Monthly Archives: November 2011

Release Events for America Beyond Capitalism

I am doing a small book tour to mark the release of America Beyond Capitalism, with three events on the East Coast starting this weekend.

Saturday, December 3rd : Boston
Where: Encuentro 5
When: 6PM
More info *
Facebook event (please share!)

Sunday, December 4th: New York City
Where: Bluestockings
When: 7PM
More info *
Facebook event (please share!)

And then the hometown release event, with some great special guests….

Wednesday, December 7th: Washington, DC
with Ted Howard, John Cavanagh, and Ralph Nader

Where: Busboys and Poets, 14th & V.
When: 7PM
More info *
Facebook event (please share!)
 

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Occupy Economics

I am one of the hundreds of economists who have signed on to the Economists Statement in Support of Occupy Wall Street; below is a video which truly brings this statement to life:

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

I’m proud to be one of the many voices featured in the video version of the statement, and hope you’ll share it widely. Also worthwhile in connection with this is the excellent article by Nancy Folbre that appeared in the New York Times Economix blog: “Occupy Economics”. She writes, in discussing the significance of these increasingly common moments of dissent from economic orthodoxy:

Concerns about the impact of growing economic inequality fit neatly into a larger critique of mainstream economic theory and its deep faith in the efficiency of markets.

Many unbelievers (including me) insist that we inhabit a global capitalist system rather than an efficient market. Willingness to use the C-word (capitalism) often signals concerns about a concentration of economic power that unfairly limits individual choices, undermines political democracy, generates financial and ecological crises and limits access to alternative economic ideas.

We can’t address these concerns effectively without a wider discussion of them.

Exactly.

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America Beyond Capitalism

This article, adapted from the introduction to the new edition of my book America Beyond Capitalism, first appeared in the November/December edition of Dollars & Sense.

“Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical religious coalition put forward a plan for community-worker ownership of the giant mill. The plan captured widespread media attention, the support of numerous Democrats and Republicans (including the conservative governor of the state at the time), and an initial $200 million in loan guarantees from the Carter administration.

Corporate and other political maneuvering in the end undercut the Youngstown initiative. Nonetheless, the effort had ongoing impact, especially in Ohio, where the idea of worker-ownership became widespread in significant part as the result of publicity and educational efforts traceable to the Youngstown effort—and because of the depth of policy failures and the continuing pain of deindustrialization throughout the state. In the more than three decades since that effott, numerous employee-owned companies—inspired directly and indirectly by the effort to save the Youngstown mill—have been developed in Ohio. Individual lives were also changed, among them that of the late John Logue, a professor at Kent State University who established the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, an organization that provides technical and other assistance to help firms across the state become worker-owned.

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Movements, History, and Economic Transformation, Part 7: Systemic change and the long haul

In this seventh and final segment, I bring some historical perspective to bear on the problem of social transformation: how do we abandon our “vested interest in pessimism” and orient ourselves to the difficult work of really changing the system in the long haul? What kind of vision do we need to build a movement committed to the decades of work ahead of us?

Watch previous segments:

Interview shot and produced by Jordan Karr-Morse from Softbox Digital.

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Video from the “Occupied Super-Committee”

Thanks to C-SPAN for this video of my testimony at the “Occupied Super-Committee for the 99%” event at DC’s Freedom Plaza:

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