Early last week, when Republican Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested that the elderly should be willing to die from COVID-19 to get the economy back in action, something major shifted. If just briefly, the mask came off. Here was an elected official explicitly offering human sacrifices to appease the market. 

Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick went on national tv & argued elderly people should die for the health of the market. Capitalism is a system that priorities profits over people. This fight is literally a matter of life or death. Battle lines are being drawn. Which side are you on?

“Capitalism has always been willing to sacrifice life,” author and activist Naomi Klein told an audience of 14,000 people last week on an online teach-in hosted by Haymarket Books. “[It’s an] economic model soaked in blood. This is not a more radical version of capitalism; what is more radical is the scale.”

It’s unfortunate that it’s taking a global pandemic to reveal it, but the unprecedented crisis catalyzed by the coronavirus has exposed our capitalist economic system for what it has always been. From the early history of colonialism, slavery, the enclosure of the commons to the ravages of industrial capitalism, and into modern austerity regimes, capitalism has always put profit over people.

This is exactly why any calls for “returning to normal” are so misguided. “Normal is deadly, normal was a massive crisis,” Klein emphasized last week. “We don’t need to stimulate the death economy, we need to catalyze a massive transformation into an economy that is based on protecting life.”

In 2007, Klein presented her thesis of disaster capitalism to the world in her groundbreaking book, “The Shock Doctrine.” Her ideas seemed to perfectly explain much of what was — and still is — taking place globally. The thesis is fairly simple: When a crisis unfolds, disaster capitalists will try to create an opportunity to advance their nefarious agendas. One obvious example of this is the stimulus bill signed into law late last week which showers trillions of dollars onto Wall Street and giant corporations with minimal oversight or regulation. Nothing suggests a “return to normal” more than another corporate bailout that will never “trickle-down” to the rest of us. 

Instead, what Klein and others demand is a bottom-up bailout that goes well beyond simply surviving this acute crisis. Throughout the teach-in, Klein and her co-panelists Astra Taylor and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, offered a variety of solutions that could be applied to both the short- and long-term crises of the coronavirus and capitalism — both relief and recovery. An example of immediate relief would be a moratorium on rent until the crisis is over, while an example of recovery would be passing policies that would guarantee affordable housing to everybody living in the United States. The former is a stopgap measure to mitigate immediate harm; the latter is systemic transformation.

Part of the economic recovery package which just passed congress includes a one-time payment of $1,200 to individuals making less than $75,000 annually. There has been quite a bit of criticism coming from many different communities suggesting the figure of $1,200 is too low. The number was likely derived from the federal minimum wage wherein a full-time worker making $7.25/hr grosses $1,160 per month. Rounded up, this explains the $1,200 figure that the Republicans and Democrats agreed upon. 

If we utilize the framing encouraged by Klein and others we can begin to see how the coronavirus pandemic simply reveals the more chronic disaster that is the Federal minimum wage. If $1,200 is not enough in an acute crisis, then it’s certainly not enough during “normal” times. 

Of course, affordable housing and an increase in the minimum wage are not new ideas. In fact, many of the structural policy proposals put forth by Klein and her co-panelists are ideas that have been on the agenda of the left for quite some time. “We need to reimagine in this moment,” Klein argued. “And the good news is that we aren’t starting from scratch.”

Policy proposals like the Green New Deal, universal health care, universal basic income, and labor protections such as raising the minimum wage to $15/hr and democratizing the economy, for example, have all — as Klein puts it — been “lying around” for quite some time. She borrows this phrase from the economist Milton Friedman, who argued that radical transformation can only take place during periods of acute crisis. It’s during these periods that the ideas “already lying around” will step in to fill the gaps. 

Friedman was an American right-wing economist whose ideas are largely responsible for the rise of neoliberalism and austerity politics that have shaped the last 40 years. He utilized a crisis in capitalism during the late 1970s to help usher in a sweeping transformation that ended the Keynesian, New Deal-era in the United States. 

“The scale of the coronavirus crisis is so profound that there is now an opportunity to remake our society for the greater good, while rejecting the pernicious individualism that has left us utterly ill-equipped for the moment,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explained during the teach-in. “The class-driven hierarchy of our society will encourage the spread of this vicious virus, unless dramatic and previously unthinkable solutions are immediately put on the table.”

The coronavirus is an unprecedented event, but it’s the sharpening of class divides, the gutting of our social safety net and the mentality of selfish individualism encouraged by capitalism which have turned this pandemic into an unimaginable crisis. 

Things like eviction moratoriums, stimulus checks, or extended unemployment benefits will not fundamentally address the conditions which allowed the coronavirus to unfold so disastrously. They also won’t address the many chronic disasters that plague capitalist society on a daily basis. As Klein and others argue, these things can only be addressed through radical, systemic transformation. 

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This article is part of our reporting on the community response to the coronavirus crisis:

• The People’s COVID-19 Response needs you
• The coronavirus pandemic calls us to share more than ever
• 10 ways to share during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Coronavirus catalyzes growing wave of grassroots action despite social distancing
• 14 community-minded books to read during the 2020 quarantine
• Things got a whole lot more local than I expected due to coronavirus
• My new pandemic routine
• How these US immigrants are giving back to their new community during the COVID-19 crisis
• Open-source medical supplies battle COVID-19

Lead image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The post Coronavirus demands radical transformation, not a ‘return to normal’ appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A national conversation has begun which is alarming, yet also familiar. It talks about costs and trade-offs, losses and accounts. It is a conversation about human lives framed in the language of economics.

A recent study by Philip Thomas, professor of risk management at Bristol University, suggests that ‘If the coronavirus lockdown leads to a fall in GDP of more than 6.4 per cent more years of life will be lost due to recession than will be gained through beating the virus’.

Research like this presents us with a terrible dilemma, even leading some people to wonder whether the trade-off for trying to save elderly and vulnerable lives is really worth it, when it would cripple the economy for decades.

In times like these it helps to remember that we are presented with this misleading narrative every time we decide to act on our conscience. We are told we cannot halt the arms trade, because we will lose jobs. We are told we cannot reduce carbon emissions, because we will lose jobs. Now we are told we cannot save people’s lives, because we will lose jobs. For decades governments have used the threat of recession to badger us into maintaining an economic system that has made the poor poorer and the rich richer at the expense of the Earth’s support system. We are told this makes economic sense, but does it? 

Economics vs Chrematistics

In their book ‘For the Common Good’ economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr explain the difference between the practice of economics (from the Greek word oikonomia ‘the management of the household so as to increase its use value to all members over the long term’) and chrematistics (from khrema, meaning money and referring to ‘the branch of political economy relating to the manipulation of property and wealth so as to maximize short-term monetary exchange value to the owner’):

“Oikonomia differs from chrematistics in three ways. First, it takes the long-run rather than the short-run view. Second, it considers costs and benefits to the whole community, not just to the parties to the transaction. Third, it focuses on concrete use value and the limited accumulation thereof, rather than on an abstract exchange value and its impetus towards unlimited accumulation…. For oikonomia, there is such a thing as enough. For chrematistics, more is always better… “

In this definition of economics financial wealth does not trump the wellbeing of the community, as it is distinct from the actions a society must undertake to look after its members. The threat to our livelihoods that a fall in GDP represents is due to a conflation of economics with chrematistics.  

If for a moment we were to prise them apart we would see a different picture.

Whereas the lockdown has caused a drop in GDP growth (chrematistics) with the threat of recession and likely hardship for many people, apart from restricting our movements, it generally does not make us less able. It will mean many of us will not have access to society’s current means of exchange (money), but it does not represent a loss of ability, talent and willingness to contribute in the population at large. 

In fact, despite the fear and anxiety generated by the crisis, what we are witnessing is a phenomenal upsurge in generosity and creativity as people pull together to support each other with whatever they have. We are collectively defying the popular economic notion of humans as selfish utility maximising individuals and mostly showing solidarity and kindness. In the process we are realising who the real wealth creators are. They are the frontline workers in the caring economy: the nurses and doctors, the shop assistants and delivery drivers, the shelf stackers, the cleaners, the 750.000 (and counting) volunteers that have come forward to help the NHS. Online, they are the people offering free education, performances, exercise classes, financial advice, museum tours, mental health support, the list just goes on.  Behind closed doors it is those managing the domestic life: the family members doing their best to keep their children and themselves healthy and happy and sane, the friends joining together at a distance via a multitude of platforms. 

In this moment of crisis the fragilities of a globalised system have been exposed and it is ‘ordinary people’ and communities working together that are heading off socio-economic breakdown. They are demonstrating in the words of Naomi Klein in her book No is Not Enough, that ‘If the goal is to move from a society based on endless taking and depletion to one based on caretaking and renewal, then all of our relationships have to be grounded in those same principles of reciprocity and care —because our relationships with one another are our most valuable resource of all.’

The effects of Covid 19 will continue to place an unprecedented strain on societies that will require international cooperation, imagination and courage to overcome, but these efforts must not be geared towards returning to business as usual. Instead, we need to foreground the countless social and economic practices that have been developed over the last four decades by academics and practitioners dedicated to creating economic systems that serve all life on earth, and put in place mechanisms that reward people for generating real wealth and value. 

Time for bold solutions

After years of waiting in the wings Universal Basic Income (UBI) has now entered public discourse. Many pilots are underway, but the oldest ongoing experiment, The Alaska Dividend Fund, has shown no decrease in labour market participation and has ‘significantly mitigated poverty, especially among Alaska’s vulnerable rural Indigenous population.’ 

Currency experts such as Bernard Lietaer have shown that diversifying our exchange systems will make them more resilient to shocks in the global market and enable us to support social and ecological regeneration. The Human Scale Development framework developed in Latin America in the 1980s can help us evaluate whether what we are currently producing is actually meeting our real needs or pseudo satisfying manufactured wants. Together with Doughnut Economics and Steady State Economics such frameworks can help us steer a course that keeps our economic activity within the Earth’s limits. 

Vulnerable international food chains must now be replaced by regenerative local food systems. Building a vibrant food culture could simultaneously tackle obesity and youth unemployment, while ensuring future food security and restoring our soils. Land and property ownership must come under scrutiny and re-imagined to ensure food sovereignty, the regeneration of natural habitats and truly affordable and secure housing for all. The creation of worker cooperatives and support for local businesses have been shown to multiply local wealth and wellbeing, and will be needed to create more cohesive living and working communities.

In order to give people a say in shaping their lives and their communities, local authorities could introduce participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies and community charters.  Both nationally and internationally we must look at ways to abolish the crippling debt that is forcing people into unsafe work or destitution. We must also urgently start a discussion about the internet as a public utility. Work done by the P2P Foundation and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance can provide a guiding framework for sharing the wealth created by our communal efforts and make sure we all have access to its vital services.

The unintended social experiment precipitated by the virus presents a once-only window of opportunity to re-think our economic and social organisation in ways that can help us survive both the Corona epidemic and the greater threat of climate change that is now playing out. Instead of making people and planet fit around the numbers, it is time for numbers (financial mechanisms, exchange systems) to start fitting around people and planet. 

GDP does not measure what we value most. This crisis must be an opportunity to challenge what we have allowed corporations around the world to do with the natural environment (conveniently referred to as resources) and people (labour) in the name of economic growth. Thatcher was wrong: there are alternatives. Many of us have been working on them for decades. We are ready to take our rightful place at the table to help us turn the corner into a possible and hopeful future.  

Lead image by Tim Mossholder

The post No more business as usual – Rethinking economic value for a post-Covid world appeared first on P2P Foundation.

A new feudalism is on the rise. From the internet to service and care, more and more industries expect people to live gig to gig, while monopolistic corporations feed their spoils to the rich. But as Nathan Schneider shows through years of in-depth reporting, there is an alternative to the robber-baron economy hiding in plain sight; we just need to know where to look.

Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on. Co-ops have helped to set the rules, and raise the bar, for the wider society.

Since the financial crash of 2008, the cooperative movement has been coming back with renewed vigor. Everything for Everyone chronicles this economic and social revolution—from taxi cooperatives that are keeping Uber and Lyft at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, cooperative enterprise is poised to help us reclaim faith in our capacity for creative, powerful democracy.

Endorsements

“Everything for Everyone lives up to its title. As Nathan Schneider documents, cooperative movements are everywhere—from Barcelona to Bologna, Nairobi to New York, Jackson, Oakland, Boulder, Detroit, and points in between. And they are struggling to bring everything in common—electricity, healthcare, tech, transportation, banks, land, food, knowledge, even whole cities. Spoiler alert: this is no paean to the neoliberal ‘gig economy’ but rather an historical and contemporary tour of the radical potential of cooperative economics to disrupt capitalism as we know it. It is a book for everyone and a book for our times: read it, share it, but don’t just talk about it. Commons for all!”

—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“People have always fought to forge economies based on cooperation and creativity, rather than domination and exclusion. But that work has never looked so urgent as it does today. Charting a wealth of renewable ideas, tools, and commitments that are poised to reinvent democracy, Schneider tackles an immense subject with precision and grace.”

—Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and This Changes Everything

“The time has never been better for cooperative enterprise to change how we do business. This is a guide to how a new generation is starting to make that promise into a reality.”

—Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society and lecturer at the Wharton School

“Everything for Everyone proves how our vested interests are best served by addressing our common ones. In Schneider’s compelling take on the origins and future of cooperativism, working together isn’t just something we do in hard times, but the key to a future characterized by abundance and distributed prosperity. We owe ourselves, and one another, this practical wisdom.”

—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, professor at Queens College

“Nathan Schneider is one of our era’s foremost chroniclers of social movements. Always engaging and analytically insightful, there’s simply no one I’d trust more to guide me through the latest iteration of the longstanding, international, and utterly urgent struggle to build a more cooperative world and reclaim our common wealth.”

—Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform

“A gifted writer, chronicling the world he and his compatriots are helping to make—spiritual, technological, and communal.”

—Krista Tippett, host of On Being

Photo by HeatherKaiser

The post Book of the Day: Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

After Hurricane Irma devastated 90% of the island’s buildings last year, it forced virtually all 1,800 residents to relocate to nearby Antigua or cities like New York and Toronto.  International investors, working with Prime Minister Gastone Brown, a former banker, decided it was a ripe time to invoke the Shock Doctrine. This is the idea popularized by journalist Naomi Klein to describe how the market/state collusion to exploit national crises to ram through predatory neoliberal policies, which would otherwise be fiercely resisted by the citizenry.

In a great piece of reportage in The Intercept (January 23, 2018), Naomi Klein and Alleen Brown describe how the island government is taking advantage of the diaspora of Bardua residents. With no one around, it is an opportune moment to try to privatize the land and eliminate the communal ownership that has existed in Barbuda for nearly 200 years. A senator on the island described the communal ownership as something that was “born in the bowels of slavery and continued to grow in the post-emancipation world.”

The ostensible goal of the privatization policy is to provide a humanitarian response to the hurricane by facilitating outside investment and development. But the real goal is to open the door to investors and developers, who have long resented the democratic limits on development on Barbuda. They are eager to buy up pristine Caribbean land at bargain-basement prices and spur standard-issue Caribbean luxury resorts and ancillary businesses. The most notable such investor is actor Robert De Niro, who plans to build a luxury complex called Paradise Found Nobu.

According to Klein and Brown, “a sweeping 13-page ‘amendment‘ to the hard-won Barbuda Land Act was officially introduced in Antigua and Barbuda’s House of Representatives” on December 12, 2017.  “It includes changes that entirely reverse the meaning of the law. In the amendment, a clause declaring Barbuda ‘owned in common by the people of Barbuda’ was deleted and replaced. ‘The fundamental purpose of the Act is to grant to Barbudans the right to purchase the [land],’ the amended act reads.”

An outrageous act of enclosure, cast in the name of humanitarianism. Not surprisingly, international media coverage of these developments has been virtually absent. One exception:  a twelve-minute video documentary by The New York Times.

The transition to a scheme of private ownership of land – and the rampant “development” that would ensue – would radically change the culture of the island and strip Barbudans of their control over their land and rights of self-determination. It would also force many residents to leave the island permanently because they could no longer afford to live there, except as employees at the new luxury hotels and resorts.

In light of the diaspora of residents, it is hard for the to fight back. If anyone knows of people or groups actively involved in efforts to save the communal ownership of Barbudan land, please let me know and I’ll share the information here.

Update: There is a Facebook group dedicated to the Barbuda land grab and recovery delays at www.facebook.com/barbudasilentnomore.

To my readers:  My apologies for the absence of blog posts in recent weeks.  I am in the middle of writing a book that I hope to complete soon. Thanks for your patience!

Photo by andryn2006

The post Now Underway, a Neocolonial Land Grab on Barbuda appeared first on P2P Foundation.

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.

For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most of all – these losses are unbearable.

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump’s message was: “All is hell.” Clinton answered: “All is well.” But it’s not well – far from it.

Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump’s support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future.

It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.

Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people’s agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.

Bernie Sanders’ amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are “leaderful”, as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

So let’s get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let’s set aside whatever is keeping us apart and start right now.

Photo by Victor Engmark

The post It was the Democrats’ embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump appeared first on P2P Foundation.

An edited version of this article first appeared in Tikkun Magazine, the interfaith (and secular-humanist) voice of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. You can subscribe to Tikkun at www.tikkun.org and join the Network of Spiritual Progressives by visiting www.spiritualprogressives.org.

Whether catalysed by Pope Francis’ relentless critique of the global market economy, or the wakeup call presented in Naomi Klein’s urgent polemic This Changes Everything, or else the activists calling for ‘system change’ worldwide, there is a growing realisation that Sustainable Development Goals and non-binding CO2 emission targets simply won’t go far enough. Many millions of people now recognise that without reforming the policies that are responsible for widening inequalities and encouraging environmentally destructive patterns of consumerism in the first place, our response to socio-economic and ecological crises will remain inadequate and fail to create the “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”.

Although periodic negotiations facilitated by the United Nations offer governments a vital opportunity to overcome national self-interest, prioritize the needs of the disadvantaged, and curb environmental damage, these conferences take place within a wider political and economic framework that is structurally incapable of delivering global social justice or sound environmental stewardship. As such, the policies and institutions that drive our economic systems do not embody a basic spiritual understanding of the meaning and purpose of human life, which can be simply interpreted as our collective obligation to serve the common good of all humanity and protect the natural world.

To be sure, an outdated assumption that human beings are inherently selfish, competitive and acquisitive has long defined the politics of domination and control, and still underpins how society is organised and the way the global economy functions. There can be little doubt that the ongoing obsession with prioritising national interests and safeguarding corporate profits at all costs has failed to benefit the world’s poor and led to catastrophic consequences for the environment. As the economist David Woodward recently calculated, it would take 100 years to eradicate $1.25-a-day poverty if governments relied on global economic growth alone – and twice as long if we use a more realistic $5-a-day poverty line. Meanwhile, humanity as a whole has been in ‘ecological overshoot’ since the 1970s, and most people in rich industrialised countries currently have lifestyles that would require between three and five planets worth of resources to sustain if it was the norm across the world.

In recent years it has become painfully clear that aggressive competition between nations, the lobbying power of multinational corporations and the financial interests of an ultra-wealthy elite severely impede the possibility of effective international cooperation. In 2012, the director of Greenpeace condemned the much anticipated Rio+20 Earth Summit as “a failure of epic proportions” and lamented that its outcome document was “the longest suicide note in history”. There has been little improvement since then: after a series of ineffective UN climate change conferences over recent years, governments are widely expected to fail in their objective of keeping global warming below the already dangerous two degrees centigrade threshold. There is also a sizable gulf between the ambition and political feasibility of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly since it is not clear how governments will bridge the $2.5tn a year financing gap.

The path ahead: sharing and cooperation

Transforming the paradigm within which nations attempt to resolve the many pressing crises we face will require moving beyond the aggressive, competitive ways of the past and embracing solutions that meet the common needs of people in all nations. In accordance with Ghandi’s popular maxim that you should ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’, it stands to reason that this process of reforming the global economy should begin in our hearts and minds with a profound realisation that ‘humanity is one’ – in other words, that all people are part of an extended human family that share the same basic needs and rights. This simple spiritual insight must be translated into a heightened empathy for those who suffer needlessly in a world of plenty, as well as a sense of indignation towards the injustice of the world situation and a demand for change. If these reactions are put to constructive use, they can empower us to articulate a new ethos for public policy rooted in an appreciation of ‘right relationship’ as it applies to how we serve our fellow citizens across the globe and protect Mother Earth for the benefit of future generations.

This is the approach we have taken at Share The World’s Resources (STWR), where we place great emphasis on the fundamental role that the principle of sharing can play in addressing interconnected global crises. As the organisation’s founder Mohammed Meshabi explains, the new institutions and laws that are needed to heal our divided world must stem from an engagement of our hearts with the suffering of others, and a recognition of the all-encompassing spiritual, psychological, socio-economic and political significance of implementing the principle of sharing as a solution to humanity’s problems. To quote from Mesbahi’s essay ‘Uniting the people of the world’:

“Sharing is inherent in every person and integral to who we are as human beings, whereas the profit-oriented values of commerce are not a part of our innate spiritual nature. The individualistic pursuit of wealth and power results from our conditioning since childhood, nurtured through our wrong education and worshipping of success and achievement. But you cannot condition someone to cooperate and share, you can only remind them of who they are … True power is togetherness and sharing among millions of people, which is unifying, creative and healing on a worldwide scale … When all the nations come together and share the resources of the world, when humanity brings about balance in consciousness and in nature – that is power in the truest sense.”

These are views that the US-based Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) no doubt broadly share, as they relate to the need for a new ‘bottom line’ to counteract the dysfunctional view of human nature that is perpetuated by the mainstream media and reflected in the culture of consumerism. As the NSP emphasise in their Spiritual Covenant, any international program for creating a more compassionate and sustainable world must reflect “the Unity of All Being and our commitment to care for each other as momentary embodiments of the God energy”. Hence with a spirit of repentance for decades of perpetuating global injustice and environmental degradation, our response to the world situation should be one that is based on deep humility and a strategy of ‘overflowing generosity’.

But at a time when the institutions and policies that underpin the modern world in no way reflect the inner connectedness of all life on Earth, how do we translate this spiritual vision into a political and socio-economic reality that is inherently humane and ecologically sound? It’s in response to this epochal challenge that the ethic and practice of sharing can provide the necessary values-based policy framework for planetary rehabilitation – one that compels us to think in global terms, prioritise the needs of the poorest, and recognise that we only have one planet’s worth of resources that must be fairly shared by all people. Simply put, a response to poverty and climate change based firmly on the principle of sharing would ensure that all people in every nation are able meet their basic needs without transgressing the Earth’s ecological boundaries.

Global priorities based on radical generosity

From these basic propositions of equality and sustainability, STWR have advocated a cooperative and just approach to sharing the world’s resources in our ‘Primer on global economic sharing’. As outlined in this publication, a broad coalition of civil society need to bring pressure to bear on governments to coordinate a global program of wholesale economic transformation under the aegis of a reformed and democratised United Nations. In response to a worldwide public consultation, nations would have to focus on both the immediate and long term measures needed for mitigating the interrelated poverty, environmental and security crises, which would require a dramatic shift in international relations on the basis of true cooperation and economic sharing. Such an aspiration to simultaneously address multiple global issues may seem far-fetched or radical in the existing political context, but it broadly echoes a proposal put forward more than 30 years ago by the Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues. Even though the ground-breaking recommendations set out in the ‘Brandt Report’ were never translated into the necessary inter-governmental policy measures, it was extremely influential in promoting the need for North-South cooperation in an era of fast expanding global interdependence.

Drawing on the Commission’s recommendations, STWR propose that the first pillar of a transformative global agenda should include an international program of emergency relief to prevent life-threatening deprivation and avoidable poverty-related deaths – regardless of where they occur in the world. Such a program needs to be agreed and implemented in the shortest possible timeframe, and will require an unprecedented mobilisation of international agencies, resources and expertise over and above existing emergency aid budgets and humanitarian programs. However, an emergency relief program can only be an initial stage in a broader transformative agenda, in which governments must also agree to a comprehensive plan for restructuring and cooperatively managing the global economy in the interests of all nations. Among the many reforms that should be considered during these negotiations, particular attention should be placed on building an effective ‘sharing society’ within each nation that provides social protection for all; establishing a just and sustainable global food system based on low-impact, ecological systems of farming; and instituting a cooperative international framework for sharing the global commons more equitably and within planetary limits.

There are some obvious parallels between these proposals and the NSP’s inspiring Global Marshall Plan (GMP) initiative – particularly in relation to the GMP’s call for systemic reforms that are based on core spiritual values that must drive social and economic policy in the 21st century. In many ways, the principle of sharing underlines any ‘strategy of generosity and care’ in which the advanced industrial countries of the world use their resources to guarantee that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life, including a quality public education and essential healthcare, while at the same time unprecedented action is taken to repair the environment. Furthermore, an international policy framework based on generosity, solidarity and genuine economic sharing is likely to be the most effective way to address the national security concerns of governments – especially at a time when humanity’s failure to share is continuing to escalate interstate conflicts over land, fossil fuel reserves and other resources.

Perhaps most importantly, both STWR’s vision of an international emergency relief program and the NSP’s Global Marshall Plan share a central focus on completely eliminating poverty and hunger as a foremost global priority, and both place responsibility on rich countries to show leadership in mobilising the full range of resources needed to address this longstanding crisis – from finances and military personal to the active engagement of the world’s citizens through an International Peace and Generosity Corps, as the NSP propose. There cannot be a more urgent international imperative than a coordinated program that seeks to end inhumane levels of deprivation in a world of plenty, especially when more than 800 million people are still classified as hungry (an official figure that may be considerably underestimated). For every single day that nations fail to end this atrocity, around 40,000 people die needlessly from a lack of access to the basic nutrition, clean water and essential healthcare that so many of us take for granted.

Campaigning for ‘what is necessary’

We are often asked whether STWR’s proposals for international sharing constitute a realistic demand from civil society, given that economic policy in most countries is increasingly based on neoliberal ideals that favour privatisation, deregulation and the expansion of market forces within a competitive international framework – one that clearly undermines meaningful cooperation between nations. It is of course true that progressive calls for social and environmental justice will remain politically unfeasible as long as real power continues to be taken away from ordinary citizens and concentrated in state institutions, unaccountable corporations and a minority of high-net-worth individuals. However, it is surely far more unrealistic to think that we can continue on the current trajectory while millions suffer needlessly in abject poverty and ecosystems endure the devastating impacts of unbridled consumerism. From the most realistic and pragmatic perspective, ending poverty in all its forms through sharing the world’s resources is now a moral, economic and geopolitical imperative that governments can no longer afford to ignore, and it must be rapidly achieved at all costs.

To some extent, the very question of political feasibility fails to recognise how many progressive organisations and activists already propose economic alternatives or practise sustainable, democratic solutions for how to organise society and manage the commons. This often requires challenging the status quo and proposing a new vision of society that will necessarily seem radical or unrealistic when compared with the prevailing orthodoxy. For many civil society groups like STWR and the NSP, it’s clear that the only sensible response to the world situation is to focus on what is now absolutely necessary and not what is merely possible to achieve within the current political framework. This determined approach proved to be effective for both the civil rights and environmental movements in the past, and is still in tune with the demands of millions of campaigners that remain focussed on seemingly unrealistic goals in the face of widespread opposition and public apathy.

Similarly, any concern that proposals for global economic sharing are unaffordable is a red herring. After all, these same financial concerns are quickly set aside by politicians when plans are being made to bailout private sector banks or finance military interventions. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, governments spent $14.3 trillion on their military budgets and the economic impacts of violence and war in 2014 – which is more than 13% of global GDP. In comparison, the 3-5% of world GDP that the NSP estimate is required to end poverty and improve international security is an extremely cost-effective investment, especially since it would reduce the costs associated with regional and international conflicts. Indeed, according to some calculations ending income poverty for the 21 percent of the global population who live on less than $1.25 a day would require as little as 0.2 percent of global income.

As STWR detailed in our report ‘Financing the global sharing economy’, governments have the means to mobilise staggering amounts of additional finance for urgent humanitarian purposes. The report demonstrated that by implementing a range of policy options that already have much support among progressives (such as redirecting a proportion of military spending, taxing financial speculation and ending fossil fuel subsidies) governments could redistribute more than $2.8tn a year to prevent life-threatening deprivation, reverse austerity measures and mitigate the human impacts of climate change. Moreover, the institutional structures, capacity and expertise needed to utilise these additional resources for essential human needs is already in place – all that lacks is a sufficient level of public support to overcome the political barriers to implementing such an emergency program of international redistribution.

Sharing as a common cause that unites us all

There is no denying that these fundamental changes to the international economic order can only become a reality if sufficient numbers of people support this pressing cause. That’s why values-based civil society proposals that embody the principles of generosity and sharing are so crucial at this time: they allow people to be inspired by a vision of the world that resonates deeply with an inner sense of justice and goodwill towards all people. Only through this heartfelt response to the world situation, anchored in a spiritual perception of what it really means to be human, can the possibility of a dramatic shift in global public opinion become an observable reality.

Given the current business–as-usual approach to policymaking, it is likely that the demand for sane economic alternatives will continue to mount until the crises of inequality and environmental breakdown reach a dangerous climax in the years ahead. If in response to these spiralling crises the US government were to put its full weight behind a Global Marshall Plan, civil society organisations operating across Europe (including STWR) would be in a much stronger position to build public support for a similar program to share essential resources across the world. A truly global campaign of this nature would require a fusion of progressive causes and a consensus among a critical mass of the world population about the necessary direction for transformative change. A key task for progressives is therefore to work together in order to mobilise a movement of supporters and build a momentum for change that could one day help create such a tipping point.

In STWR’s most recent report ‘Sharing as our common cause’, we outline how a worldwide movement of movements is already on the rise, driven by an awareness that the crises we face are fundamentally caused by an outmoded economic system in need of wholesale reform. Never before has there been such a widespread and sustained mobilisation of citizens in countries across the world around actions that challenge leaders and influence progressive social change. A renewed sense of idealism and hope is emerging everywhere for a new society to be built from within the existing one, and for a radical transformation in our values, imaginations, lifestyles and social relations, as well as in our political and economic structures.

It’s for these reasons that STWR recently launched the ‘Global call for sharing’ campaign, in order to promote the role that a demand for sharing can play in uniting citizens and progressive organisations across the world in a common cause. As stated in the campaign report, the principle of sharing is already central to diverse calls for social justice, environmental stewardship, global peace and true democracy. Whether expressed in implicit or explicit terms, all of these urgent demands relate to the need for a fairer sharing of wealth, power or resources throughout our societies – from the community level up to the international. Everyone understands the human value of sharing, and by upholding this universal principle in a political context we can point the way towards an entirely new approach to economics – one that is based on overflowing generosity, deep humility, and the spiritual recognition that all life on Earth is an integral part of an interdependent whole.

Rabbi Michael Lerner and the Network of Spiritual Progressives were early signatories to our online campaign statement, thereby affirming “the fundamental importance of strengthening and scaling up all genuine forms of sharing in our divided world”. Moreover, their ongoing work is an important example of how individuals and organisations can help spark public awareness and a wider debate on the importance of sharing in economic and political terms. We look forward to continued cooperation and mutual support with the worldwide community of Spiritual Progressives, and as our campaign continues to gain momentum we would like to invite readers of Tikkun Magazine and supporters of the NSP to also endorse the global call for sharing campaign statement by visiting www.sharing.org/global-call.

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