The%20Social%20Economy%20as%20the%20Economics%20of%20Liberation

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The Social Economy as the Economics of Liberation
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The four oppressions!

• Capitalismsource of oppression overwhelming
  rights of capital
• Colonialismsource of oppression global
  extension of capitalism
• Communismsource of oppression excessive power
  of the state
• Patriarchysource of oppression unequal
  relationships between sexes

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World Social Forum, Porto Alegre
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Liberation from capitalism

• This is where co-operation started
• The Webbs and the Miners next step
• Reclaiming surplus value
• Challenging the power of capital to buy labour
• Robert Owen, William Morris and the utopian
  community
• Guild socialism

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Liberation from colonialism

• Imperialism as a global extension of capitalism
• Colonialism as the institutionalisation of global
  capitalism
• Challenge engendered inferiority
• Ghandis ideas of Swaraj
• Vandana Shiva and the subsistence perspective

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From Medellin to Porto Alegre

• Latin bishops conference, Medellin, 1968,
  created the term institutionalised violence
• Comunidades eclesiales de base (CEBs local
  church communities)
• Gustavo Gutierrez Merino (born 1928, Lima, Peru),
  A Theology of Liberation (1972)
• Leonardo Boff (born 1938, Concórdia, Brazil),
  Church Charism and Power Liberation Theology
  and the Institutional Church
• Eliminated by JPII and Cardinal Ratzinger

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The concept of emancipatory praxis

• Everyday experience of poverty mutualism as a
  practical rather than ideologically driven
  response
• Uses a radical reintepretation of the Bible.
  Jesus as revolutionary. Marxist ideas of class
  struggle
• Deeply rooted in the local Church importance of
  mutualism as local solutions
• Change grows out of meetings to discuss
  scripture community involvement
• Realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth
  importance of utopian project coops as real
  change agents rather than the lottery
  mentality, living on dreams, encouraged by the
  conventional economy

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Social economy in the poor countries

• Social economy grew under the Pinochet
  dictatorship in Chile, as a source of resistance
  and mutual support from 15 of the workforce in
  Santiago in 1970 to some 20 by 1982. Provides
  around a third of jobs in the poorer quarters of
  Santiago.
• MST in Brazil and the peasant challenge to state
  support for neoliberal, neocolonial land
  ownership patterns
• Case-study from Argentina The Take, taking over
  factories left idle because of financial collapse
• Côte d'Ivoire 827,000 small farmers are
  co-operative members
• Nicaragua 78 per cent of maize and 59 per cent
  of beans are cooperatively marketed

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Liberation from communism

• Concentration of state power loss of initiative
• Issue of scale one bicycle factory
• Party replaces community
• Bureaucracy creates inefficiency

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Co-operatives in Central and Eastern Europe

• Gorbachev hoped to liberalise via co-ops
• Lost history of co-operation in Czech Republic
  in 1994 new agricultural coops operated on 47 per
  cent of cultivated land and controlled 67 per
  cent of production
• Cooperative is frequently co-opted by the state
  and now not trusted

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Liberation from patriarchy

• Sisterhood is powerful
• Womens strength in community
• Reproductive labour
• A different attitude to resources ecofeminism

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The Holy Family
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• Extended by Engels in his The Origin of the
  Family, Private Property and the State (1942)
• In communal economies women are equal or more
  powerful (matrilineality)
• The growth in private property undermines the
  role of women
• Men's ability to generate a surplus creates
  patriarchy where women (and slaves) become
  themselves the property of father and husband.

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Feminist views of patriarchy

• Feminists focus on women's work as reproductive
  rather than productive labour
• The invisible nature of women's work
• The iceberg model (Maria Mies)
• Ecofeminists argue that loss of embeddedness is
  source of spiritual and environmental alienation

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Are women natural co-operators?

• Ease of access to finance
• Sharing of skills and building of confidence
• Micro-finance developed in womens co-ops and
  businesses
• Could this idea be based on stereotyping?

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What do the four have in common?

• Concentration of power democratisation
• Inequality of access to resources equality
• Alienation empowerment
• Self-delusion self-realisation
• Isolation mutuality, reciprocity, sharing

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Assess the four concepts in terms of the three
organisational forms

• Democratisation
• Equality
• Empowerment
• Self-realisation
• Mutuality

• Social firm
• Social enterprise
• Co-operative