I do favor personal autonomy, but not at the extreme expense of other persons. Interdependence is a fact of life that should support individual and societal “independence”. But, as the saying goes, “My rights end where the rights of others begin”. Artificial boundaries like “fences”, “enclosures”, and capitalism only throw dysfunctional and temporary impediments in the path of more natural courses of human democracy.
According to Wikipedia, “an autarky is an economy that limits trade with the outside world, or an ecosystem not affected by influences from the outside, and relies entirely on its own resources. In the economic meaning, it is also referred to as a closed economy”, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky).
The most glaring flaw in this argument is that “life” itself, by any conceivable definition, is interdependent. It is simply impossible for any “ecosystem” or any “individual” to rely “entirely on its own resources” and become absolutely—“self-sufficient”.
In Atlanta, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both”, (http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Where_do_we_go_from_here.html).
As a real-world example, the recent history of Sweden could be considered an “autarky”. For decades, the “Swedish Model” enjoyed a continuous and peaceful “revolution” of ideas, “not affected by influences from the outside”. Then, at some point, Sweden decided to circulate their currency and trade on the “global market” to become an “open” (rather than “closed”) economy. As a result, the nation suffered its worst recession in a hundred-years, as an insurge of capitalism threatened to crush Sweden’s very equitable system of “Social Democracy”.
But according to James K. Galbraith, the “Scandanavian Model” seems to have survived its recent crises quite well, still providing the rest of the world with a living example to emulate:
“Suppose that instead of building a trade policy to help with wages, we built a wages policy to help with trade. Does that sound far-fetched? It isn’t. If you did that, you would have what economists call the Scandinavian Model. The Scandinavian countries are egalitarian. They have universal unions, high minimum wages, and a strong welfare state. But they also are highly open. They practice free trade. Business there is free to import, export, and outsource. Business there is free to hire and fire. And yet the Scandinavians enjoy, most of the time, the lowest unemployment rates in Europe.”
“The secret is in the wages. If you are a business in Sweden or Norway, there is one thing you are not free to do. You are not free to cut your wages. You are not free to compete by going after cut-rate workers, either native or immigrant. You are not free to undercut the union rate. Successful businesses must, therefore, find other ways to compete. They do it by keeping productivity high. This means that advanced industries thrive in Scandinavia, while backward ones die out. (And that progressive businessmen prosper, while reactionaries fade away.) As a result, the economies stay competitive. The tax and welfare systems then make sure that everyone has enough to live on”, (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/05/james_galbraith.html#comment-69632792).
The political democracy that “Americans” claim to embrace is hollow without the economic democracy that breathes life into the “Scandanavian Model”. As Dr. Martin Luther King wrote from the Selma, Alabama jail in 1965, “If we are to achieve a real equality, the United States will have to adopt a modified form of socialism”.
Dr. King recognized the need for electoral activity removed from the Republican and Democratic parties in “America”. Regardless of how much power one individual or one political party has over others, that power is still reliant upon the collective favor (consent) of the majority. This is even true when media-induced hypnosis places open “debate” on autopilot, and “democracy” becomes a one-way, televised discussion.
So democracy is never dead. But, when most of its participants are “asleep at the wheel”, democracy can be artificially skewed and distorted to favor a slim minority. In the United States, this slim minority is the upper-one-percent of the population, who 1) own the means of production, 2) control nearly all the resources, and 3) make all the key decisions about “how the world works” for the rest of us.
Conversely, a concept like “Economic Democracy” requires conscious, active participation from far more than one-percent of the population. Even in a “closed”, “Autarkic” society, political and economic distribution can become heavily skewed, without democratic participation from the majority of—“workers”. So what will it take for “American” workers to snap out of their democratic hypnosis?
Writers like David Schweickart (“After Capitalism”) and Peter Barnes (“Capitalism 3.0”) speculate that an “American” transition from Corporate Fascism to Economic Democracy will probably require an economic crisis, like World War and/or another Great Depression. Since previous incidents of such tragedies did not result in any sort of “Economic Democracy”, Mr. Barnes suggests that we prepare an organized plan to “reclaim the commons”, well in advance of the next inevitable set of crises imposed by capitalism.
And I agree. Workers must control the means of production through some form of Economic Democracy. But it’s equally important to recognize that this process has no finite end. Economic Democracy must be a continuous and peaceful revolution of new and better ideas that maintains the empowerment and growth of all participants, rather than stifling the majority of human potential for the sake of individual profit and power.
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Comments
For the record, I do NOT think Autarky is “best”.
I do favor personal autonomy, but not at the extreme expense of other persons. Interdependence is a fact of life that should support individual and societal “independence”. But, as the saying goes, “My rights end where the rights of others begin”. Artificial boundaries like “fences”, “enclosures”, and capitalism only throw dysfunctional and temporary impediments in the path of more natural courses of human democracy.
According to Wikipedia, “an autarky is an economy that limits trade with the outside world, or an ecosystem not affected by influences from the outside, and relies entirely on its own resources. In the economic meaning, it is also referred to as a closed economy”, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky).
The most glaring flaw in this argument is that “life” itself, by any conceivable definition, is interdependent. It is simply impossible for any “ecosystem” or any “individual” to rely “entirely on its own resources” and become absolutely—“self-sufficient”.
In Atlanta, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both”, (http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Where_do_we_go_from_here.html).
As a real-world example, the recent history of Sweden could be considered an “autarky”. For decades, the “Swedish Model” enjoyed a continuous and peaceful “revolution” of ideas, “not affected by influences from the outside”. Then, at some point, Sweden decided to circulate their currency and trade on the “global market” to become an “open” (rather than “closed”) economy. As a result, the nation suffered its worst recession in a hundred-years, as an insurge of capitalism threatened to crush Sweden’s very equitable system of “Social Democracy”.
But according to James K. Galbraith, the “Scandanavian Model” seems to have survived its recent crises quite well, still providing the rest of the world with a living example to emulate:
“Suppose that instead of building a trade policy to help with wages, we built a wages policy to help with trade. Does that sound far-fetched? It isn’t. If you did that, you would have what economists call the Scandinavian Model. The Scandinavian countries are egalitarian. They have universal unions, high minimum wages, and a strong welfare state. But they also are highly open. They practice free trade. Business there is free to import, export, and outsource. Business there is free to hire and fire. And yet the Scandinavians enjoy, most of the time, the lowest unemployment rates in Europe.”
“The secret is in the wages. If you are a business in Sweden or Norway, there is one thing you are not free to do. You are not free to cut your wages. You are not free to compete by going after cut-rate workers, either native or immigrant. You are not free to undercut the union rate. Successful businesses must, therefore, find other ways to compete. They do it by keeping productivity high. This means that advanced industries thrive in Scandinavia, while backward ones die out. (And that progressive businessmen prosper, while reactionaries fade away.) As a result, the economies stay competitive. The tax and welfare systems then make sure that everyone has enough to live on”, (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/05/james_galbraith.html#comment-69632792).
The political democracy that “Americans” claim to embrace is hollow without the economic democracy that breathes life into the “Scandanavian Model”. As Dr. Martin Luther King wrote from the Selma, Alabama jail in 1965, “If we are to achieve a real equality, the United States will have to adopt a modified form of socialism”.
Dr. King recognized the need for electoral activity removed from the Republican and Democratic parties in “America”. Regardless of how much power one individual or one political party has over others, that power is still reliant upon the collective favor (consent) of the majority. This is even true when media-induced hypnosis places open “debate” on autopilot, and “democracy” becomes a one-way, televised discussion.
So democracy is never dead. But, when most of its participants are “asleep at the wheel”, democracy can be artificially skewed and distorted to favor a slim minority. In the United States, this slim minority is the upper-one-percent of the population, who 1) own the means of production, 2) control nearly all the resources, and 3) make all the key decisions about “how the world works” for the rest of us.
Conversely, a concept like “Economic Democracy” requires conscious, active participation from far more than one-percent of the population. Even in a “closed”, “Autarkic” society, political and economic distribution can become heavily skewed, without democratic participation from the majority of—“workers”. So what will it take for “American” workers to snap out of their democratic hypnosis?
Writers like David Schweickart (“After Capitalism”) and Peter Barnes (“Capitalism 3.0”) speculate that an “American” transition from Corporate Fascism to Economic Democracy will probably require an economic crisis, like World War and/or another Great Depression. Since previous incidents of such tragedies did not result in any sort of “Economic Democracy”, Mr. Barnes suggests that we prepare an organized plan to “reclaim the commons”, well in advance of the next inevitable set of crises imposed by capitalism.
And I agree. Workers must control the means of production through some form of Economic Democracy. But it’s equally important to recognize that this process has no finite end. Economic Democracy must be a continuous and peaceful revolution of new and better ideas that maintains the empowerment and growth of all participants, rather than stifling the majority of human potential for the sake of individual profit and power.