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A COHERENT COMMUNITY
A COHERENT COMMUNITY
-- Social and Business Glue
By Jim Miller
One of the most perceptive studies of “social ecology”, which discusses the lack of and the need for a “Coherent Community”, is Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Bellah, et al. i The observations are especially critical to the formation and life expectancy of MASA. ii This and other studies portend a major change in the way business, if not most social organizations, will be formed and operate. What was said in 1985 was prophetic and is more true today than in 1985 as to the coming changes in social ecology.
During the past hundred and more years of industrialization of commerce, we have developed a culture of separation. Workers who use to weave cloth in the homes on land they owned, were separated from their resources and went to work in the textile mills where they owned nothing. The workers who used to work with spouses and children on the farm, have been split, with one or both spouses working in the town or city to supplement failing farm enterprises. Children work for a while, then as young adults leave the farm for the cities, not to return.
Control over natural resources is the bedrock of all civilizations. Land is the principal resource for production of wealth in most societies, especially agrarian societies. iv We see the megacorps buying farmland in order to control supply of farm products. By taking crop land out of production, USDA further enhances the value of the remaining productive private agricultural lands. By reducing crop land, the prices of crops increases, thus enriching the existing growers and raising barriers against the entry of new producers. Farming cannot generally be profitable accomplished on lands costing in excess of $5,000 per acre. By holding farm lands near growing cities for many years, land owners can carry the land by raising crops and then sell the land at considerable profits to the developers.
By keeping land out of the hands of the would-be producer, it enforces the separation of workers from ownership and forces them to seek factory jobs. Thus the continuing separation of the worker from the capital necessary for production increases the dependence of the worker on the existing corporate system of ownership of the means of production.
Bellah, et.al contend that the drive for “individualism” has had devastating consequences to education, especially in our institutions of high education.
“In the contemporary multiversity, it is easier to think of education as a cafeteria in which one acquires discrete bodies of information or useful skills. Feeble efforts to reverse these trends periodically convulse the universities, but the latest such convulsion, the effort to establish a ‘core curriculum’, often turns into a battle between disciplines in which the idea of a substantive core is lost. The effort is thus more symptomatic of our culture fracture than of its cure.” v
A “personal model” of who we should be has emerged from the “rugged individualism” era of our pioneers. Such emphasis on individualism has been aided and abetted by the mass media, especially television programming and the movies. As Todd Gitlin opines:
“. . . [T]elevision’s world is relentlessly upbeat, clean and materialistic. Even more sweepingly, with few exceptions, prime time gives us people preoccupied with personal ambition. **** The sumptuous and brightly lit settings of most series amount to advertisements for a consumption-centered version of the good life, and this doesn’t even take into consideration the incessant commercials, with convey the idea that human aspirations for liberty, pleasure, accomplishment and status can be fulfilled in the realm of consumption. The relentless background hum of prime time is packaged good life. vi
Today’s driving “ethic” is to put ourselves and our immediate family and close friends ahead of the common good our neighbors, our neighborhood, our community and our nation. As individuals, we survive based on a one-to-one relationship with our employer or other source of income. Such relationship transplants the relationship with the social and economic network found in tribal villages and early frontier communities, and in pockets of social action. vii
Eastern Europe went through catastrophic events in the change from totalitarian cults of state to that of oligarchies, war lords, anarchy, ethic cleansing, a velvet divorce, and into a sort of democracy. The profligate, ineffectual management by lords of the Communist states was replaced by the ownership of capital, profits and power by the “individualists” who captured power in the vacuum following the dissolution of the USSR. Are these same types of events happening to the USA? I give you proof: Enron, World Com, Haliburton, and the many global megacorps.
These issues and more were examined by Milovan Djilas. viii The workers enjoyed “freedom” after the fall of the Soviet hegemony, but continued to work in deep poverty. “Capitalist” replaced the collective State as the lord and masters of the economy and political structure. Yugoslavia launched wars of great oppression on its neighbors. The transformation of these societies to democracies have been slow and painful. The transformation of America’s economy from control by powerful overlords into a worker-lead businesses could, but need not be, painful.
What, then, “keeps the new world powerless to be born”? As a fragmented and absurdly independent society, we are so rooted in our past behavior that it is hard to see ourselves as part of a cohesive business community, let alone gather our resources together and make the change. We have seen many such changes by parts of our society: unionism, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, religions of all colors, and most recently the commoditization of labor by globalization. These forces ebb and flow, wax and wane, according to the perceived need and eventual outcome of the organizational directives.
Sustainability is the central issue.
The Anabaptists have sustained themselves as working religion-based groups for over 400 years. Their economic success is due to the use of internal labor forces working for $15 a month in spending money, but otherwise living at a decent standard of living on the farms. The Catholic Church is sustainable because of its “margin”. It takes in more than it gives out – same as any successful business. Mondragon Cooperative Corporation has developed a worker-as-owner model which now commands 150 included companies, assets of over 17 billion dollars and net income in the billions. ix
To get “born”, three essentials have to occur in the same time and space:
The “sparks of life” for social movements were identified and explained by Jo Freeman in On the Origin of Social Movements. x Freeman’s propositions are:
“Proposition 1. The need for a preexisting communications network or infrastructure within a social base of a movement is a primary prerequisite for the ‘spontaneous’ activity.
“Proposition 2. Not just any communications network will do. It must be a network that is cooptable to the new ideas of the incipient movement. To be cooptable, it must be composed of like-minded people whose backgrounds, experiences, or location in the social structure make them receptive to the ideas of a specific new movement.
“Proposition 3. Given the existence of a cooptable communications network, or at least the rudimentary development of a potential one, and a situation of strain, one or more precipitants are required.” xi
Freeman concludes:
“From all of this it would appear that training [as] an organizer or a least a proselytizer or entrepreneur of some kind, is a necessary background for those individuals who act as movement innovators. Even in something as seemingly spontaneous as a social movement, the professional is more valuable that the amateur.” xii
The “road map” for MASA (indeed, any wannabe organization), following Freeman’s rules, requires:
MASA’s formula of personal interaction is to create several farmsteads, for starters. Each farmstead will be a “campus” where the worker/owners all live and work on the farmstead. Work will consist of farming for our own use and for profit. Manufacturing and post-harvest food processing will be added. Web-business will be used from the outset to generate margin. These enterprises will serve as platforms for both our economic needs and our interpersonal, interactive communicative needs.
We reject this latter criteria for use by MASA in that MASA will not be a mass social movement, dependent on a “spark” to ignite a protest march or other event. The “crisis” we fight has been with us for generations, is diverse, hard to define and difficult to lasso. We see the evidence: low wages, rising un-employment and under-employment, down-sizing, out-sourcing, NAFTA, WTO, globalization, slave labor in foreign manufacturing centers, huge differences in environment and business regulations among nations and the destruction of nuclear families. The strain most of us feel comes from the disparity between our net, after tax income, and the cost of fulfilling our needs and wants. In our consumer-based society, this gap is increasing.
The solution is to reduce our individual consumption. We need to do as much as we can for ourselves and bypass much of our commercial society – a kind of Hutterite approach. Seldom buy new; buy wholesale, buy used when practicable. We need to do major bypassing of the retail market. We need to consolidate our resources and make them do the work of many resources. The best situs for such consolidation is the campus-like development of the farmstead.
MASA’s will create substantial profits, not as our main goal, but as our means to a peaceful, productive and sustainable cooperative community of worker-owners. By creating this form of business and becoming economically and socially successful, MASA will become the model and the magnet for America’s wave of coherent communities.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
==============================================================
-- Social and Business Glue
By Jim Miller
One of the most perceptive studies of “social ecology”, which discusses the lack of and the need for a “Coherent Community”, is Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Bellah, et al. i The observations are especially critical to the formation and life expectancy of MASA. ii This and other studies portend a major change in the way business, if not most social organizations, will be formed and operate. What was said in 1985 was prophetic and is more true today than in 1985 as to the coming changes in social ecology.
The “Modern Era” is slipping away, contended Matthew Arnold in 1885:
“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.” iii
“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.” iii
During the past hundred and more years of industrialization of commerce, we have developed a culture of separation. Workers who use to weave cloth in the homes on land they owned, were separated from their resources and went to work in the textile mills where they owned nothing. The workers who used to work with spouses and children on the farm, have been split, with one or both spouses working in the town or city to supplement failing farm enterprises. Children work for a while, then as young adults leave the farm for the cities, not to return.
Control over natural resources is the bedrock of all civilizations. Land is the principal resource for production of wealth in most societies, especially agrarian societies. iv We see the megacorps buying farmland in order to control supply of farm products. By taking crop land out of production, USDA further enhances the value of the remaining productive private agricultural lands. By reducing crop land, the prices of crops increases, thus enriching the existing growers and raising barriers against the entry of new producers. Farming cannot generally be profitable accomplished on lands costing in excess of $5,000 per acre. By holding farm lands near growing cities for many years, land owners can carry the land by raising crops and then sell the land at considerable profits to the developers.
By keeping land out of the hands of the would-be producer, it enforces the separation of workers from ownership and forces them to seek factory jobs. Thus the continuing separation of the worker from the capital necessary for production increases the dependence of the worker on the existing corporate system of ownership of the means of production.
Bellah, et.al contend that the drive for “individualism” has had devastating consequences to education, especially in our institutions of high education.
“In the contemporary multiversity, it is easier to think of education as a cafeteria in which one acquires discrete bodies of information or useful skills. Feeble efforts to reverse these trends periodically convulse the universities, but the latest such convulsion, the effort to establish a ‘core curriculum’, often turns into a battle between disciplines in which the idea of a substantive core is lost. The effort is thus more symptomatic of our culture fracture than of its cure.” v
A “personal model” of who we should be has emerged from the “rugged individualism” era of our pioneers. Such emphasis on individualism has been aided and abetted by the mass media, especially television programming and the movies. As Todd Gitlin opines:
“. . . [T]elevision’s world is relentlessly upbeat, clean and materialistic. Even more sweepingly, with few exceptions, prime time gives us people preoccupied with personal ambition. **** The sumptuous and brightly lit settings of most series amount to advertisements for a consumption-centered version of the good life, and this doesn’t even take into consideration the incessant commercials, with convey the idea that human aspirations for liberty, pleasure, accomplishment and status can be fulfilled in the realm of consumption. The relentless background hum of prime time is packaged good life. vi
Today’s driving “ethic” is to put ourselves and our immediate family and close friends ahead of the common good our neighbors, our neighborhood, our community and our nation. As individuals, we survive based on a one-to-one relationship with our employer or other source of income. Such relationship transplants the relationship with the social and economic network found in tribal villages and early frontier communities, and in pockets of social action. vii
Eastern Europe went through catastrophic events in the change from totalitarian cults of state to that of oligarchies, war lords, anarchy, ethic cleansing, a velvet divorce, and into a sort of democracy. The profligate, ineffectual management by lords of the Communist states was replaced by the ownership of capital, profits and power by the “individualists” who captured power in the vacuum following the dissolution of the USSR. Are these same types of events happening to the USA? I give you proof: Enron, World Com, Haliburton, and the many global megacorps.
These issues and more were examined by Milovan Djilas. viii The workers enjoyed “freedom” after the fall of the Soviet hegemony, but continued to work in deep poverty. “Capitalist” replaced the collective State as the lord and masters of the economy and political structure. Yugoslavia launched wars of great oppression on its neighbors. The transformation of these societies to democracies have been slow and painful. The transformation of America’s economy from control by powerful overlords into a worker-lead businesses could, but need not be, painful.
What, then, “keeps the new world powerless to be born”? As a fragmented and absurdly independent society, we are so rooted in our past behavior that it is hard to see ourselves as part of a cohesive business community, let alone gather our resources together and make the change. We have seen many such changes by parts of our society: unionism, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, religions of all colors, and most recently the commoditization of labor by globalization. These forces ebb and flow, wax and wane, according to the perceived need and eventual outcome of the organizational directives.
Sustainability is the central issue.
The Anabaptists have sustained themselves as working religion-based groups for over 400 years. Their economic success is due to the use of internal labor forces working for $15 a month in spending money, but otherwise living at a decent standard of living on the farms. The Catholic Church is sustainable because of its “margin”. It takes in more than it gives out – same as any successful business. Mondragon Cooperative Corporation has developed a worker-as-owner model which now commands 150 included companies, assets of over 17 billion dollars and net income in the billions. ix
To get “born”, three essentials have to occur in the same time and space:
- Preexisting communications network
- a composite of like-minded people
- A situation of strain or crisis
The “sparks of life” for social movements were identified and explained by Jo Freeman in On the Origin of Social Movements. x Freeman’s propositions are:
“Proposition 1. The need for a preexisting communications network or infrastructure within a social base of a movement is a primary prerequisite for the ‘spontaneous’ activity.
“Proposition 2. Not just any communications network will do. It must be a network that is cooptable to the new ideas of the incipient movement. To be cooptable, it must be composed of like-minded people whose backgrounds, experiences, or location in the social structure make them receptive to the ideas of a specific new movement.
“Proposition 3. Given the existence of a cooptable communications network, or at least the rudimentary development of a potential one, and a situation of strain, one or more precipitants are required.” xi
Freeman concludes:
“From all of this it would appear that training [as] an organizer or a least a proselytizer or entrepreneur of some kind, is a necessary background for those individuals who act as movement innovators. Even in something as seemingly spontaneous as a social movement, the professional is more valuable that the amateur.” xii
The “road map” for MASA (indeed, any wannabe organization), following Freeman’s rules, requires:
- A preexisting communication network. Use of the Internet satisfies the technical level of this need. It does not satisfy the personal interaction requirement – the handshake, pat on the back, breaking of bread together and the host of other face-to-fact social and business interactions. MASA is secular which leaves churches out of the loop. MASA is not a university sponsored project. No federal or state funding is likely to be available as was made available to the Civil Rights Movement and the Welfare Rights Movement. Trade Unions only know how to deal with the hierarchical business community.
MASA’s formula of personal interaction is to create several farmsteads, for starters. Each farmstead will be a “campus” where the worker/owners all live and work on the farmstead. Work will consist of farming for our own use and for profit. Manufacturing and post-harvest food processing will be added. Web-business will be used from the outset to generate margin. These enterprises will serve as platforms for both our economic needs and our interpersonal, interactive communicative needs.
- Cooptable network. The benefits of similar state of education, knowledge, experience and life experience will provide some of the social glue to create and sustain the network. Somewhat in opposition to this state of affairs is the need to have diverse skills and life experiences. A rich mix of diverse talent is necessary if we are to compete successfully with the established corporate enterprises. The deepest layer is the good will toward each other and the willingness to experiment with change, even if the change does not produce the intended results.
- Strain and crisis. In good times, social protest increases due to the greater availability of funding and time of the participants. In poor times, the scarcity of resources tend to reduce promotion of social causes, despite the generally heightened needs.
We reject this latter criteria for use by MASA in that MASA will not be a mass social movement, dependent on a “spark” to ignite a protest march or other event. The “crisis” we fight has been with us for generations, is diverse, hard to define and difficult to lasso. We see the evidence: low wages, rising un-employment and under-employment, down-sizing, out-sourcing, NAFTA, WTO, globalization, slave labor in foreign manufacturing centers, huge differences in environment and business regulations among nations and the destruction of nuclear families. The strain most of us feel comes from the disparity between our net, after tax income, and the cost of fulfilling our needs and wants. In our consumer-based society, this gap is increasing.
The solution is to reduce our individual consumption. We need to do as much as we can for ourselves and bypass much of our commercial society – a kind of Hutterite approach. Seldom buy new; buy wholesale, buy used when practicable. We need to do major bypassing of the retail market. We need to consolidate our resources and make them do the work of many resources. The best situs for such consolidation is the campus-like development of the farmstead.
MASA’s will create substantial profits, not as our main goal, but as our means to a peaceful, productive and sustainable cooperative community of worker-owners. By creating this form of business and becoming economically and socially successful, MASA will become the model and the magnet for America’s wave of coherent communities.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
==============================================================
END NOTES
i
Bellah, Robert N.; Madsen, Richard; Sullivan, William M.; Swidler, Ann; and Tipton, Steven; 1985, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
Bellah, Robert N.; Madsen, Richard; Sullivan, William M.; Swidler, Ann; and Tipton, Steven; 1985, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
ii
Mutual Aid Society of America (MASA) is intended to be a dual layered organization in the form of a limited liability partnership and its included limited liability partnerships, operated as an integrated partnership. The workers as owners have the ultimate sovereignty in all major matters. Power and profits are shared among MASA, the included companies and the workers. The businesses are both vertically and horizontally integrated. The specific design draws from the “best practices” found for cooperative enterprises. We have found that the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation has a considerable amount to offer as a model for MASA.
Mutual Aid Society of America (MASA) is intended to be a dual layered organization in the form of a limited liability partnership and its included limited liability partnerships, operated as an integrated partnership. The workers as owners have the ultimate sovereignty in all major matters. Power and profits are shared among MASA, the included companies and the workers. The businesses are both vertically and horizontally integrated. The specific design draws from the “best practices” found for cooperative enterprises. We have found that the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation has a considerable amount to offer as a model for MASA.
vii
Louis Wirth studied the superficiality, anonymity and transitory character of urban social relations generally ascribed to city-dwellers, in Urbanism as a Way of Life. Wirth, Louis. 1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life, The University of Chicago.
We, as a society, are still on that path, leading to the disintegration and mortification of our city-based society. In older farm communities, neighbors living ten miles apart knew more about the comings and goings of their neighbors than city dwellers do about the neighbor in the apartment next door, eight inches away.
Louis Wirth studied the superficiality, anonymity and transitory character of urban social relations generally ascribed to city-dwellers, in Urbanism as a Way of Life. Wirth, Louis. 1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life, The University of Chicago.
We, as a society, are still on that path, leading to the disintegration and mortification of our city-based society. In older farm communities, neighbors living ten miles apart knew more about the comings and goings of their neighbors than city dwellers do about the neighbor in the apartment next door, eight inches away.
viii
Djilas, Milovan. 1990. A Revolutionary Democratic Vision of Europe. International Affairs, vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 265-73:
So, too, will the coming “revolution” allow workers to “take back” ownership of their own economic futures. Like Eastern Europe communities, worker communities will arise, coagulate to form worker-owed business communities, and gain control over a substantial portion of the nation’s means of production and commerce.
Concurrently, there will be a need for a political revolution. A third, “swing” party will be formed. By negotiating with both major parties either on a wholesale basis or on an issue-by-issue basis, the small party can either control or substantially influence the course of the Federal government. Because the Feds control the highest percentage of buying power, the brakes can be put on the devaluation of our standard of living caused by profligate government spending at all levels.
Djilas, Milovan. 1990. A Revolutionary Democratic Vision of Europe. International Affairs, vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 265-73:
“No one can remain indifferent in the face of the democratic revolution in Eastern Europe. Everyone, in one way or another, will be affected by it.”
So, too, will the coming “revolution” allow workers to “take back” ownership of their own economic futures. Like Eastern Europe communities, worker communities will arise, coagulate to form worker-owed business communities, and gain control over a substantial portion of the nation’s means of production and commerce.
Concurrently, there will be a need for a political revolution. A third, “swing” party will be formed. By negotiating with both major parties either on a wholesale basis or on an issue-by-issue basis, the small party can either control or substantially influence the course of the Federal government. Because the Feds control the highest percentage of buying power, the brakes can be put on the devaluation of our standard of living caused by profligate government spending at all levels.
ix
Cheney, George. 1999. Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon. Cornell University Press. P. 11.
Cheney, George. 1999. Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon. Cornell University Press. P. 11.
“Taking a closer look at these highly successful but changing Basque cooperatives helps us to see more clearly what the tradeoffs are while examining the basic question posed at the beginning of this book: How can an economically successful, growing organization maintain its essential value commitments? The Mondragon case is important not only as an instance of workplace democracy in a world of organizations that are not typically democratic but also in terms of how tensions between, for example, globalization and local control are being addressed (Castells 1996). **** Phrasing the question ‘Can Mondragon survive – here or there?’ tends to divert our attention from the larger question: ‘What is business about, anyway?” If we see the lessons Mondragon within the limited parameters of the cooperatives’ purity or if we shelve the case as a quaint footnote in our consideration of the array of possible organizational forms, we really miss the broader and more important point. What is happening to the Mondragon system internally while it deals with a more ‘open’ external market, tell us a great deal about what options are possible, or thinkable, or discussable for other organizations, no only radically alternative ones, but also mainstream ones. We can better see the possible futures by noting what course is being charted by socially inspired organizations that are adjusting to today’s market.” Pp. 146-47.
xi
Freeman gives examples. Black churches lead the way of the civil rights movements. They had the existing network and the leaders – both lay and ministers – to guide and sustain the creation of various cells of the larger organizations which came to prominence in the 60’s and 70’s. Women’s movements had antecedents in temperance unions, female trade organizations, women’s studies in colleges and President Kennedy’s President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Granges established a degree of organization for America’s farmers, followed by the farm bureaus.
Freeman stresses the need for personal interaction rather than impersonal media communication. If a network is to grow rapidly, it must capitalize on a well-embedded network. Vitality and sustainable depend on horizontal relationships – many-to-many – rather than vertical relationships, such as autocratic one-to-many. Face-to-face interaction is a critical need.
Since people act on their own prior knowledge and experience, the members’ predispositions are elevated by having had the same experiences in common. Such prior, common experience tends to sweep away or subdue ideological differences.
Freeman found that every movement needs an “agent of change” – an organizer or “agitator”. “Dr. King may have been the public spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott who caught the eye of the media, but is was E. D. Nixon who organized it.”
Some organizations are “spin-offs” or “children” of parent groups. The spin-off occurs when an established organization refuses to recognize or support a given initiative which is a highly valued goal of some of the members. Farm Bureaus were given to sponsoring emerging groups which would undertake issues which the farm bureaus were not willing to do because of government or private subsidies.
Freeman gives examples. Black churches lead the way of the civil rights movements. They had the existing network and the leaders – both lay and ministers – to guide and sustain the creation of various cells of the larger organizations which came to prominence in the 60’s and 70’s. Women’s movements had antecedents in temperance unions, female trade organizations, women’s studies in colleges and President Kennedy’s President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Granges established a degree of organization for America’s farmers, followed by the farm bureaus.
Freeman stresses the need for personal interaction rather than impersonal media communication. If a network is to grow rapidly, it must capitalize on a well-embedded network. Vitality and sustainable depend on horizontal relationships – many-to-many – rather than vertical relationships, such as autocratic one-to-many. Face-to-face interaction is a critical need.
Since people act on their own prior knowledge and experience, the members’ predispositions are elevated by having had the same experiences in common. Such prior, common experience tends to sweep away or subdue ideological differences.
Freeman found that every movement needs an “agent of change” – an organizer or “agitator”. “Dr. King may have been the public spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott who caught the eye of the media, but is was E. D. Nixon who organized it.”
Some organizations are “spin-offs” or “children” of parent groups. The spin-off occurs when an established organization refuses to recognize or support a given initiative which is a highly valued goal of some of the members. Farm Bureaus were given to sponsoring emerging groups which would undertake issues which the farm bureaus were not willing to do because of government or private subsidies.
xii
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