By Mort Malkin
In Part 1 of this mini-series, a few of the ills of capitalism were outlined: the great number of people below the poverty line, the number of unemployed, the number without health-care coverage, and the starvation of funding to the arts, the humanities, and Public Radio. At the same time, the US is in record debtor mode, and its people personally have followed suit. All of us have spent more than we saved. Thrift became an archaic word. Yet we were exhorted to buy more and more – have another credit card or two.
The billionaires, meanwhile, became multibillionaires. The ultra-rich became hyper-rich, and super-wealth turned to mega-wealth. We were obsessed with money numbers, and more material goods (stuff) were necessary to happiness. On the politics front, our leaders tried to convince us that free trade would lead to democracy all around the world. Some even equated capitalism (free of all restraints such as Glass Steagall) with democracy. The 800 lb gorilla in their board room – China, by name –somehow remained a communist state despite its conversion to capitalism.
Capitalism was not always imbued with the philosophy that greed is good. In the mid-20th century, none other than John Maynard Keynes said the love of money is “semi-criminal, semi-pathological.” The same John Maynard Keynes who brought us free enterprise with tweaking!
Can we depend on President Obama to return capitalism to the time of Keynes? So far, he hasn’t had Gramm Leach Bliley abrogated and Glass Steagall reinstalled. Derivatives and indices are still in the Wall Street script, and derivatives of derivatives are still waiting in the wings. Some in the community of Fat Finance have even boasted, “Obama — Capitalist Tool” in print. Further evidence that the executive branch of government won’t change much is Attorney General Holder’s failure to declare the Patriot Act null and void. The FBI may have started reading in our libraries rather than raiding them, but they are keeping their options open, just in case. Why, at this very moment terrorists could be enrolled in colleges studying library science with a long-term plan to take over key libraries.
Could we persuade corporate America to hold social responsibility higher than profit? Will either of the two main political parties in Congress strengthen the safety net of the poor, the unemployed, the uninsured, and the aged? It seems as unlikely as depending on the White House.
Is there a way out of ringalevio materialism short of the example set by our Founding Fathers in 1776? Yes, we could do it with the secret weapon of community & localism. Keeping our economic activity in our own neighborhood and depriving giant corporations of our contributions to their profits is the essence of participatory economics. No, we don’t have to go to the deprivations of 24/7 Voluntary Simplicity. Our lives can be rich without French perfume that rocks the room or black caviar from a sturgeon that lives in the Volga River.
First, let us let us search back through American history, more recent and long ago. We have rich traditions to guide us: barn raisings, barter between people, cooperatives of family farmers, state banks and citizen credit unions, even currency struck by individual states – all at various times and places in these United States.
Let us count the ways of participatory economics which will avoid the pathology of scourge capitalism:
• Turn lawns into vegetable gardens. Even if you have a black thumb, you’ll at least be able to grow radishes, carrots, and leaf lettuce. Pomegranates may take a longer learning curve.
• A nearby farmer may grow other produce or keep chickens who are not caged. Talk to the farm family and get to know them. Surely, they’ll have some interesting stories to tell about their animals, 100-year record weather events, whether wolves have returned to the region … Ask if they use pesticides and encourage abstinence from chemicals in their growing. Frequent the farmers’ markets that are springing up like mushrooms.
• You may join a CSA (community sponsored agriculture), whereby you buy a share of the farm’s production as available fresh each week. You can get to know the farm family and also neighbor-sharists. Neighbors are always dependable than corporations.
• As you get to know more people in the nearby, their talents, skills, and interests will appear – all ready for a barter exchange of goods and services. Organize a real regional exchange. Why shouldn’t your community create a market for local fine crafters and enjoy the fruits of their talents in pottery, painting, sculpture, furniture, handmade clothing …?
• Bank at a cooperative credit union or, at least, at a state owned bank. See that they don’t trade in imaginary derivatives of CDOs (bundles of collateralized debt obligations). Be wary of anything called “securitized.” Citizen bankers? What a concept. They would be conservative and keep borrowing rates low, savings rates high, checking accounts free, and fees more like what the local library charges for overdue books. These banks would not have profit as a primary mission. Nor would they claim personhood even now that the Supreme Court has given them the privilege.
• Buy goods mostly from Main Street merchants, especially ones that carry goods made locally. A Walmart store in a nearby shopping center doesn’t count as local.
• A few communities have issued their own currency. Some call their units time-dollars, but your town can be more imaginative – maybe aureos or argentimes or sun spots. The currency can be used to buy and sell offerings of the people in the network, be it food, furniture, ceramics, surgery, poetry, plumbing, or a multitude of other goods and services.
Materialism? Yes, we should embellish our homes and ourselves with nice things, but not be extravagant with “stuff.” We can enrich ourselves and our communities as we starve the profiteers of big business. Don’t cry for Wall Street. They can always go on unemployment.
The Catskill Chronicle 
Dear Christine,
You are correct in that selecting one or two small efforts at localism will not much change our capitalist, materialist society. But, assembling a bunch of them, using our imagination to establish new initiatives, and inviting neighbors and friends to join the revolution can deprive the corporatists and Wall Street of their lifeblood: profit.
The essay listed only seven suggestions, but there are others that are possible and some already here and now. Would you believe worker-owner factories now in existence in Spain, Argentina, and California? Such enterprtises can be highly competitive — they have no executive salaries or stockholder profits to build into the cost of their products. In Britain, David Cameron, the pre-eminent privateer, can’t object to a plant that is privately owned, even by the employees. Here in the US we must not limit our rights to democracy to voting once every two years. We must talk the talk and walk the walk. Participation in the new neighborhood order needs all of us swarming the wall of scourge capitalism. May I count n you as a member of the Gadfly Revelry and Research Gang?
Peace and parody
Gadfly
Dear Dissenta,
Re: our need for solidarity, cooperation, connection … Gadfly assents. Indeed, that is the brief the column tried to present, replete with ways we may act both individually and in groups with shared interests. Because we can act together, but because governments & corporations also act in cooperation (conspiracy), the column is better titled as “Capitalism vs Caring.” The likes of Big Pharma, Colossal Coal, Slick Oil, and Maligniquent Wall Street have never been accused of caring about anything more than the love of money.
Peace and parody,
Gadfly
Your suggestions for saner living are spot on, and how cheering it is to see the healthy growth of many of them in our community. But: I’m sorry I can’t persuade myself that these irrefutably great and good efforts will be remotely sufficient to free our so-called democracy from the stranglehold of the corporate capitalists. (In fact I’m sadly reminded of the suggestions – exhortations – of Prime Minister David Cameron encouraging the Brits to embrace the joys of a self-created “Big Society” – as he slashes into the health and welfare systems of what was heretofore a comparatively caring country.) More suggestions, Gadfly, please, for truly claiming America for us the people.
Sentence in par 3 should end: “. . . this way greater separation, alienation and weakness lie.”
>>We have rich traditions to guide us: barn raisings, barter between people, cooperatives of family farmers, state banks and citizen credit unions, <<
Getting together we have strength, health and we thrive. The term "solidarity" comes to mind, as in Lech Walesa's movement of labor unions against the Soviet Union. Strength in unity, a simple proposition but discouraged in capitalism where individualism is glorified. I wonder if it has to do with keeping prices as high as possible?
In US we have become conditioned to the individualized competitive style, deluded by Beck and Limbaugh (et al) to believe this way greater “freedom” lies when in fact this way greater separation, alienation and weakness lies. We have less power to negotiate. The competitive style runs counter to cooperation and a "unity of interests," the definition of solidarity. There is nothing wrong with competing in a race or a sport. We hone our unique strengths and talents that way. But when we make competition a hallmark style of living and existing, we are breaking down our strengths, our interalliances, our resources, our power. Competitiveness rests on separation whereas cooperation rests on connection and association.
I'm reminded of Robert Putnam's work (Harvard), "Bowling Alone," etc. which struck me when he noted a gradual loss of social capital in the loss of associations like bowling leagues and all sorts of "leagues" and how this seemed to coincide in social community with the rise of television as the new "hearth" where the atomized – individualized, isolated — families gather around not the fire but the TV set. In this system families do not go out and associate with other families so much (forming molecules, as it were, barn-raising as you put it) but stay at home and watch advertising-laden TV in isolated suburban homes or apartments.
This structure affords a lamentable development of isolated ideas because they are not challenged in the broader “marketplace of ideas” and thus we are developing personalities rather than ideas and thus we have Palin. Commercial newsmedia, to boost ratings, tend to encourage personality, conflict/horserace and psychopathology wherever possible, making matters worse.
The alliances formed in associations offer safety and strength, socially and economically. In our atomized and separated state we are less able to survive (thrive) as easily. In a development that is great for investors in capitalism but not so good for society, individual purchasing is emphasized rather than group bulk purchasing which would bring down prices. This is part of the principal behind single payer, as you know, the power of collective negotiation to bring down drug, equipment and hospital prices. (I worked on the CA single payer bill which passed the legislature twice before being vetoed by Arnold). Instead of a universal noncommercial system of publicly funded healthcare we’ve had a system of individual private policies which allows prices to remain as high as possible. Now Obama has mandated universally that all adults buy individual commercial private policies without making sure premium prices are controlled. (Our Betrayer-in-Chief even gave away the puny public option in a back-room deal). HCR as it stands now is a capitalist/corporate wet dream, and we're going to be in for a bumpy ride — if HCR survives at all.
"Capitalism vs Caring" might be rephrased as "Capitalism vs Connection." Caring, for me, arises from empathy which can arise in connection but without connection it's not so easy to care in the abstract, staring at one's TV set isolated in a room alone. This is a gross generalization but you can see what I'm getting at.
I like the fact that you keep mentioning Glass-Steagall and the need to reinstate it. Very important.