I Want to Practice Economic Democracy, But I Don't Know How

Kevin Carson announces the Solidarity Economy Network which is supposed, inter alia, to be kind of clearinghouse of information about movements and institutions devoted to “economic democracy”. Perhaps this will be a step toward overcoming the fragmentation of the movement. Writes Carson:

“Cooperatives and other alternative economic ventures find themselves swimming in a capitalist sea; because of their fragmentation from each other, their minimal systemic influence bears no relation to their actual numerical importance.”

I regret that I find myself so far out on the fringes of the movement that it is all but invisible to me. I share the values of the movement, but I don’t know how to live them. Because I am not competent about it, the particpants in my part of the world are not salient to me. A whole world of cooperatives and alternative economic ventures could be around me, and I wouldn’t even know it. Perhaps this SEN will be helpful in drawing me in. I hope that they will have something like an Economic Democracy for Dummies function for folks like me who are sympathetic but clueless.

My main problem is that my fee time is precious to me thanks in part to my long commute. While I want to patronize alternative ventures and cooperatives, I need to be directed to them. I just don’t have the time or energy to seek them out.