Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley

11. Economic Democratization from Below

11. Economic Democratization from Below The NVP efforts recounted in this book have sometimes been disparaged as “social experiments that failed.” But it would be closer to the truth to say that those initiatives that failed were crushed by the policies of neoliberal globalization that dominated the world for the past three decades. Now it is neoliberal globalization that has proved to be a failed experiment, wreaking devastation on the entire world year by year and culminating in the “Great Recession” that reached a crescendo in 2008–9. How can we now find taking-off points for new experiments that can test alternatives to the “let the market decide” neoliberal dogma? The strategies developed by the NVP in the 1980s can provide one touchstone from which to go forward. One of the NVP’s original godfathers, sociologist Fred Perella, described it as “an embryonic sign” of what had to develop in the future on a much broader basis “for this society to survive and be strong.”1 But what does that “sign” signify? In contrast to more common approaches to economic problems, the NVP’s goal was neither to increase the power of government over the economy nor to reduce the role of government in favor of unconstrained markets. Rather, it sought ways that grassroots people and organizations could affect economic forces and decisions themselves. It took the underlying idea of participatory democracy—that people should control the decisions that affect them—and tried to apply it in the economic sphere. It pursued economic democratization from below. This chapter reviews the strategies the NVP used in the experiments described in this book, in later activities, and in projects considered but not realized. It supplements these with ideas and experiences from initiatives elsewhere. It aims to analyze NVP strategies, but also to suggest what further development of an NVP-type process of economic democratization from below might entail. This chapter revisits the “sources of powerlessness” described in chapter 1,and it examines the ways in which NVP strategy attempted to address such problems as the concentrated control of property rights, the undesirable side effects of economic decisions, and the lack of accountability of public institutions. It compares and contrasts NVP strategies with traditional trade union strategies. It looks at related strategies that have been tried or considered elsewhere. Accountability Who was responsible for coping with deindustrialization? For much of the Naugatuck Valley’s history, a civic leadership of local industrialists had used their economic, social, and political power to preserve and develop the valley ’s economic base. But after the middle of the twentieth century, their power, resources, and commitment eroded. Plant closings affected congregations, unions, community groups, government, and virtually all other institutions in the valley, but no institution had clear responsibility for addressing them. Unions represented many of the workers most directly affected by particular closings, but U.S. courts had held that employer decisions to close businesses are “peculiarly matters of management prerogative.”2 Corporations had even less accountability to local communities than to their workers. Although the NVP worked with, included, and depended on unions, it organized people along different lines than traditional forms of unionism. Unions generally are based on uniting in one organization workers who are selling their labor power in the same or related markets. Craft unions unite workers in the same occupation, industrial unions those in the same industry, enterprise unions those with the same employer. Union members are presumed to have common interests rooted in their shared position in the labor market. Plant closings, housing, and related issues affected workers but also the wider community. They went beyond workplace conditions and the relation of one group of workers to one employer. The NVP brought together a range of people whose interests might vary far more than workers in one craft, company, or industry but shared a wider common interest in relation to issues like plant closings and housing, whatever their personal workplace, employer, and class. Although the core of the NVP’s constituency was composed of people Economic Democratization from Below 187 who would usually be described as working class, it included small-business people and middle-class suburbanites. Although it was largely grounded in the economic interests of its working-class constituency, it also included many people whose motivations for involvement were partly or predominantly noneconomic. Because it represented a geographical region, it drew on shared local interests but...