Unions and Building Economic Democracy
Empowering Workers Through Economic Democracy
By Nyegosh Dube, United Steelworkers Blog
(cross-posted on Solidarity Economy.Net)
We’re once again witnessing an American election campaign dominated by big money and wealthy candidates.
The Republicans are trying to sell unregulated, low-tax (for the rich), free-market capitalism as the solution to the nation’s economic woes, when in fact it’s exactly this system that has landed the country in deep water. They blame government, when the problem is Big Business and Wall Street – and their influence over government.
Newt Gingrich has accused Mitt Romney of “vulture capitalism,” but Gingrich and other Republicans have done everything in the past 30 years or so to give vulture capitalism free reign. The result is a major economic crisis that has badly affected tens of millions of middle and working class Americans.
What’s the real solution to America’s economic troubles? I believe it’s economic democracy, taking the economy out of the hands of the super-rich 1 percent (and the mega-rich 0.1 percent) who siphon off a disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth.
Read the rest at
http://blog.usw.org/2012/02/08/the-need-for-an-economic-democracy/ or
http://www.solidarityeconomy.net/2012/03/31/empowering-workers-through-economic-democracy/
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Comments
Maybe -- Not So Fast
Having just largely completed transcription of Frank Lindenfeld's Cooperative Commonwealth speech to the Association for Humanist Sociology in 1996, I found this blog posting familiar in many ways. Frank had a better grasp of the breadth of the Cooperative Movement and his vision was broader in that sense. This article certainly makes many excellent points. It deserves broader attention.
I do worry about initiatives from wielders of consolidated power. The Unions might consider a bit more Democracy in their National Organizations and move back to a model with more autonomy for Locals where Democracy is more participatory. Their penchant for command-and-control thinking colors these initiatives that suggest that Cooperative-like Republics will be the result.
Dube launches, as does Frank at some level, into nationally encompassing change and institutions. Without good models at the micro-level from which to generalize the norms and strictures for higher order bodies of law or institutions, it is difficult to accept such sweeping suggestions. Let's build what we think we want in settings where we can rapidly adapt to the realities and see where we come out after some practical experience. There's much to learn from the small that should inform our plans for the medium and large.