An unfortunate graphic — and as a socialist, I do draw a distinction between “socialism”and “social democracy” — but a good question:

http://www.daytoncitypaper.com/why-not-democratic-socialism/

Some hopeful signs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/wall-street-capitalism_b_1238210.html

Too bad it will take this:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175494/tomgram%3A_christian_parenti%2C_big_storms_require_big_government/#more

Just  few things for people to keep n mind.

(Prepared for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum)

Wherever we progressives look, there are signs of hope. The world economic crisis -– terrible though it undoubtedly is for so many –- has undermined the public faith in free-market fundamentalism. At the same time, new communications media are creating new methods both of coordinating political activity and of mobilizing support. And the withering of old Cold-War tensions is making it possible to close some of the deadly political fissures which weakened the progressive community in the last century. It is not too much to hope that we are on the verge of a “social-democratic” period.

While non-socialist progressive conceive of their reform program as a series of specific proposals to deal with particular problems –- though many of them are fully aware that the corporate elite presents the key roadblock to progress –- we socialists see our program as part of systematic struggle to impose democratic, pro-social control on the economic system. The logical conclusion of this struggle, in our eyes, is a program of full-fledged economic restructuring and democratization. That belief is why we’re socialists –- and why Barack Obama isn’t.

As a practical matter, we have generally put off consideration of this ultimate goal while concentrating on immediate political goals -– a “left” or “advanced” version of mainstream liberalism. We have also been reluctant to say out loud that the classic socialist goal of a state-owned economy has to be given up – too “divisive.” But on the rare occasions when we think about the ultimate goal, we tend to foresee worker-, consumer-, or community-owned enterprises, operating in a more or less “free” market -– to be achieved by some combination of creating new enterprises and converting existing ones.

Meanwhile, what might be called a “solidarity economy movement” has been building up. The various “alternative” economic activities have begun coalescing, often under the auspices of the various social fora, including the previous USSF in Atlanta. “Solidarity economy networks” have formed at various levels. One of the first tasks has been to develop “maps” –- in practice, databases –- to show what is where; from these, it is hoped that SE supply chains can be formed and institutions designed to support an SE “sector.” (It is hoped that decisions will be made this week about how to proceed with the “mapping.”)

If the drive to build up an SE sector can be joined to the political drive for social democratic reforms, full-fledged socialism will finally be on the table. It is therefore in the interests of the existing socialist movement that concrete plans for the growth and, ultimately, the rapid expansion of the SE sector be laid. We socialists, hopefully, have contacts throughout the progressive community whose support for the nascent sector can be encouraged. And above all, we have the consciousness that the SE sector should not only grow, but be in a position to take over most of the economy.

Building an SE sector can be analyzed into a number of tasks. We can begin with the “mapping” project. The initial set-up may be paid for through a foundation grant, but sooner rather than later it should be put on a self-sustaining basis. Based on the “map,” we can begin to develop (1) infrastructure to support the sector, such as financing systems, design to be rapidly scalable if the sector expands, (2) infrastructure that can be created now in an embryonic form, again prepared for rapid expansion, (3) more speculative institutions, which can be rapidly created when the time comes, and (4) relatively concrete plans to convert existing capitalist firms, including large ones, into SE forms. The point is that there should be relatively concrete and realistic plans ready to be put in motion in the event of a political opening.

So what we need is a mechanism for generating business plans. We will need people capable of drawing up a proper plan who are willing to put in the work on something that will have to be put on the shelf indefinitely. One possibility that occurs to me -– people are more than welcome to come up with others –- is to find a way to get business students to do this for academic credit; that would require reaching out to the relevant professors who can turn the process into a legitimate educational exercise.

This will not necessarily be done in the existing socialist organizations. We don’t have the skill sets; there aren’t a great many MBA’s in our present ranks. Perhaps more important, our organizational culture doesn’t really fit into this. For example, if and when the capital structure of existing firms is re-organized, someone stands to make obscene amounts of money. For many life-long socialists, this is a dispiriting, if not downright squalid prospect. I, on the other hand, figure that if someone can make money doing it … it might actually get done. (And there may be ways for us to pick up a few bucks.)

That does not mean, however, that the existing organizations don’t have a role to play. We can do things that play to our strengths, such as doing public education about the existence of economic alternatives and supporting policies that favor them — though such policies will have to wait until we have a sense of where things are going. We may also be able to mine our contacts to find people able to take part in the process. Most importantly, however, we are the ones who are most determined to see a full-scale reorganization of the economy carried out; we -– or perhaps a unit within one or more of our organizations -– should be the ones always trying to make sure that the next step in the process goes forward.

Our goal should be to have fairly concrete plans, embryonic institutions, and lists of people to carry plans out if and when favorable political situations -– “people power” uprisings in non-democratic countries or even crises in democratic ones -– make it possible to move. (“Fortune favors the prepared mind.”) If we can come out of this week with a handful of people committed to finding and mobilizing the skills necessary to do the planning, we may be on our way.

“Communism,” Lenin once famously declared, “is Soviet power plus electrification.” As the formulation of the socialist project in terms of state-ownership and central planning fades into irrelevance, we might hazard our own definition: “Socialism is social-democratic politics plus co-op conversion.” Our practical politics focuses on an advanced version of regulation and redistribution — goals such as single-payer health care — but we always have at the back of our minds that someday we want a fundamental transfer of control over economic life itself.

Something exciting is stirring in the global Left. People are beginning to look at the “solidarity economy,” the creation of alternative forms of economic activity which place human need before private greed. Networks have been formed at the international, continental, and most recently U.S. levels. Hopefully, this will enable the progressive community to integrate economic restructuring and democratization into the broader struggle for change.

To begin, there is a problem of definition. “Solidarity economy” is defined so broadly that it includes everything from well established alternatives, such as the Mondragón system of Spain and the Israeli kibbutzim, to corner food co-ops and even open-source software production. Hopefully, that lack of specificity will provide a degree of flexibility to proposed alternatives; we can, under the rubric of “solidarity economy,” offer a variety of options to deal with concrete situations; the last thing we need is ideologically-driven rigidity about what exactly qualifies as an SE enterprise.

And there is a lot out there. Europe has some 83,000 worker co-ops, employing 1.3 million people. In Japan, 225,000 households participate in a network of worker and consumer co-ops. In Latin America, alternative economic forms are being developed by the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, by the Landless Movement of Brazil, and by the “recovered factories” movement in Argentina.

Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone, in “Cooperativization as Alternative to Globalizing Capitalism,” an on-line article on the Grassroots Economic Organizing site (http://www.geo.coop/node/139), discern three “tiers” of an emerging SE movement. The first, or “vanguard,” consists of (1) First-World cooperative enterprises, such as the Mondragón system and the co-ops of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy; (2) Third-World resistance efforts, such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas and the “recovered factories” of Argentina; and (3) networks of social-change activists creating alternative forms, such as food co-ops. Bowman and Stone’s second tier consists of labor organizations seeking to intervene directly into decision-making through such mechanisms as co-determination and ESOP’s. Their third consists of communities, particularly in less developed areas, that retain communal and socially-owned property as parts of their economies. Bowman and Stone hope to see these three tiers coalesce into a force capable of challenging global capitalism. Their conceptualization is perhaps overly schematic, but they are correct to stress the importance of connecting all the on-going efforts.

It is not yet clear, however, how networks of political activists should relate to what are, ultimately, economic enterprises. The United States Solidarity Economy Network (USSEN), formed at the 2007 U.S. Social Forum in Atalanta, adopted a “mission statement” (http://www.populareconomics.org/ussen/node/17) which was clearly the result of a brainstorming session. The proposed tasks fall into three categories: (1) doing education around SE alternatives; (2) pushing policies supporting those alternatives; and (3) actually building those alternatives.

The first task, doing educational work, could be started immediately. Solidarity economics is, bluntly, not yet “on the radar” of most leftists. How many American progressives are even aware that the old socialist dream of workers seizing factories is actually underway in South America? The U.S. media will not cover that, of course — though it has been reported by the BBC. The scope and variety of the parallel economy would surprise — and gratify — many socialists if they knew what was out there. People also need an honest appraisal of the difficulties SE enterprises face and how those difficulties can be resisted. Educational efforts can be undertaken by the present activist cadre of progressive movements and so could be gotten started quickly. We could start by developing an introductory reading list — what exists now consists mainly of brief introductions and specialist material for training actual SE managers, rather than educating general activists — and setting up a blog or website. Later, we might develop a speakers’ bureau to make presentations at progressive meetings.

The second, working on policy issues, also plays to the strengths of existing political organizations. Alternatives enterprises need legal structures that give them flexibility and protect their democratic character. The ownership shares of worker-members must be protected both from voluntary alienation — this is a problem under our legal system — and from being taken for personal debt or divided in divorce. We will also need procedures for existing entrepreneurial firms to convert themselves into alternative forms — and eventually various forms of pressure to do so. Such initiatives, however, are best guided by the activists of the existing enterprises, who are the best judges of what they need and how proposals are likely to play out. Here we might develop a wiki to give people with specialized knowledge a forum for exchanging ideas and proposals.

The third is actually creating institutions. We will need sources of capitalization which do not compromise the democratic character of SE enterprises, mechanisms for mutual support of enterprises, and support services for enterprises either starting out as democratic or making a transition from traditional forms. These things could be created without first achieving state power. But this will need to be almost entirely the work of professionals from existing enterprises; most political activists simply don’t have the skills. Again, a wiki might help. We could also try to find out what is already out there — to explore possibilities for cooperation and to encourage the growth of services, such as banks (or, better, credit unions) and accounting and law firms that specialize in meeting the needs of SE enterprises.

The last two tasks could be thought of as creating a number of “pathways,” ways that SE enterprises could be created, either new or by reorganization from existing enterprises. Worker co-ops, for example, could be created by groups of workers directly or by organizations such as unions. Alternatively, regular entrepreneurs could create new businesses with the expectation that they would be sold to their employees at an appraised price later. There should also be ways for standard enterprises to convert to co-op forms. There should be multiple pathways to give us flexibility. There will have to be legal forms for the enterprises to assume and institutional support for the creation or conversion.

So our immediate task is to grow a network of people with expertise in building, running, and servicing co-ops and other SE enterprises. They should form a center for developing the pathways, devising concrete alternatives for building or converting SE enterprises. At the same time, the larger progressive community should be educated about the possibilities of a Solidarity Economy, so that they will be ready to support a transition as it become available.

Their first task will be to produce and distribute educational materials for the broader progressive community on the feasibility of building and converting enterprises into democratic, pro-social forms. They will also be charged with developing a concrete picture of how a transition might come about and what legal and institutional changes will be needed to be ready for the day. Later, the transition itself can be integrated into the politics of the progressive community.

We should have faith that at some point — how, exactly, we won’t know until it happens — the social-democratic political project will open a space for a program of economic democratization. So we should try to have a program of conversion ready to go whenever the political situation makes it possible. We’ll need, first, a progressive community aware of the alternatives and primed to make it part of its agenda. Second, we’ll need enabling legislation, either enacted or ready for introduction. And third, we’ll need at least the skeleton of institutions to impose democratic control. That way, when a moment of serious anti-corporate possibility arrives, we can put the alternative in place. We should always have a contingency plan for what happens when the larger political community loses faith in the capitalist system — as it may well do within the next few years.

When that happens, we will have achieved socialism.

In the desperate final days of the McCain-Palin campaign, one of the leading themes was that Barack Obama is that all-purpose bogeyman, a … SOCIALIST! Well, he’s not. I can speak with authority because I am. And I don’t know a single socialist who thinks he is. This is as good a time as any to explain why not.

To begin, what do people think they know about us? That we want the government owning, or at least controlling, everything? Not really. Most contemporary democratic socialists have given up on state-ownership as a major strategy. Although we don’t yet have a detailed blueprint, most of us are thinking about employee-ownership, or some other form of “stakeholder” control, with government only taking on a few more functions than today. The important point is that we want the economy to be under “social” control, run democratically, by society — in practice, by the working people who make up the great majority of society — for the good of the whole community, rather than the profits of a few. That’s why it’s called “social-ism” — as opposed to “capital-ism,” where the owners of the capital call the shots.

For the last thirty years, the American people have been subjected to an unbroken drumbeat of propaganda — lavishly funded, of course, by those making the big bucks — designed to convince them that the free market solves all problems. The truth is, it creates them. Businesses range the globe hunting for the cheapest wages, lowest taxes, and loosest regulations. The result is an unrelenting “race to the bottom,” in which the living standards of working people, the health and safety of the community, and the very environment that sustains us are sacrificed to the pursuit of private profit. That’s not a distortion of the market — that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Inevitably, the people who are getting hurt organize to fight back. Sometimes this resistance takes negative forms, such as scapegoating minorities and seeking to impose religious beliefs on the community. The more positive, “progressive” forces, seeking to confront the harm caused by unregulated capitalism directly, fall along a continuum from reforming “liberals” to more radical “socialists.”

Our programs are not identical. We, for example, generally prefer single-payer healthcare to fiddling with the private-insurance system. But there is enough overlap that liberals and socialists can work together on an immediate program. So what’s the difference? Liberals, who think the system is basically good, see their program as managing capitalism to keep it running. We, on the other hand, see it as part of a complex process of extending social control. So when the incoming Obama Administration calls for increased government regulation and “spreading the wealth around,” they are not being socialists, just intelligent capitalists.

What’s the alternative? The free-market fanatics, who see taxation as theft and every interference with private moneymaking as a human-rights violation, will just run the country further into the ground. That might be good for us, but it’s unlikely to lead to anything positive.

We don’t have to resolve the difference between liberals and socialists to get a common program through. If the liberal program succeeds, capitalism will be saved by reform, and Americans will end up with high wages, improved social services, and health, safety, and environmental protections. That’s not everything we socialists want, but neither is it to be sneezed at. We really do want those reforms — and not just as a prelude to further change. But if we’re right — if reform doesn’t solve the problems or if short-sighted capitalist resistance blocks it — many liberals, moderates, and even stray conservatives will be ready to look at more radical solutions.

That doesn’t necessarily mean government ownership. There are any number of ways to establish democratic control of the economy, and whatever we do will involve compromise, trial, and error. We could build a new economy around worker-, consumer-, and community-owned enterprises, operating in the market, with the government only setting broad goals, regulating abusive behavior, and providing selected social services. The key will be to balance government and market, equality and incentives. The market enables the community to find the most efficient use of resources; left entirely to itself, it produces inequality, health and safety dangers, and environmental damage. Democratic government is good at defining common goals; if it tries to do too much, it creates stagnation. We need individual incentives to get people to innovate and put themselves out for the community; too much individual reward creates extreme inequality, which is destructive to democracy.

Where will we strike the balance? I have no idea. As long as political democracy prevails, we won’t have to. There will be a political party in favor of more redistribution, regulation, and political control and another in favor of more incentives and market determination. (Let’s call them “Democrats” and “Republicans,” respectively.) They will rotate in power, and whenever things get pushed too far in one direction, the other party will come back in. The result will be a dynamic balance that should do the trick.

So in the end, liberals aren’t socialists and we’re not them. But both sides can work together without dishonesty, naiveté, or loss of integrity — on either side. And we are going to need each other in the months and years ahead, as powerful right-wing forces try to push the Obama administration back from its campaign promises. We must be ready to keep the campaign going and maybe even go into the streets to campaign for national health care, peace, strong unions, environmental protection, and the rest.

These should be some exciting times.