By Meanna Gray
This week’s readings discussing mutualism incite a perspective finally focused on the fundamental construction of a future that prioritizes solidarity, community, and a redistribution of financial resources. Sara Horowitz informs us that mutualism is the product of an amalgamation of the “same-old-same-old that gets rehashed in the current ‘blah blah sphere’ of social media, think tanks, podcasts, and foundation and corporate board rooms.” (Horwitz 1). The old notion of “what needs to be done” is finally given breath by mutualism’s breakthrough to build solidarity and organize wealth equally. (Horowitz 1). Mutualism requires the understanding that a restructuring of the economic system is inherent to any movements for social change. The praxis of mutualism lies in supporting community mutualist activity that is already in shape and form at the community level to restore a mutualist industry to rival the government and private sectors.
One clear moment in history that Horowitz sheds light on is how garment-worker unions in the 1920s in the United States created the remittance system that immigrants use today to send money to their families in their home countries which led to the creation of affordable housing models by the same unions. This shows how the distribution of capital to communities begins with solidarity. The new mutualist wave entails the support of solidarity between communities or groups in the form of unions that are confronting a larger power that controls a certain right, whether it be a civil right like housing or an educational right to free education. However, the second principle asserts that mutualism includes people having a shared economic mechanism that may be harder to achieve. Uniting groups within similar economic backgrounds contrasts the theory of interest convergence in my experience in critical race theory. Meaning, in order to ignite a certain change with momentum there needs to be people in some positions of power, or in this case, different economic regimes that at least have an interest in the matter.
I found it interesting how the urgency of climate change forces society to converge for a sharedinterest to reshape the very infrastructure of society that may not call for such economic similarities. The urgency is a self-interest in itself. One cannot receive profit or long-term capital without the consideration of their own viability. Sustaining the earth is in the interest of all and it gives an interesting moment to reshape the foundations of capitalism. Although the greed of capitalism is in direct contradiction with theories of conservation and redistribution, the government will be forced to use their duty to conserve at the detriment or expense of the largest industries to connect with mutualists’ support of the communities’ necessities. Horowitz states that government contracts can be performed by the mutualist sector. As an aspiring lawyer, I agree that the next phases of civil rights advocacy involves finding a third option apart from the two choices of centralized government and the free market. Mutualism promotes the growth of a new market in the interest of wealth and resource redistribution. The Italian constitution’s “indivisible reserves” was an interesting concept because it fuels a new cooperative formation within the context of government law making.
Horowitz insists that the issue of climate change can be a useful, strategic platform to provide mutualists access and power. From her perspective, this transformation to restore mutualists as a formidable counterpart to the government and the private sector requires first the reliance on mutualists to respond to natural disasters. Horowitz writes, “They organize food pantries, get people critical medication, take care of pets, comfort one another and create mutual aid networks.” (Horowitz 1). The government and larger corporations invest in solutions that mirror the work of mutualists to garner a profit. However, the repetition of this leads to a worsened climate and severe inequality. Thus, a new generation of thinkers will have to shift their perspective of public policy to a more mutualist approach that invokes the spirit of civil rights, unions, and cooperatives. The new role of these politicians and government will be to safeguard the mutualist industry by providing it government contracts to allow them to get paid for their services. This financial gain will allow them to use any margin to invest back into their organizations.
Esteban Kelly shares the sentiment that building the future must rely on the growth of solidarity between communities and the economic system. Similar to my own beliefs, Kelly suggests that garnering the support of elected officials, government workers, lenders, investors, and power brokers is essential to the growth of mutualism. The transformation of societal infrastructures demand the flexibility and adaptability of the law as a source of industry compliance and scaling. He further asserts that access to already existing institutions is an essential element of support and should be woven into the first task of advocates.
In addition, Kelly and Hoover illustrate that building a “democratic future that centers people communities solidarity, and ecology in our ecosystem” requires the scaling of larger projects like worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting, community land trusts, and nonextractive finance. (Kelly 1). The issue of reimagining and restructuring this future lies in the amount of resources and time devoted to “raising awareness and producing data about whether that leap is even possible” takes away from the praxis of certain utopian theories. (Kelly 1). Problematizing the theory itself, from a dis perspective, only illustrates a hesitancy to begin the change. No catalyst for civil rights as been a perfect calculation to change, but one can learn how to make failures of efforts into lessons to drive the praxis forward. Critical race theorists struggle with this same concept – what happens when prison abolitionists want different things? What happens when different leaders of the most marginalized groups envision a different way towards social change and the destruction of capitalism? These intragroup debates, while essential, need to step towards current investment for the future. Kelly and Hoover offer these steps through the concept of mutualism by building worker and community ownership and control through existing efforts.
To achieve this objective, the authors look toward the Black community and how the language of “economic alternatives” for self-sufficient societies has been stalled for several generations because of its presumption that it cannot displace the exploitation of racial capitalism. A relevant example is India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association, which is the country’s largest women’s collective for organizing and empowerment.
The redistribution of wealth from the private sector that Horowitz emphasized is connected to Kelly’s attention to movements in Philadelphia and California that have begun the process to allocate money to establish public banks. The call for reform requires supporting efforts like these projects that are creating current strategies in praxis. These projects are the foundation of wealth distribution by creating the beginnings of systems that will be relied upon when other theories are fully formed and coalescing towards a broader, more connected vision. The Drivers Cooperative, which works as a democratic rival to economic powerhouses Uber and Lyft instill a more cooperative attitude that, with support, can undermine frameworks within the capitalistic fold. The advancements of technology allow these industries to become more beholden to large cooperatives influence over people of similar economic backgrounds similar to what Horrowitz’s iteration.
The urgency of climate change that affects the efficacy of capitalism – since what can garner industry and capital without living breathing consumers or people to exploit? The industry, even under more unprecedented conditions like the COVID-19 pandemic, showed a startling ability to introduce alternatives. These alternatives require the urgency of the government to use its power of compliance through the law to compel the capitalistic industry to adhere to man-made rules and regulations. A democratic future must enlist the government to assist projects of change in order to usher in alternative methods to industries that have enough revenue to ignore resilient grassroots efforts. However, because of the younger generation’s connectivity and access to technology, demands are becoming harder to ignore. The consequence of unprecedented and unpredictable crises lead to a rise in social consciousness. This can be seen in the demand that student debt be canceled and the emergence of permanent real estate cooperative land trusts. The crises often show how quickly government action can be deployed and the extent to which it can be disbursed. For the first time people witnessed how a wealthy economy can mobilize in the interest of its people: “unemployment benefits for most workers (including freelancers, for the first time), monthly child tax credit payments, stimulus checks, free COVID tests and vaccines even for the uninsured, and forgiveness of small business loans powered by the SBA and underwritten by banks and CDFIs.” (Kelly 2). This reconfigured the imagination of solidarity in an economic infrastructure and pushed forward the notion of telling elected government officials what the economy needs. Instead of pushing towards “one static vision” one can create ideas of how a solidarity economy can arise in different scenarios. (Kelly 2).
The first scenario given by Kelly considers the notion that the United States government does not become an invested partner to scale the democratic economy. This would require working outside of the law to support the promotion of public banks, green social housing, and worker ownership. The second scenario features the success of public banks working alongside young politicians who “have found ample support to test out community benefit agreements, permanent real-estate cooperatives, tuition-free public colleges, universal child care programs, and democratic municipal energy and broadband utilities in progressive cities.” (Kelly 3). The third scenario enlists a presumption of volatile upheaval that affects the status quo of racial capitalism. In this scenario, crisis response systems within the already faintly established solidarity economy survive because they meet or solve an urgent social problem or burden. An important issue of this scenario is that it lacks political support and it will take a considerable amount of time for the next emergence of political leaders who build the society around economic democracy. The fourth scenario seems to be the most optimistic since there is no collapse of the political and socio economic system. Instead grassroot movements apply pressure to the government and elect new politicians while demanding a more accountable role for providing for underserved communities. The transformation is fueled by infrastructure projects that build a solidarity economy sector.