It's Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems

Remember the name, Gar Alperovitz. He is a man who understands the
mess we're in, and why we're in it. And besides that, I agree with
most of what he writes.

Carl Jarvis



On 4/3/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> It's Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems
> Published on
> Thursday, April 02, 2015
> by
> Common Dreams
> It's Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems
> by
> Gar Alperovitz, James Gustave Speth
>
> 'We can create the kind of society--and world--we'd like now and for future
> generations.' (Photo: Flickr/darwinyamamoto / via thenextsystem.org)
> It's getting harder and harder to be an optimist. A deep economic crisis
> has
> given way to a profoundly unequal recovery. Climate catastrophe is steadily
> unfolding across the globe. And the work of building a racially inclusive
> society appears to be stalled -- indeed, in many areas, to be losing
> ground.
> All of this in an age of unprecedented technological progress, which has
> manifestly failed to keep its promises. If there is one saving grace, it is
> that the pain caused by these interconnected failures make it possible --
> for the first time in modern history -- to pose the question of system
> change in a serious fashion, even in the United States, the faltering heart
> of global capitalism.
> To pose the system question means first and foremost to point out that
> long,
> failing trends are anchored far more deeply in political-economic
> structures
> than conventional political debate suggests. It is to ask how the system is
> built, for whom, and how it operates to recurrently produce the decaying
> outcomes we are experiencing. There is, in fact, no shortage of people
> today
> to tell us that something is wrong, that things are built to work for the
> wealthy, for the white and for those far from the frontlines of climate and
> social calamity. Such diagnoses are increasingly commonplace and harder and
> harder to contest.
> It is no major leap from such anguished complaints to recognition that the
> system itself--American corporate capitalism--is generating the outcomes we
> witness; that we do, indeed, face a systemic challenge, one manifestly not
> responsive to traditional political approaches and strategies.
> But if defining the system question is easy, answering it remains much
> harder. For decades, the only options for many have seemed to be state
> socialism, on the one hand, or corporate capitalism, on the other. If we
> reject the authoritarian and bureaucratic centralism of the former, but
> find
> it increasingly difficult to believe that the latter will be able to
> nurture
> equality, liberty and democracy, or even able to keep our planet livable,
> is
> there any alternative besides cynical resignation and despair?
> The traditional strategies that once seemed capable of winning equitable
> and
> sustainable social, economic, and ecological outcomes simply no longer
> work.
> Labor unions, the core of the traditional progressive power base, have been
> radically weakened, and could well continue to decline still further under
> political attack. Corporate power and concentrations of great wealth
> dominate the democratic process, widening massive gaps in wealth and
> income,
> and severely limiting the capacity of the occasional progressive
> administration to use taxation to meaningfully redistribute wealth or to
> seriously regulate corporations in many areas. Publicly listed, large-scale
> corporations, for their part, have little choice but to grow or die,
> putting
> more and more pressure on ecological limits.
> Efforts to cobble together "solutions" to these challenges for the most
> part
> draw upon and reinforce the very same institutional arrangements that
> caused
> them in the first place. Virtually none challenge underlying institutional
> power structures. In short, we face a systemic crisis, not simply political
> and economic difficulties. Accordingly, we need to discuss, debate and
> mobilize to achieve systemic solutions.
> It is time to begin a real conversation--locally, nationally and at all
> levels--about what a genuine alternative beyond corporate capitalism and
> state socialism would look like, and how we would build it. Not too long
> ago, it was easy to dismiss any talk about "changing the system" as
> frivolous or impractical, a luxury or a distraction. What we are seeing
> today is that increasing numbers of people understand that this task has
> become absolutely necessary. What's become frivolous and distracting is
> continuing to assume that business as usual is still an option.
> It's rare that ideas matter in politics. Usually, what matters is simply
> the
> momentum of entrenched power. But every so often, history gives us an
> opening to something new. When the old stories no longer explain the world
> around us, when it is obvious to everyone that something is deeply wrong,
> new ideas can matter, and matter a great deal. Our present time in history
> appears to be one of those moments. Unless we can seize it, and come
> together to develop and implement a plausible alternative system, the
> current downward trajectory of pain and decay will only continue.
> There are real alternatives. In precisely those places where the current
> system has reached a dead end, we see a steadily-building explosion of new
> proposals and new experiments, new ideas and new activism, and above all a
> new basis for hope. Worker-owned firms are being developed in many parts of
> the country. In Boulder, Colorado a powerful movement to take over and
> municipalize the private utility holds out the promise of actually dealing
> with local sources of global warming. In several cities variations on the
> inspiring Mondragón cooperative network approach are being developed.
> Strikingly, the recent financial crisis brought de facto nationalization of
> General Motors, Chrysler and A.I.G, once the largest insurance company in
> the world. Although all were re-privatized after public bailouts saved them
> from collapse, what might happen in the next crisis--or the one beyond--is by
> no means a closed question. Our task is to bring together (and extend and
> expand upon) the growing number of experiments and new strategies, and then
> forge a coherent new systemic direction that can help guide us as we build
> what comes next.
> A tall order? Certainly. But history reminds us that easy pessimism is both
> dis-empowering and often wrong. The Civil Rights Movement, the feminist
> movement and the movement for marriage equality all began at moments when
> very little seemed possible. Nor was the collapse of the Berlin Wall and
> the
> Soviet Union, or the apartheid regime in South Africa, expected or
> predicted
> by conventional views of what was possible at the time.
> Many progressives today also forget how marginal today's right-wing ideas
> were in the decades before 1980. Indeed, the ideas and beliefs currently
> dominating American politics were once regarded as ridiculous by the
> mainstream press, politicians and most serious scholars. Serious
> conservatives, however, saw their opening, and worked self-consciously to
> develop and propagate their ideas over the long haul. If we can roll up our
> sleeves and get organized and serious about really tackling the system
> question, about building a new system of political economy, there are
> grounds for optimism that deep and far-reaching change is possible.
> Recent surveys of public opinion indicate a radical openness to something
> new just below the surface of conventional media reporting. People between
> the ages of 18 and 29 slightly favor the word "socialism" over the word
> "capitalism" (49 percent to 46 percent). In 2012 Merriam Webster, publisher
> of the widely used online dictionary, noted that the two most looked-up
> words that year were "socialism" and "capitalism."
> Today's young people, of all races and national origins, increasingly
> recognize that if nothing changes they will likely be worse off than their
> parents were. Even as the elderly and the middle-aged begin to stir,
> there's
> no stronger ally imaginable than a generation realizing that without a next
> system, they may not have a future.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
> Gar Alperovitz
>
> Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at
> the
> University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. His
> latest book is What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American
> Revolution. Other books include America Beyond Capitalism and (with Lew
> Daly) Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and
> Why
> We Should Take It Back.
> It's Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems
> Published on
> Thursday, April 02, 2015
> by
> Common Dreams
> It's Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems
> by
> Gar Alperovitz, James Gustave Speth
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> 11 Comments
>
> 'We can create the kind of society--and world--we'd like now and for future
> generations.' (Photo: Flickr/darwinyamamoto / via thenextsystem.org)
> It's getting harder and harder to be an optimist. A deep economic crisis
> has
> given way to a profoundly unequal recovery. Climate catastrophe is steadily
> unfolding across the globe. And the work of building a racially inclusive
> society appears to be stalled -- indeed, in many areas, to be losing
> ground.
> All of this in an age of unprecedented technological progress, which has
> manifestly failed to keep its promises. If there is one saving grace, it is
> that the pain caused by these interconnected failures make it possible --
> for the first time in modern history -- to pose the question of system
> change in a serious fashion, even in the United States, the faltering heart
> of global capitalism.
> To pose the system question means first and foremost to point out that
> long,
> failing trends are anchored far more deeply in political-economic
> structures
> than conventional political debate suggests. It is to ask how the system is
> built, for whom, and how it operates to recurrently produce the decaying
> outcomes we are experiencing. There is, in fact, no shortage of people
> today
> to tell us that something is wrong, that things are built to work for the
> wealthy, for the white and for those far from the frontlines of climate and
> social calamity. Such diagnoses are increasingly commonplace and harder and
> harder to contest.
> It is no major leap from such anguished complaints to recognition that the
> system itself--American corporate capitalism--is generating the outcomes we
> witness; that we do, indeed, face a systemic challenge, one manifestly not
> responsive to traditional political approaches and strategies.
> But if defining the system question is easy, answering it remains much
> harder. For decades, the only options for many have seemed to be state
> socialism, on the one hand, or corporate capitalism, on the other. If we
> reject the authoritarian and bureaucratic centralism of the former, but
> find
> it increasingly difficult to believe that the latter will be able to
> nurture
> equality, liberty and democracy, or even able to keep our planet livable,
> is
> there any alternative besides cynical resignation and despair?
> The traditional strategies that once seemed capable of winning equitable
> and
> sustainable social, economic, and ecological outcomes simply no longer
> work.
> Labor unions, the core of the traditional progressive power base, have been
> radically weakened, and could well continue to decline still further under
> political attack. Corporate power and concentrations of great wealth
> dominate the democratic process, widening massive gaps in wealth and
> income,
> and severely limiting the capacity of the occasional progressive
> administration to use taxation to meaningfully redistribute wealth or to
> seriously regulate corporations in many areas. Publicly listed, large-scale
> corporations, for their part, have little choice but to grow or die,
> putting
> more and more pressure on ecological limits.
> Efforts to cobble together "solutions" to these challenges for the most
> part
> draw upon and reinforce the very same institutional arrangements that
> caused
> them in the first place. Virtually none challenge underlying institutional
> power structures. In short, we face a systemic crisis, not simply political
> and economic difficulties. Accordingly, we need to discuss, debate and
> mobilize to achieve systemic solutions.
> It is time to begin a real conversation--locally, nationally and at all
> levels--about what a genuine alternative beyond corporate capitalism and
> state socialism would look like, and how we would build it. Not too long
> ago, it was easy to dismiss any talk about "changing the system" as
> frivolous or impractical, a luxury or a distraction. What we are seeing
> today is that increasing numbers of people understand that this task has
> become absolutely necessary. What's become frivolous and distracting is
> continuing to assume that business as usual is still an option.
> It's rare that ideas matter in politics. Usually, what matters is simply
> the
> momentum of entrenched power. But every so often, history gives us an
> opening to something new. When the old stories no longer explain the world
> around us, when it is obvious to everyone that something is deeply wrong,
> new ideas can matter, and matter a great deal. Our present time in history
> appears to be one of those moments. Unless we can seize it, and come
> together to develop and implement a plausible alternative system, the
> current downward trajectory of pain and decay will only continue.
> There are real alternatives. In precisely those places where the current
> system has reached a dead end, we see a steadily-building explosion of new
> proposals and new experiments, new ideas and new activism, and above all a
> new basis for hope. Worker-owned firms are being developed in many parts of
> the country. In Boulder, Colorado a powerful movement to take over and
> municipalize the private utility holds out the promise of actually dealing
> with local sources of global warming. In several cities variations on the
> inspiring Mondragón cooperative network approach are being developed.
> Strikingly, the recent financial crisis brought de facto nationalization of
> General Motors, Chrysler and A.I.G, once the largest insurance company in
> the world. Although all were re-privatized after public bailouts saved them
> from collapse, what might happen in the next crisis--or the one beyond--is by
> no means a closed question. Our task is to bring together (and extend and
> expand upon) the growing number of experiments and new strategies, and then
> forge a coherent new systemic direction that can help guide us as we build
> what comes next.
> A tall order? Certainly. But history reminds us that easy pessimism is both
> dis-empowering and often wrong. The Civil Rights Movement, the feminist
> movement and the movement for marriage equality all began at moments when
> very little seemed possible. Nor was the collapse of the Berlin Wall and
> the
> Soviet Union, or the apartheid regime in South Africa, expected or
> predicted
> by conventional views of what was possible at the time.
> Many progressives today also forget how marginal today's right-wing ideas
> were in the decades before 1980. Indeed, the ideas and beliefs currently
> dominating American politics were once regarded as ridiculous by the
> mainstream press, politicians and most serious scholars. Serious
> conservatives, however, saw their opening, and worked self-consciously to
> develop and propagate their ideas over the long haul. If we can roll up our
> sleeves and get organized and serious about really tackling the system
> question, about building a new system of political economy, there are
> grounds for optimism that deep and far-reaching change is possible.
> Recent surveys of public opinion indicate a radical openness to something
> new just below the surface of conventional media reporting. People between
> the ages of 18 and 29 slightly favor the word "socialism" over the word
> "capitalism" (49 percent to 46 percent). In 2012 Merriam Webster, publisher
> of the widely used online dictionary, noted that the two most looked-up
> words that year were "socialism" and "capitalism."
> Today's young people, of all races and national origins, increasingly
> recognize that if nothing changes they will likely be worse off than their
> parents were. Even as the elderly and the middle-aged begin to stir,
> there's
> no stronger ally imaginable than a generation realizing that without a next
> system, they may not have a future.
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
> /author/gar-alperovitz
> /author/gar-alperovitz /author/gar-alperovitz
> Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at
> the
> University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. His
> latest book is What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American
> Revolution. Other books include America Beyond Capitalism and (with Lew
> Daly) Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and
> Why
> We Should Take It Back.
>
>
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