Anya Kamenetz has an important article in Daniel Pinchbeck’s Reality Sandwich site. After noticing the revival of volunteerism in New Orleans, by Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals, she reviews the history of mutual aid societies, from 800 BC in India until today in the U.S.. Of particular interest is the mention of the organization she is working with herself, i.e. the Freelancers Union, which is a contemporary example of what is needed, especially for knowledge workers, but also already happening.

She writes that:

“For the past year I have been working with an organization that points the way toward a new future of mutual benefit. Sara Horowitz was raised in the traditional left – her grandfather was vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, and she and her father were both labor lawyers. But she grew impatient with the old categories and old ways of thinking. In 1995 she founded Working Today, now known as the Freelancers Union. She won a 1999 MacArthur Genius Grant for her work with the organization, which was conceived as the first step toward a “New New Deal,” or new social safety net, that fits the way Americans live and work today. They currently have 52,000 members and provide health care at group rates to 17,000 freelancers in New York City. Freelancers Union members are also eligible for life, dental, and disability insurance, discounts, and connect online to exchange referrals, tricks of the trade and job opportunities. They are beginning to have meet-ups nationwide to encourage political participation and the all-important value of fellowship. Currently the Freelancers Union is expanding health insurance to members in 30 states. Plans for providing more benefits like unemployment and retirement are underway.”

Here is what she proposes for the future and sees good chances of happening:

“Right now a turn of the political wheel gives us an opening to grow and strengthen a new type of institution: networks formed by social entrepreneurs and maintained by members, using technology, for mutual aid. The Freelancers Union example shows what’s already possible. Long term, Horowitz and I envision a new social safety net to replace the one that is disintegrating, delivered by a new breed of intermediaries. New unions or other types of nonprofit affinity groups can band together to deliver services such as pensions, unemployment insurance, and group health insurance. Unlike employers, membership-supported nonprofits have a bigger chance of having a long-term stake in their members’ wellbeing – and 30% of the workforce and growing doesn’t have a traditional employer relationship anyway. These new groups will have some characteristics of the old institutions, but will be more flexible and adapted to our less rooted way of life. They may unite people by type of work, neighborhood, heritage, or family status. They have a chance to move beyond old political debates and strengthen democracy by channeling people’s energy into participation and efficacy.

What should the government’s role be? Encouraging the growth of these institutions requires halting the political war on organizing and organizers fomented by business conservatives and waged through the courts. Financially, the investment would be modest: perhaps a program of tax breaks and incentives for providing benefits similar to that now given to corporations, as well as access to low-cost capital for organizations providing a social benefit. Mutual aid is not a political cure-all or even a policy program – it’s a means of delivering solutions.

For individuals, the benefits are much richer, and they can start today. If you read this site, you probably already participate in some form of mutual aid, like a dumpster-dived salvaged food potluck, a benefit party to help a friend with a health care expense, a clothing swap, or a community supported agriculture program. A growing movement of people are getting together to provide themselves with space and resources to work and make art. They are lending money to each other at mutually-agreed upon rates, rather than use banks. They are forming educational and fun business networks. The Burning Man community in many cities provides a form of the old Social Aid and Pleasure club. You don’t need to wait for political action; you can work within or outside the existing system, just like Indian merchants or Roman craftsmen a thousand years ago.

The idea of fostering the growth of mutual aid satisfies many political and cultural yearnings at once. Conservatives have sought to strengthen churches as social institutions, and centers of worship do have an important place in the panoply of mutual aid societies. But they don’t satisfy the full range of needs for organization and political efficacy in a multicultural, non-theocratic democracy. Liberals are very vocal about the need to foster community, but too often we form organizations under duress around political grievance or “resistance,” and we don’t sustain them. Without rewarding self-interest through providing benefits, long-term continuity goes missing. And with a charity-based model of simply delivering benefits across class lines, populism is an empty, not an empowering, message.

Unlike the prescription of government welfare benefits, which Americans seem to be hardwired against anyway and which seem further out of reach than ever in the current atmosphere of fear and scarcity, mutual aid fosters competition, and strengthens democracy by building civic involvement and political constituencies. Unlike winner-take-all capitalism, labor market intermediaries create more winners than before. The old solutions are dead, and we have a chance to get it right this time if we join together.”