“At the Heart of Democratic Socialism Is the Ethic of Solidarity” — Nikil Saval

The foundation of the 18th century liberalism that spread globally as "Western values" and "freedom and democracy" is the motto of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité. It translates as "liberty, equality and fraternity." 

"Liberty" means personal freedom based on the "natural rights of man." "Equality" means equal rights and equality before the law (equal justice). "Fraternity" means the "brotherhood of man." It is expressed as community and "solidarity." 

"Solidarity" has not been a key term in the US and UK, which emphasize personal liberty. However, it is a key concept in Europe, which manifested as social democracy, which the US and UK opposed as "socialism." 

Jacobin

“At the Heart of Democratic Socialism Is the Ethic of Solidarity”
Nikil Saval, union campaigner, leftist magazine editor, and a democratic socialist who is running for Pennsylvania State House

Jörg Bibow — Euro Union – Quo Vadis?

No doubt Greece is in crisis, in economic, political, and humanitarian crisis. But the actual crisis in Europe today runs much deeper and is bound to ultimately tear the continent apart unless the actual fractures that undermine the euro finally get addressed....

Europe used to see itself as the beacon of democracy in the world. But democracy appears to be the ultimate victim of the crisis of the euro currency union, as one people turns against another. The euro as a means to prosperity turned out to be a pipe dream. As a flawed and dysfunctional currency union, it is impoverishing the continent instead. For how much longer will it be a means to secure peace then? 

What is to be done?

Most importantly, in dealing with the legacies of their joint blunders in solidarity, they need to look towards the future and remember what the European ideal was all about. It is high time to re-launch the euro on a sounder footing, beginning with organizing investment [that increases demand] rather than insane austerity [that reduces demand]. 

Through joint investment into their common future Europeans need to refocus on striving for higher productivity, efficiency, and living standards – rather than getting entrapped in a race to the bottom in the name of “competitiveness” (misconceived as underbidding each other in terms of wages and social protection). For Europe there isn’t all that much room to fall further from here without unleashing mayhem. Greece may be the final wake-up call.

Multiplier Effect
Euro Union – Quo Vadis?

Jörg Bibow | Professor of Economics at Skidmore College and a Research Associate at the Levy Institute at Bard College

John Henley — Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s a whole new model – and it’s working’

As well as helping people in difficulty, Giovanopoulos said, Greece’s solidarity movement was fostering “almost a different sense of what politics should be – a politics from the bottom up, that starts with real people’s needs. It’s a practical critique of the empty, top-down, representational politics our traditional parties practise. It’s kind of a whole new model, actually. And it’s working.”

It also looks set to play a more formalised role in Greece’s future under what polls predict will be a Syriza-led government from next week. When they were first elected in 2012 the radical left party’s 72 MPs voted to give 20% of their monthly salary to a solidarity fund that would help finance Solidarity for All. (Many help further; several have transferred their entitlement to free telephone calls to a local project.) The party says the movement can serve as an example and a platform for the social change it wants to bring about....

Socialism has to be grassroots, or it is just utopianism. Necessity is the mother of invention. Neoliberalism is creating its opposition and replacement along the lines that Marx predicted dialectically. What Marx could not have foreseen in his days was that this could happen peacefully through popular participatory democracy. But we aren't there yet and the neoliberal elite is far from having made its last stand.

The curious thing is that it was already done by American "hippies" in the Sixties and Seventies. "Hippy" was a derogatory term used by the Establishment; we called ourselves "freaks," because the objective was to freak "Them" out. Actually, we had to freak ourselves out first to get over the cultural and institutional baggage. The reason that this was curious at the time is that there was no material need for it. The protest was primarily anti-war but also against a culture and institutions that young people found boring and restrictive.

But a whole new underground economy was created that not only still exists but has greatly expanded. A significant part of it was also co-opted and integrated into the mainstream. For example, music became an industry. I recall a very successful musician and songwriter telling me in the Nineties that he had broken in back in the Sixties by loading up his car up with his records and traveling the country dropping in on DJs. He explained that this was no longer possible since music had become corporatized.

But the alternative economy is now a multi-billion dollar operation in the US that is still providing alternatives and innovating. Greece has the added impetus of material necessity that my generation did not have here in America. It was "revolution for the hell of it" — Abbie Hoffman. And it was a hell of party — in spite of the occasional tear gas and constant threat of being busted.

“This whole thing,” she said, “has made a lot of people very aware, not just of what they face, but also of what they can – and must – do. Expectations are going to be high after Sunday, but there are of course limits to what even a Syriza government will be able to do. It’s up to us, all of us, to change things. And honestly? This feels like a good start.”

Go for it! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

The Guardian
Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s a whole new model – and it’s working’ 
John Henley in Athens
ht Clonal

Three from Dan Kervick

Three from Dan Kervick.

Rugged Egalitarianism

Democracy through Solidarity

If we must get more organized, then the chief political question is what form that organization will take. The struggle for the 21st century will be a struggle between the forces of democratic systems of human organization and hierarchical, corporate systems of organization. It will be a struggle between democratic political communities of various shapes and sizes, on the one hand, and concentrations of organized and unaccountable private capital and entrenched privilege on the other.

Why Did Economists Neglect Distribution for So Long?

And yet there has been a very palpable taboo, a detectable sense of embarrassment, discomfort and irritation, around the distribution question. So it seems to me that we need to consider other hypotheses to explain why most economists have, in recent years, neglected distribution. And the hypothesis I would suggest is that this stance has much more to do with the cultural, political and ideological norms that have prevailed in the field of economics, as a living, breathing institutional reality concerned in unique ways with social order and power, than it does with more general scientific norms distinguishing descriptive from normative inquiries. In a word, economics is a “peculiar institution”, and the constraints, taboos, incentives and disincentives imposed on its practitioners have a more direct connection with established power structures and authoritative political ideologies than do the norms in most other sciences....

I have one other hypothesis to propose. Despite their claims to political independence and rigorous scientific scruples, economists are political animals like the rest of us. Some of the dominant figures have well-known partisan loyalties and commitments. It appears to me that much of the recent concern with inequality only arose after a groundswell of political discontent with the savage cruelties and injustices of American society had reached a level that partisan power-brokers could no longer contain, and that even economists could no longer ignore.

A Flaw in The Economist’s Explanation of Piketty

This paragraph contains a mistake. Piketty does not argue that “as a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output,” and that is not the dynamic captured by the expression r > g. Nor does his argument require a rate of wealth growth higher than income growth in order for the forces of divergence to predominate and produce greater inequality. What he argues is that, for a given savings rate s and national income growth rate g, the wealth-to-income ratio will tend to stabilize around the ratio s/g. If the wealth-to-income ratio is less than s/g, then wealth will grow more rapidly than national income. But if the wealth-to-income ratio is greater than s/g, then wealth will grow more slowly than national income.

So assume a savings rate of 10% and a growth rate of 2%. Only if the wealth-to-income ratio were less than 5 would wealth be growing faster than income. But that’s neither here nor there, since it will stabilize near 5 in any case over the long run, and the capital share will stabilize at rs/g. Whether or not wealth is growing faster than income is not what drives growing inequality. What drives increasing inequality of capital ownership, as I understand Piketty’s argument, is that some individuals save at a higher rate than the national savings rate, and other save at a lower rate; and the savings rate for individuals is likely to be higher in proportion to the amount of previously accumulated wealth they already possess. As a result, even in an economy with a stable wealth-to-income ratio and stable capital share, the rate of change in the proportion of the capital share flowing to a given possessor of wealth will tend to vary directly with their wealth. The rich don’t just get richer; they get richer at an increasing rate depending on how rich they already are....

Note also, that these portions of Piketty’s argument only deal with issues related to inequality of capital ownership. But there are other factors driving inequality. Piketty tells a very complex and nuanced story about the forces tending toward inequality in wealth and income, a story spread over six chapters of the book. The story weaves together three factors: inequality in capital ownership, inequalities in labor income, and inequalities related to the way in which the first two factors interact. He also stresses that he does not rely on one single synthetic index of inequality, such as a Gini coefficient, but that inequality is a multidimensional phenomenon, and that it is best to examine and understand these dimensions separately.

Dan Kervick

AFP — Pope Francis calls for a ‘rethinking of our models of economic development’

Pope Francis on Thursday urged governments around the world to show more solidarity and strive for equality following a period of economic crisis, a day after being declared “Person of the Year” by Time magazine.

“The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles,” Francis said in his message for New Year’s Day, which is World Peace Day.

“Effective policies are needed to promote the principle of fraternity, securing for people… access to capital, services, educational resources, healthcare and technology,” he said in a written text which will be read out in Catholic churches on January 1.

Governments have a “duty of solidarity” towards poorer nations and a “duty of social justice” towards their citizens, while individuals should also practice fraternity by “sharing their wealth”, he said.

He also said disarmament accords were not “sufficient to protect humanity from the risk of armed conflict”.

“A conversion of hearts is needed which would permit everyone to recognise in the other a brother or sister,” he said.

Francis called for “a culture of solidarity” and said the biblical story of Cain and Abel showed “the difficult task to which all men and women are called, to live as one, taking care of each other.”

“Rampant individualism, egocentrism and materialistic consumerism, weaken social bonds, fuelling that ‘throw away’ mentality which leads to a contempt for, and the abandonment of, the weakest,” he said.

He also reiterated his critique of financial speculators saying they were often “both predatory and harmful for entire economic and social systems, exposing millions of men and women to poverty”.

The Raw Story
Pope Francis calls for a ‘rethinking of our models of economic development’
Agence France-Presse

Chris Dillow — On Within-Class Envy

Of course, there are countless real world analogies to this behaviour. Old money sneering at new money, the richcomplaining about the super-rich, "white trash" being racist and "strivers" attacking "shirkers" are all examples of within-class conflict. What's striking about this experiment is that such behaviour emerges so easily, without the aid of ideology or media manipulation.This suggests that the lack of development of class solidarity has some deeper-rooted causes than ideology alone.

For a Marxist, this is depressing stuff. But it should also concern any liberal or democrat.It suggests that people might support policies that hurt other poor people - for example, welfare cuts or immigration controls - even if they themselves are harmed by such policies. In this sense, people's preferences aren't necessarily the same as their narrow material interests.

Stumbling and Mumbling
On Within-Class Envy
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle (UK)

The basis of interest politics and wedge issues?

Solidarity Economics

Defining Solidarity Economics

But what exactly is this "solidarity economy approach"? For some theorists of the movement, it begins with a redefinition of economic space itself. The dominant neoclassical story paints the economy as a singular space in which market actors (firms or individuals) seek to maximize their gain in a context of scarce resources. These actors play out their profit-seeking dramas on a stage wholly defined by the dynamics of the market and the state. Countering this narrow approach, solidarity economics embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a complex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of individual gain. The economic activity validated by neoclassical economists represents, in this view, only a tiny fraction of human efforts to meet needs and fulfill desires.

What really sustains us when the factories shut down, when the floodwaters rise, or when the paycheck is not enough? In the face of failures of market and state, we often survive by self-organized relationships of care, cooperation, and community. Despite the ways in which capitalist culture generates and mobilizes a drive toward competition and selfishness, basic practices of human solidarity remain the foundation upon which society and community are built. Capitalism's dominance may, in fact, derive in no small part from its ability to co-opt and colonize these relationships of cooperation and mutual aid....

At its core, solidarity economics rejects one-size-fits-all solutions and singular economic blueprints, embracing instead a view that economic and social development should occur from the bottom up, diversely and creatively crafted by those who are most affected. As Marcos Arruda of the Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network stated at the World Social Forum in 2004, "a solidarity economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle of the human being to live and to develop him/herself as an individual and a collective. 

Similarly, contrasting the solidarity economy approach to historical visions of the "cooperative commonwealth," Henri de Roche noted that "the old cooperativism was a utopia in search of its practice and the new cooperativism is a practice in search of its utopia." Unlike many alternative economic projects that have come before, solidarity economics does not seek to build a singular model of how the economy should be structured, but rather pursues a dynamic process of economic organizing in which organizations, communities, and social movements work to identify, strengthen, connect, and create democratic and liberatory means of meeting their needs.

Success will only emerge as a product of organization and struggle. "Innovative practices at the micro level can only be viable and structurally effective for social change," said Arruda, "if they interweave with one another to form always-broader collaborative networks and solidarity chains of production-finance-distribution-consumption-education-communication."

This is, perhaps, the heart of solidarity economics—the process of networking diverse structures that share common values in ways that strengthen each. Mapping out the economic terrain in terms of "chains of solidarity production," organizers can build relationships of mutual aid and exchange between initiatives that increase their collective viability. At the same time, building relationships between solidarity-based enterprises and larger social movements builds increased support for the solidarity economy while allowing the movements to meet some of the basic needs of their participants, demonstrate viable alternatives, and thus increase the power and scope of their transformative work.

Dollars & Sense — Real World Economics
Other Economies are Possible!

Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity

Ethan Miller

Cat Johnson — The Rise of the Sharing Communities

“To me, the question is not so much about whether access is better than ownership,” says Ouishare co-founder Antonon Leonard. “It's about people. It's a change in culture. People have just started to realize that they have amazing opportunities to express themselves, be their own bosses, and start a new life.”

Leonard stresses that community “is everything” and that Ouishare is built around people who do things, not those who say they will do things.

“We need complex solutions to solve complex world issues,” he says. “We bet that it's only by connecting people with different perspectives that we'll be able to bring sustainable change. Sharing is an amazing opportunity to build a community and you need to build a community in order to make sharing work.”

Shareable
The Rise of the Sharing Communities
Cat Johnson

Creativity is enhanced by creating information, emotion, and tool-rich  communities and environments.

Nick Krafft — Saints and Scholars: The Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo - Economist

What is in part remarkable about the event is that Toniolo was not your typical saint: he was an economist, the first to be beatified. More important for the rest of us, he was not an abstract theoretician; rather, he was a political economist whose work was shaped by a vision of social solidarity.

Read it at Open Economics
Saints and Scholars: The Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo

by Nick Krafft

Chomsky: Occupy Movement "Has Created Something That Didn't Really Exist" in US — Solidarity

Chomsky: Occupy Movement "Has Created Something That Didn't Really Exist" in US — Solidarity

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy Goodman. Transcript at Democracy Now!

I have written on numerous occasions about the social, political and economic challenge of resolving the trifecta of liberty, equality, and "fraternity." Fraternity has be called "solidarity" in Europe for come time, and that is now catching on in the US, along with the more colloquial "community.'

This is an important rising trend that began in the Sixties and Seventies but was co-opted and sidetracked. Now it is taking off again, for a variety of reasons, some due to conditions and some to enhanced communications technology and the introduction of social media/networking as a communications tool.

Dirk Ehnts — Solidarity or extremism

European solidarity failed in the 1930s, just as international cooperation failed. You might think that this is not a big deal, but in fact solidarity was replaced by hate, and cooperation by war. There was no middle way – appeasement failed.

I think it is time for European politicians to reflect on their policies. Spain and Greece are going through depressions, with no policy tools available: no monetary policy, no fiscal policy. They are not allowed to renegotiate their debt burdens, neither those of government nor those of the private sector. The current policy of kicking the can down the road by bailing out banks and speaking of solidarity is clearly not a policy to address the problems. Rather, the financial symptoms of the real problems are addressed. If mainstream politics does not address the problems of the real world, extremist views will take over. 

Read it at EconoBlog101

Barroso on European History

by Dirk Ehnts

Unfortunately, populist parties are often extremist, lead by a charismatic figure with whom the common people identify.

4 Signs the American Spring May Be Coming to Chicago

Here are four signs that the American Spring is coming to Chicago:

1) Political Provocation [by the Elite]2) Climate of Repression3.) Elite-Driven Hysteria4) Dynamic Political Organizing Capacity

Read it at AlterNet

4 Signs the American Spring May Be [Is] Coming to Chicago

by Matt Reichel

This has already been worked out by movement leaders from around the world at the anti-Davos in Brazil. There is huge global solidarity growing that the neoliberal approach to globalization is a dangerous threat to democracy other than in name only. It is viewed as a global power grab for world hegemony under the leadership of Western elites, especially finance capital, the  ideal of which is unfettered rent-seeking rather than development with a view to distributed prosperity. It is seen as merely the next step in neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism, as set forth in the works of people like Michael Hudson and Noam Chomsky in the US.

We are at the outset of a battle that will determine the course of the 21st century. It is a battle between those that believe late stage (monopoly) capitalism, whose goal is global growth through the aegis and under the control of the elite, is the future and those who hold that the future belongs to those willing to struggle for participatory democracy, distributed prosperity, and solidarity. 

The question is one of freedom:  Will there be freedom for the few that make it to the top, or freedom and prosperity for all.

UPDATE: Here comes the protest music. Bruce Springsteen on board with Occupy.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Bruce Springsteen Talks Occupy Movement, New Album

Bruce Springsteen said this week that his new album Wrecking Ball was inspired by an "angry patriotism" that drew fuel from the Occupy movement. 

Speaking to a group of journalists at the Theatre Marigny in Paris, Springsteen described how the financial crisis, income inequality, and other hot-button political issues informed Wrecking Ball, which paints a picture of an America that has failed the working class. 

"My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American Dream--how far is that at any given moment," Springsteen said. Judging by the album's tenor, he believes the gap has only become wider in recent years.

New Wave

Musings of visions and dreams of possible futures, speaking truth in a time of lies and pondering my place in the midst of this radical awakening and fall of the Empire.

Read it at Out on a Limb
The Gentle Economic Collapse of the Empire
by Mary Hall

Warning for economically straight folks: "Utopian socialism"

I would not call this collapse of the presently cresting wave, but rather would see it as a new wave swelling up.

As I see it, there are two major forces at work in creating a major trend that is developing, and both are libertarian-anarchistic. One is anarcho-capitalism, and the other is anarcho-communitarianism. These are manifesting socially and politically as the Tea Party, on one hand, and Occupy and the 99% Movement, on the other. The mainstream has not yet grasped the underlying structure and dynamic. Therefore, mainstream perception of both is mostly a caricature of the underlying reality, and so it misses most of the substance and interplay.

In most major fields a trifecta is operative. In socio-politics it is "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," that is, freedom, equality, and solidarity or community.

Liberty involves individual freedom and protections, as well as self-determination. Liberty includes freedom from arbitrarily imposed constraint, freedom to choose as one wills, and freedom for self-determination and self-actualization.

Equality involves rights and responsibilities, the rule of law, equivalence of persons before the law, due process, and absence of privilege. Equality recognizes diversity of individual characteristics and circumstances. Equality holds that all humans are identical as persons while being diverse as individuals.

Solidarity implies community based on voluntary cooperation of self-sufficient individuals for mutual benefit in creating and administering institutions suitable for accomplishing tasks at hand, guided by natural leadership. Solidarity recognizes that relationships among individuals in social groups is as significant socially, politically and economically as individuals as members of the group. "No man is an island." Human beings are inherently social, which implies complex webs of relationship.

The various social, political, and economic positions approach resolving this trifecta differently. History is the dialectical record of interaction among these positions and shifts in which is "king of the mountain" where and for how long.

Rats hardwired for empathy?

As described by Science Daily, “After several daily restraint sessions, the free rat learned how to open the restrainer door and free its cagemate. Though slow to act at first, once the rat discovered the ability to free its companion, it would take action almost immediately upon placement in the test arena.”

“We are not training these rats in any way,” one of the designers of the experiment explained. “These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal. We’re not showing them how to open the door, they don’t get any previous exposure on opening the door, and it’s hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying, and it eventually works.”

Further variations on the experiment appeared to confirm that the rats were acting out of pure empathy. For example, they would not bother to open the door when a toy rat was placed in the tube. However, they would open it even if it released their companion into a separate area, meaning they were not just looking for company.

And not only that, but when the rats were offered two tubes — one of which contained their companion and the other a pile of chocolate chips — they were as likely to free the other rat first as they were to start by gobbling all the chocolate. There were also cases in which the rat retrieved the chocolate chips first but didn’t eat them until after freeing the other and sharing the chocolate with them.

Read the post and watch video at Raw Story
Study shows lab rats would rather free a friend than eat chocolate

by Muriel Kane

Are rats a step ahead of Ayn Rand and Randites on the evolutionary scale?

Going global

As images rolled in this week of the Egyptian authorities' assault on protesters in Tahrir Square, observers in the United States could not escape thoughts of the official violence that had very recently been wrought on Wall Street occupiers in New York City and around the country. Civilians beaten with clubs, dragged by their hair, subject to tear gas, watching their tents demolished, returning to the square they were occupying only to be beaten back again - all that spoke well of and distinguished American police was their death toll of zero.

Then came Sultan Al Qassemi's report that an Egyptian State TV anchor had confessed the inspiration Egyptian military and security forces drew from "the firm stance the US took" against occupiers, and it all made perfect sense. The Egyptian authorities, even in the post-Mubarak period, look to America for leadership.

 Recall that, in the run-up to Mubarak's downfall, the dictator's strategy at every turn followed American advice. First, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy statements urged Mubarak to "seek dialogue," which he dutifully offered to do. That did not appease the protesters, so the US instructed him not to run again. His obedient announcement that he would not was insufficient to quell the unrest. The US then advised Mubarak to make a load of "concessions," and Mubarak's included appointing a vice president and insisting that his son Gamal would not seek the presidency. The Egyptians, however were intent on meaningful democratic revolution, and the State Department's puppeteering was all for naught.

As Egyptian authorities continue to take cues from American authorities, American protesters continue to take cues from Egyptian protesters. In the spring, I reported on an evening meeting between Ahmed Maher and Waleed Rashed, of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement and a group of American activists that included a number of people instrumental in getting Occupy Wall Street off the ground, activists intent, like their Egyptian brothers and sisters, on wresting democracy from the grip of a corrupt ownership class intent on accumulating wealth and power no matter the human cost. "Don't worry if the revolution doesn't come tomorrow," the Egyptian comrades told us on that occasion. "It will come. It is only a matter of time. Just keep working."

Read the rest at TruthOut

Occupying Wall Street and Tahrir Square: Feathers of the Same Bird

by J.A. Myerson, Truthout | News Analysis

Polish Solidarity at work in MENA

Benghazi, Libya - As the first foreign official to visit Libya after the liberation announcement made by National Transitional Council, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski tried to kill two birds with one stone.

First, to enable Polish energy and construction companies’ comeback to post-Gaddafi Libya. This "unique opportunity" at the "best possible moment" excited members of his entourage.

The other part of what may appear a new Warsaw Pact being offered to the Arab nations was more idealistic. Poland wants to share its knowhow on transfer to democracy.

"We want you to learn from our successes as well as our mistakes," Sikorski declared after the meeting with NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil. The offer was backed with signs of goodwill. From his previous visit to Libya in June, Sikorski brought back to Warsaw three families of African refugees. This time he offered the services of Polish doctors and nurses to Libyans wounded in war, both in Poland and in Libya. The Polish medical mission in Misrata has now begun its work.

The old Solidarity trademark seems still helpful. "We remember your brave Solidarity movement and we want to learn from Poland how to depart safely from dictatorship," Abdalla M. Fellah, head of the Libyan Business Council, told IPS.... (emphasis added)

Read the rest at TruthOut
Poland Steps Into Arab Spring
by Robert Stefanicki, Inter Press Service