Half Past Capitalism

-- Recorded July 2023 -- Amrita Wassan is the Senior Director Programs at Center for Economic Democracy (CED), and they are an educator, organizer and solidarity economy practitioner. Francisco Perez is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and he’s director of the Center for Popular Economics. They are both part of the team that teaches Economics for Emancipation, which is “A Course on Capitalism, Solidarity and How We Get Free”. Find out more at https://economics4emancipation.net/ Subscribe to Half Past Capitalism on the podcast service of your choice.

Find out more about the Solidarity Economy Incubator for Zero Emissions (SEIZE) at solidarityeconomy.ca

Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House, the Cush Vlog, and Hell on Earth joins Dru Jay to discuss the tyranny of the self, fear of death and horizons of post-capitalism. Check out Matt's vlogs here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5ddgvszig&list=PLhxUDrMFUqyMQSozC1ES-Q4BkT8MJbY_1

Moving a city, moving an economy w/ Cheyenna Weber

A bit over a decade ago, it was just a handful of people speaking the phrase "solidarity economy" in New York City in an intentional way. Today, the concept has gained considerable traction, but obstacles loom as successes accumulate.

Cheyenna Layne Weber has been at close to the heart of that trajectory. Here, she shares insights, lessons and observations from the journey so far.

Cheyenna is involved a number of organizations, but we focus here mainly on her work with Solidarity NYC, the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City, and the Solidarity Economy Principles Project.

Links:

http://solidaritynyc.org/

https://gocoopnyc.org/

https://solidarityeconomyprinciples.org/

The global food crisis is—according to most available indicators—just getting warmed up. Shylah Wolfe has participated in many cooperatives in the food sector, and with the Concordia Food Coalition, is involved in the establishment of a non-profit food institution at Concordia University. She spoke to Dru Oja Jay about what kinds of cooperative systems for food production, distribution and processing are already being built and how we'll probably have to expand them pretty rapidly to feed ourselves.Show less

Venezuelan communes—where productive activities are controlled by a range of community assemblies—are fascinating examples of socialist forces experimenting with the creation of new social forms.
Venezuela's communes are an attempt to address some of the shortcomings of cooperatives and state-owned socialist factories by addressing not just economic production but other social relationships like parenting and gender relations at the grassroots level.
Chris Gilbert, author of the forthcoming book Commune or Nothing! Venezuela's Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project and co-author (with Cira Pascual Marquina) of Venezuela, the Present as Struggle, joins us from Caracas to explain the theoretical basis for communes. --- Mentioned in this episode: -- Five Factories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8uUJPPST7s Communard Union https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/04/08/a-milestone-venezuelas-communard-union-stages-its-foundational-congress/ István Mészáros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_M%C3%A9sz%C3%A1ros_(philosopher) Venezuela: The present as struggle (book) https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15045 Commune or Nothing! (book) https://monthlyreview.org/product/commune-or-nothing-venezuelas-communal-movement-and-its-socialist-project/

Cuba’s thousands of agricultural cooperatives are responsible for about 56% of Cuba’s growing land, and employ an estimated 300,000 cooperative worker members. Some observers say the cooperatives more efficient than the state-owned parts of Cuba's agricultural production.

Federica Bono is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography at Christopher Newport University joins Dru Oja Jay to discuss her observations of Cuba's vast network of agricultural cooperatives. Dr. Bono has written about food access, the concept and practice of solidarity, and border relations. In 2015, she spent time living with agricultural cooperatives, and interviewed dozens of worker-members.

Two interviews with Camila Piñeiro-Harnecker

https://geo.coop/articles/cubas-new-cooperative-legislation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpgM80xLF9I

Spatializing Solidarity: Agricultural Cooperatives as Solidarity Transformers in Cuba, by Federica Bono and Maarten Loopmans

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ruso.12386

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Half Past Capitalism is a show about alternatives to capitalism as if they were possible.

Produced with the support of the Solidarity Economy Incubator for Zero Emissions (SEIZE): http://www.solidarityeconomy.ca

Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism⁠ Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/halfpastcapitalism Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Kevin Harding, one of the organizers of a spirited, hail-mary attempt to save Mountain Equipment Co-op from being sold off to a US private equity firm.  Before its assets were sold (and the member list apparently destroyed), the outdoor supplies cooperative had reached an estimated 6 million members and $700 million in annual revenues.

Kevin is a public policy professional who works with cooperatives and community enterprises. In this episode, he shares about how tens of thousands of members mobilized to stop MEC's sale, and came very close to being successful. 

Dru and Kevin also discuss the situation that led to the co-operative's demise, what could have prevented it, and what became of the effort to save MEC.  

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Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/HalfPastCapitalism 

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay 

Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Mo Manklang of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives to discuss recent changes to federal legislation championed by various cooperative organizations, and how laws can be changed further.

Mo is the Communications Director and Policy lead at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, a board members of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance and the Sustainable Business Network of Philadelphia.

CHIPS act update: https://www.usworker.coop/blog/the-usfwc-applauds-the-spotlight-on-worker-co-ops-in-the-chips-and-science-act/

Other policy updates from USFCW: https://www.usworker.coop/blog/category/policy

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Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/HalfPastCapitalism

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay

Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Dru is joined by Carmen Marcuello and Anjel Errasti, authors of some interesting publications about Mondragon's expansion abroad. We talk about why the cooperative model hasn't taken root in Mondragon's overseas operations, and what makes Mondragon different from multinational conglomerates of similar size that are not owned and democratically managed by their workers.  

Carmen Marcuello is a professor of Business Management at the University of Zaragoza. Anjel Errasti is a professor at the Institute of Cooperative Law and Social Economy, University of the Basque Country.  

Read their 2018 paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019793918779575  

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Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism  

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism  

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay  

Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

I've been working on a Ukraine episode for a while. After an interview with Yulia Yurchenko (whose book Elliot recommends at the end) was unusable due to wartime internet, I turned to Elliot Dolan-Evans in Melbourne. 

In addition to being the author of the timely article "Why Ukraine needs foreign debt cancellation now,"[1] Elliot has spent time in Ukraine's Donbas region during the civil war that has been ongoing since 2014, where he conducted dozens of interviews on the subject of women's work and how it was affected by IMF-driven privatization.[2]

1. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/why-ukraine-needs-foreign-debt-cancellation-now/

2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2021.2012223

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Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism

Subscribe on Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalism

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay

Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Organizer, teacher, co-founder of Movement Generation and co-organizer of Seed Commons and Peoples' Solar Energy Fund, Gopal is a key facilitator, convener and thinker in the climate justice movement. He has been involved in Climate Justice Alliance, ETC Group, Ruckus Society, Cooperation Richmond, and the Center for Economic Democracy, and he teaches Ecological Systems Thinking at Antioch University, and in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University.  

You can find Movement Generation at https://movementgeneration.org/ and Seed Commons at https://seedcommons.org/ 

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Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism

Subscribe on Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalism

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajayHalf Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Dancer, bodyworker, somatic educator and Art.coop co-organizer Marina Lopez joins us for episode 8 of Half Past Capitalism. Marina has been involved in solidarity economy organizing through Cooperation Humboldt in Northern California, and more recently in organizing an educational series following the release of the Art.coop report, "Solidarity Not Charity - Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy".  

We discuss the role of art in the solidarity economy movement, the reception to the report, and what it's like to dance about an economy.  

Read the report: https://art.coop/report/
Follow @_artcoop on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_artcoop
and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_artcoop/ 

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Half Past podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism
Subscribe on Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalism
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajay
Half Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Justin Podur has been poring over the details of world history with his comrade and former teacher, and sharing the results on the Anti-Empire Project podcast's "Civilizations" series (https://podur.org/).

I asked Justin about the insights and shifts in perspective from this fascinating in-depth study, which covers the era of colonialism and imperialism, and the various responses to it.   It was a fun conversation, and I hope you enjoy it too!  

LISTEN: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism

DONATE: https://patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

Evan Henshaw-Plath was one of the key organizers of the Indymedia network, employee #1 at Twitter, and started two worker co-ops and a bunch of other companies. He has worked at Fortune 500 monoliths and in anarchist collectives. In this episode, we discuss how software is a commons, what the cooperative movement can learn from Silicon Valley, and how cooperative tech projects can scale up.

Evan is at @rabble and www.planetary.social (part of a larger attempt to create a decentralized social media platform) is his current project.

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Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:

   • Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapit...

   • The Youtube show is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkK5IDHxpJ3YBiOCBJttGg​​

   • Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Historian-activists Kassandra Luciuk and Saku Pinta join us to discuss the "hall socialism" that flourished in communities of Finnish and Ukrainian migrant workers in the early 20th century. Though much of this incredibly vital social, political and cultural activity was successfully suppressed by anti-communist purges in the post-war period, the legacy and lessons of these networks lives on.

About our guests:

-- Kassandra Luciuk is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She is broadly interested in the history of Ukrainians in Canada. Her dissertation uses the community as a case study to investigate how anti-communism was entrenched in Canadian political consciousness throughout the twentieth century. Kassandra has also written several books and articles on the internment operations of the First World War. Most notably, she is the author of a graphic novel, Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire, which was published with Between the Lines. Kassandra’s most recent article, “More Dangerous Than Many a Pamphlet or Propaganda Book: The Ukrainian Canadian Left, Theatre, and Propaganda in the 1920s,” was awarded the Jean-Marie Fecteau Prize from the Canadian Historical Association.

-- Dr. Saku Pinta holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and occassionally works as a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Labour Studies at the University of Manitoba. As an independent scholar, his research is focused on two areas: the intersections between anarchisms and Marxisms and the history of the Finnish North American left and the membership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union in the twentieth century.

Pinta is a co-editor and contributor to Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (PM Press, 2017) and his essays appear in the anthologies Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education (PM Press, 2012) and Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (Pluto Press, 2017). He is a proud memeber of the Winnipeg General Membership Branch of the IWW, Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3909, Unifor Local 567, and the Association of Employees Supporting Education Services.

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Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Nav Kaur (@north_kaur) joins HPC to talk about child care, how capitalism and colonialism are taught from an early age, and the conditions under which the people who care for children for a living might be less alienated. We talk worker cooperatives, landlords, boards and languages.

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Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Sam Gindin shares his critique of cooperatives and his ideas about the broader challenges of building socialism. 

Sam Gindin served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and later as chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. At both unions, he participated in major collective bargaining,  policy development, and strategic discussions on direction of the union.   

He drew on that experience to author "The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union." He co-authored "The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire" and "The Socialist Challenge Today" (with Leo Panitch) and "In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives" (with Greg Albo and Leo Panitch).  His articles for Jacobin mentioned in this episode include:  

Chasing Utopia: Worker ownership and cooperatives will not succeed by competing on capitalism's terms. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/workers-control-coops-wright-wolff-alperovitz 

What a Socialist Society Could Actually Look Like
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/socialist-society-future-cooperatives 

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Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism
​• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​​
• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Half Past Capitalism Episode 002 – NYC's Solidarity Economy Movement 

Dru talks to Lauren Hudson, an organizer with SolidarityNYC, feminist geographer, PhD grad and lecturer at John Jay College (full bio below). She discusses her direct experience of capitalism, the differences in pandemic response among solidarity economy institutions she's involved in, effects of cooperation on family and kinship structures, and theories of the state – among other topics. (The continuous interventions from the one-year-old in the background are due to thin walls in the host's apartment.)

Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism​

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​

More info:

• Solidarity NYC on the web: http://solidaritynyc.org/

• Solidarity NYC on Twitter: https://twitter.com/solidaritynyc

• CEANYC on the web: https://gocoopnyc.com/

• Lauren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/blactivist

Lauren Hudson is a recent Ph.D in earth and environmental sciences at the City University of New York-Graduate Center. Her dissertation, "Defining 'Movement Space' in New York City's Solidarity Economy," is an ethnographic project about women who engage in collective forms of labor throughout the city. Using both interviews and sketch maps from participants, her research asks how in doing such work - which includes cooperative finance, community gardens, and food cooperatives - women are redrawing the boundaries of the city and creating a movement geography based on collective values.

Lauren is also a peer educator with the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York, an organization that she and other collective members of SolidarityNYC, a solidarity economy advocacy organization, co-founded. She is a lecturer with ThinkOlio, were she teaches subjects related to feminist urban geography, and an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College. She lives in Brooklyn.

Half Past Capitalism Episode 001 – How can we transform the forestry industry? Spoiler alert: organizing worker power is part of the mix. Dru talks to Marcus Peters, a friend, collaborator, cooperative developer and labour organizer about mosquitoes, clearcuts, transparency and workplace culture in the corner of Canada's forestry industry devoted to treeplanting.  

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkK5IDHxpJ3YBiOCBJttGg

Visit us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism  

Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay