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March 18
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Solidarity
gave  to:
Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Hardcover)
by
Ted Nordhaus
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
Ivan Handler
recommended for: Green activists, community organizers
read in September, 2007
Solidarity said:
"Amazon.com: You argue that global warming is a "monumental" crisis that demands a response beyond the more limited (and limiting) environmental policies of the past. On the other, you acknowledge that, despite a great deal of press attentio...more
Amazon.com: You argue that global warming is a "monumental" crisis that demands a response beyond the more limited (and limiting) environmental policies of the past. On the other, you acknowledge that, despite a great deal of press attention, "global warming" still ranks at the very bottom of voters' concerns. How do you confront a crisis that voters don't care about?
Shellenberger and Nordhaus: By getting it out of the global warming/environmental ghetto. We know that things like energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. So why not redefine our agenda as the solution to those problems? We can still cap carbon, but that needn't be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters. Making big investments to get off oil, making clean energy alternatives widely available and cheap, and creating millions of new jobs in clean energy industries is a winner with American voters and can carry the whole suite of policies that we need to address global warming....
More notes and comments on thirdwavestudygroup.blogspot.com(less)
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January 24, 2008
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Solidarity
made a comment on Solidarity's profile:
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Solidarity
added a quote:
"If you don't have a strategy, you're part of someone else's strategy. "
— Alvin Toffler
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Solidarity
gave to:
Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Paperback)
by
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
Google
recommended for: Community Organizers, Unions
read in January, 2007
Solidarity said:
"Amazon Book Description
Bringing together classic and new writings of the trailblazing feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders addresses some of the most pressing and complex issues facing contemporary feminism....more
Amazon Book Description
Bringing together classic and new writings of the trailblazing feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders addresses some of the most pressing and complex issues facing contemporary feminism. Forging vital links between daily life and collective action and between theory and pedagogy, Mohanty has been at the vanguard of Third World and international feminist thought and activism for nearly two decades. This collection highlights the concerns running throughout her pioneering work: the politics of difference and solidarity, decolonizing and democratizing feminist practice, the crossing of borders, and the relation of feminist knowledge and scholarship to organizing and social movements. Mohanty offers here a sustained critique of globalization and urges a reorientation of transnational feminist practice toward anticapitalist struggles.
Feminism without Borders opens with Mohanty's influential critique of western feminism ("Under Western Eyes") and closes with a reconsideration of that piece based on her latest thinking regarding the ways that gender matters in the racial, class, and national formations of globalization. In between these essays, Mohanty meditates on the lives of women workers at different ends of the global assembly line (in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States); feminist writing on experience, identity, and community; dominant conceptions of multiculturalism and citizenship; and the corporatization of the North American academy. She considers the evolution of interdisciplinary programs like Women's Studies and Race and Ethnic Studies; pedagogies of accommodation and dissent; and transnational women's movements for grassroots ecological solutions and consumer, health, and reproductive rights. Mohanty's probing and provocative analyses of key concepts in feminist thought—"home," "sisterhood," "experience," "community"—lead the way toward a feminism without borders, a feminism fully engaged with the realities of a transnational world.(less)
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Solidarity
gave  to:
Building the Bridge to the High Road (pdf or paper)
by
Dan Swinney
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
The Author
recommended for: Workers, Unions, Activistists
read in January, 2000
Solidarity said:
"From the clcr.org website:
What is 'High Road' Political Economy?
To assist labor, communities, and business to pursue the High Road of economic development guaranteeing the building of a strong, participative and productive eco...more
From the clcr.org website:
What is 'High Road' Political Economy?
To assist labor, communities, and business to pursue the High Road of economic development guaranteeing the building of a strong, participative and productive economy, social justice and the equitable distribution of wealth.
In short, the High Road for development calls for:
-- a vision of development in the context of the global economy;
-- a fundamental change in economic policy to define leading roles for labor and community, premised on labor and citizen participation in all aspects of the economy, politics, and society;
-- development that is environmentally sustainable, which means that companies make products and use processes and technology that are good for the health of workers, consumers, and surrounding communities; and that they restore rather than damage the environment;
-- development that is economically sustainable, creating jobs and livelihoods that allow and encourage true human development. We want good jobs that can support a family and allow time for leisure, education, and social participation;
-- development that is socially sustainable, with an objective of overcoming historic divisions and oppressions in society connected to race, gender, class, and national origin;
-- a challenge to the limits of traditional redistributionist strategy for labor and community, recognizing that redistribution can best be achieved through popular control and leadership;
-- a strategic alliance between the labor movement and the political, democratic, environmental, economic, new immigrant, and social organizations within the concept of "community;"
-- recognition that labor and community must accept the responsibility to lead in creating wealth and developing productive capacity;
-- recognition that the business sector includes friends and allies as well as low roaders, and that we must leave behind a simplistic "anti-corporate" analysis;
-- identifying market forces as well as mass movements as our tools and terrain for change;
-- being entrepreneurial--seeking to be leaders in the market place as well as in the social and political world-- and defining the essential connection between the two; and
-- defining a clear role for government, including a responsibility to expand our civic structure and life and to measure success by progress at the company and community level.(less)
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Solidarity
gave to:
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beau (Paperback)
by
Paul Hawken
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
Google
recommended for: Green activists, community organizers
read in June, 2007
Solidarity said:
"You suggest that the politics of the future are really about fostering unusual alliances that revolve around ideas. Strange bedfellows—evangelicals aligning with environmentalists, for example. Are you seeing this elsewhere?
Yes. A...more
You suggest that the politics of the future are really about fostering unusual alliances that revolve around ideas. Strange bedfellows—evangelicals aligning with environmentalists, for example. Are you seeing this elsewhere?
Yes. At the same time, we find out that we’re not strange bedfellows. We’re human beings and what estranged us is far less important and almost meaningless compared to what is meaningful now. You’re seeing Wal-Mart, for example, quite authentically—and I don’t care what someone else says about them—they’re very committed to 100% renewable energy and a lot of other things that they have not talked about yet. Well, who would’ve thought it? Is that a strange bedfellow or just the American people awakening to core values that now need to be expressed?
This goes back to what you wrote about in The Ecology of Commerce. At the time it seemed an oxymoron to combine those two ideas of nature and business. You were among the first writers who tied sustainability to commerce.
I was and I didn’t get a lot of support at the time. But this week’s cover story of Business Week is called "Beyond the Green Corporation" and the first line is, "Imagine a world in which eco-friendly and socially responsible practices actually help a company’s bottom line." That’s the opening line of the lead story of Business Week. Fourteen years after The Ecology of Commerce was published. When it was published, not a single business publication here would review it. It was reviewed, by the way, but editors wouldn’t publish the reviews.
More from this interview at thirdwavestudygroup.blogspot.com(less)
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Solidarity
gave to:
Rust to Renewal (Paperback)
by
Joshua Reichard
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
Google
recommended for: faith-based and other social activists
read in January, 2008
Solidarity said:
"Rust to Renewal:
A Case Study of the Religious
Response to Deindustrialization
Joshua D Reichard
Vision Publishing, 2007
180 pp, pb $12.99
Reviewed by Carl Davidson
‘Rust to Renewal’, a...more
Rust to Renewal:
A Case Study of the Religious
Response to Deindustrialization
Joshua D Reichard
Vision Publishing, 2007
180 pp, pb $12.99
Reviewed by Carl Davidson
‘Rust to Renewal’, as this book’s title implies, is about the decline of American steel towns in the 1970s and 1980s, the responses of their communities—most importantly, their churches—and whether there is still hope for the future in these places.
These are critical topics even in 2008, especially with an economic recession and growing unemployment on the horizon, along with debates over what does or does not constitute a proper ‘stimulus’ to the economy.
Author Joshua Reichard uses Youngstown, Ohio and the surrounding Mahoning River Valley as his case in point; and the story he tells may seem old news to many people still residing there. The Youngstown area, moreover, was only part of a wider region, stretching from Wheeling, W VA, through Pittsburgh, PA to Cleveland, OH. This was the country’s steel heartland, and by the end of the1980s, some 100,000 steel mill jobs were permanently abolished, with great distress to those concerned..
Back in 1977, on ‘Black Monday,’ after being told repeated lies and given false hopes, thousands of Youngstown area steelworkers were summarily fired. The mills were shut down, and a community lost what it perceived as a decent future.
The workers, however, and their community allies, mainly churches were hardly passive. During a series of protests, they formed the Ecumenical Coalition, which, together with the local Steelworkers Union, had considerable clout, at least for a time, and they forced the owners into negotiations. To make a long story short, they tried to buy out the failing mill, take it over, reorganize production, and run it themselves. They took the battle all the way to Jimmy Carter’s White House, but abruptly lost, sabotaged mainly by Beltway federal bureaucrats and rival steel bosses.
If you’re looking for a detailed critique of where the Ecumenical Coalition and the steelworkers went wrong, settling old scores, you won’t find it here. But if you think it important that workers and community allies waged a valiant battle, and want to look to the future with some fresh ideas to deal with ongoing problems, this slim volume is a good place to start....
Full review at carldavidson.blogspot.com(less)
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Solidarity
gave to:
After Capitalism (New Critical Theory)
by
David Schweickart
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my rating:
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recommended to Solidarity by:
The Author
recommended for: Workers, Unions, Activistists
read in January, 2001
Solidarity said:
"There Is An Alternative:
Market Socialism
with Radical Democracy
Some Notes On Reading
‘After Capitalism’
By David Schweickart
Published by:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
PB: $23.95; 193pp.
...more
There Is An Alternative:
Market Socialism
with Radical Democracy
Some Notes On Reading
‘After Capitalism’
By David Schweickart
Published by:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
PB: $23.95; 193pp.
Reviewed By Carl Davidson
In this short book, building on his earlier work, ‘Against Capitalism,’ David Schweickart has given us an excellent breakthrough in finding the road to a new socialism for the 21st century. Using both practical and ethical arguments, his main objective is to take on the ‘TINA’ argument-‘There Is No Alternative’-of the neoliberals. He convincingly shows there is at least one alternative, a ‘successor system’ that he calls ‘Economic Democracy.’ His critics will find it hard to dismiss his ideas lightly.
First, Schweickart’s Economic Democracy alternative is a working hypothesis, and not a rigid or doctrinaire model. While rooted in historical materialism, Schweickart’s Marxian notions of science are more in tune with the ‘open systems’ and critical instrumentalism of modern pragmatism. He casts a wide net to draw lessons from practice-from the failed Soviet-led command economies, to the ongoing surge of China’s market socialism, to the new smaller and more tentative projects in Spain’s Mondragon Cooperatives and Brazil’s Worker’s Party projects. He uses all these as resources, but he returns to American soil to work out his basic ideas and proposals.
‘Successor-system theory’, Schweickart explains, ‘is meant to be theory with practical intent. If it cannot offer a plausible projection as to how we might get from here to there, successor-system theory remains an intellectual exercise in model building-interesting in its own right, perhaps, and capable of providing a rejoinder to the smug apologists for capital, but useless to people trying to change the world.’ So what is ‘Economic Democracy’? The core idea is that the workers themselves democratically elect the managers of their firms. They also share the wealth they create by sharing the profit among themselves. They make their money the old-fashioned way: by finding consumer needs, meeting those needs with decent products, and selling them to satisfied customers at reasonable prices.
But how are things like costs, prices, new products and production goals determined? Here Schweickart departs from traditional socialist conceptions; he affirms the primary role of the market rather than relying on nationally centralized planning. What to produce is shaped mainly by consumer demand; what to charge for products or services is determined by competition for market share with other worker-controlled or private enterprises; and what to pay the workforce is limited by what’s left over after total costs are deducted from total sales.
What about ownership? Each Economic Democracy plant or workplace is controlled by each respective group of workers, but the firm is not owned by each particular group. The firms are socially owned by the public at large. Because of this public ownership, the local workers are also required to meet the cost of paying into two funds: a depreciation fund, to be used locally by the firm for capital expenditures, and a government-controlled capital investment fund. This latter payment is in the form of a capital assets tax also added to the firm’s costs. In a sense, the workplace is leased by the workers from the government. But what’s left after all the costs are met, the profit, the workers divide among themselves as they see fit. The capital assets taxes that the government takes in is used to finance new enterprises, to maintain and develop infrastructure projects, and other costs spread across the whole of society.
That’s the bare-bones model. Naturally, it has further implications and raises many more questions, not the least of which is how we get from today’s globalized capitalism to the ‘successor system’ of Economic Democracy . In the course of the book, Schweickart addresses a good deal of these problems; but for some issues, he has only hints or open possibilities...
For the full review, go to carldavidson.blogspot.com
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