Marxist Theory

This book is an anthology of reports and papers from the 2007 U.S. Social Forum. It shares a wealth of new economic alternatives springing up in the USA and globally.

By means of qualitative analysis, this paper examines the organisational cultures underlying three worker cooperatives in the San Francisco Bay Area. 20 workers were interviewed and the transcripts were subsequently analysed along Edgar Schein's cultural framework. The findings show that overall the culture of these worker cooperatives is people-centred: the wellbeing of the workers comes first and the concern for making a profit comes only second.

This dissertation addresses key questions raised in Human Geography and Economic Geography concerning scale and the production of space, alternative economic geographies and co-operative economic development. It is the product of a five year ethnographic investigation with cooperative enterprises in Western Massachusetts and the broader Connecticut River Valley of Western New England.

This paper asks the question “What are the key elements to building an effective United States-based worker cooperative movement in the context of global capitalism?” Data was collected by reviewing literature in the field, interviewing 24 worker cooperative movement activists, attending a Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC) meeting, reading posts on the NoBAWC list-serve and talking with worker cooperative movement activists at social and job related events in the San Francisco Bay Area.

From 1945, until its transformation into the Left wing Democrats in 1989, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) effectively, and uninterruptedly, governed Emilia-Romagna. The Communists in Emilia were master's at building political hegemony. Their leadership style was relatively open and democratic. Local governments under the PCI became known around the world both for their efficiency and efficacy. In addition, the bold and creative economic policies of the PCI have been the object of study throughout the world.

Over the last twenty years, a profound change has taken place in the relationship between citizens and their governments. In the western democracies, the gradual transformation of social care into a commercial commodity has fundamentally altered the role of government as the primary provider of social care and public welfare. This change in the relations between the state and the citizenry has been marked by starkly different perspectives, deep conflict, and the radical realignment of social and state institutions.

This is the draft conference paper submitted by the same author as 037 for the 2013 UNRISD conference on the potential and limits of the Social and Solidarity Economy

A slide show presented at a 2013 UNRISD conference on the social and solidarity economy. The author presents the broad principles and concepts associated with the SSE (social/solidarity economy) as a response to five challenges: the green challenge, the inclusion challenge, the wellbeing challenge, the moral challenge, and the governance challenge

The co-operative movement has always had uneasy relationship with Marxist philosophy and tradition that concentrated on state ownership. Yet co-operatives are socially owned and operated organizations that operate, theoretically at least, on a non-profit basis, driven by member needs and not capital. For instance, worker co-operatives would not accumulate the “surplus labour” in Marx’s labour theory of value, leaving them immune to accusations of exploitation and worker alienation.