|
The Campaign for Co-operative Socialism
>> For equality and ecology, peace, justice and
co-operation >>
** A Fair, Safe and Peaceful world **
We are suggesting that the time has come to help create the Global Co-operative
Commonweal: a Global Commonweal of Local Commonweals. A world, in other
words, based upon the Values and Principles of The International Co-operative
Alliance (see
attached). Centrally, we also suggest that The Co-operative Commonweal
requires that we convert all workplaces into appropriate co-operative
enterprises, so that every person, and every organisation, has respectful
stewardship of land and knowledge resources, and that true equality is,
sustainably, created.
To do so, it is clear that we have to transform the economic system in
which we live, so that
|
o All people, co-operatively and together, are in control of their
lives,
o Where all work is for the long-lived benefit of all: caring for
the long-lived benefit of the whole global ecology - and all its
inhabitants.
|
This requires changes to the central features of present-day economics:
o The ownership of workplaces and knowledge used for profit,
o The ownership of land and natural resources, and their use for profit,
o The practices of money-lending and debt- and credit-creation for
profit,
o Inequality and insecurity of individual incomes,
o The created culture of rampant crime, fear, debt, and insecurity. |
Accordingly, we work for each community to be in full, open, co-operative
control of its economic resources, ensuring that they are used for the
benefit of the whole of humanity, and for the benefit of the whole global
ecology, so that:
o Everyone has the security of a fair, guaranteed income,
o And that proper stewardship of the planet is our central task |
>>This suggests the following Seven Point Action
Plan >>
Co-operative Socialism - A Seven Point Action Plan
1) ‘Co-operation not Coercion’
Convert competitive, market-based businesses into workplace co-operatives,
and remodel monopoly activities as stakeholder co-operatives: each one
having responsible stewardship of land and knowledge resources, with each
co-op demonstrably working according to the Seven Co-operative Principles
of The International Co-operative Alliance (see attached). See points
2) and 5), below, for the funding mechanism for this;
2) ‘Predistribution not Redistribution’
Distribute the created wealth from these workplace co-ops through nationally
collected, co-operative corporate taxation, distributed into local, democratically-controlled,
Community Banks and, so, make money and credit available for responsible
wealth creation and community development,
3) ‘Global stewardship for needs not private resources for profits’
Maximise public service provision (health, life-long education, libraries,
transport and so on) on a co-operative, free-at-the-point-of-use basis,
thus only retaining money as a mechanism for access to discretionary purchases,
4) ‘Fair, guaranteed incomes for all’
Introduce guaranteed fair income for all, within upper and lower limits,
and with elements of automatic Citizens’ Income, and, so, do away
with the need for direct and indirect personal taxation,
5) ‘Banking as public service - not as global warfare’
Abolish money-lending and credit-creation for profit: operate banking
as a community co-operative public service (see point two above),
6) ‘End global exploitation through financial speculation’
Reintroduce international exchange controls, a Tobin Tax, etc, as necessary,
7) ‘All our sisters are our brothers: and all our brothers are
our sisters’
Make capital grants (not loans) to developing countries.We hope this action
plan gives us, all, a good, evolving basis: >> for a practical,
moral, sustainable, and co-operative economics.
Please share and discuss this plan with family and friends
(and let us know people’s reaction?). Thanks!
The Campaign for Co-operative Socialism
www.cooperative-socialism.org
Campaign contact: John Courtneidge courtj@globalnet.co.uk
13 North Road Hertford SG14 1LN (UK) (+44) 01992 501854
(September 2003)
|