Summer, 2008
In May 2008, I was invited by the Fair Trade Shop of Valletta (Malta) to speak within the framework of their Worldfest. This is a very nice group of people who are bringing the seeds of a new culture of solidarity in Malta. If you visit Malta, don't miss their shop in the old neighborhood of the city
Il-ÄŚanut l-Arka 306, L-Arka, St Pauls Street, Valletta, Malta. Tel: +356 21244865 - Fax: +356 2131 5562 Here is a short summary of I shared with those who attended the discussion forum on
Making the social economy work. In recent years I've been working in the field of culture, coaching foreign and independent artists living in Finland. I’ve loved music ever since I was a child.
It speaks directly to the heart and can bring the listener to higher states of consciousness. Unfortunately today, most of the artists are victims of the “formats” industry. As a result, the artists are getting more impersonal, and from New York to Bali, you hear the same music. Recently, my friend Mir-0 who plays all kinds of acoustic instruments and produces organic sounds using modern technology, was invited to the States to take part in a Live Looping Festival. He was terrified by what he experienced during his one week stay. He realized that not only most of the artists were playing for themselves, but they were also looking for all possible ways of replacing human creativity with technology. This is exactly what is happening with nature. Because it has become hard to control and dominate it, some people think it would be good to replace it with something more efficient. I believe that blind faith in technology is leading the world down the wrong path.
When the world was passed on to my generation in the 60s, there was much criticism about the criteria to reach capitalism's dreams of progress. In the industrial world, some people started to seek more human values and to experiment with alternative life styles. Peace, ecology, the environment, and civil rights were on the agenda of a new generation of thinkers and activists. One consequence was the inevitable reactionary backlash that occurred in the 70s and 80s. Then in the beginning of the 90s the Soviet Union collapsed. We were left with only “one world” and the implications could not be more profound. It meant that there were new territories to be conquered and new people to enslave in a new stage of capitalism commonly coined “globalization”. Globalization is not new. Long distance capitalism has its origins in the 17th century, when the first multinational was founded in The Netherlands. Since then, capitalism has never been a linear process. In an historical perspective, periods of opening – more interpenetration of national economies – have always been followed by partial or complete closures, as societies have sought relief from competition, immigration and social and cultural change. Somehow, the lesson is that the internationalization of capitalism is, and always has been, vulnerable to setbacks. One reason is that global capitalism goes with global leadership. We know all that leadership is never undiscussed. On the one hand, the USA, who have been leading the world for several decades, have found new challengers since
large countries like China, India, Russia and Brazil, have entered the world system. On the other hand, nation-states have an ever-reduced power compared to the new transnational global forces. It’s not very clear yet who will play which role in the future. But one thing is clear: huge investments in the USA have been made since the 11th of September in the defense and military sectors. Another reason is that being in a period of transition, global capitalism throws into question many of our most cherished notions about the meaning and direction of progress. For many people around the world, the triumph of information technology appears more like a bitter curse, with the high-tech global economy moving beyond the mass worker and global companies eclipsing the power of nations, socializing the production costs and privatizing the benefits, with little concern about threatening environmental and social issues.
You don’t need to be a prophet to realize that something is going wrong somewhere. From an ecological point of view, our small planet is not able anymore to regenerate itself. Since the industrial revolution, we have used it as a rented car. Our global ecological footprint is too big and we would need one or two more planets like ours to support modern consumption patterns for all. What if the whole population of China or India consumed like the average American or European? From a social and economic point of view, millions of people are becoming unemployed or underemployed and left with only two choices: either to barter their labor force or turn to depression, political and religious extremism, theft or criminality. All over the world, technology displacement, job loss and reduced purchasing power are leading to a dramatic rise in crime and random violence, affecting youth most of all. When it comes to ethical values, it seems that individualism and materialism are leading the party. The result is there for all to see. On the one hand, the world is losing its grace and humankind its soul. Even our most basic connections with the process of life – through the food chain, for instance – are getting disrupted. Planet Earth looks more and more like a battle-field, a bio-tech lab with the remaining biosystems as a testing ground, and all human beings as guinea pigs for a great experiment which could mean the end of humanity. On the other hand, the rules that should regulate the architecture that was meant to sustain the world’s growing interdependence – democracy – are disobeyed and ignored by a growing number of key actors, starting with those who should give the example.
One question for the world today is: will we be able to rewrite a social contract for the benefit of the whole planet or shall we continue to bury our heads in the sand? I have spent most of my life in cities like Brussels, Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. But I also spent years in the countryside and in the wilderness. I got the chance to meet and share the daily life of people at the margins of society, to start up ecological intentional communities, to work with hundreds of groups, grassroots organizations, NGOs, CSOs and CBOs in Europe, Canada, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans. There is a whole world out there waiting for us. Now that the business and public sectors are no longer able or interested to secure some of the fundamental needs of society, people have little choice but to begin organizing themselves, co-operating, re-establishing communities, building “new tribes”, as a buffer between the impersonal global market forces and the increasingly weaker central governing authorities. Some do it online, some others do it on the ground. This choice is available for all of us and attracting a growing number of people who refuse to be parked inside some morose “underclass”. If you travel around the world with open eyes, you’ll see that there is much pain, poverty, violence and competition. But you’ll also see a great deal of hope, co-operation, friendship and care. Many people are getting organized, re-directing their own energy, talent, resources, and creativity to positive goals. Nothing around us is completely black or white, and part of the solution to today’s world problems is within us, in the ways we look at the world and feel more responsible for what's happening around us. The media unfortunately are not of much help. There is a great need to touch reality with our own hands.
One problem with global capitalism is that it’s part of a dominant culture, and as such it tends to completely eclipse other ways of looking at the world. What I want to point out here is that very often, when looking for solutions, we feel
very uncomfortable with their very diversity and unpredictability. We refuse to see them. Fair trade is one example. Nobody could ever predict that a small group of people in Holland in the middle of the 60s would be at the origin of an international movement with thousands of actors all over the world. The same goes with organic farming, and many organizations which have become part of our daily life somehow. They are successful, not because they will solve all our problems, but because they share a vision that gives people a sense of grounding in the larger human and biological community of planet Earth. What I mean is that more than ever before in human history people need to feel they belong to an open community and an indivisible organic whole, where there is a role for them to play. They need to broaden their loyalties and affiliations beyond the narrow borders of the marketplace and the nation-state. Their concrete involvement can take many different forms. And the third sector is the one that can actually give them some concrete opportunities. The foundations for a strong community-based “third force” exists. French social scientists introduced the term Social Economy in the 80s in an attempt to clarify the difference between the public sector, the business sector and the third sector - which is the most socially and environmentally responsible of the three sectors. The organizations that belong to this sector are effectively serving many functions with strong ethical values, like care for people and the environment, and fair share. They operate in many fields – health, art, culture, youth, technology, trade, finance, social services, environment, and there is nothing easier than to create your own self-supporting group, club or NGO. Here are some numbers. In the end of the 90s, internationally renowned social critic Jeremy Rifkin was already speaking of 1.400.000 organizations belonging to the third sector in the USA, compared to 350.000 in the UK, 300.000 in Germany, 50.000 in France (6% of total employment), and 23.000 in Japan. This did not include the growing influence of the third sector in the former communist nations of the Soviet bloc and in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where thousands of volunteer organizations have been born to answer people’s needs. Of course, there is still a lot be done to transform the third sector into a new force that could lay the groundwork for a post-modern or post-market era. I can’t predict if this social utopia will become reality or not, but I know it’s a great feeling to be part of it. And if the task is overwhelming, the challenge is exciting too. Now, the future lies in our hands, and it’s everybody’s responsibility to choose where to invest their time, talent and energy.
I hope we can join forces. Article by Eric E. van Monckhoven