Dear Vivian and friends, all,
Firstly, congrats to our NZ friends on their award of recognition.
Second of all:
I particularly snip the following:
>The Jobs Research Website http://www.jobsletter.org.nz . . . whose
work increases co-operation not conflict, tolerance not tension<
Yay !!
In light of this, I have copied, below, two essays that are intended to get
us:
> from
a world drowning in conflict
> to
one buoyed up by co-operation.
Please, all, feel fully welcome to use these essays where- and when-ever you
feel appropriate ( forwarded / in print / what-ever: non-copyright applies !
)
Abundant hugs to, for and from, all,
j
***********
----------
>From: "vivian Hutchinson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: The Jobs Research Website at the NZ 1999 Media Awards
>Date: Thu, Nov 25, 1999, 3:05 am
>
>The Jobs Research Website http://www.jobsletter.org.nz has been
>awarded the Premier prize in the Internet category of the 1999
>Media Peace Awards, organised by The Peace Foundation of
>New Zealand / Aotearoa.
>
>The Media Peace Awards recognise those in the media whose work
>increases co-operation not conflict, tolerance not tension.
>
>vivian Hutchinson
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>phone 06-753-4434 fax 06-759-4648
>P.O.Box 428
>New Plymouth, Taranaki, New Zealand
>
>visit The Jobs Research Website
>Premier Award Winner of the 1999 Media Peace Awards
>http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/
>
********************
Delivering A Fair, Safe and Peaceful Society -
Money, Work and The Economic Policy of The Labour Government.
Paul Anderson ('Tribune,' 23 July 1999), asks that we create a plan of
action for Labour.
I consider that the goal is to create a fair, safe and peaceful society, and
that the key to delivering such a socially- and globally-ethical society is
the economic system in which it is embeded.
In a phrase, we need to create an economy where people are in control of
their lives: working for the long-term benefit of all. A world, in other
words, where we live in trust and respect both for one-another and the
planet .
Looking back over the past fifty years, we can see that, by leaving the
fundamentals of capitalism in place, each return of a reactionary government
has resulted in the roll back of many of our parents' achievements.
As a consequence, we need to take action that cannot be taken away.
We need, in other words, to find the nineties' equivalent of the NHS -
something that is so universally valued, that it will never be repealed.
To find this elusive step, we have to have find strategies for all three of
capitalism's central features: ownership of workplaces used for private
profit, ownership of land used for profit and ownership of money used for
profit.
To be able to deal with all three of these aspects of capitalism, we must,
first, return money to its proper use - as a lubricant of human activity,
created by, and flowing through, a nationally-owned, community-controlled,
Public Service Banking and Financial System - a 'National Wealth Service.'
With that in place, we can, then convert workplaces into appropriate
co-operatives - each having care, or stewardship of, their land and premises
and all working for the commonweal, ensuring that every-one receives a fair,
guaranteed income - a network of workplaces, which maximise, in William
Morris' phrase:
"Useful work, not useless toil."
Given that strategy, how about these for practicalities:
Co-operative Socialism - A Plan of Action
� Convert competitive activities into worker co-operative partnerships and
remodel monopoly activities as stakeholder co-operatives,
(see points two and five for the funding mechanism for this);
� Redistribute 'added-value' from these co-operatives, through
nationally-collected corporate taxation, distributed into local,
democratically-controlled Community Banks, thus making money available for
wealth creation and community development,
(and the conversions refered to above);
� Maximise necessary service provision (health, education, libraries,
transport (?) etc) on a free-at-the-point-of-use basis, retaining
(initially?) money as a mechanism for access to discretionary purchases.
� Introduce guaranteed income maxima and minima for all, and, so, abolish
personal taxation;
� Abolish money-lending for profit, operating banking and financial
services as a Public Service, 'National Wealth Service'
(see point two above);
� Reintroduce international exchange controls as necessary;
� Make capital grants (not loans) to developing countries.
In brief, transforming money - from master to servant - provides the way of
converting planet-trashing capitalism into locally-controlled, sustainable,
ethical co-operatives, each operating according to the 'Seven Co-operative
Principles' of The International Co-operative Alliance, all working
inter-dependently to deliver sustainable, 'responsible stewardship' of the
earth - for the long-lived well-being of all.
Dr John Courtneidge 13 North Road Hertford SG14 1LN
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01992 501854
***********************************
The Way Forward: Co-operative Socialism
Dr John Courtneidge
[13 North Road Hertford SG14 1LN 01992 501854 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
]
[This is a personal statement by the Author, who is a former Town
Councillor, a Quaker Socialist, an active member of both Labour and
Co-operative Parties, a Fabian Society member and a co-founder of The
Campaign for Interest-Free Money.]
In Fabian Pamphlet 565, �Socialism,� Tony Blair describes � . . . the
destination (as) - a strong, united society which gives each citizen the
chance to develop their potential to the full . . .�
The Fabian membership card tells us (from Rule 2) that �The Society consists
of Socialists.�
As Socialists, therefore, how can we help Tony Blair achieve his objective
of �a strong, united society,�?
Socialists come with various perspectives - I am a Quaker- and
Co-operative-Socialist - but all end up agreeing that capitalism is the
central and utterly unredeemable problem which the world presently faces.
Dictionary definitions of capitalism highlight two essential features of the
capitalist system: that the factors necessary for the production of those
commodities necessary for human life are in private ownership and that these
factors are used for private benefit (or �profit�).
This definition - focussing as it does on ownership of and profit from the
resources necessary for production - suggests, therefore, the following
Table:
Economic System: Ownership of
Benefits flow
the means of
to:
production:
Capitalism Private
Private
Communism Public
Public
Co-operative Socialism Private
Public
Totalitarianism Public
Private
Clearly definition of some terms is necessary:
� �Private� ownership can encompass ownership by individuals or groups of
kin or otherwise (�the family firm� and multinational, share-holder owned
joint stock companies are examples of such �private� ownership under
capitalism, while, under co-operative socialism, various forms of
co-operative - worker-cooperatives, consumer-cooperatives,
stakeholder-cooperatives and so on - form the pattern of wealth-creating
units, with the distinct objective of creating wealth for the Common-weal,
rather than primarily for the individual).
� �Public benefits�, too, needs analysis: �who gets how much - and of what�
is the essence of politics, and so considerations of income maxima and
minima continue to be central, but since, as Churchill, in one of his most
lucid moments, observed �Ninety percent of politics is economics,� our focus
here must remain sharply upon economics.
Practical experience shows that the three Capital �Factors necessary for
production� are:
� land,
� knowledge (physically embodied in the machinery and process know-how
necessary for production - Company �hardware� and �software�) and,
� money.
(The energy and raw materials required for production are subsidiary factors
derived from land ownership, while �labour� is not a Capital resource)
The three capital factors of production - land, knowledge and money -
deliver their returns in the following ways:
Ownership of: Delivers income as:
Land Rent
(along with sales of raw materials and energy)
Knowledge Dividends
(on
share-holding in Companies which own machinery
and
process know-how)
Money Interest
(and returned principle).
It is �Private ownership for private benefit� of these three factors which
mean that Capitalism can never produce the �strong, united society which
gives each citizen the chance to develop their potential to the full� taken
from Tony Blair�s pamphlet.
The reasons for this are many-fold, but, to take just two:
� a community where one group (in this case the owners of capital
resources) are exploiting the rest can never be a �strong, united society,�
� secondly, the fact that the owners of capital take away a portion of the
�added- � or �surplus-value� created during production, means that the
work-force, when acting as consumers of production, can never buy back the
full extent of their production. This results, in part, in the boom and bust
features of capitalism, and, accordingly, the failure of capitalism to allow
�. . . each citizen the chance to develop their potential to the full� -
who-ever can be living life to the full during unemployment and job
insecurity?
So, how might we deal with the problems which capitalism brings?
Firstly, as to objective.
As a Co-operator, the recent search within semantics - over �The Third Way,�
�Stake-holder Capitalism,� �Social Capitalism,� �Ethical Investment� and so
on - are all aspects of the Co-operative Agenda, which, itself, is a
statement of the ethics of the �Third, not-for-profit, Sector� (look, for
example, at the ethics and process contained within the International
Co-operative Alliance�s recently-updated �Seven Co-operative Principles�).
Eventually - unless we are keen to see the world engulfed in yet more
violence - we will have to start to convert shareholder capitalism into
co-operative socialism: where work is done not for personal gain but to
provide genuine social security for all. In other words, lives lived in the
manner suggested by Nye Beven�s book title �In Place of Fear� - for
everyone, locally and globally!
Secondly, as to strategy:
Taking each of the �Factors of Production� in turn - in the reverse order
from that given above, but in order of speed of acheivability:
� Money: we should create a truely �Public Service� Banking and financial
system, Community-owned and Community-accountable, issuing money and credit
debt-free and interest-free.
[It is worthwhile reviewing GDH Cole�s �History of the Labour Party since
1914� in respect of long-standing proposals to move both central- and High
Street Banking into the not-for-profit sector.]
� Knowledge: we should gradually convert share-holder companies, public
corporations and so on, into appropriate co-operatives (perhaps worker/staff
partnership co-operatives in the competitive sector and stake-holder
co-operatives in the monopoly/public service sector.)
� Land: by process, land will gradually become owned by appropriate
cooperatives, but, in the short-term, a complete register of land ownership
and rents will gradually enable land profits to move into the community
purse through a fair taxation system.
In brief: capitalism creates a society divided against itself, continuously
at war both within and between nations, where atomised individuals struggle
for what they perceived are shares in a restricted quantity of goods and
opportunities. A power-decentralised, co-operative socialist community - a
true Common-weal - is the route to abundance for all, since it will will
enable all productive resources, in co-operator William Morris� words to be
applied to:
�Useful work, rather than useless toil�
A restatement, in essence, of Tony Blair�s aim of:
� . . . a strong, united society which gives each citizen the chance to
develop their potential to the full . .�
>>>>>>>>>
Postscript
After conversations concerning this paper, it seems appropriate that I add a
broader and deeper note, concerning matters to do with money - both its
creation for use, methods for its circulation and the uses to which it is
put.
Modern �money� has rather less, it seems, to do with notes and coins, than
with �electronic� money in the form of computer-generated and -stored �lines
of credit.�
The creation of �money,� in this development, is described in a number of
recent books: under the index heading of �Fractional Reserve Banking� in,
for example, Peter Warburton�s �Debt and Delusion,� and Martin Meyer�s �The
Bankers� (both published by Penguin, 1999 and 1997 respectively) and, at
greater length, in Michael Rowbotham�s �The Grip of Death� (Jon Carpenter
Books, 1998.)
However, the questions of money circulation and its use, their centrality to
capitalism�s activities, and the role of transformative approaches for the
conversion of capitalism into cooperative socialism are examined, for
example, in Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson�s highly important �Age of
Insecurity� (Verso, London 1998, now, 1999, in paperback.)
There, in their final, key, chapter, these authors point out, that:
� Ideally, we should like to return all credit creation to its proper home,
the governement . . . [and] . . . We should also, in the very long term,
phase out one of the most powerful weapons in the financial interest�s
armoury, compound interest . . .� (Page 275 of the paperback edition.)
More-over (page 282) they propose the creation of:
�A National Bank, with proper branches . . . [which] would act as
catalysts for community regeneration . . . At a strategic level, the
National Bank would be a powerful lever for the promotion of economic
policy.�
Clearly, the question of money and its role in both present-day capitalism
and future Cooperative Socialism are key elements in the debate of new
economic, social and political structures, and I hope that Fabians will play
their part in considering these questions.
John Courtneidge 24 August 1999.
*****************************
