Communitarian Economics
The Green key values Respect for Diversity, Community-based Economics, and Sustainability evoke an image of a world of diverse and decentralized (perhaps bioregional) communities living lightly upon the earth. In such a world we could expect culturally diverse communities to exhibit diversity in regard to economic relations. This is in stark contrast to current neo-liberal efforts to universalize economic relations under the rubric of “globalization.”
The dominating ideologies of the twentieth century, capitalism and socialism, were both universalistic — on the one hand advocating private ownership of means of production, on the other hand advocating public ownership — as “best, everywhere.” Local communities and cultures all over the world were justifiably averse to the capitalist and socialist ideologues, with their industrial modernist, social engineering mentalities.
The Greens hold out an alternative vision of a communitarian economics. Such a vision runs counter to the civilizational trendlines which have been leading in the direction of compelled uniformity and monoculture. In order to foster diverse cultural expression, re-empowerment of communities, and participatory decision making, Greens advocate regionalization of economic life, enhanced local autonomy, and more humanly-scaled institutions and technologies.
This pivotal shift in direction will require a gradual process of devolution of power and localization of production. Accordingly, the Green vision of social transformation rejects old-paradigm notions such as “expropriation” and “revolution” — there will be no “final conflict” ushering in the new era, but rather a generations-long challenge to build the new society within the shell of the old.
That being the case, how are we to deal with the anti-ecological, anti-social corporate dominance that characterizes economic relations under conditions of industrial capitalism? In other words, what are we to do, here and now, about the corporations? The socialists have a ready answer: “Socialize them.” They say that allowing large concentrations of productive assets to remain in private hands, controlled by individual families and/or small cliques of elite investors, is socially irresponsible, as well as undemocratic — and inevitably results in plutocracy. While this critique of capitalism is unassailable, the socialist solution turned out to be problematic.
“Socialize the corporations” sounds good in theory, as do slogans like “democratic control of the economy by the people” or “workers control of production.” In fact, these ideals might very well be achievable within a context of communitarian social relations and local production. But it should be clear by now that attempts to “socialize productive assets” within the context of mass society and mega-industrial production invariably result in centralization and bureaucratic government ownership.
The socialist alternative was increasingly discredited during the twentieth century as it became clear that the promise of egalitarianism and “peoples control” was a chimera in one socialist experiment after another. Power elitism is evidently a characteristic of industrial modernist society, whether property relations are capitalist or socialist.
The question remains, then: what is to be done about the corporations? Green prescriptions for transformation of economic relations emphasize undermining their dominance rather than “expropriation” or “socialization.” A multifaceted approach is suggested:
a) constrain corporate power through regulation and the establishment of economic counterweights (like Ralph Nader’s consumer associations);
b) undermine the dominance of the corporations by fostering the development of community-based alternative economic institutions (co-ops, credit unions, CSA’s, land trusts, locally owned businesses, municipally owned enterprises);
c) gradually reallocate social resources away from the corporations toward the emergent alternative institutions.
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“Communitarian economics” — does it constitute a new “system” or a new ideology? No. In his Introduction to E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Theodore Roszak describes it as “a libertarian political economy that distinguishes itself from orthodox socialism and capitalism by insisting that the scale of organization must be treated as an independent and primary problem. This tradition, while closely affiliated with socialist values, nonetheless prefers mixed to ‘pure’ economic systems. It is therefore hospitable to many forms of free enterprise and private ownership, provided always that the size of private enterprise is not so large as to divorce ownership from personal involvement, which is, of course, now the rule in most of the world’s administered capitalisms. Bigness is its nemesis, whether the bigness is that of public or private bureaucracies, because from bigness comes impersonality, insensitivity, and a lust to concentrate abstract power. Reaching backward, this tradition embraces communal, handicraft, tribal, gild, and village lifestyles as old as the neolithic cultures. In that sense, it is not an ideology at all, but a wisdom gathered from historical experience.”
(this article appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Green Horizon Magazine)
