At 01:47 PM 3/31/97 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Thad Williamson writes: > >Problem #1: For Alperovitz, a structural solution to the first problem >requires that firms must be able to "internalize" the externalities; >functionally, this means that they should be community owned, or owned by >some combination of interests (worker-community joint interest, partial >ownership in locally-owned firms, etc) guaranteeing a community stake. Under >a community ownership regime, if a community wishes to pollute its river, it >can make the decision to do so; or it might decide not to pollute itself and >instead accept a lower profit margin. The key point is that the community, >in a democratic process, has the power to determine the ecological behavior >of its major industry. Obviously, a problem emerges when one considers >emissions into the air which might pollute someone else, a problem requiring >a macro-level planning capacity beyond the micro-level community-ownership >structure, a point to be taken up again below. > > >COMMENT: The problem with this is that pollution externalities are not >likely to be confined to a community. Chernobyl devastated Laplander's >way of life. Acid rain may damage communities far from the source communities. >Pollution is often not a community matter, or even a state or provincial matter >but a national or international matter. Why couldn't the internalization of >costs be achieved through taxation? Surely control of pollution should not >be at the local community level. > As the last sentence of the initial statement re Alperovitz concurs, you're quite right to say it shouldn't be <all> at the local level. The main point is to break the dynamic whereby there is a sharp distinction between the intrinsic interests of private producer and the public good, starting at the local level. But obviously you need higher levels of authority (including possibly some int'l) for a lot of problems...the question is whether you can effectively get that by starting top-down to fix a system whose on-the-ground characteritics are biased against ecology. I.e. I'm not sure you can get the needed higher-level governance without serious attention and change at local level too. No problem with taxes as a tool, but politically I don't think you can just galve green taxes onto present capitalism and get a very happy result, with the possible exception of a place like Denmark or the Netherlands. Hanly continues: > >COMMENT: Are these forms of economic endeavor really growing that much? What >proportion of total economic activity do they form. In some of the prairie >provinces(Sask and Manitoba and to a lesser extent Alberta) >, producer co-operatives, consumer co-operatives, credit unions > and marketing co-operatives are quite a large factor in economic activity >-as are the caisses populaires in Quebec, but it doesn't seem to stem the >tide of neo-liberal policies. The organisations seem to become much less >radical then in an earlier era. The CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) >specifically supported and built up these institutions in Saskatchewan in >the fifties and sixties in the hope that >there would be a steady evolution toward the co-operative commonwealth. It >never happened and the nationalised industries and services >have to a considerable extent been privatized. Among credit unions and >co-operatives the trend is not to devolve into smaller units but to amalgamate >into larger units. This is voted in democratically by the smaller units. > Cheers, Ken Hanly > I defer to and thank you for your superior knowledge of this stuff in Canadian scene. The growth referred to is in the US, and no the percentage of total economic activity is still negligible. The question of de-radicalization of these groups over time is very important (perhaps same point can be made about kibbutzim in Israel--compared to initial socialist vision..and in other countries.) To me this tendency just speaks to the need to have a larger "vision" or ideology to weld things together over time, so that organizations and groups have a sense of where they're going instead of simply slipping into being nice things within the parameter of capitalist society. In other words, this is exactly why I think "utopianism", or whatever you want to call it is important--esp. if you can plausibly connect the vision to concrete organizational activities, some already existent, much not yet born. thanks for the comments, Thad Thad Williamson National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives (Washington)/ Union Theological Seminary (New York) 212-531-1935 http://www.northcarolina.com/thad
