Solidarity Cooperative Economics for the Global Majority
Note: Continuing the Miami Institute’s economics forum, Jessica Gordon-Nembhard argues that “most African Americans and the global majority have not benefitted from mainstream economic development, have often been excluded from or disadvantaged in the economy, and experience market failure in every market.” Gordon-Nembhard proposes instead that a “solidarity cooperative commonwealth is a strategy for group advancement, for equitable development and economic independence and justice for the global majority.”
Traditional neoclassical and neoliberal economics do not have a theory of the democratic enterprise or of a social enterprise, because it is so focused on profit maximization for those who already own capital. The quest for excessive profits exploits economic activity to provide inferior products and services, oppressive work conditions, and high unemployment. It creates an economics of scarcity that has people fighting each other all the time for crumbs, and justifies exclusion and exploitation. When we combine that oppressive system with the construction of the false notion of racial inferiority for people from Africa and of African descent to justify enslavement and economic inequality; and to divide the have nots so that they don’t join together to resist and overthrow such as system; we end up with the racialized, gendered capitalism we currently live under.
At every level, capitalism and market societies fail African Americans and their communities – as well as most women and the global majority. In labor markets, the Black unemployment levels, for example, have always been at least two times higher than for white people; and African Americans are often relegated to the lowest level service jobs, at the least wages. In capital and credit markets, African Americans have been discriminated against by not being served at all, or by being served with unequal, inferior, usurious loan products such as mortgages at sub-prime interest rates. In housing markets, African Americans have been excluded, or charged higher rates, or their home values have been deflated. In the context of all this discrimination, we understand that most African Americans and the global majority have not benefitted from mainstream economic development, have often been excluded from or disadvantaged in the economy, and experience market failure in every market. Markets have often been irrelevant to Blacks in the best cases (because Black peoples have been so marginalized in and/or left out of many markets including housing, capital and labor markets); or activity in markets have left Black peoples disadvantaged and exploited - BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and the global majority in most cases. Even when one or a few “make it” into the upper classes, the whole community does not prosper with them. They move out of the community, save their money in commercial banks and assets outside the community, and their resources do not re-circulate through the community. And they still cannot achieve the levels of wealth that comparable white people hold.
What do we need instead? Roger Spear, co-op scholar in the UK, explains that demand side theories of contract failure and excessive market power help to explain how state and market failures lead consumers and workers to search for alternative means of conducting economic exchanges based more on trust and transparency. Brett Fairbairn, June Bold, Murray Fulton, Lou Hammond Ketilson, and Daniel Ish similarly outline the failures of market economies and the attraction of cooperative economics:
“For decades, co-operatives in market economies have arisen where there are market deficiencies, imperfect competition, excessive concentrations of power, and unmet needs. They have arisen, too, where the costs of adjustment to economic change have threatened to destroy communities, where local people needed power to control the pace and direction of change in order to preserve what they valued. Look for the market deficiencies, look for the costs of change, look for the need, and find the niche where a co-op may thrive.”
Over the past 25 years, I have explored the viability of African American economic agency in independent self-help and cooperatively-owned organizations and businesses, as an example of ways that subaltern populations use cooperative economic development to counter economic marginalization and discrimination. I have argued that cooperatives address issues such as: community control in the face of transnational corporate concentration and expansion; pooling of resources and profit-sharing in communities where capital is scarce and incomes low; and increased productivity and working conditions in industries where work conditions may be poor, and wages and benefits usually low.
At the Rosenwald Economic Conference in 1933, in a speech he titles “Where Do We Go from Here?” W.E.B. Du Bois bitterly reminds us of our exploitation – and then inspires us with a vision of an alternative:
“... I propose as the next step which the American Negro can give to the world a new and unique gift. We have tried song and laughter and with rare good humor a bit condescending the world has received it; we have given the world work, hard, backbreaking labor and the world has let black John Henry die breaking his heart to beat the machine.”
“It is now our business to give the world an example of intelligent cooperation so that when the new industrial commonwealth comes we can go into it as an experienced people and not again be left on the outside as mere beggars.”
“... if leading the way as intelligent cooperating consumers, we rid ourselves of the ideas of a price system and become pioneer servants of the common good, we can enter the new city as men and not mules.”
In his 1940 autobiography, Du Bois further asserts: “We have a chance here to teach industrial and cultural democracy to a world that bitterly needs it.” Now in the 21st century this is still the case.
Clyde Woods, the late Black geographer and American Studies scholar, posits “a distinct theory of social organization” among Black people, forged “in the centuries-long struggle against plantation capitalism,” and centered around a “co-operative environment ethic” of “participatory democracy at work.” For Woods, the essence of the Blues epistemology where “the author and the audience jointly determine their collective destiny” is the essence of African American political economy - the joint production of a collective economy.
I take the following concepts from Du Bois: rid ourselves of a price system (i.e., eliminate markets) and be servants of the common good (i.e., practice values-based solidarity economics), and combine them with Clyde Woods’ notion of the joint production of our collective destiny, to construct an economics of mutual aid, solidarity, democracy, and cooperation to create widespread community well-being and abundance. I have been working on how to theorize, describe, and implement such an economic ecology of caring community, and solidarity cooperative commonwealths. Such an ecosystem or political economy would be characterized by greater labor and grassroots community input and participation in the planning, development, production, and governance of commercially-viable socially-responsible worker- and community-owned (multi-stakeholder) enterprises that solve community problems and generate jobs, and income and wealth-producing assets for individuals and communities. These collective economic enterprises would be structured and governed democratically, using self-management, consensus-building, conflict transformation, and anti-oppression practices.
Such a strategy entails pooling resources, providing education and training, and organizing economic activities to ensure that all needs are met for the group in equitable ways. Such a strategy promotes comradery over competition; democratic engagement rather than hierarchical management; full participation and membership rather than sole propriety; equity rather than opportunity; and collective wealth rather than profit. It exchanges positive, group-focused, creative energy for the prevailing negative, marginalizing, exploitative economic practices. It also requires innovation and courage to pursue and persist, in the face of internal resistance and fear, and external sabotage. The collective operates more productively and effectively than the individual - goods and services are produced from and consumed by and for the community. The group/community creates its economic reality instead of waiting for crumbs or hand outs from others. Praxis is important: economic solidarity and cooperation must be demonstrated not just talked. The development strategy includes stages that build from co-op education, to business planning, training, establishment, promotion and public education; to inter-cooperation.
We have examples of such enterprises existing throughout history and today in the 21st century (see my book Collective Courage (2014)). We need more and more of them and better and better such practices. We need policies to support them. And we need to educate people about them and how to design and run them. I have recently proposed that group reparations payments to Black communities should be used to develop and disseminate learning materials about cooperative and solidarity economics, with examples and case studies, especially about the legacy of African American co-ops (in the USA) and to support cooperative business education. In addition, most effective would be to support the development of age-appropriate, youth-owned cooperatives from Kindergarten to higher education, in and out of schools. If we start with our youth, we will not only be raising potential cooperators who already have experience developing and running cooperative businesses, but we will also interest and engage their families - and double the impact.
A political economic system based on providing for needs through self-help and mutual aid, utilizing group energy and collective spirit, solidarity and trust, and providing returns according to use and participation, is more useful and returns more to the community, than one based on greed, self-aggrandizement and individual gain. A solidarity cooperative commonwealth is a strategy for group advancement, for equitable development and economic independence and justice for the global majority.
-Jessica Gordon-Nembhard
Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College in New York City, Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist specializing in community economics, Black Political Economy and popular economic literacy. Her research and publications explore problematics and alternative solutions in cooperative economic development and worker ownership, community economic development, wealth inequality and community-based asset building, and community-based approaches to justice. She is the author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (2014).
References
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Gordon Nembhard, Jessica. 2018. “African American Cooperatives and Sabotage: The Case for Reparations.” The Journal of African American History Vol. 103 No. 1-2 (Winter/Spring): 65-90.
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Woods, Clyde. 1998. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. London: Verso Press.
