By Dr. Ed McKenna

 

Neoliberalism can be broadly defined by 2 tenets:

Capital should be permitted to flow globally in markets unhampered by government regulation, and

When government intervention is required (largely to protect private property) it should be the result of decisions arrived at through a democratic process.

This view has dominated world thinking since the 1970s, and especially so since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But there are increasing signs that this dominance is now coming to an end. The rise of China has raised serious questions as to whether capitalist economic systems coupled with authoritarian political regimes might not perform at least as well as democratic capitalism. More ominously, the rise of authoritarian regimes in countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Turkey has raised the issue of whether democracy itself might be in decline. Serious scholars have raised the question of whether even the United States, the wellspring of Neoliberalism, might be in danger of becoming an authoritarian state. The possible decline of Neoliberalism stems from a number of factors. At the most practical level, neoliberalism has failed to produce the economic security that its adherents promised. This failure, in turn, has led to a deeper understanding of how markets actually work, an understanding that seriously challenges the view that unregulated market outcomes will benefit even a majority of people, much less everyone.

by Mark Friedman

PROUT (The Progressive Utilization Theory) advocates a three-tiered economy, including a privately-owned small business sector, a sector of cooperatives where most production and commerce will take place, and a sector of large government owned and operated firms. Let us look into the rationale for each sector.

Size Matters: Small Business

Under a PROUT system only small firms can be owned by individuals or small partnerships. There are several reasons to restrict private ownership to small firms, involving both economic efficiency and economic justice.  But some private ownership helps create a lively and varied economy.

The Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) is an alternative to capitalism and Marxism.  Trond Overland shows how PROUT would provide security to all people by building on the premise that "every citizen has a fundamental value, an existential value, that supercedes the output value of individual participants."

During the twentieth century the battle for political democracy dominated world events, perhaps the 21st century will be marked by a struggle to establish economic democracy. Ravi Logan gives an outline of what economic democracy would look like.

D.H. Wright reports on a conference in Atlanta, where labor and environmental leaders joined forces in an attempt to show how collaboration and equality can bring economic prosperity.