Global Social and Economic Independence

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]  

Contents:

Origins of European greed for wealth and thirst for power

Human evolution or involution?

The ultimate nature of our crisis of civilization: legalized grand theft.

L'imagination au pouvoir!

The role of alternative economic initiatives

Economic evolution vs. political revolution

Non-violent acts of non-resistance: Just say No to constituted authority!

An alternative economic role for labor unions?

The relationship between humans and their environments is at the root of innovating social relations at this historical juncture. Achieving healthy social (object-) relations (Melaine Klein, 1964) and Self-actualization (C.G. Jung, 1957) is the defining core of human experience. In spite of the now common state of latent fear and dejection spun forth by the currently prevailing economic and political system (which forces people to function in a constant state of alienation from one's own Self and estrangement from one's social and natural milieus) no human can escape the consequences of not fulfilling this existential mandate.

At least since 1492 however, the system which can be likened to a giant and insatiable processor of human and natural resources, has never stopped working nor growing and it has reached such leviathan proportions today to threaten the very survival of all living species if not of the planet itself.

How did we get to this point? The wrong existential choice may have been made around one overriding question: what are we on earth for? At some point along the historical line a fateful decision was made to live in the pursuit of wealth and power over others and to fear, control and savagely exploit Nature.

Now burdened with the ultimate consequences of that decision for our entire civilization, with impending environmental and economic disasters but also with the dissolution and fragmentation of our group and personal lives, we face a new choice.

The new existential answer may stem from a variety of accumulated knowledge and experiential sources: from clinical social work and psychological practice, from education and social research, spiritual enlightenment practices, shared social reflection among radical intellectuals, successful alternative economic practices, as well as from informal networks of friends and colleagues that have formed in response to the intractable inhumanity of the system.

There is growing sentiment on a global scale that the new answer may be based on the awareness that we are not above or separate from the earth but an integral part of it conceived as one living whole (Lovelock, 1979).

Work (economic activity) directly invests and conditions the most basic inter-relations among human beings and with the earth. Therefore, it also has to be the focus of a journey of discovery for a new way of life, at once individual and collective, rather than the means of domination and estrangement from the actualization of the Self within. Such evolution can only be borne out of unambiguous contexts of freedom.

Trailblazing a new path that asserts the primacy of individual development in social relations and the intimate awareness of who we are and what our lives are for, our quest for a better way of life will imply evolving alternative technical knowledge and abilities. In other words, living and working are about being, manifesting, and relating, as opposed to having, hoarding and possessing.

The very ideas of economy, market, technology, democracy, society and civilization, dependent in each instance on the power and control of a ruling elite, materialize themselves as integrated in practice and analogous in meaning through the urban sprawl of the modern metropolis. This has produced a sort of regimented, generalized, bureaucratic (machine-like) uniformity and sterility among cities that is adverse to healthy biological growth as well as to the spontaneous initiative and creativity proper to the healthy human psyche.

Autonomous, federated, worker-initiated and worker-run economic practices are within reach to generate a new, lighter-footed way of being and relating to the earth and to each other, one unburdened by economic necessity and without subordination to powerful leaders or centralized mega-institutions such as the State, the Church, the Corporation and the Mafia.

What ultimately accounts for the difference we make to the health and survival of the planet and of ourselves is the continuum of individual choices we carry out through time in dealing with material problems or social conflict (no matter how trivial they may appear to us at the moment). This continuum properly constitutes the double helix of each single human life evolving between the Alfa and the Omega of one's individual and collective story.

Origins of European greed for wealth and thirst for power

It is postulated that for working people slavery, subjugation, subordination and exploitation started some 8,000 years ago with the appearance of the first urban settlements such as Jericho in the valley of the Jordan River and Catal Huyuk in present-day Turkey, when the world population was still at only 4 million.

By 3500 BC, the world population had grown to 14 million and human agricultural activities in the Fertile Crescent could already support great numbers of ‘non-working specialists' like priests, property owners, warriors, philosophers and politicians to give rise to the first civilizations.

By contrast, we now know that Homo Sapiens (our species) survived without extensive agriculture, sedentary life, social hierarchies, civilization, conquering armies and major wars for about 240,000 years before they first decided to settle down.

Things would take sharp turns for the worse for the health of humanity and the natural environment, when in 313 AD Roman emperor Constantine integrated the powers of church and state under his rule (i.e., bigoted religious creed and ruthless political power became mingled as the exclusive, centralized province of Emperor and Pope) and again in the 1700's, when the massive process of world industrialization began in the UK and in the USA, feeding off slave labor and wage slavery (with the blessing of the Christian Churches and the violent intervention of the Bourgeois State), and world population started growing exponentially to reach 6.8 billion today.

Human evolution or involution?

Have we been evolving since abandoning our original matrices in pristine natural environments? Or have we been turning into impulse driven shadows of our ancestors, pre-programmed machines dependent on someone else's mind for survival and functioning? Are the people of the world better off today than they were prior to their first contact with (European) ‘Civilization'? And are people of European ancestry better off than they were prior to industrialization and prior to settling in their first agricultural towns?

Our modern concept of civilization (Society!) is inseparable from the callous violence that forced the indigenous people and the peasantries of the world to adopt the ways of the conquerors. They were deprived of life and limb, wealth, natural resources, natural environments, cultural identity, social relations, language, religion, values, institutions, mores, memories, independent means of survival -- through extermination, subjugation and slavery. Entire traditional and millenarian sets of skills and cultural traits were torn asunder and replaced with the unskilled, uniformed, destructive and self-destructive cultural monotony of modern urban dwelling.

In lieu of the majestic symphony of variety and biodiversity found in fractal relationship within pristine natural environments, our modern landscape (the urban environment) presents itself as a numbing cacophony of orthogonal and sterile relationships. Moreover, one will find cities in every respect analogous to what amounts to a standard urban relief model almost no matter where one travels in the world; people in modern cities are increasingly found to live alike, speak alike and dress alike.

The spread of this societal model, whether it is called ‘Global Capitalism', ‘Democratic Capitalism' or the ‘American Empire', a reconstituted Babylon of stock markets, financial and real estate speculation, private property, cultural uniformity and government bureaucracies - is in crisis!

Alienation from Self, others and environmental contexts is at the crux of this crisis, because in spite of the fact that the income and consent of each individual modern citizen serve to maintain the dominant economy and polity, most have little or no say over the day-to-day running and activities of any of their corresponding institutions. Instead, such institutions appear as constantly incumbent, like the dark gathering clouds of a storm on a more or less unpredictable basis.

The ultimate nature of our crisis of civilization: legalized grand theft.

As a result, about 50 million people are living at or below the poverty line in the US, whose population is now 307 million. The richest 15% amount to 46 million people, composing a critical mass. Thus the American oligarchy manages to control everything and everybody in the US and to effectively interfere in the affairs of any country in the world it sets its sights on.

Somewhere up the income ladder there is a magic rung past which people (regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity) stop being concerned about the pitfalls of classism and imperialism and become invested in the rewards of the system as is. They become the bosses for all intents and purposes.

The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including primary residence, was at a record 9.2 million in 2007. Their aggregate net worth was of $ 23.25 trillion. ‘Affluent' households defined as those with $500,000 or more in net worth, were 15.7 million in 2007 while about 72 million people enjoyed household incomes of $100,000 and above. Keep in mind that "net worth" refers to net savings or assets minus debts. While it includes actual income, it does not specify it in relation to levels of consumption or cheap cash available on credit.

By contrast the total US federal expenditure for 2009 is budgeted at about $2.5 trillion if one excludes, as one should, $736 billion for old age pensions and $784 billion for health care (they are universal entitlement funds collected and administered separately).

Defense related expenditure alone hovers at around $900 billion, which if added to national security expenditure takes up about 50% of the discretionary budget. As a result of constantly rising military, security and medical expenditures, the mushrooming national debt has gotten past $13 trillion.

This is the unsettling story of the crisis for working people (there are 155 million people in the American labor force in 2009, there were 85 million in 1973) who for the most part survive in the proximity of median income today, they are not "poor" but the security that once came from savings or housing property is either threatened or lost and they must rely on a paycheck and credit card debt to get by (Wolff, 2008).

Whereas the US work force almost doubled in size during this period, the buying power of an individual production worker was about halved relative to increases in wages, cost of living, worker productivity and corporate profits in the 25 years preceding 1973.  In 1973 it took one wage earner to raise a family of four, in 2007 it took two, plus a 20% increase in hours worked and a 30% increase in consumer debt. (Ibid. and Mishel, Bernstein, Allegretto, 2007). In the meantime the number of American millionaires increased in almost geometric proportion.

What does a political-economic system have to show before it looses the trust and the support of its participants? This crisis represents the failure of the corporation, the nation state, the political party, the church, with their constant striving for power, control and relative advantage, their propensity for wasteful competition and war, their administrative and forced taxation structures and political turfs, their national borders.

They have morally and legally supported and justified one another's epochal grab for power and money from working people. But it wasn't the first time...indeed that is what Capitalism is ultimately about: cashing in one's wares and living it out! (http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/global_labor_strategies/2009/07/lessons-from-hard-times-passed1.html)

Since they all have stood to steer, constrain, condition, control and exploit the lives of the many, what should be abundantly clear is that in opting in a different direction one simply cannot accept any longer to delegate decision-making power to corporate executives, politicians, priests or government  bureaucrats. They have abundantly shown how they operate and what they are really about, consistently throughout their history.

L'imagination au pouvoir!

The trouble is that in imagining a different society, the act of imagining may be heavily encumbered by the one we live in. What will keep us from reproducing it tout court simply because that is what we are used to and have adjusted to over at least 500 generations?

‘Re-imagining' a new society implies that the one we now have is the product of actual human acts of imagining at some point in history and that now we can redo it by using the same process. ‘Imagining' evokes two terms ‘image' and ‘imagination', the conjuring up and representation of social reality through images. ‘Society' is part and parcel with ‘civilization' and may be inseparable from static notions of national borders, power institutions, market and bourgeois rule.

The immediate association is with current, systemic uses of ideological, propaganda and advertising images, through photographs, cinema and television and their psychological appeal to the myths of the ‘unconscious' (Campbell, 1988) in order to lead the ‘conscious' to consume, to vote, to legitimate the current state of affairs, to adhere to a series of moral tenets or to live according to pre-established models.

Is it proper, useful and productive to evoke images or myths of what human reality is to come next? Are there other verbs/acts? What about ‘dreaming', ‘conceiving', ‘revealing', ‘realizing', 'generating', ‘envisioning', ‘inventing', ‘choosing', ‘evolving', ‘expressing' ‘practicing', ‘living', ‘doing' or as Cornelius Castoriadis (1995) would say, ‘creating'?

Is it then possible to generate new social realms by relating and applying our minds and hands to living ‘matter' directly, freely, without imaging or modeling? Or much like a machine, should a human being be imagined, planned or determined by another human or by one's own ego? Should s/he also be made to behave and relate to other humans according to a pre-established set of forms, procedures, rules and regulations? Isn't that what our failing, modern, Jacobin and robotic society has been actually founded on?

For as long as capitalism has been around, those who went before us not only envisioned but expressly ‘created' and ‘practiced' alternatives to the system. Their point was to free the human being from the yokes of organized Violence, Religion, Capital and their Technology. The history of the Left is rich with moments ordinary people broke ranks with prevailing models and forged new sets of social relations, new ways of life.

From the Paris Commune to the common origins of cooperativism and syndicalism, to mutual societies, to the sixties and current alternative social and economic forms found within the social and solidarity economy, in anarchist, utopian and communal living, our history is rich with references to worthwhile examples (Green 2006; Parker, Fournier, Reedy, 2007; Gonzales de Oleaga, 2009).

The role of alternative economic initiatives

Within the context of creating positive alternatives, one could create one's own economic initiative in accordance with the best participatory and egalitarian tenets and work creatively, cooperatively and productively in such fashion. One can find a plethora of examples of this type of initiative in several existing local, regional and global networks already in operation such as the US-SEN and the RIPESS.

In fact, what's generally referred to as the Social and Solidarity economic sector (which ranges from cooperatives, to barter arrangements, fair trade, alternative currencies and sources of funding, community financed agriculture, direct exchanges between producers and consumers, self-managed factories, etc, etc.) already constitutes upwards of 25-30% of the GDP in several countries in Europe, Canada and Latin America. Its extension is smaller in the US but it is predicted that because of the economic crisis more people will resort to generating economic alternatives for themselves.

For example, one could start a cooperative or a collective anew or take over/buy out one's workplace and start running it as a collective or cooperative at non-profit or for-profit sharing. One could then strive to organize a Federation of such outfits. Several efforts are already ongoing in the US, such as the Grassroots Economic Organizing and the U.S. Federation of Workers' Cooperatives.

Furthermore, ordinary people, taken as sovereign actors can organize their social and economic institutions on scales that they can administer and control directly. This has to do with vying for optimal size, for the achievement of economies of scale and for optimal quantitative and qualitative results. An economic organization can't be too small like family-owned corner stores and micro-businesses nor can it be too big, like the GM corporation found out prior to bankruptcy, in order to survive and prosper.

Indeed the very notions of economic cooperation and self-management (as opposed to competition and hierarchical management) can only work well on a relatively ample scale, for example, within the framework of a federation of small independent initiatives of like mind and mutual utility, on a clustered territorial or regional basis. Otherwise it would soon find itself devoid of necessary resources, competing for market share locally, tightening up belts and reins and stratifying within.

Economies of scale are key to the size and scope of an economic activity, to the level of organizational complexity, to the number of hours needed to get the work done, the financial and human resources to be deployed, and to several essential and independent social and economic safety nets: for unemployment, health and pension plans, training and education capacities, coverage for levels of wages and benefits, bargaining power, etc. The basic structure of the Mondragon cooperative offers a successful example to refer to.

For these reasons, the localist tendencies also present in this new economic sector risk throwing away the baby with the bath water. Whether we like it or not the economy of today is global (it has been waning global for the past 500 years at least). Just as one can't navigate the oceans in a pond boat the fact of the global economy requires ‘territorial' scale vessels not just ‘local'.

This doesn't mean that all local spaces are automatically closed, on the contrary, real strength, energy and vibrancy, life itself, is always rooted locally, at the ground level, on real territory, in a chunk of soil. But it does mean that we can't ignore the opportunities the fact of globalization potentially presents: freedom of movement, immediate communications on a global scale, learning and trading with different practices and cultures, higher demand for quality products and services, sustainability, access to raw materials and energy sources, global networking/cooperation, world peace, etc..

The Socialist/Anarchist dream has always been, from day one, an internationalist dream, a world without frontiers with freedom of movement and universal, portable rights for workers. We may be closer to achieving that dream than we think.

How this local/global process of economic transformation can be realized in practice needs to amount to a consistent practice, to a complex but simple and unassuming discipline, to a way of life developed and applied humbly and diligently day by day, for years.

It takes time and constant effort to enable and empower oneself. Gladwell (2008) estimates that it takes 10,000 hours of practice over a period of 10-15 years to achieve mastery in music. Similar lengths of time are reported to achieve mastery in Sports, Arts, Crafts, Yoga, Zen meditation and the martial arts. Once mastery is achieved one must continue to practice with equal or increased intensity just to keep it.

Economic creation and the evolution of new social relations are not different and start once the ‘Subjects' (the agents, those who act) become ready to develop effective new social and economic initiatives first hand (Coraggio 2007, 2009).

Economic evolution vs. political revolution

Whatever capital (public or private) has existed and exists on earth today is in reality only possible if there are workers that make it so. Workers and their labor generate profits, savings and pay for taxes and interest on debt. The regimes of oppression and exploitation can only endure through their participation and consent.

Therefore workers could refuse to pay and could withdraw their consent. Instead of organizing political parties workers can organize networks and federations of independent, empowered and sovereign producers and establish entire economies under their direct control and thus outside the purview and control of capitalists and politicians. They simply need to accept the challenge, the responsibility and the risks to do so. The recuperated factories movement in Argentina shows that this is possible even starting in conditions of abject poverty, with no liquid capital or machinery whatsoever (Lavaca, 2007; Rebon, 2007).

If for example, workers refused to pay the portion of taxes currently going to the purchase of arms and the waging of wars, or the interest on credit cards, place it in territorial funds controlled and accountable to their participants and contributors and then use them to create alternative economic initiatives and thus productive work, what's the Obama's or even the Cheney's of this world likely response going to be facing the court of national and world public opinion? (http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=3760)

The power, the individual will, energy and initiative that naturally resides within each of us is also there. All is needed is the courage of one's own convictions and the realization that it is better to live one day as a wolf than a hundred days as a dog. To paraphrase Paul La Fargue (1883), in times of economic crisis the proletarians out of work starve, so they ask for more work. Yet the granaries and the warehouses are full. Why aren't they seizing the grain and the wares that they produced all along with their own hands, and that filled those granaries and warehouses to begin with?

It has been amply tested the world over during the past 160 years of Social-Democratic ‘Incrementalism' and 92 years of ‘Realized Socialism' that the State does not wither away. Relying on the State for its subsidies and protection or on private charities, private capital investment or managerial hierarchies to create alternative economic forms only ends up perpetuating the system as is.

Capital and/or state will eventually commandeer, co-opt, undermine or discard, at will, anything that is dependent on their contribution and stewardship. For this reason much like the 50% of the American electorate that already chooses not vote at political elections, workers, out of self-interest and self-preservation, cannot (ethically and materially) afford to vote, make campaign contributions, much less run for political office.

So I would hold, counter intuitively, a position diametrically opposed to Marx's. Whereas by "Revolution" he postulates a large scale, macro or global takeover of the means of production at an uncertain future date, this could only happen politically, as a coup or violent civil war but leave all basic sets of social relations unchanged (one bureaucracy of leaders/managers would substitute another, every dependent worker would go back to his/her work station, unsustainable technological development would remain frozen in time) I say that real, affirmative social change takes place simply, collectively, non-violently and without fanfare on the basis of individual choice and initiative and on much smaller scales -- now.

In fact, positive economic change can only happen and acquire momentum each time an individual worker manages, even if partially, to freely withdraw his/her political consent and economic support from the tyrants, while acting in the affirmative and non-violently, to redirect both to some new and alternative economic and peaceful use under his/her direct ownership, planning and control. This initiative would be of a scale that is not larger than what s/he can intelligently oversee and control at work, through light civic direct participation, or with a simple, egalitarian administrative structure.

Non-violent acts of non-resistance: Just say No to constituted authority!

How is one to deal with power hungry politicians, managers, generals, spooks, police, priests and ‘bosses' of every description as they ever so seriously, somberly, intently, cynically, anxiously and painstakingly focus on mechanically implementing procedures to con, connive, cheat, deceive, manipulate, mystify, confuse, cajole, force others to do their bidding while striving to acquire ever increasing wealth and war chests for absolute control over their minds and hearts?

Humor, art, music, dance, theater, poetry, singing, yoga, meditation, martial arts, close contact with nature and other cultural activities and expressions have been very much important parts of our search for alternatives and do help people reestablish the natural contact with one's body, one's natural environment, one's senses, one's ability to heal, think, move, express creatively. Indeed, a major prerequisite for peace to take hold is the individual resolve on the part of ordinary people to laugh at the tragicomic charades of the system based on power and control (law and order).

Keeping our sense of humor, our "centerdness", laughing in the face of the ominous toil of bosses is a sine-qua-non requirement. Equally essential is deliberate, organized, vigorous action aimed at punctually and effectively opposing them by demystifying and pre-emptying their designs. Such action needs to be grounded on economic independence, alternative ways of life, value systems and social groupings. We need to become "the change we want to see" in the world before it can actually take root and branch.

Essentially, this implies that means and ends, tactics and strategy, need to be morally (right or wrong) and ethically (life or death) consistently aligned. One can't compromise on the validity, the efficacy, the impacts and the morality of the means (the tools of working, organizing and struggling) and still achieve end results that are not offensive to the health of one's human psyche (mind-body) or that are in keeping with basic principles of respect for the dignity and sovereignty of the individual human life.

We must consider this in relation to the deployment of violent/authoritarian tactics and what passes for democratic decision-making based on tyrannical majority votes, usually implied in the concepts of ‘democracy' or ‘resistance' which take the form of direct confrontation or clash between two forces.

The Art of non-resistance (Tolstoy, 1894; Ueshiba, 1927; Gandhi, 1927; Nhat Hanh, 1992, 2009) teaches how not to bow down or give ground to an attacking or overbearing force while staying faithful to one's center, to the clarity of one's principles, inner peace and wholeness in conflictual social interaction.

Therefore, alternative decision making processes avoid majority votes and plebiscites on the one hand and centralized, minority solutions from above on the other (Malatesta, 1926). Majorities devoid of technical mastery and strongly held, generalized moral tenets and values, have been responsible throughout history for the worst crimes against humanity while flocking behind unscrupulous leaders and tyrants. Economic and political decision making, at a human scale, is best left to individual free choice and commitment to responsibly and competently grant or withdraw consent and cooperation at will.

Non-violent acts of non-resistance have as their prerequisite the emergence and development of new, alternative and uncompromising ways of being, which can be developed and articulated off an equally new and strong moral backbone. Every act one carries out and every word one utters in this new fashion emanates from individual mindful reflection, appreciation and mastery of what is right or wrong regarding the instant matter.

As the new practices arise and as one goes about freely choosing to interact with or withdraw from them, their transformative power affects all conflicts arising within one's living contexts, be they social, political or economic. And interestingly, human conflicts and conflict resolutions usually carry some mix of these three characters, regardless of which context they arise in.

An alternative economic role for labor unions?

Organized Labor's role in response to the global crisis would also require a new kind of approach, one that empowers workers to directly take on the basic questions of how to address the challenge of environmental degradation and collapse, how to overcome the unequal distribution of wealth and the constant threat of economic collapse, unemployment and poverty, and how to build worker solidarity and economic exchanges on a global scale.

In fact, the issues facing organized labor today transcend craft, industry, economic sector or national economies and have to do with working people, taken as a global class, reshaping the structure and the organization of the economy and its social milieus. (http://laborstrategies.blogs.com/global_labor_strategies/2009/07/lessons-from-hard-times-passed1.html)

Can organized labor stand up to the challenge? Ninety eight years went by since the publication of "Principles of Scientific Management" by Frederick Winslow Taylor; one hundred twenty three years from the Chicago events of May 1st 1886, which marked the workers' victory on the eight hours day but also the usurpation of the technical and educational authority of the master artisans, of their control over production inside the factories, by Taylor's managers (Green, 2006); one hundred sixty one years since the publication of "The Communist Manifesto."

Organized Labor understood as an economic association of workers on a global scale (which is not state, political party, church, capital or organized crime) is by definition dependent on the existence of the dominant system, as mediator and representative of a social class that is in turn dependent on and subordinated to the capitalists and the state. Could it have a second nature, a historical mission that transcends historical material conditions?

If the answer is yes what would be its post-capitalist role? Labor unions have exercised certain traditional capacities and prerogatives:

-    Class mobilization (power to strike and civil disobedience);

-    The ability to establish and manage links of social solidarity among workers in different economic sectors, among trade unions, with civil society nationally and internationally;

-    Of protection and implementation of worker's legal and contractual rights;

-    Of collective bargaining;

-    Of influence, participation, intervention through bargaining power and policy making in the management and control of a single firm, of an entire economy or of public institutions such as education, health care and social assistance;

-    Of economic and political research, information and education of its leaders and its base;

-    Of access to the practical knowledge of productive systems, of new technologies and work organization as well as of financial policies and strategies of investment and job creation;

-    Of securing operational funds through taxation of its members.

These capacities would render the global labor movement able and responsible to carry out a role representative of workers' interests, which need not be by and large subordinated to the system's powers that be. Labor may in fact be a vehicle, which by claiming for itself a high degree of relative autonomy and independence from the dominant system, could serve as a ready-made link between a past of dependence and a future of sovereignty for workers.

If the labor unions could fully assert their character as ‘workers' associations' on the basis of class, controlled and managed by their members, they could begin to act in concert, as a new political and economic subject, as a social force that is alternative to capital and the state, immediately.

Organized labor could foster the organization and federation of independent unions. These could establish ‘de facto' recognition by the government or employers by setting precedents of concerted activity to break loose of standing legal constraints through active free association, mass mobilization, and civil disobedience (http://www.cta.org.ar/base/).

In order to secure bargaining power and mutual assistance capacities they would need to be mindful of scale while striving to eliminate competition by lower paid and lower skilled workers by:

1. Organizing along territorial and class lines;
2. Revamping the organization of work to limit the use of capital intensive high technology;
3. Striving to reduce management to "the size of a mouse and then drown it in the bathtub";
4. Producing in a social and environmentally sustainable fashion.
5. Experiment, foster or support the development of new forms of economic initiatives, managed and controlled directly by the workers inside and outside public entities or private firms with the goal of pushing for increased technical competence, increased independence in decision-making relative to production processes.

Furthermore, on the basis of their traditional characteristics, Unions and their members, could incubate, sponsor, organize, coordinate, assist, protect and spread new economic and political ideas, policies and initiatives that are more enlightened and responsible towards the social and the natural environment:

-    For peaceful and slow paced economic development;

-    For unfettered individual freedom of association and economic initiative;

-    For the creation of new egalitarian and self-managed forms of economic activity in the production of goods or the delivery of services;

-    For securing the resources and the establishment of economic development funds on territorial and human scale;

-    For the provision of technical, managerial, administrative, organizational assistance to workers;

-    To foster systems of direct distribution from producers to consumers;

-    For decision-making processes that are more timely, effective, egalitarian, horizontal, non-authoritarian and non-discriminatory;

-    For organizational forms that are cooperative, participatory and open to the developmental needs, desires, inclinations and sensitivities of the individual worker and his/her person;

-    For the constant acquisition of technical and professional abilities and capacities through lifelong practice, training and education;

-    For quality products and services.

What is covered in the paper: "Global social and economic independence"

By Pasqualino Colombaro

By section:

Prologue

Here the reader can find the general perspective and general overview of the paper.

Origins of European greed for wealth and thirst for power

This section briefly postulates and hints that psychological, anthropological and historical research and debate is a pre-requisite to intelligently deal with social change. Not only neo-liberalism but also ‘progressive', authoritarian reform movements conveniently discard prior history as a given.

Human evolution or involution?

We can't afford anymore to deterministically consider instances of aggression, greed, domination and subordination as legitimate, inescapable factors of "human nature" or "human history". The plasticity and the creativity of the human brain, the role of individual will and responsibility, of deliberate human acts of planning, designing and implementing unhealthy, anti-social oppressive structures or of engendering liberating economic conditions cut across historical epochs and eliminate the artificial borders between past, present and future. The same Homo Sapiens manufactured them, the same Homo Sapiens can discard them and try his/her hand at something new.

The ultimate nature of our crisis of civilization: legalized grand theft.

This section documents what the neo-liberal $50 trillion (?) scam of the past 36 years and what Capitalist accumulation are really about and how manufactured historical, ideological, cultural factors and the major societal institutions idiosyncratically conspire to re-propose it recurrently through economic cycles.

L'imagination au pouvoir!

Here I critique the appropriateness of applying concepts like ‘imagining' and ‘society' to call for real social change and hint that some other verbs/acts may be more to the point.

The role of alternative economic initiatives

 This section calls attention to existing alternative economic initiatives, highlighting some current issues of debate and controversy among them and outlining criteria that I deem to be key to their potential for shaping post-capitalist economic reality.

Economic evolution vs. political revolution

 In this section I warn against relying on any of the current economic/political institutions of the global system and the left's traditional emphasis on political clash and confrontation as well as on ‘democratic', authoritarian decision making as ineffective and counter productive.

Non-violent acts of non-resistance: Just say No to constituted authority!

Here I propose that the non-violent 'art of non-resistance' and decision making processes based on individual free choice are key to unlocking peaceful human development in the economic, political and social dimensions.

An alternative economic role for labor unions?

In this closing section I draw conclusions and prescriptions for the global labor movement based on the foregoing.

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