- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I am not ranting against the welfare state (you should not have to beg for unemployment benefit, better yet minimum assured income for all). The same about formal education (although I would discuss that it alone is enough as empowerment).
I am just saying that there is another side that was forgotten: (self)strengthening of self-assurance and self-reliance of people (and communities!) less well-off. It is more a process where people (partially by their own) get to trust their own abilities and capacities.
That is a bottom-up approach (notice that it doesn't involve any charity from private parties) and very different from a top-down approach where the state takes care of your welfare. Both are possible and not contradictory. One based only on state help is, in my view, condescending and diminishing to people that got unlucky at some point in time.
Political change through strong, informed, active participation of the majority. I am just claiming that there was too much energy spent on "taking power", where some should have been on cultivating grassroots.
Peer-to-peer is a step in the good direction.
My mistake was to put this argument in the context of American self-reliance (stupid framing of my part). I just saw it as a bait to bring the subject up.
Strong individuals (which have the right to get state help in time of distress but do not have the psychological traits of beggars - especially because they have enough self-esteem). A culture of self-learning, self-improvement, self-belief.
Strong local communities also. Atomization is probably one of the biggest causes fat cats can get away so easily (as they are organized, and have lobbies).
Self-reliance not only on an individual level but also at a community level.
This is not incompatible with a strong welfare state. In fact our individualist culture produced individuals that are completely dependent on a fictional society. What was promoted was promoted by new "labour" types, was above all, egoism.
I guess I want to see you define how your programme and framing differ from those of Third Wayists on the European Center-Left, not just from those of American liberals and conservatives. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
These relationships are what should be fleshed out, to make it different and leftist. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Maybe 10 years ago a shoe factory bankrupted somewhere in north Portugal (cheaper Chinese products were starting to arrive). The thing got on public TV, and they were interviewing people. One of the women working there was desperate. What struck me the most was the attitude. She was begging for some entrepreneur to go there and "take care of them". The response was not either to take the issue in their own hands (and maybe become self-employed - "The American Way"(TM)) or demand the right to state support (which, by the way, she had and for at least two years - at an approximate income level of her salary). No, the way out, in her head was to beg for new masters (and note, they were making a ridiculous low salary with bad working conditions). Next to her was the union leader (which I happen to know), a hard-line trotskyist. We was quite comfortable with that attitude. That woman, might have a job today, but doesn't even know her rights and has the aspirations of being a slave. This is an attitude that I see on people around (starting in my own family), but that TV shot, by being so vivid, so desperate and so clear, stuck.
I contrast this with some very old anarcho-sindicalists that I know: born into poverty, minimal education. But they educated themselves, mostly in union created community centres with small libraries and such.
The only thing missing IMHO has been a non-toxic legal and financial structure to implement what are essentially Cooperatives of service providers in partnership with Cooperatives of service users. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
It's hard if you don't grow up with that mindset to understand how pervasive it is, how confidently you can walk into a bank or an office and feel that you have what it takes to work hard and take charge of things.
I have another friend who grew up in a huge mansion, and it's the same for him - he's very socially self-assured at board level, very comfortable hiring and firing people, and almost supernaturally aware of his own position in the pecking order and the relative positions of the people around him. He's not a bad person, but his education has left its mark.
If your education is working class, you don't get any of that kind of support or reinforcement. Yes, you can become self-employed - probably in a trade - but if you're of average intelligence and don't have any experience of banking, loans, taxes, employment law, and so on, setting yourself up with a small business is incredibly daunting. Turning a small business into a big business is even harder.
I don't have an answer to this. But I don't think it's just about getting the facts out and telling people that they have options.
But I'd distinguish between community and class consciousness. I think the Progressive idea of community is largely wishful thinking - I don't think 'good' communities ever actually existed.
Most real communities would have been harsh places, and some people will have paid a high price for the economic solidarity they offered.
