often this is held in huge open air lagoons.
It’s important to understand the seriousness of the threat CAFOs provide.
Pollution: CAFO’s produce large amount of liquid waste, which leaks into local water supplies. In addition, the greenhouse gases generated by such facilities are suspected as being one of the contributing factors to global warming.
Disease: Because so many animals are enclosed together in small places the animals raised in CAFOs are more susceptible to disease. As a result Big Agra has to pump them with antibiotics, which increases the chances of an epidemic of antibiotic resistant disease.
Pesticides: CAFOs use large amounts of pesticides, which run off into the creeks and rivers and contaminate local water supplies. The effects of such run off go far beyond the local area. The Gulf of Mexico has a reoccurring dead zone every summer due in part to the massive amount of pesticides dumping into it from the Mississippi.
Slaughterhouses: Today just a few corporations dominate the US meatpacking industry. We see the results of this near monopoly every time there is a recall of beef or chicken. The political power of these corporations is seen in the impotent food inspections by the USDA.
Workers: Just as the slaughterhouses use their political power to castrate the USDA they’ve also helped make OSHA a joke. The working conditions in CAFOs along with large corporate slaughterhouses are highly dangerous to the employees, many of whom are undocumented workers.
Treatment of Animals: The list of suffering that animals on CAFOs undergo is extremely long and is morally unjustifiable. Just as C.S. Lewis said in his condemnation of animal testing the same can be said of the suffering of the animals on CAFOs, “In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level.”
To learn more about the dangers of corporate farming visit http://www.sustainabletable.org/ (Source for majority of this article.)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Leland Stanford
Last week my wife and I spent several days with our daughter at a parent-student freshmen college orientation. Spending that time walking around her university campus inspired me to share a brief biography about the founder’s of one of America’s great universities: Leland Stanford.
Leland Stanford was born in1824 on a farm near Albany, New York. In 1848 Stanford passed the bar and moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin to begin a law practice. After his business was destroyed in a fire Stanford packed up and struck out on his own to join his brothers in California to operate a mercantile business. On his way to the Golden State he stayed in Michigan to work in a general store. Stanford did very well at the store and after three years he was able to purchase it and bring his wife from Albany.
Leland Stanford’s wealth came not from the store but from the railroad. Stanford along with other high risk investors formed the Central Pacific Railroad, most famous for building the transcontinental railroad. It was Stanford who had the honor of hammering in the golden spike at the meeting with the Union Pacific in Utah.
The year prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad his son, Leland, was born. Young Leland was a creative child. He raised dogs and horses and had an interest in both farm equipment and trains. He was a tall child, at 15 young Leland stood taller than 5 feet 10 inches, he was fluent in French, and had interests in art and archeology.
After finally arriving in California, Leland Stanford helped organize the state Republican Party. He worked for Abraham Lincoln during his election in 1860 and was elected governor in 1861. Stanford was elected by Californians to the U.S. Senate in 1885 and 1893.
In 1884 tragedy struck when young Leland contracted typhoid fever. Young Leland died in Florence just two months before turning 16. This tragic event, a heart ache that few can imagine, changed Stanford forever. The day after his son’s death, when Stanford awoke he turned to his wife and said, “The children of California shall be our children.”
After the death of his son Stanford took on a new mission in life. His goal was to replace capitalism and corporations with an economy based on worker-owned cooperatives. His solution to the problem of capitalism was, “through co-operation, labor could become its own employer.”
As a senator he was the author of several cooperative related bills. One bill was to provide a legal basis for worker cooperatives to incorporate. The text of the bill, oddly enough, actually stated how the cooperatives were to be organized. Rather than one person-one vote the voting rights were to be based on the amount of capital that each member provided. Not only did that go against the basic operating principles of cooperatives as established by the Rochdale Principles but it seems to reflect Stanford’s capitalist mentality. No matter what he still unconsciously gave preference to those with wealth.
Along with the legislative efforts, there was also the founding of Stanford University. Stanford explained that the three objectives of the university were education, conservation of the great doctrines, and “the independence of capital and the self-employment of non-capitalist classes, by such system of instruction as will tend to the establishment of cooperative effort in the industrial systems of the future.”
So how successful was Stanford? In both the legislative and the educational arena he failed utterly. None of the senate bills he proposed ever became legislation. And while Stanford University is today known as one of the great universities of the world it never became a center of cooperative economics. Today there is no reference to Stanford’s third objective anywhere on the official school web site.
For a good online article about Leland Stanford and his historic role in Economic Democracy I recommend: http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PAPERS/BCLSFV/
Leland Stanford was born in1824 on a farm near Albany, New York. In 1848 Stanford passed the bar and moved to Port Washington, Wisconsin to begin a law practice. After his business was destroyed in a fire Stanford packed up and struck out on his own to join his brothers in California to operate a mercantile business. On his way to the Golden State he stayed in Michigan to work in a general store. Stanford did very well at the store and after three years he was able to purchase it and bring his wife from Albany.
Leland Stanford’s wealth came not from the store but from the railroad. Stanford along with other high risk investors formed the Central Pacific Railroad, most famous for building the transcontinental railroad. It was Stanford who had the honor of hammering in the golden spike at the meeting with the Union Pacific in Utah.
The year prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad his son, Leland, was born. Young Leland was a creative child. He raised dogs and horses and had an interest in both farm equipment and trains. He was a tall child, at 15 young Leland stood taller than 5 feet 10 inches, he was fluent in French, and had interests in art and archeology.
After finally arriving in California, Leland Stanford helped organize the state Republican Party. He worked for Abraham Lincoln during his election in 1860 and was elected governor in 1861. Stanford was elected by Californians to the U.S. Senate in 1885 and 1893.
In 1884 tragedy struck when young Leland contracted typhoid fever. Young Leland died in Florence just two months before turning 16. This tragic event, a heart ache that few can imagine, changed Stanford forever. The day after his son’s death, when Stanford awoke he turned to his wife and said, “The children of California shall be our children.”
After the death of his son Stanford took on a new mission in life. His goal was to replace capitalism and corporations with an economy based on worker-owned cooperatives. His solution to the problem of capitalism was, “through co-operation, labor could become its own employer.”
As a senator he was the author of several cooperative related bills. One bill was to provide a legal basis for worker cooperatives to incorporate. The text of the bill, oddly enough, actually stated how the cooperatives were to be organized. Rather than one person-one vote the voting rights were to be based on the amount of capital that each member provided. Not only did that go against the basic operating principles of cooperatives as established by the Rochdale Principles but it seems to reflect Stanford’s capitalist mentality. No matter what he still unconsciously gave preference to those with wealth.
Along with the legislative efforts, there was also the founding of Stanford University. Stanford explained that the three objectives of the university were education, conservation of the great doctrines, and “the independence of capital and the self-employment of non-capitalist classes, by such system of instruction as will tend to the establishment of cooperative effort in the industrial systems of the future.”
So how successful was Stanford? In both the legislative and the educational arena he failed utterly. None of the senate bills he proposed ever became legislation. And while Stanford University is today known as one of the great universities of the world it never became a center of cooperative economics. Today there is no reference to Stanford’s third objective anywhere on the official school web site.
For a good online article about Leland Stanford and his historic role in Economic Democracy I recommend: http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PAPERS/BCLSFV/
Sunday, June 8, 2008
The Price of Oil
You can’t get away from it. Even if you don’t drive you’re going to be affected by the price of gas. Not only is the high cost found at the pump but it’s also to be found in the cost of food along with services. No matter what you are affected by the rising cost of oil and gas.
Everyone from the local barbershop to the TV commentators to the politicians is talking about the causes of the price of gas. People blame the high prices on OPEC, the executives of Big Oil, or government regulations. It’s safe to say that to some degree supply and demand is indeed an issue. China, India, and the US are consuming more and more every day. Plus, there’s good reason to accept the Peak Oil Theory. Originating in the 1950s the Peak Oil theory predicts that at some point the amount of available cheap crude oil would eventually be used up.
But the rise of “third world” economies, American addiction to oil and Peak Oil can truly account for the rise in gas prices. The real reason for the high prices of gas is actually the product of the very nature of globalized corporate capitalism.
The Low dollar And Corporate Earnings
Part of the problem is the dramatic drop in the value of the dollar. A weak dollar means that it cost more for Americans to purchase a barrel of oil than much of the rest of the world. As much as a third of the price of gas in the US is the result of the drop in the dollar. (Dallas Morning News, 5/25/08, page 10A)
While most politicians say they support a strong dollar little effort is actually spent to increase its value. The reason is because the low dollar helps to increase corporate profits. Kathy Lien of the investment web site “Seeking Alpha” wrote, “The further the dollar drops, the more that it will help corporate earnings.” http://seekingalpha.com/article/72708-good-news-for-earnings-dollar-hits-record-low
The reason it helps corporate profits is that it helps exports by making US products cheaper. So those US industries that are heavily reliant on free trade benefit from a declining dollar.
Corporate Obligations to Shareholders
This benefit to the corporate bottom line by the depressed dollar leads to the next major reason for the high cost. Corporations are legally obligated to their shareholders to maximize their profits. It’s in the nature of corporations to take steps to maximize their bottom line regardless of the consequences to society. This is why that even though they could reduce their prices and still make large profits for their shareholders they won’t.
Commodities market
The biggest influence on the price of oil is activity by capitalists who invest directly in oil through the commodity and futures markets. According to that same article in the Dallas Morning News the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, “estimates that crude oil trading is up 350 percent since 2002. And the daily average trading volume in energy futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 53 percent for 2008 from last year.”
So who are these investors? They’re primarily large hedge funds, which are investment partnerships that often prefer high risk trading strategies. The average hedge fund doesn’t consist of small time investors. Instead, many of them require enormous personal investments in the range of millions of dollars.
What’s driving these hedge funds is the Peak Oil theory. With the likelihood that the Peak Oil theory is correct the capitalist predators are seeking to turn this into an opportunity to make a profit. To show that the capitalist hedge fund investors are listening when T Boone Pickens, a prominent oilman and hedge fund operator, recently went on television to promote the Peak Oil theory the next day oil futures hit an all time high. Capitalists are driving the prices up by speculating that the prices would go up and are therefore creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Conclusion
As we have seen it’s in the structural nature of capitalism that largely responsible for the current rise in the price of oil. In each element listed here there is one common theme, which is the insatiable drive to reproduce capital for the capitalist class.
Everyone from the local barbershop to the TV commentators to the politicians is talking about the causes of the price of gas. People blame the high prices on OPEC, the executives of Big Oil, or government regulations. It’s safe to say that to some degree supply and demand is indeed an issue. China, India, and the US are consuming more and more every day. Plus, there’s good reason to accept the Peak Oil Theory. Originating in the 1950s the Peak Oil theory predicts that at some point the amount of available cheap crude oil would eventually be used up.
But the rise of “third world” economies, American addiction to oil and Peak Oil can truly account for the rise in gas prices. The real reason for the high prices of gas is actually the product of the very nature of globalized corporate capitalism.
The Low dollar And Corporate Earnings
Part of the problem is the dramatic drop in the value of the dollar. A weak dollar means that it cost more for Americans to purchase a barrel of oil than much of the rest of the world. As much as a third of the price of gas in the US is the result of the drop in the dollar. (Dallas Morning News, 5/25/08, page 10A)
While most politicians say they support a strong dollar little effort is actually spent to increase its value. The reason is because the low dollar helps to increase corporate profits. Kathy Lien of the investment web site “Seeking Alpha” wrote, “The further the dollar drops, the more that it will help corporate earnings.” http://seekingalpha.com/article/72708-good-news-for-earnings-dollar-hits-record-low
The reason it helps corporate profits is that it helps exports by making US products cheaper. So those US industries that are heavily reliant on free trade benefit from a declining dollar.
Corporate Obligations to Shareholders
This benefit to the corporate bottom line by the depressed dollar leads to the next major reason for the high cost. Corporations are legally obligated to their shareholders to maximize their profits. It’s in the nature of corporations to take steps to maximize their bottom line regardless of the consequences to society. This is why that even though they could reduce their prices and still make large profits for their shareholders they won’t.
Commodities market
The biggest influence on the price of oil is activity by capitalists who invest directly in oil through the commodity and futures markets. According to that same article in the Dallas Morning News the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, “estimates that crude oil trading is up 350 percent since 2002. And the daily average trading volume in energy futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 53 percent for 2008 from last year.”
So who are these investors? They’re primarily large hedge funds, which are investment partnerships that often prefer high risk trading strategies. The average hedge fund doesn’t consist of small time investors. Instead, many of them require enormous personal investments in the range of millions of dollars.
What’s driving these hedge funds is the Peak Oil theory. With the likelihood that the Peak Oil theory is correct the capitalist predators are seeking to turn this into an opportunity to make a profit. To show that the capitalist hedge fund investors are listening when T Boone Pickens, a prominent oilman and hedge fund operator, recently went on television to promote the Peak Oil theory the next day oil futures hit an all time high. Capitalists are driving the prices up by speculating that the prices would go up and are therefore creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Conclusion
As we have seen it’s in the structural nature of capitalism that largely responsible for the current rise in the price of oil. In each element listed here there is one common theme, which is the insatiable drive to reproduce capital for the capitalist class.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Dorothy Day
On this Memorial Day I thought I would post a brief biography of one of the great American pioneers of economic democracy: Dorothy Day.
“We believe in loving our brothers regardless of race, color or creed and we believe in showing this love by working for better conditions immediately and the ultimate owning by the workers of their means of production.” - Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1887 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1906 her family had relocated to Chicago. It was in Chicago that as a young child Day became acquainted with Catholicism after coming across the mother of one of her friends praying beside her own bed. She recalled being impressed by the calm appearance of the woman and how she lacked any form of embarrassment. Day once wrote that in Catholicism she saw “the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor.”
After dropping out of college Day moved to New York City where she became a reporter for various socialist newspapers, first The Call and then later the The Masses. The Masses opposed America’s entry in WWI, which quickly brought it the wrath of the Wilson administration. Later, in 1917 Day was sentenced to prison for protesting in support of Women’s Suffrage in front of the White House. Day, along with the other women, responded to being handled roughly at the workhouse by going on a hunger strike. They were later freed by Presidential order.
After spending some time working in New Orleans she returned to New York where she lived with an Anarchist by the name of Forster Batterham. When she became pregnant in 1926 she felt that it was a miracle because she had long thought she was infertile due to a previous abortion. But Batterham felt otherwise for he thought that bringing a child into a world filled with such pain and sorrow was wrong. Ultimately Day and Batterham separated.
In 1932 Day met Peter Maurin. Maurin was a French immigrant and a former Christian Brother. Maurin convinced Day that she needed to publish a paper that promoted Catholic social teachings as well as a peaceful change to society. Day took to the idea and began publishing The Catholic Worker.
Over time The Catholic Worker became more than just a newspaper. It became a call for the homeless and the downtrodden, who often sought out Day for help. Eventually The Catholic Worker began opening houses for the homeless across New York. It wasn’t long before The Catholic Worker opened homes throughout the country.
Day and the Catholic Worker Movement joined the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. While visiting the racially integrated commune “Koinonia”, which had been attacked previously by the Ku Klux Klan, Day volunteered to stand sentry. While on watch she noticed a car racing towards the house. Realizing that it was an attack she ducked just as bullets hit the interior of the car she was in.
In 1967, when Day was visiting Rome, she was one of two Americans invited to receive the Eucharist from Pope Paul VI. Later, in 1973 the Jesuit magazine dedicated a special issue to her saying that she represented “the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the past forty years.” In recognition for “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” Day was presented with the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University. Near the end of her life, when she was no longer able to travel, Day was pinned with the cross worn by the Missionary Sisters of Charity by Mother Theresa. Dorothy Day died November 29, 1980.
To understand Day’s views one can simply look at the Catholic Worker’s mission statement. “We advocate. . . [a] decentralized society in contrast to the present bigness of government, industry, education, health care and agriculture. We encourage efforts such as family farms, rural and urban land trusts, worker ownership and management of small factories, homesteading projects, food, housing and other cooperatives—any effort in which money can once more become merely a medium of exchange, and human beings are no longer commodities.”
Along with the Catholic Worker’s mission statement Day herself wrote in her 1939 essay The Catholic Worker and Labor, “We pointed out again and again that the issue is not just one of wages and hours, but of ownership and of the dignity of man. It is not State ownership toward which we are working, although we believe that some industries should be run by the government for the common good, it is a more widespread ownership through cooperative ownership.”
Without a doubt Dorothy Day was a great defender of the poor and the downtrodden. Though she never considered herself a saint there continues today a movement to have Dorothy Day canonized.
“We believe in loving our brothers regardless of race, color or creed and we believe in showing this love by working for better conditions immediately and the ultimate owning by the workers of their means of production.” - Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was born on November 8, 1887 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1906 her family had relocated to Chicago. It was in Chicago that as a young child Day became acquainted with Catholicism after coming across the mother of one of her friends praying beside her own bed. She recalled being impressed by the calm appearance of the woman and how she lacked any form of embarrassment. Day once wrote that in Catholicism she saw “the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor.”
After dropping out of college Day moved to New York City where she became a reporter for various socialist newspapers, first The Call and then later the The Masses. The Masses opposed America’s entry in WWI, which quickly brought it the wrath of the Wilson administration. Later, in 1917 Day was sentenced to prison for protesting in support of Women’s Suffrage in front of the White House. Day, along with the other women, responded to being handled roughly at the workhouse by going on a hunger strike. They were later freed by Presidential order.
After spending some time working in New Orleans she returned to New York where she lived with an Anarchist by the name of Forster Batterham. When she became pregnant in 1926 she felt that it was a miracle because she had long thought she was infertile due to a previous abortion. But Batterham felt otherwise for he thought that bringing a child into a world filled with such pain and sorrow was wrong. Ultimately Day and Batterham separated.
In 1932 Day met Peter Maurin. Maurin was a French immigrant and a former Christian Brother. Maurin convinced Day that she needed to publish a paper that promoted Catholic social teachings as well as a peaceful change to society. Day took to the idea and began publishing The Catholic Worker.
Over time The Catholic Worker became more than just a newspaper. It became a call for the homeless and the downtrodden, who often sought out Day for help. Eventually The Catholic Worker began opening houses for the homeless across New York. It wasn’t long before The Catholic Worker opened homes throughout the country.
Day and the Catholic Worker Movement joined the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. While visiting the racially integrated commune “Koinonia”, which had been attacked previously by the Ku Klux Klan, Day volunteered to stand sentry. While on watch she noticed a car racing towards the house. Realizing that it was an attack she ducked just as bullets hit the interior of the car she was in.
In 1967, when Day was visiting Rome, she was one of two Americans invited to receive the Eucharist from Pope Paul VI. Later, in 1973 the Jesuit magazine dedicated a special issue to her saying that she represented “the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the past forty years.” In recognition for “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” Day was presented with the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University. Near the end of her life, when she was no longer able to travel, Day was pinned with the cross worn by the Missionary Sisters of Charity by Mother Theresa. Dorothy Day died November 29, 1980.
To understand Day’s views one can simply look at the Catholic Worker’s mission statement. “We advocate. . . [a] decentralized society in contrast to the present bigness of government, industry, education, health care and agriculture. We encourage efforts such as family farms, rural and urban land trusts, worker ownership and management of small factories, homesteading projects, food, housing and other cooperatives—any effort in which money can once more become merely a medium of exchange, and human beings are no longer commodities.”
Along with the Catholic Worker’s mission statement Day herself wrote in her 1939 essay The Catholic Worker and Labor, “We pointed out again and again that the issue is not just one of wages and hours, but of ownership and of the dignity of man. It is not State ownership toward which we are working, although we believe that some industries should be run by the government for the common good, it is a more widespread ownership through cooperative ownership.”
Without a doubt Dorothy Day was a great defender of the poor and the downtrodden. Though she never considered herself a saint there continues today a movement to have Dorothy Day canonized.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Worker Cooperatives – Part 4
This is the last installment in this series on worker cooperatives.
Sometimes one will find cooperatives where one would least expect to. This is the case with Arghand Cooperative in the heart of Afghanistan. The Arghand Cooperative was started by Sarah Chayes, who at the time was a war reporter for NPR during the NATO invasion after 9/11. While there she fell in love with the Afghan people and realized that they needed more than just talk but needed action and started a worker cooperative that produced soap using local materials.
The early days of her efforts were difficult. The most difficult challenge was negotiating the capitalist mindset of the US bureaucracy in a search of financial aid. Chayes turned to the Alternative Livelihoods Program, which is a branch of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), for financial start-up assistance. Though they were eventually able to win a contract essentially what she found was mountains of red tape and resistance.
Rather than sit around and wait for the US government to help Chayes and the Afghanis went ahead and started production. They learned how to extract seed oil and turn it into soap. With help from individuals around the world they gradually acquired the resources necessary to begin making sufficient amount of soap to export. Today the men and women of the Arghand Cooperative successfully sell soap and body oil in shops in both the United States and Canada.
To read more about the Arghand Cooperative go to: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/afghans
The web site for the Arghand Cooperative is http://www.arghand.org/
Sometimes one will find cooperatives where one would least expect to. This is the case with Arghand Cooperative in the heart of Afghanistan. The Arghand Cooperative was started by Sarah Chayes, who at the time was a war reporter for NPR during the NATO invasion after 9/11. While there she fell in love with the Afghan people and realized that they needed more than just talk but needed action and started a worker cooperative that produced soap using local materials.
The early days of her efforts were difficult. The most difficult challenge was negotiating the capitalist mindset of the US bureaucracy in a search of financial aid. Chayes turned to the Alternative Livelihoods Program, which is a branch of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), for financial start-up assistance. Though they were eventually able to win a contract essentially what she found was mountains of red tape and resistance.
Rather than sit around and wait for the US government to help Chayes and the Afghanis went ahead and started production. They learned how to extract seed oil and turn it into soap. With help from individuals around the world they gradually acquired the resources necessary to begin making sufficient amount of soap to export. Today the men and women of the Arghand Cooperative successfully sell soap and body oil in shops in both the United States and Canada.
To read more about the Arghand Cooperative go to: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/afghans
The web site for the Arghand Cooperative is http://www.arghand.org/
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Book Review
I decided to interrupt my series on worker cooperatives to post a brief book review. I plan to pick up the series in the next posting.
Sometimes it takes a while before one finds a treasure. I recently found such a gem. Written in 2000 the book “Self-Management and the Crisis of Socialism: The Rose in the Fist of the Present” by Michael W Howard is an excellent work. Howard begins by taking the proposal of self-management and demonstrates in a very convincing and clear manner how it’s consistent with John Rawls Theory of Justice. Later in the book Howard defends economic democracy it against criticisms from Marxists, environmentalists and feminists.
One of the most intriguing proposals presented by Howard is for a universal Basic Income. According to Howard a guaranteed basic income, which is not means tested and would be set at the highest economically feasible level, would compliment economic democracy and resolve concerns Howard expresses about social justice and self-management.
Michael Howard’s book is a must read for anyone interested in economic democracy.
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