Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy

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There is no doubt that the number of new ideas emerging in the field of humane, sustainable economics is accelerating.  But complete blueprints are still pretty few and far between.  Even so, our British colleagues at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) have created an outline that is both impressive and hopeful.  Their blueprint offers a coherent foundation on which to build a future economics. They have called it “The Great
Transition.”

All of us at the E. F. Schumacher Society look forward to collaboration with NEF as we undertake our own transition to become the New Economics Institute. David Boyle, a senior research fellow of NEF, and his family, have joined us in the Berkshires to further that organizational transformation.

At the end of this email David shares his thoughts on nef’s Great Transition report for your information.  The full document is at www.neweconomics.org.

Susan Witt, Stefan Apse, and Kate Poole
Staff of the E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230
www.smallisbeautiful.org
www.neweconomicsinstitute.org

Board of Directors: Gar Alperovitz, Jessica Brackman, Eric Harris Braun,
Neva Goodwin, Hildegarde Hannum, Dan Levinson, Richard Norgaard, Constance
Packard, Will Raap, Gus Speth, Joseph Stanislaw, Peter Victor, Stewart
Wallis.
Advisory Board: Peter Barnes, Tanya Berry, Wendell Berry, Lisa Byers, Olivia
Dreier, Merrian Fuller, Hazel Henderson, Wes Jackson, Amory Lovins, Bill
McKibben, John McKnight, Otto Scharmer, Michael Shuman, David Orr, Cathrine
Sneed, Lewis Solomon, John Todd, Doug Tompkins, Greg Watson, and Arthur
Zajonc.

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The main question we need to know about any vision of the future is what it is that has driven the change.  In the case of The Great Transition, it is the rising costs of going back to ‘business-as-usual’, the huge cumulative cost of climate change (they estimate this at $3.75 trillion in the UK by 2050) and the cumulative cost of high levels of inequality (they estimate this at $6.75 trillion for the UK in 2050).

Drivers of change are often uncomfortable, and this one is no exception.  What is exciting about The Great Transition is that it sets out a believable path whereby Britain can take big, radical steps toward a society and economy that delivers long, happy and equitable lives and fits within the planet’s carrying capacity.

It means that the UK’s conventional GDP will fall by a third.  This is offset by making better use of what they have, and by an economic boost from increasing social and environmental value.  The costs of climate change can be partly avoided and the costs of social breakdown can be avoided too.

New Economics Foundation policy director Andrew Simms put it like this. “For years we have been told that there is no alternative to an economy that wrecks the environment and worsens inequality.  We’ve been told that we live in a time of prosperity, when really we’re no happier than we were thirty years ago.  We’ve been told that crashes, bubbles and recessions are all part of the ‘natural cycle’ of economies.  But faced with potentially irreversible climate change and corrosive inequality, these are dangerous fairy tales. The Great Transition shows we have a chance of a better reality.”

The point is that, as we know, GDP is a very poor measure of progress: the revenues skimmed off the financial system by traders in the City of London as they built a pyramid of ‘toxic’ derivatives added to GDP.  So does cleaning up the effects of pollution and paying the costs of high rates of crime increases. This isn’t just an academic point: what we measure ends up driving what we do. The Great Transition proposes a move beyond GDP, to start measuring the things which really produce value, for our communities, our societies and our environment.

The report sets out seven main interventions.  These include:

- A Great Revaluing to make sure that prices reflect true social and environmental costs.
- A Great Rebalancing that sets out a new productive relationship between markets, society and the state.
- A Great Economic Irrigation that helps money and investment flow to where it is most needed.

But how do we get there?  The Great Transition suggests a universal Citizen’s Endowment of between £40,000 and £50,000 to give every adult an equal chance in life and the opportunity to invest in education, a business or local productive assets.  This would be funded by a phased rise in inheritance tax on all estates up to 67 per cent and would go a long way to reducing the massive inequalities of inherited wealth in the UK.
Community land trusts are also central to The Great Transition.  The report also proposes redistributing working time by setting out a four-day working week for everyone that would cut GDP by a third without a major loss of jobs.

There would be a major reorganisation of business, with publicly listed companies progressively transferring shares to their staff, giving them real control over the companies where they work.  This would lead to the creation of a series of co-operatives, operating in regulated markets, and subject to competition from new companies.  This is designed to change power relations within workplaces, creating a form of economic democracy.

There would be new variable consumption taxes, replacing income tax, reflecting the social and environmental costs of goods. A windfall tax on
the profits of fossil fuel companies, for example, could channel funds into clean energy projects.  There would be government lending for large-scale green energy and transport projects, channelled through a national Green Investment Bank.  There would be a new national Housing Bank, more along the lines of those in the USA, offering people the opportunity to transfer a portion of their mortgage debt into equity and paying social rent on the balance.

There would be new regulations on the reserve requirements of private banks, which would be related to the social and environmental value of their investments.  This is intended to engineer a ‘race to the top’, avoiding the more familiar race to the bottom, at the same time as reducing speculation and credit bubbles.

The purpose of The Great Transition is to inspire debate.  It was designed for the UK not the USA.  Many of the measures will be controversial.  Some will be wholly unacceptable to people who are already steeped in sustainability.  But it is a bold and coherent vision, with details and
figures ­ using the skills of novelists, as much as the skills of economists, to create a believable world.  And it suggests that other kinds
of economic worlds are possible.  That, in itself, represents hope.

David Boyle may be reached at:
davidboyle@smallisbeautiful.org

The co-operative movement, whose fundamental value system has consistently proved its prestige and legitimacy, stands ready more than ever to respond to the many challenges that our society is facing as it labours under the weight of a worldwide economic, social and financial downturn.

Co-operative enterprises assert that it is possible to conduct business using an alternative economic model. Indeed, they have been putting that model to the test successfully for more than 150 years. Their strengths and advantages are rooted in economic efficiency, democratic and participative management and a concern to put social responsibility into practice. Co-operative entrepreneurship offers a modern response to the expectations and aspirations of both citizens and democratic governments alike. Indeed, the co-operative business model is increasingly being seen as a powerful instrument for stimulating growth and for pioneering sustainable development. Even today, when the world is in the grip of a deep and widespread recession, it holds out the promise of creativity, innovation and social justice. The increasing number of co-operatives being created makes these assertions abundantly clear.

The theme of the 2010 European Co-operative Convention will be : “Innovation and cooperation: a key policy for co-operative growth and creation”. Four seminars will be devoted to the analysis of development and innovation strategies, new growth sectors of the co-operative movement, the modernization of the co-operative image and, a reflection on economic research that is more suited to the nuances of co-operative enterprises.

Do not hesitate to contact the team of Cooperatives Europe  office@coopseurope.coop for any further information.

By Mario Osava

IPSnews

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 15, 2010 (IPS) – The initiatives were already there, in the form of cooperatives and a variety of related activities. But they have a new connectedness thanks to the growing solidarity economy, which has opened up new horizons for alternative forms of production and social relations.

The Fio Nobre Cooperative, founded 15 years ago by Idalina Boni, evolved from craftsmaking to textiles, and now produces shirts, blouses, t-shirts, skirts, pants, shorts, dresses and handbags, as well as accessories like necklaces, in Itajaí, a port city in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

Once Fio Nobre reached a certain quality level, thanks in part to a fashion designer, it began to export its products. The cooperative already has contacts in Italy and France, and in February Boni will travel to Spain to market its goods.

Before setting up Fio Nobre, Boni was active for years in rural, community health and human rights movements, based on her belief in liberation theology, a progressive current in the Catholic Church that works to empower the poor.

“When you’re young, you think you can change the world,” she told IPS.

But unemployment forced her to come up with a project that could bring in an income on which to survive while she continued her efforts “to at least improve the world,” she said.

That gave rise to Fio Nobre and the organisation of an organic clothing production chain stretching from cotton farming to the final sale, under the Justa Trama brand name.

A number of other collective initiatives based on cooperation and self-management, and free of the employer-employee relationship, have networked at the World Social Forum, whose annual editions were held in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where it first emerged.

The Brazilian Solidarity Economy Forum (FBES) emerged at the 2003 WSF, which coincided with the start of the government of leftwing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who established a National Secretary of the Solidarity Economy (SENAES) under the Labour Ministry.

The movement in Brazil differs from those of other countries, because it combines three dimensions, said FBES executive secretary Daniel Tygel. Besides the economic aspect, which comprises self-management and the creation of cooperatives and networks, it includes a cultural dimension, related to consumption, gender relations and areas like free software, as well as a policy of social transformation.

In the long term, “we want to change the model of production and the direction of development, towards a model that is not harmful to life,” said Tygel.

Brazil’s solidarity economy ranges from agricultural production, which accounts for 60 percent of the groups linked by the FBES, to crafts, apparel, microcredit cooperatives, bankrupt companies that have been salvaged by workers’ cooperatives, community church projects and university incubators of solidarity businesses.

Although the solidarity economy currently represents a “paltry” share of the national economy, as Tygel acknowledged, it is growing fast, despite the scant government resources dedicated to supporting its development.

But although SENAES has a tiny budget, cooperatives and related initiatives also receive financial support from the ministries of Agricultural Development, Social Development and others.

Forging connections between the numerous and varied small local initiatives and making headway in terms of marketing and sales are the big challenges facing the solidarity economy.

But there are successful examples of integrated production chains and networks, like Justa Trama, in which the need to secure raw materials produced under the same shared principles – of horizontal labour relations and environmental sustainability – brought together several textile cooperatives and an association of more than 700 cotton farmers.

Justa Trama and the solidarity economy movement fuelled “the quantity and especially the quality of Fio Nobre’s production,” said Idalina Boni. The cooperative’s output climbed from 1.5 tons in 2005 to eight tons in 2008.

The production chain runs from the “ecological cotton” grown by family farmers in nine municipalities in the northeastern state of Ceará through a textile cooperative that makes yarn and fabrics in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais to three garment-making cooperatives in the south.

Buttons, collars and other components, meanwhile, are made from seeds gathered by members of another cooperative in the Amazon jungle state of Rondonia.

The biggest hurdles faced by organic farming cooperatives are marketing and selling their products.

In the northeast, Brazil’s poorest and driest region, the Xique Xique network of community-focused and solidarity-based marketing, which takes its name from a local cactus, facilitates the marketing of products by family farmers in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, organised in hundreds of groups, which make up nine larger cooperatives.

Agroecology, women’s rights and empowerment, and the solidarity economy are the “three main focuses” of the fast-growing network, which links production and trade, said Viviana Mesquita, a local technical assistant with SENAES.

“Women have a greater vocation for the solidarity economy,” but their strong presence in Xique Xique is also due to the local activity of the World March of Women, said the activist, a sociologist who has been active in the community organising and environmental movements. (END)

The existence of co-operatives puts into practice the idea of a plural economy, namely, an economy articulated by a plurality of organisational forms of production and exchange. Under the viewpoint of the co-operative world, the main issues of such a plurality is that of attractiveness and the variety of their articulations with other forms of production and labour organisation.

The Conference aims at raising questions and analyses regarding such a plurality, seen as a possible way of managing efficiently a variety of issues coming from human economic activity, including social ones and environmental ones. In this conference framework, the following topics will be especially welcome.

(1) The specific contribution of co-operatives

An economy that is plural is justified by the differentiated contributions of each of his poles : non-market production by non-profit organisations and public organisations ; modalities of redistribution operated by public administrations ; etc. What is the specific contribution of co-operatives in this framework of plurality ? Is it only an extra-economic one (training, stakeholder’s roles…), or does it regard the economic dimension of co-operative activities as well ?

(2) What favourable institutional and organisational combinations for the development of the co-operative world ?

In other words, which institutions and which organisations are required for the co-operative to overcome their difficulties and to develop, during the various periods of their activity and of their life : entrepreneurship training and support ; short-run and longer-run finance and, beyond, financial services ; sectoral representation ; advocacy and lobbying, etc. What is the actual state of such combinations, especially in the European Union ? That is to say, is the co-operative environment plural enough to let them develop on the long run while providing means for overcoming short-run crises ?

(3) Plurality of co-operative law

The recent statute of European co-operative society offers new possibilities. However, they add up to the existing specific country rules rather than harmonise them. How is this statute actually integrated in the various national co-operative law ? What can be said, 4 years after its implementation, regarding the success of this new statute ? Does it really generate a new layer of co-operatives, clearly distinct from co-operatives under national law ? What can be said on the diversity of co-operative statutes in the countries of the EU today ?

(4) The problem of attractiveness of co-operatives : between competition and complementarity of entrepreneurship modes

The co-operative world is too often seen like parasite or illegitimate by the classical firms and their representative organisations. In various countries, fiscal advantages for co-operatives raise the major question of the legitimacy of co-operative specificities. How to analyse the concurrence of co-operatives and non-co-operative firms ? Should one analyse the development of co-operative groups integrating non-co-operative entities (as, for example, the famous co-operative complex of Mondragón) as a sign of complementarities, as a contradiction, or as a fatal drift of the co-operative world ? Is there competition processes between these types of firms (beyond their very activity), which would lead to the question of the choice of the legal statute of a firm, from its creation to its end, going through major steps of its life (bankruptcy, leaders retiring…) ? All this eventually refers to the general problem of attractiveness of co-operatives as regards the other possibilities of entrepreneurship. What is at stake regarding the attractiveness of co-operation ?

(5) Autonomy or articulation

The present crisis has showed how shifts of co-operative banks or mutual insurance companies towards the practices of classical firms can be dangerous, when submitting them to the same pressures as classical banks or insurance companies or to the same sensibility to financial innovations and to the volatility of financial assets whose prices are fixed on financial markets. Which solutions should be implemented to avoid both such contagion and such shifts in practices ? Are there successful cases of protection ? Is it necessary to implement a disconnection with this financial system centred on financial markets ?

(6) Dynamics and exemplarity of the co-operative innovations

An economy that is plural, namely, organised around a variety of actors and action motives, should be more able to provide efficient solutions to highly evolving economic, social and environmental issues. What answers did the co-operative world bring to those issues, and what answers is it still likely to bring on the matter, facing the environmental, social and economic crises ? What dynamics of innovations can be identified in the co-operative world, innovations that were implemented (or are under implementation) as a way of answering these new stakes – in Europe as well as elsewhere in the world ?

This list is mainly indicative and proposals on additional topics concerning co-operatives are welcome. Additional workshops can be proposed too, if they are accompanied by a series of prospective presenters.

Schedule and submission conditions

Paper proposals

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted in English (and possibly in French) by April, 1st, 2010, to the following email address :icalyon2010@cress-rhone alpes.org

Abstracts should include (in a word document attached to the email) : the name of the author(s), the title of the proposal, the number of the relevant topic (if any) and the abstract ; and at the end of the abstract : the address and full title of the author(s) ; the organisation(s) and email address(es) ; the name of the corresponding author if the proposal is a collective one.

Answers will be sent to authors by April, 30st, 2010.

Complete papers of accepted proposals will be due by July, 30th, 2010.

Papers will be uploaded on the conference website before the conference.

Workshop proposals

Additional workshops can be proposed under the form of a set of paper proposals. In this case, a summary of the workshop must be sent in English (and possibility in French) by April, 1st, 2010, to the following email address : icalyon2010@cress-rhone-alpes.org

Workshop proposals should include : the title of the workshop ; an abstract of the general theme of no more than 300 words ; a list of the prospective presenters with their own abstract of no more than 500 words.

Please note that a workshop must eventually include no less 3 to 4 contributors.

Answers will be sent to proponents by April, 30st, 2010.

Please note that authors whose paper proposals are included in a workshop proposal are submitted to the same review process than other authors abstracts(see above), unless agreed otherwise. Complete papers of accepted proposals should be submitted latest July, 30th, 2010. Papers will be uploaded on the conference website before the conference.

Publication

A selection of papers will be published in a collective book in the year following the conference, and possibly in special issue of dedicated journals.

Languages

The Conference language will be English. English / French translation will be organized for the plenaries. French-speaking workshops will be organized, according to the proposals and the possibilities.

Conference venue and registration

The Conference will be held in the Université Lyon 2, downtown, located along the river Rhône. Lunches will be taken in the very place of the conference. Accommodation will be booked by attendants themselves in hotels nearby. A list of hotels is available on the website of the conference, see http://www.cress-rhone-alpes.org/cress/ .

Scholarships may be available for PhD students and scholars coming from developing and transforming countries whose paper proposals were accepted for presentation. We will provide more information on availability and application procedures together with the registration forms.

For any information, visit the website of the conference, hosted by the regional chamber of social and solidarity economy (CRESS) : http://www.cress-rhone-alpes.org/cress/

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Scientific Committee :

Jérôme Blanc (Université Lumière Lyon 2, LEFI, France)

Rafael Chaves (Director of IUDESCOOP, Universidad de Valencia, Spain)

Danièle Demoustier (IEP Grenoble, Université Pierre Mendès-France, CREPPEM, France)

Jean-François Draperi (CNAM, CESTES, editor of the RECMA – Revue internationale de l’économie sociale, Paris, France)

Maryline Filippi (Université de Bordeaux and Enitab, GAIA, France)

Simeon Karafolas (Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Greece)

Maurice Parodi (Université de la Méditerranée, President of the Collège coopératif Provence Alpes Méditerranée, France)

Nadine Richez-Battesti (Université Aix-Marseille II, LEST, France)

Roger Spear (Open University, United Kingdom)

Johanan Stryjan (Södertörn University, Sweden ; ICA Committee on Co-operative Research)

— -

Organization committee :

Denis Colongo (CRESS Rhône-Alpes / Université Lumière Lyon 2, France)

Jérôme Blanc (Université Lumière Lyon 2 – LEFI, France)

Simeon Karafolas (Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Grèce)

Yohanan Stryjan (Södertörn University, Sweden ; ICA Committee on Co-operative Research)

Lahsen Abdelmalki (Université Lumière Lyon 2 – LEFI, France)

Saïd Yahiaoui (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France)

Documents joints

• Call for papers (515.9 ko)

by Wilfredo Maldia