Real Utopias
Erik Olin Wright argues that the taming and eroding components of anti-capitalism are not a theoretical exercise; they able to be obtained in the “real world”. This is what Wright describes as a “real utopia”. The utopia element as Wright puts it, is directed at the emancipatory ideals of liberty, equality, and solidarity in actual space and time.[1] They are to be pragmatic implementations of public policy. Yet these implementations are obstructed by capitalist firms. Internal resources are distributed in a grossly unequal manner to continually undermine efforts at solidarity. It is absent any democratic awareness of policy direction. However, a “real utopia” is exemplified in worker-owned cooperatives where all of the assets of the firms are jointly owned by the employees themselves, who also govern the firm in a one-person-one-vote, democratic manner. In a small cooperative, this democratic governance can be organized in the form of general assemblies of all members; in larger cooperatives the workers elect boards of directors to oversee the firm.
The Mondragon Corporation is an experiment in Spain regarding worker cooperatives. Other examples can be noted in the work of Gar Alperovitz and his New Economy Coalition. The Institute for New Economic Thinking is another group working on democratic cooperatives. There are a significant number of worker cooperatives that are currently operating successfully in the United States. This would include corporations with works as the major share-holders. This information can easily be accessed on the internet. Notwithstanding, worker cooperatives may also embody more capitalistic features: they may, for example, hire temporary workers or be inhospitable to potential members of particular ethnic or racial groups. Cooperatives, therefore, often embody quite contradictory values. Nevertheless, they have the potential to contribute to eroding the dominance of capitalism when they expand the economic space within which anti-capitalist emancipatory ideals can operate. Clusters of worker cooperatives could form networks; with appropriate forms of public support, those networks could extend and deepen to constitute a cooperative market sector; that sector could - under possible circumstances - expand to rival the dominance of capitalism. [2]
Real utopias can also be found in proposals for social change and state policies, not just in actually existing institutions. This is the critical role of real utopias in long-term political strategies for social justice and human emancipation. One example is an unconditional basic income (UBI). A UBI simply gives everyone, without conditions, a flow of income sufficient to cover basic needs. It provides for a modest, but culturally respectable, no-frills standard of living. In doing so it also solves the problem of hunger among the poor, but does so in ways that puts in place a building block of an emancipatory alternative. UBI directly tames one of the harms of capitalism - poverty in the midst of plenty. But it also expands the potential for a long-term erosion of the dominance of capitalism by channeling resources towards non-capitalist forms of economic activity.
Consider the effects of a basic income on worker cooperatives. One of the reasons worker cooperatives are often fragile is that they have to generate sufficient income not merely to cover the material costs of production but also to provide a basic income for their members. If a basic income were guaranteed independently of the market success of the cooperative, worker cooperatives would become much more robust. This would also mean that cooperatives would be less risky for loans from banks. Somewhat ironically, a UBI would help solve a credit market problem for cooperatives. Wright would agree with presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s UBI platform, at least initially. I suspect Wright would argue more along the lines of a living wage, where Yang argues for a cap at $1000.00 per month. Clearly this would need to be assessed in relation to the relative wealth of the demographic region in the United States.
The real utopia is in essence a worker owned or controlled democratic economy.
ANTI-CAPITALIST ECONOMIC RIGHTS
In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was elected president of the United States with the daunting task of ending the Great Depression. Many of his landmark New Deal legislation was implemented as a “safety net,” not simply as support for impoverished Americans, but primarily to rescue capitalism from devastation. While the New Deal was successful in preventing the disintegration of society, it did not end the Great Depression until the final days of World War II. At that time FDR capitulated to unions and labor leaders by agreeing to fundamental economic rights of citizens. On January 11th, 1944, State of the Union address to Congress, FDR referred to a Second Bill of Rights and prefaced this reference with the following warning, “We have come to the clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men.”[3]
The principle elements of the Second Bill of Rights, can be divided into two fundamental elements: opportunity and security. FDR argued that individual freedom is inadequate without economic security and that economic deprivation itself threatened social cohesion. With respect to economic opportunity, FDR argued for the economic rights to: a useful and remunerative job; a good education; every businessman to conduct their business free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. Regarding economic security, FDR argued for rights to: protection from the economic fears associated with old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; decent housing for families; a living wage in order to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation.[4]
The Second Bill of Rights, as described by Cass Sunstein, has been partially implemented in the United States while other industrialized countries have already implemented such rights.[5] Though economic rights were not specifically included in the original Constitution and subsequent amendments, scholars such as Sunstein demonstrate that the Founding Fathers (Madison and Jefferson) nevertheless considered the strategic significance of these rights as essential to democracy itself as Madison states:
By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited accumulation of riches; by the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the laws of property, reduce extreme wealth to a state of mediocrity, and raise indigence toward a state of comfort.[6]
And Jefferson states:
The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislatures cannot invest too many devices for subdividing property … Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.[7]
The idea of economic rights did not attract much attention in the United States until FDR was elected president. The current experience of the Great Depression made the need for economic rights quite clear in the minds of a large proportion of the citizenry. Sunstein indicates that new “rights” need not take the form of amendments to the Constitution. They can be recognized through reinterpretation of the Constitution by courts or when a general consensus develops among large majorities of citizens as to what constitutes a “right.” This is only a half measure, however.
For example, some of the most concrete results of FDR’s efforts were the Social Security Act of 1935, the creation of several agencies that produced greatly needed jobs, labor protection laws that created the right for workers to organize into unions and a federal minimum wage, antitrust policies, the GI Bill of Rights, record tax rates on wealthy corporations and individuals. But perhaps more importantly by the end of FDR’s presidency, large segments of the American population accepted his Second Bill of Rights as legitimate rights. Yet today, many of these programs have been terminated and Social Security is under attack, continually.[8]
In this context FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, as economic rights guaranteed to all citizens, must be memorialized as an amendment to the Constitution in securing democratic economic rights. Wright’s anti-capitalist agenda, both taming and eroding capitalism, provides an emancipatory path forward. Coupled with a Green New Deal, a Second Bill of Rights must be an immediate political agenda in the promotion of peace and justice.[9]
The Post World War II “Golden Age” of capitalism was, arguably, an historical anomaly, or a brief period in which favorable structural conditions and robust popular power opened up the possibility for relative egalitarian model. Before that time capitalism was a rapacious system, and under neoliberalism it has become rapacious once again, returning to the normal state of affairs for capitalist systems. As this problem appears to become more acute, political movements attempting to reform, if not overthrow capitalism completely, are under consideration. And the drive to end monopoly capitalism, and its disastrous effects on the planet and its inhabitants, and the avoidance of a sixth massive extinction demand an anti-capitalist movement, real utopian economic rights.
Affordable Housing for Women Workers in India
[1] John Gostil and Erik Olin, Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance, New York: Verso, 2019; Robin Hahnel and Erik Olin Wright, Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy, New York: Verso, 2016; Wright, Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, New York, Verso Books, 2010.
[2] See the following organizations for more information on cooperative and democratic economies: Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC; Institute for New Economic Thinking, New York, NY; Democracy Collaborative, Washington, DC; Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Amherst, Massachusetts; Center for Economics and Policy Research, Washington, DC; New Economy Coalition, Boston, Massachusetts; Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC; Death Penalty Information Center, Washington, DC; Innocence Project, New York, NY; Center of Concern, Washington, DC; Network, Washington, DC; Pax Christi, Washington, DC.
[3] This quote can be easily accessed via internet search at cites such as New Deal Progressives, www.newdealprogressives.org.
[4] Presumably, this would include human rights in terms of environmental rights and access to natural resources. A Green New Deal (GND) would, arguably, be an inherent dimension of a Second Bill of Rights. The GND aims to address climate change and economic inequality. In the 116th United States Congress, it is a pair of resolutions, House Resolution 109 and S. Res. 59, sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). In the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections Jill Stein, Green Party candidate, ran on the same platform. Also see Jeremy Rifkin, The Green New Deal, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019; Naomi Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case For A Green New Deal, New York: Vintage Books, 2019; Larry Jordan, The Green Dew Deal: Why We Need It And Can’t Live Without It – And No, It’s Not Socialism, www.pageturnersbooks.org, 2019. Also see Sunrise Movement and Friends of the Earth, www.rebellion.global; Extinction Rebellion; Rising Up; The Climate Mobilization; “anthropocine extinction”.
[5] Cass Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever, New York: Basic Books, 2004, 197-198.
[6] James Madison, 14, The Papers of James Madison, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1975, 197-198.
[7] Thomas Jefferson, 8, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, 681-683.
[8] This can also be analyzed in relation to the Human Development Report (HDR), 2019 Human Development Index Ranking in which the United States ranks fifteenth in the world. See United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2019. Beyond income, beyond, averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century, www.hdr.undp.org.
[9] Cass Sunstein, After the Rights Revolution: Reconciling the Regulatory State, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
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