← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · OlafLynckner
Thread ID: 11096 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-11-16
2003-11-16 02:09 | User Profile
ESCAPE FROM CAPITALISM lessons from the Mondragon experience
In order to move beyond capitalism, solutions for several problems have to be found. Mondragon is important because it offers viable and workable solutions for some (but not all) of these problems. I want to study the experiences by the Mondragon cooperatives more closely, but here are some preliminary data, and references that I could locate so far. Ownership of means of production. 1. Means of productions should be owned by those who use them to work. Both capitalism and communism fail in this respect. Under capitalism, means of production are owned by shareholders. Often, these shareholders have no knowledge of the production process. They are not interested in production, but in profit and gain. Under communism, means of production are owned by the 'community'. In practice, this means that state bureaucracy and party bosses are steering production. Both under capitalism and under communism, economical processes are directed by people that lack the capacity and the knowledge to do so - although practice has shown that communism is more problematic still than capitalism. Nobody owns stock in any Mondragon cooperative. A cooperative is financed by members' contributions. Every member, when entering the cooperative, lends a substantial amount of money to the enterprise. The amount of this loan is fixed every year by the 'governing council' (junta rectora). It corresponds to about the lowest annual salary. Candidates that do not have the cash, can borrow it from the cooperative; their salary during the first three years of membership is diminished by about one third. The contribution of the new member is allocated to the new owner-employee's internal capital account (ICA). The ICA is created when the member enters the cooperative, and it is closed when he/she leaves it. Everybody having an ICA has one vote at the General Assembly. About fifty percent of the profits is also allocated to every members ICA. Every year, the member receives 6 percent interest on his or her ICA. When a member leaves the firm, mostly at retirement, he/she receives the capital on his or her ICA. The ICA is closed and the right to vote is cancelled. At the age of retirement, the amount saved on the ICA can be considerable. By 1995, a representative member of a Mondragon co-op had an ICA balance of about $70.000 (Lutz 1997); older members have considerably more. It is important to note that the principle 'one person- one vote' is strictly applied. Those with more money on their ICA do not have increased voting rights. This means that a new kind of 'ownership' is created. The owner-employee's of Mondragon cannot sell their property; they can only transfer it. Those who are members gradually elect and coopt their successors. I am inclined to believe that this system is basically sound and offers a viable alternative for capitalistic (stock) ownership. There is an important caveat, however. Kasmir notes that cooperative workers do not consider the firms theirs in any meaningful way (p.197). As a matter of fact, one cannot even speak of ownership proper in the case of Mondragon, because there is no stock that can be sold. The very concept of 'ownership' loses much of its usual meaning. Therefore, I believe that the question of 'ownership feeling' is not very important. What is important, is the feeling of self-determination by the workers. Clearly, the Mondragon cooperatives are very successful in motivating managers. Probably, this is caused by the fact that managers are not subordinated to stockholders outside the firm. But in order to remain competitive within a capitalistic economy, managers are pressed to introduce methods and measures that hurt the sense of self-determination of blue collar workers. Although the Mondragon type of 'ownership' constitutes a crucial step forwards, it does not automatically induce self-determination and intrinsic motivation on the shopfloor. Democracy and Work 1. A second problem to be solved is that of democracy on the workfloor. "The participatory role of the rank-and-file co-op member is essentially constrained to their electing every year two members to the Governing Council. They do so by majority vote in the General Assembly which ordinarily convenes once a year. Besides voting two of the six electable members of the Governing Council for a three-year staggered term, the General Assembly also has to decide to accept the annual business report and vote on some basic matters like the internal rate of interest to be charged on equity accounts and the level of threshold payments for new members" (Lutz 1997, p.1410). The Governing Council has nine members and appoints the management proper for a period of 4 years. This structure strongly reassembles that of a classic representative democracy, with the voting at the general Assembly corresponding to a general election, the Governing Council playing the role of the parliament, and the management functioning as a kind of government. After their appointment, the management has large autonomy. There are two advisory councils: the Management Council and the Social Council. But as long as the management operates within the initial guidelines, they remain independent (although, of course, they are at risk of missing their reappointment when the four-year term is over). Nevertheless, there are also direct-democratic decision channels. Workers, just as managers, can demand a meeting of the General Assembly. In order to reach this goal, they have to collect signatures, just as for a legislative initiative. When one third of the workers demand it, the General Assembly of the cooperative is convoked. Although it has only an advisory role, the Social Council can also convoke a general Assembly. I believe that the democratic structures in the Mondragon co-ops are basically sound. It should be remembered, however, that democratic structures are necessary, but not sufficient for real democracy to evolve. Click here for Problems with democracy at Mondragon Income levels 1. Salaries, called anticipios, "..are based on job ratings. Ratings are numerical rakings given to each job depending upon skill level, responsibility, and such personal attributes of the worker as seniority and pace of work. Job ratings increase by increments of .05, from a low of 1.0 to a high of 3.0. These indexes are then converted into a pay scale in which the highest-paid director earns 4.5 times the salary of the lowest-paid production worker. Such a slim difference between the earnings of workers and managers is considered one of the most egalitarian attributes of the system. In 1900, while I was living in Mondragon, a delegation from the Soviet Union toured the cooperatives. A daily newspaper reported that delegation members were impressed with the system, but they thought that the 1:4.5 margin should be increased. This struck a nerve among cooperators, for the pay differential was one of the most fiercely contested issues between managers and workers. Two years earlier, the Caja Laboral Popular voted to increase its job index to 1:6. This vote affected only the bank; nonetheless it set a powerful example. In 1989, Fagor management called a meeting to propose a widening of the salary spread there. Workers organized against the management proposal and defeated it before it was taken to a vote. Managers argue that they are not sufficiently remunerated for their work. A study by the Caja Laboral Popular (1988) showed that the highest-level engineers in production co-ops, to pick one example, earn 30 percent less than comparably skilled engineers in private firms in the province of Gipuzkoa (...) Workers in Mondragon (...) continue to view the 1:4.5 salary ratio as a central democratic feature of the system" (Kasmir 1996, p.35). In my view, the salary spread is an issue that should be decided at a larger scale than the single firm or cooperative. It should be decided by law, and given the importance of the issue, the decision is best made along direct-democratic lines. This is necessary in order to eliminate the labour market. As long as the cooperative is an egalitarian island in a capitalistic sea, external pressure on a narrow salary spread will continue. As a matter of fact, I consider a 1:4.5 spread to be unacceptably broad. In the absence of labour market mechanisms, I believe that it would be narrowed very substantially. When the spread would be under direct democratic control of society as a whole, factors such as the monotonous nature of many blue collar jobs would be translated in higher rating, whereas the agreeable character of more intellectual jobs would lead to lowering the ratings for intellectual and managerial jobs. In 1990 and 1991, proposals were made in the General Assembly of the social security cooperative and in the Fagor group to widen the pay margin to 1/9 and 1/10. These proposals were defeated by the workers. In 1992, a group was formed in the cooperatives that was linked to a syndicate. In 1992, a recommendation from the Third Cooperative Congress, to widen the salary ratio to 1/7 or 1/8 in the near future, and to still wider margin later, was again defeated (Kasmir 1996, p.190). Mondragon offers an interesting example of how the labor market tends to impose income spreads that hurt feelings of justice in most people. Eliminating economic competition 1. Economic competition can be replaced by economic association within the cooperative complex. But the co-operation have to compete with capitalistic firms, and to do so successfully, they are pressed to introduce stressful working conditions, lowering wages and so on. This how Lutz (1997) sees it: "..what is really crucially important is the simple conclusion that we now have a living and prosperous example of an alternative to the capitalistic absentee-owned corporation. Economic democracy can indeed be made to work on a rather massive scale, and no capitalist corporation seems capable of really threatening its success in the marketplace. This is the lesson from Mondragon. At the same time, it must be remembered that this new structure of an enterprise is not a panacea for the solution of all economic problems. As long as we have an international and global economy with low wage producers in China and elsewhere, it is doubtful that even the best organized and most efficient co-op can remain competitive in the long run. It is too early to assess the Mondragon response to this challenge, but in theory there seems only one practical option that does not undermine the ethical principles on which everything is built: to create co-operative firms abroad that would be associated with the Mondragon group. In so doing, the new economics of industrial co-operatives could spread around the globe in an even more impressive manner. Time will tell whether this path is or even can be chosen". Preponderance of labour over capital 1. Here are some enthusiastic comments by Mollner (1994): "Unlike conventional business, which rank their priorities in the order capital-product-managers-employees, Mondragon ranks its priorities in exactly the opposite order: employees-managers-product-capital. People are given the highest priority and 'things' the lowest. People are not fired to increase profits: they are well utilized to increase profits. Keeping and providing additional jobs in the 'relationship economy' is their highest priority". The Association of Mondragon Cooperatives owns its own bank, the Caja Laboral Popular. This bank uses the money that it collects among the cooperatives and their members to start new cooperatives: "The association always begins a new enterprise with a group of people who are already friends, never with one individual. It views these natural bonds of friendship as the bedrock upon which the new firm is built. The bank and the founding group agree to stay together until the business is profitable. The members of the founding group put twice the membership fee that others will invest and the bank loans any additional capital at roughly half the initial rate. If more trouble develops, the interest rate drops to zero. If the enterprise encounters still more difficulties, the Bank may donate capital to the business. In other words, the riskier the loan, the lower the interest rate. Eventually, even if it has to switch managers or product line, the business becomes successful and is able to repay much of the loans, although the bank also uses a portion of its profits from time to time to reduce the size of the loans of all of is cooperative business. This relationship is not really as unusual as one might think. The bank is simply relating with these new business in the same way any large company relates with a new division that it has created to produce a new product, such as the development of the Macintosh computer within Apple Computer. The only difference is that the bank itself is a division of the only conglomerate called the Mondragon cooperatives and this is its particular task. The circle defining 'we' has simply been extended beyond the corporation to include not only the Bank but the entire community" (Mollner 1994)
"The main focus of the Association of Mondragon Cooperatives is the creation of owner-employee jobs to expand the opportunity for people to participate in the relationship economy. This gives the current owner-employees job security and allows them to be unreservedly enthusiastic about automation. Thus the Mondragon cooperatives tend to be very aggressive in robot development. They recognize that it both eliminates repetitive and dirty jobs and increases productivity, critically important in the international marketplace. At the same time, the cooperatives view owner-employee job creation as the best service to the community at large. Once a person has an owner-employee job in a Mondragon cooperative, best efforts are made to guarantee it for life. Thus, the person's family will never be dependent on public assistance but will continually contribute to the needs and development of society. Therefore, every act of each owner-employee every day is experienced as simultaneously providing for oneself and serving society. The for-profit versus non-profit personality split with which we are so familiar in our society is totally absent in the attitude of the Mondragon member. When you walk through a factory, you feel like you are visiting in someone's kitchen or working at a church fund-raising event, and yet the productivity of cooperative members is the highest in Spain. They bring their most mature spirit to the job each day" (Mollner 1994) An economical system should guarantee job security, because this permits intrinsic motivation to become the proper motivation of economic activity (see my Maslow page, and my Frey page). Apparently, the cooperative system of Mondragon is very successful in guaranteeing life-long employment. But of course, this success is reached through increasing growth within a capitalistic society, without real political democracy. As productivity increases, people should be able to decide shortening of the work time at the level of society as a whole. Without this possibility, job security can only be guaranteed through economic growth, that could be undesirable from an ecological and social viewpoint. The possibilities to guarantee life-long job security should be qualified somewhat. For instance, cooperatives in Basque country are allowed to contract 30% employees. The MCC "..has been trying to reduce labour costs by means of starting to hire small numbers of temporary workers who are not (yet) members (eventuales) of the co-op. Regardless of how few of them there may be, and regardless of whether they are ultimately eventuales or just temporales we would be faced with a serious breach of one of the key principles articulated by founder José Maria" (Lutz 1997, p.1419). Moreover, the MCC has started an aggressive foreign investment strategy, setting up plants in third world countries, that are run as capitalistic firms, with hired workforce. Some books and papers on Mondragon: Sharryn Kasmir (1996) "The myth of Mondragon. Cooperatives, politics, and working-class life in a Basque town" Albany, NY: State University of New York Press Mark A. Lutz (1997) "The Mondragon co-operative complex: an application of Kantian ethics to social economics" International Journal of Social Economics 24(12), pp.1404-1421 Terry Mollner (1994) "Mondragon: archetype of future business?" Bulletin Sci.Tech.Soc. 14, pp.83-87 William Foote Whyte, Kathleen King Whyte (1988) "Making Mondragon: the growth and dynamics of the worker cooperative complex" Ithaca, NY: ILR Press (there is also a second edition that I haven't seen) Some links on Mondragon [url]http://www.mep.es/maining.html[/url]
[url]http://incolor.inetnebr.com/dennis/mondragn.shtml[/url]
J. Cohen, J. Rogers, ET al., Association and Democracy., (and by And Olin Wright), London-New York, Towards, 1995, pp. 267.
The collection is marked it of written on the associative democracy, published edited by Erik Olin Wright. This model of democracy also is known like "consociative democracy ", second the expression coined from Lijphart that of was one of the founders (cfr. J. Lijphart, 1959). Tests of authors can be found to you that they have given fundamental contributions to this theory, like Philippe C. Schmitter ( The Irony of Modern Democracy and the Viability of Efforts to Reform its Practice , pp. 167-83), Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers ( Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance , pp. 7-98; Solidarity, Democracy, Association , pp. 236-67). The interest that moves these students is the substitution of the model neoclassic democratic (based entire on the conception of political representation ) with a corporative theory of the democracy, which would have to be able to explain in better way the operation of the complex societies, and to interpret of better the demands. A such theory (but to approximately forty years from its birth can be considered like a true and own effective shape of democracy), has had between its merits that one to have known problematic the relationship between democratic institutions and the structure of the society, one gap never overwhelmed from the bloomed liberal democratic theory in the first half of our century. In fact, this last one had not been pushed beyond a pure occasional reflection on the structures of the smaller associations, and, if we make exception from the work of Knows you Roman, it was remained tied mostly to the analysis of the shapes hierarchically subordinate of the political ordering (in particular way the state ), remaining faithful to the print conferred from Hans Kelsen to the theory contemporary democratic.
In this volume they are faced in locked way, with a good level of theoretical deepening, and with thematic lucidity, the main topics that constitute the bench marks of the associative democracy. The curatore has not omitted to illustrate the problematics of the issues, not lacking in dialectic an inner one, as it appears from the contributions of Wolfgang Streeck ( Inclusion and Secession: Question on the Boundaries of Associative Democracy , pp. 184-92), and of Ellen M. Immergut ( An Institutional Associative Critique of Democracy , pp. 201-6). To this purpose it goes put in relief the fact that to sure formulate a descriptive theory not deemed from the necessity of having itself to confront with a canon normative, likely to transpire from the strongly predictive value that Cohen and Rogers have made with their impressive contribution. On this point, the general principle remains in any case valid according to which to illustrate the processes of operation of a social phenomenon is not equivalent to sanction of immediately neither the conformity to the theoretical premises from which was party, neither the practical legitimate. In our case, the problem of the corporative representation, than in some social models has replaced nearly integrally the instruments of political representation, cannot be eluded through the simple acknowledgment that draft of one praxis by now consolidated, asking the political theory to abdicate in favour of conceptual instruments of other nature.
To the contrary, from the closely descriptive point of view us it seems that after the happened one of these ideas in the years it passes to you, they are committees to stasis rising , when the social changes of the contemporary world become adaptable to logical less and less of corporative type (tasks only to the two depositors of the economic increase and social mobility). For this reason, the relationship between political representation and representation of interests appear needy of one new definition, of sure in direction of a freeing of the systems of representation from corporative ties you. This truth appears clearly when all the students place the problem of a adaptability of the model to the new requirements of the contemporary world. To confirm this last position the fact that joins, if through the corporative shape the Socialism becomes an utopia possible, as Olin Wright writes, in the same way, to lead back political logic to that one of a cetuale status diverges considerably from the society model that the modern democracy has meant to look on to in the course of its history. That democracy, is one perspective difficultly dissociabile from the idea of one political soggettivitÃÂ , historically identified much more in the demand than title for the rights that in the exercise of shapes, solo in part democratics, of social status. 1. Nico De Federicis (from Bollettino telematico di filosofia politica)
WITHIN democratic theory a remarkable consensus is emerging around Tocqueville's view that the virtues and viability of a democracy depend on the robustness of its associational life. The consensus is rooted in a renewed appreciation for the limits of states and markets as means for making collective decisions and organizing collective actions. Associations promise other ways of getting things done, from supporting pubic spheres and providing representation to cultivating the virtues of citizens and providing alternative forms of governance. When institutions are properly designed, according to the consensus, associations provide the social substance of liberal-democratic procedures, underwrite the very possibility of markets, and provide means of resistance and alternatives when states or markets fail. Moreover, when associational life is multifaceted and cuts across identities, communities, geographies, and other potential cleavages, it provides a dense social infrastructure enabling pluralistic societies to attain a vibrant creativity and diversity within a context of multiple but governable conflicts.1 A robust associational life may enable more democracy in more domains of life, while forming and deepening the capacities and dispositions of democratic citizenship. Finally, for those committed to political equality, associations promise the means for voice for those disfavored by existing distributions of power and money.2 1. There are, of course, many other reasons to value associational life. Most if not all of the goods related to sociability, intimacy, socialization, and freedom have associative dimensions and conditions. My interest in associational life here, however, is somewhat more narrowly focused on its democratic effects. I use the term effects because associations formed for a variety of goods and purposes may serve democratic goods and purposes as well. To be sure, there are often trade-offs between democratic and other kinds of goods. The extent to which freedom and democracy trade off, for example, is a staple of liberal political thought. But there are many cases in which a single purpose produces a variety of effects that, although different, do not trade off against one another, as when a nonpolitical association develops skills of organization that can be put to political use in other venues. And sometimes the trade-offs among associational effects are internal to democracy, a problem that has gone almost unremarked in the literature. The solidarity required for effective political voice and representation, for example, may work to dampen dissent and deliberation within the association, and thus limit members' experiences of dealing with conflict by deliberative means. Given the current state of democratic theory, however, it is virtually impossible to relate these democratic hopes and expectations to the kinds of associational life we have or might have in the future. Associational life may be moving to the center of many democratic theories today, but there has been relatively little theoretical work that specifies what we should expect associations to do for democracies or why we should expect associations to carry out these democratic functions. This book is a modest attempt to think about and theorize these two questions. The most important reasons to attend to the associational terrain of democracy have less to do with democratic theory, however, than with social and political changes that are surpassing its conceptual capacities. Our received democratic theories were crafted during an era in which the nation-state was consolidating and had become the primary locus of nonmarket collective action. Under these circumstances, the business of doing democratic theory was relatively simple--at least compared to what it has become. Democratic theorists could focus on questions of representation, inclusion, distributions of state and state-sanctioned powers, and the characters of citizens. These traditional issues in democratic theory are hardly obsolete. Strong constitutional states are necessary to robust democracies, remaining central agents in achieving distributive justice, enforcing rights, providing security, and carrying out many other functions necessary to democracy. But they are now less encompassing of politics and collective action: the locus, domain, and nature of politics is changing, becoming more extensive and many times more complex.3 The era of the nation-state is not gone. But the forces and capacities distinctive of the state are increasingly overlaid by numerous other forces and contingencies, so much so that the terrain of politics is no longer focused solely by state-centered institutions, organizations, and movements. Nor, with changing modes of production, technology, and communication, is the landscape of economic interests as it was even a few decades ago. Combine these changes with an increase in identity politics and other postmodern features of political culture, and we can see that we are now faced with the very generic problem of rethinking the nature and location of collective action.4 The new prominence of associations--and the need for a democratic theory of association--needs to be understood broadly within this context, which involves four distinct although interrelated features. In different ways, each pushes the question of association to the foreground. Globalization Numerous forces are now pushing toward interdependencies among nation-states, including the development of global markets in finances, capital investment, labor, manufacturing, and services. There is an absolute increase in the numbers of immigrants and refugees flowing across borders. Environmental degradation likewise flows across borders, in many cases producing global effects. Global security alliances are in flux, as state-based actors such as NATO seek to redefine their missions in the aftermath of the Cold War. At the same time, new forms of communication are enabling new global publics, especially in the areas of human rights and environmental issues. There are new global associations as well as new transnational political regimes such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) labor and environmental riders. Each such development means that states lose some of their control over their resources and populations, a condition that can limit the extent to which democratic self-rule can be achieved through the state. But these same developments can weaken the powers of predatory states, while opening new, global venues of democracy.5 Differentiation Late-modern societies reproduce themselves through differentiated systems and sectors, each with its own distinct logics, purposes, criteria, and inertia. At the highest level of abstraction, states are differentiated from markets, with states attending to matters of social order through law and administration and markets organizing production and consumption via the medium of money. States and markets are in turn differentiated from systems of social reproduction located in families, schools, religious institutions, and other social groups. Late-modern societies likewise involve specialized systems for the reproduction of knowledge and culture located in universities, sheltered government research programs, and institutions devoted to arts and culture. More generally, differentiation enhances capacities for segmented collective action, not only owing to the advantages of specialization, but because distinct sectors develop their own norms and criteria. Markets respond to effective demand, art responds to aesthetic criteria, states work within the domain of positive law and administrative law, science develops factual claims, families cultivate primary socialization and intimacy, and so on. At the same time, differentiation tends to politicize society in ways that constrain these enhanced capacities. In differentiated societies, states do not control the resources necessary to the reproduction of society. Ironically, perhaps a measure of the success of liberal-democratic constitutionalism is the extent to which capacities for collective action migrate into society. But these same developments shift political conflict into society in ways that exceed the capacities of state institutions to mediate. In addition, differentiation fuels coordination difficulties--not just because of the lack of agents with capacities to coordinate, but also because the criteria embedded within sectors are often incommensurable. For example, socialization within families often conflicts with demands of the market; art for art's sake can conflict with moral socialization; market-driven demands for technology can conflict with pure science; and ethics of duty cultivated by religious and secular moral codes can conflict with the instrumental reasoning typical of markets and government bureaucracies. Differentiation thus increases sectoral capacities for collective action, while also increasing the zones of political conflict and undermining political responsibility. The state's control over coercive resources makes it a key player--maybe even the ultimate player6--but it increasingly lacks capacities to respond to political conflict, let alone engage in global planning. Complexity While increasing differentiation increases capacities, it also increases the complexity of collective actions. As Ulrich Beck has argued, the era in which collective actions could be conceived on the modern model--the application of rationally developed and monitored plans to deal with social problems--is over. Large-scale collective actions within complex environments produce unintended consequences, which in turn politicize their environments in reactive ways. Owing to the unanticipated side effects of engineering-based models of social change (for example, the costs of monoculture and pesticides in food production, dysfunctional neighborhoods resulting from planned urban renewal, birth defects caused by new medicines, and stockpiled nuclear wastes), there is a broadly based public skepticism about large-scale planning--what in a similar spirit James Scott refers to as the unmasked pretensions of "high modernity."7 We have, in Beck's terms, entered into an era of risk avoidance.8 In a "risk society," collective actions are accompanied by political calculations that distribute risk according to the constituencies that are mobilized by any given plan. Risk consciousness tends to focus on complexity and contingency, increasing the potential political opposition to any given collective action. As Claus Offe puts it, "The larger the horizon of 'actually' possible options becomes, the more difficult grows the problem of establishing reflexive countertendencies which would make reasonably sure that one's own action remains compatible with the 'essential' premises of the other affected spheres of action."9 This "absence of concern for consequences" is crisis inducing and erodes tolerance for modernization processes.10 In Beck's terms, political institutions have become subject to an increasing "congestion": mobilization around distributions of risk produces an "in voluntary deceleration" of the political capacities of governments as "various groups and levels of decision-making . . . mobilize the legal means of the state against one another."11 Pluralization and Reflexivity These developments are intertwined with changing patterns of individuation. Owing to their differentiation, complexity, and fluidity, modern societies array multiple biographical choices before individuals. As with other developments, this one is paradoxical as well. On the one hand, individuals are subject to the late-modern condition of choice. Choice cannot, as it were, be refused, nor can the responsibility that accompanies choice. And yet, paradoxically, individuals' capacities to be responsible for the consequences of their choices are diminished by the complex and fluid contexts within which they are made. Add to this the fact that choices and risks are unequally distributed, and we can see how protean, postmodern personalities can coexist with closed, fundamentalist personalities, produced by slightly different locations and experiences within the same kind of society.12 Identity politics is, in part, the result of the kind of society that raises--indeed, forces--the question Who am I? and in the process induces individuals to discover and think about how their social locations interact with their race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, profession, regional attachment, and lifestyle. Insofar as this pluralism of identities is not merely a matter of interesting difference, it is the result of raised consciousness of differential distributions of risks--injustices, if you will. The political consequences are ambiguous. On the one hand, the increased reflexivity provoked by these circumstances provides the space for ethical growth in politics.13 Only reflexively conscious individuals can ask the political questions (as Max Weber put them) What should we do? and How should we live? In this sense, politics permeates individuation as never before, as feminists noted two decades ago with the slogan "the personal is political." On the other hand, the persistence of choice can also make the temptations of fundamentalist identities more irresistible, which in turn can produce a politics within which little reciprocity or compromise is possible.14 Paradoxically, then, late-modern societies cultivate capacities for self-rule at the same time that they dislocate the institutions through which these capacities might be realized. As Claus Offe notes in commenting on the changing fortunes of parties, legislatures, and other familiar political actors, "What turns out to be surprisingly and essentially contested is the answer to the question 'who is in charge?' "15 I am not going to argue here that associations in general provide new locuses of political agency--or that by extension they provide, in general, new locations and meanings for democracy. No such generalization could be meaningful in today's environment, given the extensive diversity of associational forms, and given the fact that their capacities are quite different from those of states and markets. Rather, the question of associational life provides a more modest take on democratic possibilities: it provides an opening to the domain of questions we need to ask if we are to grasp the potentials and dangers of the changing terrain of democracy.16 The question Who is in charge? will begin to make sense only if disaggregated. The topic of association is a key trajectory of disaggregation, one that will allow us to put reasonably precise questions about whether and how these new patterns of politicization might admit of democratic possibilities. The relationship between democracy and association stands out from a normative perspective as well. Associational life is distinctive as a linkage between the normative and conflictual dimensions of politics--a linkage that has always defined the heart and soul of democracy. If we resist for the moment limiting what counts as an "association" (say, by speaking only of secondary associations, voluntary associations, and the like), we can see that questions about associational life return us to those defining features of politics that enable democracy. The concept of association evokes the possibilities of collective action, but in a way that retains social (as opposed to legal/bureaucratic or market) modes of mediation among people, through language, norms, shared purposes, and agreements. The concept of association thus connects the normative questions that define politics--What should we do? and How should we live?--to the social and linguistic media that enable these questions to be asked, discussed, and decided. In this sense, as John Dewey appreciated, democracy is closer to associational life in spirit and ethos than it is to any other means of organization.17 States, for example, can embody these definitive questions only encumbered by its systematic functions and their legal-administrative modes of organization--although they can use their resources to structure associative venues within which these questions might live. Markets displace such questions: there is no "we" in a market, and therefore no structural possibility of collective self-rule, but only an aggregate of individual preferences and firms responding to these preferences--although democracy can often live within such market-oriented organizations. Insofar as democracy evokes the ideal of collective self-rule; insofar as self-rule evokes decision making with the possibility of normative content; insofar as democracy evokes the collective consideration of future purposes, democracy regenerates itself through its associative medium, however necessary state and market modes of organization. Of course, there is nothing new about these ideas in themselves: liberal constitutionalism has always been based on the premise that states must structure associative venues for political judgment--parliaments, for example. What is new, rather, is the possibility that democracy might, via its associative media, expand within and beyond its current state-centered venues. The resurgence of the interest in associations across the ideological spectrum draws on this generic democratic idea. Given the current state of democratic theory, however, it is virtually impossible to relate even these generic democratic hopes and expectations to the kinds of associational life we have or might have in the future. No doubt our suspicions should be aroused by the breadth of the current consensus about the democratic contributions of associations. Of course, an authentic consensus would be a remarkable achievement. But it is difficult to gauge the extent of consensus, owing to numerous conceptual and normative differences, not least about the meanings of "democracy," but also about what constitutes an association and its virtues, what the domain of associational life entails, and--perhaps most importantly--what the nature of the society is within which these associative relations are conceived. Thus Michael Sandel, Robert Bellah, and other civic republicans have emphasized the impact of associations on the civic virtues.18 Influenced by civic republicanism, Robert Putnam's important Making Democracy Work argued that in Italy successful democratic governance and associational life are interdependent. Putnam's work has spurred a wave of debates and focused an increasing amount of empirical work on the nature and effects of associational life in amassing "social capital"--the dispositions of reciprocity and trust that enable collective actions.19 Nancy Rosenblum's Membership and Morals--the first careful theoretical account of associational life--details the multiple ways in which the diverse landscape of association contributes to pluralistic democracy through multiple effects upon character.20 The work on political culture within the American pluralist tradition represented most prominently by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture, has not only regained its stature, but has combined with a normative emphasis upon democratic participation in an impressive survey by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics.21 Liberals have rediscovered associational life as well. John Rawls's hopes for the moral effects of association expressed in A Theory of Justice have gained rare mention until recently.22 In addition, there has been renewed attention within the field of constitutional law to the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly protect freedom of association--a fact that sits uneasily with the liberal view that freedom of association is an intrinsic value.23 In a different vein, critical theorists who favor radical democracy, such as Ju ̈ rgen Habermas, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Claus Offe, Ulrich Preuss, and Ulrich Beck, have emphasized the ways in which liberal rights--traditionally understood as protections from the state--may also be understood as constituting a society within which associations can develop distinctive means of collective judgment and action. Associations can provide the social infrastructure of robust democracy by enabling direct self-governance, providing venues for participating in public conversations and opinions, and securing influence over states and markets.24 Finally, there is an emerging school of "associative democrats"--most prominently Paul Hirst, Joshua Cohen, and Joel Rogers--who see associations as means of unburdening the state and revitalizing smaller-scale, functionally delineated arenas of democratic decision making.25 In most cases, growing interest in associations tracks the rediscovery of the political weight of civil society--a sectoral rubric I shall explain but do not use here for reasons elaborated in chapter 3. Moreover, the sheer complexity of the associational landscape provides ample opportunity for selective exemplifications of associative virtues. The Nonprofit Almanac lists 576,133 tax-exempt organizations, excluding religious organizations, as of 1995. These associations are distributed over virtually every social need, identity, and function, and represent 645 identifiable kinds.26 Add to this count religious associations, groups that lack tax-exempt status owing to their political purposes, the numerous groups that simply lack a tax status because they lack income (neighborhood watch groups, sporting and other social groups), as well as various semilegal and criminal associations. Even more expansively, Robert Wuthnow reports that over 3 million small, informal support groups exist in the United States, covering virtually every conceivable social need.27 Broader conceptions of association provide an even more extensive picture: counting workplaces as modes of association, for example, would add many millions more. If the sheer diversity of associational landscape should give us pause about the difficulties of theorizing, recent commentators have not let it pass unnoticed that there seem to be no obvious generalizable ways in which associations enhance democracy. Indeed, many kinds of associations do not seem good for democracy at all, as Amy Gutmann rightly emphasizes when she suggests that the contemporary enthusiasm for associations is even irresponsible given our relative lack of knowledge about the associational terrain.28 Wherever associations have capacities for collective action, they also possess the potential to convert their control over one resource into another, as firms may do when they control social investment, urban design, the lives of their employees, and even public policy through their power of exit.29 Jon Van Til calculates that 77.5 percent of nonprofit expenditures and 64 percent of nonprofit employment are within associations that act much like for-profit organizations in that they pursue economic interests within competitive markets.30 These include hospitals, private schools and universities, organizations providing social services under government contract, business and professional associations, unions, and fee-based arts groups. Business associations in particular can use their unparalleled capacities to accumulate money to undermine the powers of deliberation and voting, the two key means of democratic influence. Hate groups damage deliberation through their combined racism and secretiveness, even when they do not bypass politics through violence. Some kinds of associations transform pluralism into parochialism, as do fundamentalist religious sects when they breed intolerance that carries over into political life. Nancy Rosenblum notes that freedom of association and social mobility "are vast engines of social cliques. They generate groups that labor to preserve their social restrictiveness and pretended distinction, and to claim deference from others. Above all, there is the American penchant for secret societies and the groups formed in reaction, to combat their 'conspiracies'--the Masonic fraternity, for example, and the rabid associations, also secretive, organized to counter Masonic power."31 From the point of view of democracy, then, it seems that there are associations and then there are associations. Perhaps it was for good reason that Madison was suspicious of factions, and Rousseau outlawed secondary associations in The Social Contract altogether as incompatible with the common good! At a minimum, one might be forgiven for wondering, as does Rosenblum, whether it might be meaningless to generalize about the democratic effects of associational life at all. I am convinced that we can generalize. But to do so we shall need to move beyond the abstractions that too often dominate the debates and make the right kinds of distinctions--distinctions that capture the diversity of associational goods, powers, and structural locations, and then compare these with the many different kinds of democratic functions associations might serve. After discussing background conceptual and methodological issues in chapters 2 (the literature) and 3 (the concept of association), in chapter 4 I delineate the many democratic effects associational life might potentially have. These I consider under three broad classes of effects: developmental effects on individuals; effects in constituting public spheres of political judgment; and effects that underwrite democratic institutions such as representation. The point of distinguishing these effects is threefold. First, the differences among democratic theories today tend to register in different views of what the functions of associations ought to be. Second, once the functions are detailed, it is clear that a democracy requires all of them. Differences among democratic theories are, from the perspective of associational life, differences in the mix and weight of their functions, both manifest and latent. The meanings of "democracy" are now plural--not just because the term is contested, but because the venues of politics are increasingly plural while decreasingly contained by formal political institutions. Third, distinguishing these functions makes it clear that not every kind of association can perform every kind of function. To the contrary, there are trade-offs: associations that are able to perform one kind of function may, for that very reason, be unable to perform another. A robust democracy will require, at the very least, a pluralism of different effects related in aggregate as if it were an associational ecology with numerous niches and specializations--an ideal I denote with the metaphor of a "democratic ecology of associations." The reasons for trade-offs among the democratic effects of associations become clear in chapter 5, the theoretical core of the book. Here I develop three sets of distinctions that have an impact on democratic potentials of associations. First, whether an association is voluntary or nonvoluntary is important for how conflict is handled within associations, and hence whether politics is internalized or externalized. These differences affect what I refer to as the developmental effects of associations on individuals' political capacities, knowledge, civic orientations, and other dispositions relevant to forming democratic citizens. Second, the constitutive media of association--whether it is primarily embedded within or oriented toward social resources (such as solidarity, friendship, or identity), power, or money--make crucial differences in the capabilities of an association (for collective action, resistance, representation, and the like) as well as the structural pressures that come to bear on its capabilities. In addition, differences in media affect the kinds of dangers associations may potentially pose for democracy. A corollary distinction has to do with whether an association is vested in its medium of reproduction or not--a distinction that indicates associational resources as well as whether or not it seeks change through opposition. Third, the purposes or constitutive goods of an association make a difference for democratic effects. Some kinds of goods (for example, the public good of community development) require collective action, and so will foster coalition building. Other kinds of goods (for example, individual material goods sought by wage-oriented unions) lend themselves to bargaining and compromise. The identity goods that hold together lifestyle or religious associations tend toward public displays aimed at recognition. And still other kinds of goods (the status good of private schooling, for example) are difficult to achieve in democratic settings, and will tend to be pursued in nondemocratic ways.32 In chapter 6, I suggest that when these distinctions are combined, we have the beginnings of a theory of association within democratic theory. Together, these distinctions cut across one another to show that associations with different kinds of attributes speak to democratic functions in highly diverse ways. Here I develop a set of typologies designed to distinguish associational kinds according to differences in their democratic effects. Finally, in chapter 7, I suggest that democracies require a mix of different kinds of associations to carry out the diverse and complementary tasks that, together, enable democratic responses to political conflict--a democratic ecology of associational life. Fostering and maintaining a democratic society depends upon protecting, adjusting, empowering, and regulating associational life to achieve an optimal mix of democratic effects. The analyses I provide in this book are not empirical claims. They are nothing more than theoretical elaborations of questions, and I do not intend them as anything more. What I provide, in the end, is a relatively modest piece of middle-level theorizing--without empirical evidence or analysis--devoted solely to the question of what we might expect of associations based on their structural locations and their purposes, if only we know what our expectations are. The analysis is not simple, and I shall be the first to admit that detailing the complex, plural, and ambiguous terrain of associational life in terms of democratic effects has its tedious aspects. Knowledge can bear a certain amount of tedium; what it cannot bear is pointless tedium. While ultimately the reader will be the judge, my own view is that conceptualizing the terrain of associational life is now one of the most important tasks for those democrats who, like myself, believe that democracy can still be expanded and deepened. I do have hopes for this analysis that go well beyond what I am able to accomplish here. Within democratic theory, I should like to contribute to reviving the radical core of the democratic idea--the idea of collective self-governance. I am impressed with the possibility that even today democracy might be rethought and even radicalized within the vast array of participatory spaces that large-scale, complex, and differentiated societies now offer combined with the multiple means of making collective decisions that now exist. In characterizing my aims in this way I do not intend to be sectarian. Depending upon how my analysis is read, it may also contribute to liberal problems of boundaries, liberties, and distributional justice, pluralist interests in multiplicity and diversity, deliberative democrats' interests in conditions of rational public judgment, utilitarians' concerns with efficient kinds and levels of organizations, realists' concerns with checking and balancing power, neo-Marxist interests in class structures, rational-choice interests in conditions of collective action, and postmodern interests in symbolism and spectacle. All these concerns are implicated in the multiplicity of associational attachments and the spaces they generate, and there are many potential books in each one. This book is, however, no more than a preface to any of these possibilities. Although this is not a work of social science, I do have hopes it might aid in generating propositions that could bridge democratic theory and empirical research. It is possible to read this book as offering hypotheses as to how specific associational ecologies enhance or constrain democracy. If we can develop a good account of the associational ecology of the developed liberal democracies, we should be able to predict what kind of adjustments, inducements, laws, policies, movements, and other forces might, in aggregate, be good for democracy. This kind of project, however, goes far beyond the knowledge and resources I am able to marshal here. My analysis is limited in another respect as well. Although I think my approach says something about all the developed liberal democracies, it is written from an American perspective. There are peculiar features of the American political system and social landscape that make the question of association more obvious, if not more important, than in other liberal democracies. Thus, in the colonization of America from the Mayflower Compact through the settlement of the frontiers, the associational form often preceded organized governement. American politics continues to be marked by this history. Americans have a propensity to create or join associations in response to perceived needs, threats, and conflicts--a propensity often combined with a generalized suspicion of government. In part for the same reasons, "the state" in the United States is, in fact, a diverse patchwork of some eighty thousand or more units of government with their associated supports, clients, and cultures. Relative to most European states, the American state is decentralized and fragmented. Thus, especially at the local level and within functionally delineated policy areas (school boards, water conservation districts, transportation authorities, etc.), government often looks more like "association" than "state." Certainly these qualities make the American state more open to the influence of associations--for better or worse, depending upon their purposes and powers. Then again, there are also distinctive political functions for associations generated by American single-member-district electoral system when contrasted to the proportional representation systems more common in Europe. Because the single-member district denies representation to minorities, it produces, prior to elections, incentives for coalition-building under the umbrellas of the two major parties. In proportional representation systems, majority coalitions are formed after elections among smaller parties. In the American system, political associations have the infomal role in pre-election coalition building that is formalized in proportional representation systems. Thus, the American system is more likely to generate political associations than a proportional representation system. At the same time, because the system of single-member districts tends to leave substantial minorities in different locales permanently without representation, it also generates incentives for these minorities to turn to associative venues not only for political voice, but also for redress of social needs that go unrepresented in political institutions. The "at-large" system of multimember districts in local government often has the same effects. In addition, in contrast to parliamentary systems, the American system of checks and balances between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches means that any significant collective action requires overwhelming majorities, while powerful minorities can effectively block initiatives at multiple points within the system. The overall effect is a system that is less responsive to social needs and disadvantaged minorities than other institutional mechanisms would be likely to be. One celebrated effect is to reinforce the view among the less wealthy and educated that voting is not really very important. A less noticed effect is, again, to displace much collective action onto associations--either as means of influencing government through lobbying or public pressure or as means of addressing needs, threats, and conflicts when government does not respond. These and other distinctive features of American politics suggest that associative means of collective action have been more prominent in the American case than in other developed liberal democracies. From the perspective of democracy this is not always a good thing, and I certainly do not mean to idealize the American example. As will become clear, a political system that diminishes the impact of the vote (in contrast to parliamentary systems) will tend to increase the power of those with the means to organize associations--usually those with money and education. Weak or unresponsive units of government, or those captured by associations, can fail to protect vulnerable members of society--as when they fail to enforce civil rights laws or worker safety regulations under pressure from conservative and business associations. Nonetheless, I think my analysis, with modifications, transcends the American case to encompass other developed liberal democracies. My analysis speaks less well to countries where ethnic or religious communalism remains a dominant force--Afghanistan, Iran, some Balkan states, and many African states, for example. As will become clear in chapters 2 and 3, I am assuming an associational landscape that is pluralized in the two senses. First, the purposes of associations are segmented rather than encompassing, so that associations express discrete interests (or clusters of interests) or nonencompassing identities. When associational attachments become encompassing, no democratic process can mediate conflicts. Under these circumstances, every conflict or threat cues an entire universe of meaningful social attachments, which will tend to provoke (rigidly principled) war rather than deliberation, negotiation, and bargaining. Although the most prominent examples are abroad, the United States is not exempt from this pattern of attachment. The Christian Right comes very close to exemplifying such encompassing attachment, but is held in check by the fact that it exists within a pluralized society, meaning that its members will often have interests in and allegiances to jobs, public schools, regions, hobbies, and the like that are not encompassed. Fortunately, most associations in the United States are relatively discrete in the interests and identities they embody and express. Added together, they produce a pluralism of interests and identities that, ideally, check and balance one another in ways that make democratic responses to politics more attractive even for those involved in encompassing associations. Second, the pluralism of discrete associations in the United States and other developed countries tends to be matched by individuals with complex identities. Most individuals inhabit a variety of roles with corresponding identities: those of parent, son or daughter, church member, employee, union member, consumer, sports fan, man or woman, lifestyle aficionado, member of a neighborhood, city, and region, parent-teacher association member, gardener, protester, Democrat, and so on. People are more likely to have some basis for understanding and empathizing with others in socieities where they inhabit crosscutting and overlapping roles. At the very least, complex identities disincline people to fight with arms--few threats are encompassing enough to justify this form of struggle, as compared to deliberating, demonstrating, bargaining, exiting, and other strategies that are the lifeblood of democracy. In contrast, those violent struggles that have occurred periodically in the United States almost always involve cases in which associational attachments are not overlapping, but are marked by cleavage. Historically, for example, discrimination against African Americans has extended to political enfranchisement, housing and neighborhoods, social associations, employment, career mobility, union membership, schooling, and religious worship. We should not be surprised that such a history coincides with associational attachments that rarely bridge race and provide too few incentives for democratic responses to conflict. The American case provides exceptionally rich terrain for conceptualizing the democratic possibilities of association not because it is exemplary, but because it combines a rich tapestry of associative venues for collective action with more than enough cautionary tales to give pause to anyone inclined toward uncritical celebration.
2003-11-17 05:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=OlafLynckner]ESCAPE FROM CAPITALISM lessons from the Mondragon experience
In a different vein, critical theorists who favor radical democracy, such as Ju ?rgen Habermas, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Claus Offe, Ulrich Preuss, and Ulrich Beck, have emphasized the ways in which liberal rights--traditionally understood as protections from the state--may also be understood as constituting a society within which associations can develop distinctive means of collective judgment and action. Associations can provide the social infrastructure of robust democracy by enabling direct self-governance, providing venues for participating in public conversations and opinions, and securing influence over states and markets.24 Finally, there is an emerging school of "associative democrats"--most prominently Paul Hirst, Joshua Cohen, and Joel Rogers-
[/QUOTE]
Interesting article. It would be interesting to have a little background and a link though. BTW, where is Mondragon?
Also the names and ideologies in the paragraph I cited don't sound like what's normally associated with nationalist innovation. This basically sounds like an article written by liberal communitarians.
2003-11-17 10:01 | User Profile
This was the subject of a lengthy discussion here a while back. My search, however, failed to turn up those threads. Could they have been vaporized during the last software upgrade. That would be a pity.
Anyway, Mondragon is proof that Catholic social thought is workable in practice. Mondragon was started by a Spanish Catholic priest in an attempt to put Catholic economic principles to work in very practical ways. Mondragon has an enormous turnover. It's big business, but it's also small business. This is the way we as a movement need to go.
Here are a couple of links you may find interesting:
[url]http://www.ping.be/jvwit/Mondragon.html[/url]
[url]http://195.55.138.84/[/url]
Amitore Fanfani, G.K. Chesterton, and Hillaire Belloc are perhaps the greatest popularizers of Catholic social thought in print. Here is an interesting review of Fanfani's classic work on the Protestant roots of Capitalism:
[url]http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/fanfani.html[/url]
Here is a good link on Chesterton:
[url]http://www.chesterton.org/[/url]
Here is one on Belloc (also on Catholic authors generally):
[url]http://www.catholicauthors.com/belloc.html[/url]
I would describe myself as a Third Positionist. Both Capitalism and Communism are the enemies of man, and both must be brought down. Catholic social thought forms the plinth of Third Positionist ideas.
Happy reading!
Walter
2003-11-17 10:28 | User Profile
This was the subject of several prior discussions that I am unable to locate. Could these threads have been vaporized during the last software upgrade?
I consider myself to be a Third Positionist, which is based upon Catholic social thought. Catholic teaching on social justice rejects both state sponsored socialism and capitalism, since these structures tend strongly toward monopoly, the disenfranchisement of people, and arbitrary rule. The Catholic vision is one of sole proprietorships, guilds, unions, family businesses, cooperatives, and so forth.
The pillars of Catholic social thought are:
Solidarity - the notion that people must stick together via organic and horizontal connections.
Subsidiarity - decisions should be made on the lowest possible level of competence - this excludes (at least most) centralized economic diktats by both state and large corporate bodies.
Private property - the institution of private property is the greatest practical guarantee of individual human dignity, and must enjoy iron clad guarantees.
Marriage & Family - this is the key to all social institutions, and must be guarded against all challenges (marriage is all but dead in the West now).
Nationalism - this is really an extension of #4, see Articles 56-58 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The temption to Empire is closely connected to the temptation to Paganism. Empire is the very sin of Babel.
Mondragon was invented by a Spanish Catholic priest to put Catholic social teaching into practice. Here are a couple of links for your information:
[url]http://www.ping.be/jvwit/Mondragon.html[/url]
[url]http://195.55.138.84/[/url]
British authors G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc are among the most prominent Catholic social thinkers:
[url]http://www.catholicauthors.com/belloc.html[/url]
[url]http://www.chesterton.org/[/url]
Amitore Fanfani wrote an extremely important work on the subject, describing the Protestant roots of Capitalism. Here is a short review of that work:
[url]http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/fanfani.html[/url]
Happy reading!
Walter
2003-11-17 18:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]This was the subject of several prior discussions that I am unable to locate. Could these threads have been vaporized during the last software upgrade?
Walter[/QUOTE] From being in the same position as you looking unsuccessfully for some old threads, it's my general feeling that the records of the forum are still here, albeit often in garbled form. The difficulty seems to be in locating them with the search function, which doesn't seem to work too well.
An experience which happened to me is looking for several old threads recently. Although if working properly the search function should have easily located them, as the keywords were prominent, it did not do so, and I had to use fairly mundane means to locate them.
2003-11-17 18:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]This was the subject of several prior discussions that I am unable to locate. Could these threads have been vaporized during the last software upgrade? [/QUOTE]
Here you go, Walter:
[url]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=6298[/url]
2003-11-17 20:50 | User Profile
Mondragon is in Spain. I put this article up not because I am totally in favor of the school but because it is viable alternative to capitalism that does not entail massive state control which is something I object to. A large portion of the problems facing Europa and the destruction of traditionalism and the race that created it stem from capitalism which is why I investigate these matters.
I do find some things appalling about Associative Democracy as described GDH Cole and Hirsh because they provide insights into ways that help foster social cohesion which is what is needed to reversal racial destruction and itââ¬â¢s absence is what let it happen in the first place. That goal is not a left/right issue but social/anti-social issue. I am interested in non statist and an communitarian models that promote cohesion because such arrangements are of benefit to the right and has been seen as such from the time of DeBoland. The utility of an idea can be separated from those that created it so I am like rightists from over a hundred years in that I seek that which is likely to reverse societal destruction and I accept utility no matter who created it. So that Mondragon is an anti-statist leftist notion by design but it can I feel be adopted in part to the right as part of a broader social synthesis.
My comrade Triskelion's way is that of neo-guildism and Distributalism divorced from Catholic doctrine. My way is more along the lines of traditional National Syndicalism which again was inspired by Catholic social doctrine. Any such expression is National-Socialist to those that understand the meaning of those two words used jointly although other labels can and should be used. A great many nationalists push some variant of the ideas I mentioned or a synthesis like Labriola, Deat with his workings with the Cercle Proudhon and the latter Cercle Européen which had some benefits for traditionalists although I certainly donââ¬â¢t endorse the full scope of those. programs. In short, I am closer to Bacconierââ¬â¢s original syndicalism ( VO and I helped to publish a book of his writings in English a couple of years back which sold well) which impacted heavily upon the Nordic Imperium school I have lived for these many years.