[p2p-research] communitiy organizing vs. coops

[Kevin Carson]

On 5/21/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Community Organizing and the Solidarity Economy

> By Dan Swinney
>  SolidarityEconomy.net

> Saul Alinsky, influenced deeply by John L. Lewis of the United Mineworkers of America, advanced a vision for low-income communities that paralleled the successful organizing strategy of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.  This was a strategy premised evidently on the notion that the means of production, the creators of wealth in the United States were doing a decent job.

> Alinsky didn't focus on the well-being of the means of production but on the improvement of the distribution of wealth that the system generated to include communities that were systematically excluded or shortchanged because they were Black, Latino, or working class.
>

> At the same time, in the Basque region of northern Spain in the village of Mondragon, a priest, Father Jose Maria Arizmendi, took a different tack.

> He assumed in his approach that controlling and developing the means of production in light of the values and priorities of the local community should be the principal focus of organizing and organizational development. rather than just focusing on the broader distribution of wealth.  It was at the point of production, where work was done that democracy should be extended, and where worker/residents had the greatest leverage and power.
>

It's possible to fuse the two approaches:  to promote the development
of community economies and "economic self-rule" while organizing
against unjust behavior by the large corporations and absentee
landlords who still have a presence.  A good example is Karl Hess,
author of Community Technology.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html