{"id":15218975,"date":"2007-12-13T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/2007\/12\/13\/A-Market-Without-Capitalists\/"},"modified":"2007-12-23T20:03:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-23T20:03:15","slug":"A-Market-Without-Capitalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=15218975","title":{"rendered":"A Market Without Capitalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='sustuff'>Stumbleupon Review of : <a href='http:\/\/guerrillanews.com\/articles\/2384\/A_Market_Without_Capitalists'>http:\/\/guerrillanews.com\/articles\/2384\/A_Market_Without_Capitalists<\/a><a href='http:\/\/www.stumbleupon.com\/url\/guerrillanews.com\/articles\/2384\/A_Market_Without_Capitalists'><img src='http:\/\/bunty.tv\/images\/smallstumble.png'><\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-family: Verdana, Sans-Serif; width : 620px; margin : 10px auto; padding : 15px; color : #c8a; text-align : justify; background : #2a2a2a; border : 1px solid black;\"><img style=\"float : right; margin : 0 0 10px 10px; border : 2px solid #888; padding : 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/img243.imageshack.us\/img243\/3209\/marketwr1cs7.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b>Frances Moore Lappe finds a cooperative approach to living that actually enhances human dignity<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\nA market economy and capitalism are synonymous &#8212; or at least joined at the hip. That&#8217;s what most Americans grow up assuming. But it is not necessarily so. Capitalism &#8212; control by those supplying the capital in order to return wealth to shareholders &#8212; is only one way to drive a market.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, it is hard to imagine another possibility for how an economy could work in the abstract. It helps to have a real-life example.<\/p>\n<p>And now I do.<\/p>\n<p>In May I spent five days in Emilia Romagna, a region of four million people in northern central Italy. There, over the last 150 years, a network of consumer, farmer and worker-driven cooperatives has come to generate 30 percent to 40 percent of the region&#8217;s GDP. Two of every three people in Emilia Romagna are members of co-ops.<\/p>\n<p>The region, whose hub city is Bologna, is home to 8,000 co-ops, producing everything from ceramics to fashion to specialty cheese. Their industriousness is woven into networks based on what cooperative leaders like to call &#8220;reciprocity.&#8221; All co-ops return 3 percent of profits to a national fund for cooperative development, and the movement supports centers providing help in finance, marketing, research and technical expertise.<\/p>\n<p>The presumption is that by aiding each other, all gain. And they have. Per person income is 50 percent higher in Emilia Romagna than the national average.<\/p>\n<p>The roots of Emilia Romagna&#8217;s co-op movement are deep &#8212; and varied.<\/p>\n<p>Here in the United States, many assume that Catholicism and socialism are irreconcilable. In Italy, it&#8217;s different. Socialist theorist Antonio Gramsci critiques of capitalism were a major influence on Italy&#8217;s post-war Left. Although he was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926 and died still under guard 11 years later at age 46, Gramsci&#8217;s ideas took hold. Simultaneously, the Church came to appreciate the role of cooperatives in strengthening family and community &#8212; as spelled out by Pope John XXIII&#8217;s 1961 encyclical.<\/p>\n<p>The shared values of the two traditions &#8212; honoring labor, fairness and cooperation &#8212; made them partners in standing up for co-op friendly public policies and in creating co-op support services.<\/p>\n<p>Of the three main national cooperative alliances, the two largest in Emilia Romagna are the Left&#8217;s Legacoop, with a million members, and Confcooperative, the Catholic alliance with more than a quarter of a million members.<\/p>\n<p>During the 1920s, the fascists destroyed both the cooperative and the union movements. But after World War II, the movements regrouped to rebuild war-torn Italy. Farmer and worker cooperatives put people back to work. Retail cooperatives helped consumers and housing co-ops build new dwellings. Since 1945, the housing cooperatives affiliated with Legacoop alone have built 50,000 units in Emilia Romagna.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Labor is an occasion for self-realization, not a mere factor of production,&#8221; Zamagni, an economist, writes. Cooperation offers a way beyond the dehumanization of capitalism that fully uses the advantages of the market.<\/p>\n<p>Another surprising feature of the culture is that, beginning in 1991, responsibility for social services in Emilia Romagna and other regions was transferred almost entirely to &#8220;social cooperatives.&#8221; For those providing services such as job placement, 30 percent of the staff must come from the population served and, if possible, be members of the co-op. Certain tax benefits are provided to these &#8220;social co-ops.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The approach seemed another smart way to enhance human dignity, breaking down degrading divisions between the helper and the helped.\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stumbleupon Review of : http:\/\/guerrillanews.com\/articles\/2384\/A_Market_Without_Capitalists Frances Moore Lappe finds a cooperative approach to living that actually enhances human dignity A market economy and capitalism are synonymous &#8212; or at least joined at the hip. That&#8217;s what most Americans grow up &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/?p=15218975\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":""},"categories":[10991],"tags":[1052481,165450],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218975"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15218975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15218975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15218975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/su.blog.bunty.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15218975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}