The Social Economy: We are all in this together #cgi

Disregarding the wisdom of Marx ( Groucho that is) In 2004 we attempted to join a club which on the face of it, would have us as members. It was in the form of a business plan distributed to the social enterprise community describing our social business model; It said

"Capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised, yet it came up short with its classical, inherent profit-motive as being presumed to be the driving force. Under that presumption, all is good in the name of profit became the prevailing winds of international economies — thereby giving carte blanche to the notion that greed is good because it is what has driven capitalism. The 1996 paper merely took exception with the assumption that personal profit, greed, and the desire to amass as much money and property on a personal level as possible are inherent and therefore necessary aspects of any capitalist endeavour. While it is in fact very normal for that to be the case, it simply does not follow that it must be the case.

"Profits can be set aside in part to address social needs, and often have been by way of small percentages of annual profits set aside for charitable and philanthropic causes by corporations. This need not necessarily be a small percentage. In fact, there is no reason why an enterprise cannot exist for the primary purpose of generating profit for social needs — i.e., a P-CED, or social, enterprise. This was seen to be the potential solution toward correcting the traditional model of capitalism, even if only in small-scale enterprises on an experimental basis.

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”

The paper had also drawn attention to the risk of global uprisings as a strategic case to tackle poverty. Occupy Wall Street and UK street riots came 7 years later.

There's now a Social Economy Alliance saying the same things, but as you might guess, this one doesn't want us as members

 

In February 2008 the economic crisis had not yet arrived when we asked 'What is social enterprise?'

'The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.'

We were not all in this together however and the author died 3 years later, in poverty unable to secure support from the social enterprise community. As the man who'd warned New Labour about the risk of uprisings drew his last breaths, his words, "we are all in this together" would be echoed by a new Prime Minister who would immediately demonstrate that we were not.        

Bill Clinton , is saying it too, though not all of us can call on Morgan Freeman for a voiceover.

 

 

In 2009 in the wake of the crisis he  presented to the Economics for Ecology conference in Sumy, concluding with this statement

 "What is not guesswork is that the broken – again – capitalist system, be it traditional economics theories in the West or hybrid communism/capitalism in China, is sitting in a world where the existence of human beings is at grave risk, and it's no longer alarmist to say so.

The question at hand is what to do next, and how to do it.  We all get to invent whatever new economics system that comes next, because we must."

With some difficulty I was eventually able to get a summary of these efforts spanning 15 years published on independent media The article was about Re-imagining capitalism for people and planet

According to the Social Enterprise Mark however, only they have proven this model of doing business:

"We are the only UK and international body to independently prove that a business is putting people and planet alongside profit"

We'd introduced our work and our social business model to them in 2008 and as a taxpaying business contributed to the public funds which supported their creation.

We'd introduced it also to the Social Enterprise Coalition who told us on becoming members in 2006 that our work was outside their current focus.

Later this week, there will be a book launch event for 'People over Capital:The cooperative alternative to capitalism"' describing how cooperatives can deliver an alternative to capitalism.  With the use of Google a practitioners perspective from 1997 would have provided a ready resource on the subject of people above profit, the new bottom line.

As the last statement of the 1996 paper said

"It cannot be "Me first, mine first"; rather, "Me, too" is more the order of the day."

 Unfortunately' Me First' seems to have become the guiding principle of social enterprise,  A social economy managed by the public funded devoid of transparency and inclusion.

Who will build a more efficient social marketplace?, Skoll Social Edge asked in 2009 and our founder spoke plainly

"Finally, is it acceptable to build projects with stolen property? What sort of results would that lead to? Can be build an ethical system based upon unethical behavior (such as violations of Intellectual Property Rights)?

If we invent such a system, is it anything new? Or is it just a twist on the old system?

One thing that can be collaborated openly is this: a Code of Ethics. But, whose ethics? What org(s) will enforce them, and how? Who decides who gets in, how, and why? "

Post Mortem

Civic activists in Ukaine's Maidan alliance paid tribute to the man whose body they discovered

"The author of breakthru report “Death camps for children” Terry Hallman suddenly died of grave disease on Aug 18 2011. On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission – rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished."

It was the story of Every Child Deserves a Loving Family and these were some that couldn't be saved