Co-op News (August 2019)

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REVIEWS How do we give economic power to the people? The making of a democratic economy: Building prosperity for the many, not just the few Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, US $26,95 (£21.60) “We’re radicals with our feet on the ground,” write Marjorie Kelly, executive vice president, and Ted Howard, president and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, a non-profit acting as a research and development lab for the democratic economy. Their latest book focuses on creating a democratic economy, which they describe as “one of the people, by the people, for the people”. Leading with the premise that state socialism will not work but neither will corporate capitalism, the two argue that while society democratised government long ago, it never democratised the economy. They identify capital bias, or favouritism towards finance and wealth-holders, as one of the issues with the current economic system. And they believe the emerging democratic economy is in stark contrast to today’s extractive economy: “There’s a role for everyone in nourishing this potential next system.” In addition to research, the Democracy Collaborative has focused on community wealthbuilding projects in Cleveland, which had fallen from being one of the USA’s wealthiest cities to one of its poorest after deindustrialisation. In collaboration with other local institutions, the Democracy Collaborative helped to set up Evergreen Energy Solutions, Green City Growers and Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, all known as the Evergreen Cooperatives. Evergreen Laundry’s clients include large local non-profits, such as the Cleveland Clinic, called ‘anchor institutions’ because of the way they are anchored in the local community. The book identifies seven principles of the democratic economy: community; inclusion; place; good work; democratic ownership; sustainability; and ethical finance. Its chapters then look at how these principles have been put into action. The book traces the emergence of the democratic economy in different communities, with case studies about various actors, including a former drug dealer from Cleveland who got a second chance when he got a job at the Evergreen laundry, and an ecological scientist behind an employee-owned environmental consulting firm in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Matthew Brown, Preston Council’s leader, also features in a chapter on how the town took inspiration from the Cleveland model to develop its own version of a democratic economy. However, Kelly and Howard warn that what works in Preston may not be the same as in Cleveland and what resonates with one community may not resonate with another. They also fear that the democratic economy has too many names – stakeholder capitalism, the solidarity economy, the new economy, the sharing economy, the regenerative economy, the living economy – which makes it harder for the different democratic businesses to speak with a single voice. “There’s a role for everyone in nourishing this potential next system,” they add, explaining that the book is aimed at everyone concerned about the fate of the planet and civilisation, rather than targeting just political scientists and economists. p Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard. Below: Workers at the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry. Credit: Evergreen Cooperative 48 | AUGUST 2019
Ted Howard: Architect of the Cleveland Model On 9 July 2019, Co-operative Futures and Co-operatives West Midlands hosted an evening with Ted Howard, at the co-operatively owned Warehouse Cafe in Birmingham. Mr Howard, who co-wrote The Making of a Democratic Economy with Marjorie Kelly (see review, left), has spent his career working in social justice advocacy and campaigning for a democratic economy. He co-founded the Democracy Collaborative in 2000 (he remains executive director) and was the architect of the green jobs and wealth-building program in Cleveland, Ohio, known as the Evergreen Cooperatives (or the Cleveland Model), which was based in part on the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. In 2010 he was named one of ‘25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World’ by Utne Reader magazine. “I am convinced that there is a very interesting, dynamic dialogue between the UK and the US,” he said. Mr Howard highlighted how, in the 1970s and 80s, UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president Ronald Regan ushered in a bold neoliberal agenda that swept the globe. But, but added, “I am hopeful a new expression is emerging for our countries and for the world – that of a democratic economy”. Co-founding the Democracy Collaborative was a significant turning point for him. “That was when I began to make the journey beyond politics and policy reform to look at the key structural issues that are embedded in our capitalist economy,” he said. “What are alternative ways of organising enterprise that are more democratic, committed to and rooted in community, that produce greater benefit for people? That journey has led me into an inquiry about how can we envision a political economy that is neither centralised state socialism [...] nor this hyper-corporate capitalism that we have now.” A second turning point was the experience of Mondragon, which he has now visited six times. “It has influenced the work we’re doing in Cleveland. It’s illuminating to see highly democratic worker ownership done at scale. But as they say there, this is not paradise and we are not angels. There are still challenges.” The third part of his journey came when he was challenged to actually build a co-op structure after years of researching and writing about the model. “This is our work in Cleveland,” he said. “When we started, I said ‘how hard can it be, this isn’t rocket science…’ Eventually a friend of mine said ‘no, it’s not rocket science, it’s much harder than that’. The reality has been a transformative experience in my life.” In the 1950s and early 60s, Cleveland, Ohio was one of the five wealthiest cities in America, and one of the largest with a population of nearly 1 million. JD Rockefeller, the industrialist, was born there, and at one point it was home to 50% of the world’s millionaires. But then came the deindustrialisation of the 70s and 80s. Today Cleveland is one of the country’s five poorest cities, with a population of just 385,000. “There had been a sense of great futility,” said Mr Howard. “I was invited to come there by a number of institutions to try to find a new way to develop the economy. What we hit upon was to emphasise worker ownership rather than just a salary; emphasise decent work, not just a job; and we created a strategy, working with legacy institutions (universities, hospitals, cultural centres, etc) to encourage them to buy locally, while at the same time setting up worker co-operatives in the city to provide the services they need.” One of the challenges was to find people to run these services – often technical and complex, such as with industrial laundries – while remaining true to values. Bringing in co-operators and training them in this work didn’t work. “What did work was bringing in corporate experts and training them in co-operative culture,” says Mr Howard. “We made every possible mistake in the book, but we’re still standing.” AUGUST 2019 | 49
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Co-op News (August 2019)

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