Elise believing another world is possible

Last week in Marita’s class, a Marxist economist named Mel Leiman spoke to us about the downfalls of capitalism, particularly in regard to race, and socialist alternatives to these issues. I personally found this talk intriguing because I’m not a fan of capitalism myself and agreed with his criticisms of it. Here in South Africa, colonialism and the ‘free hand of the market’ has fostered hierarchies and inequalities—especially across racial lines—with detrimental consequences. It frustrates me when outside forces try to implement market-based solutions to problems in ‘developing’ countries because I see it as reinforcing the systems that lead to things like poverty, violence, and health/education disparities in the first place. Mel put emphasis on reworking the system so that everyone, especially workers, control the means of production and foster an economy based on democratic principles. While I can stand by this ideology, I also believe that Marxism is too Western and outdated to be relevant now in South Africa. So what are the other alternatives? The past few days I’ve been inspired to find some, and these are a few of the things I came up with.

I started my search with the World Social Forum. The WSF is a bi-annual meeting of civil society organizations from around the world who convene to share their alternatives to the hegemonic, neoliberal vision of development in an open and democratic space. Some of the key ideas that come from it are that, to start, there is no one answer that can work universally. True development will be based on localized principles and needs, but policy should always be built with the participation of youth, peasants, women, and indigenous people. One of the most prominent pragmatic examples of this approach at the WSF is agroecology and food sovereignty. These movements reject industrialized farming and instead rely on the knowledge of local farmers to grow food based on traditional and environmentally friendly practices.

From here, I discovered something called the Solidarity Economy which is defined as “production, distribution, and consumption activities which contribute to the democratization of the economy via citizen engagement at local and global levels.” This movement shares a lot of similarities with socialism, particularly the emphasis on strengthening the capacity for a democratic government to provide social services. However, the Solidarity Economy puts more emphasis on social justice and operates by focusing on the production of goods and services that benefit the public and community as a whole. Models are constructed on three principles: 1, individuals earn money by offering goods and services to benefit the community; 2, strengthening the state’s capacity to provide social services; 3, contesting outside and top-down decision making. An example of this is a bank in north eastern Brazil that was managed by the community and focused on improving the infrastructure of the area by introducing a local currency, thus becoming internally sustainable. The program worked beautifully, transforming wooden shacks into homes made of concrete and brick.

I then decided to look into feminist economic theory and found an organization called the Association for Women’s Rights in Development. Their mission is to solve human rights violations through strategies that put women’s rights at center stage. The agency of women is compromised by patriarchy and neoliberal dominance, which is why alternative development strategies are so crucial for social justice. One of the main issues in this context is women’s lack of access to and control over resources. One interesting program that addresses this is Just Associates (JASS) which helps women in Southeast Asia organize into autonomous savings (not microcredit) groups that invest in joint economic ventures. By setting up these cooperatives, women practice democratic leadership and gain individual profits so that they are not dependent on male partners. What makes this program unique is that JASS acts as a facilitator, not the creditor, manager, source of startup capital, or decision maker.

Cape Town faces a plethora of issues that seem impossible to fix, making work here very frustrating at times. These movements excite me because even though they are small steps, they contribute to a healthier social ideology that could be start of big changes worldwide. The phrase that comes to mind is the WSF’s slogan that I’ll be keeping it in mind as I continue to explore Cape Town:  “Another world is possible.”