Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Cooperation is not only a good idea, it already works in practice

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Cooperation is not only a good idea, it already works in practice

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from his blog Systemic Disorder.

Cooperation is a fundamental human trait. You may find it bizarre to read a post that begins with such a sentence, but sometimes we do have to point out the obvious.

Competition, we are continually lectured, is the primary driving force animating human beings. It is rarely, if ever, put quite so explicitly, but the prevailing ideology does tell us exactly that. Competition is the fuel of economic growth and progress in a system based on never-ending life-and-death fights to gain dominance at pain of going out of business — so we are told. Competition, conveniently, can be won by only a few heroic figures, who must be given control over other peoples’ lives and rewarded with stratospheric pay.

However, there is one group in capitalist society that does not like competition--capitalists! That is, they do not like it for themselves. They love it for workers and athletes. But for themselves, they do everything they can to eliminate it without being too obvious about it. They collude with others to maintain high prices, they eliminate competition by buying out competitors, as industries they bribe congress to pass laws favorable to them (low taxes, subsidies, cutting back on regulations, anti-union and labor organizing laws, etc.)