![]() |
|
|
|
China and the Question of Ownership: Is There a Third Way Forward?
|
|
A New Vision for Providing Hope, Justice and Economic Empowerment for Sierra Leone's Victims of War by Norman G. Kurland, Michael D. Greaney and Dawn K. Brohawn |
||||||||
|
|
Few people would disagree that the primary victims of Sierra Leones civil war since 1991 have been the children. It is they who have been conscripted into various armed groups, deprived of family life and stable communities, and forced into a survival struggle without any reasonable opportunity to develop fully as human beings. In view of the present chaos, a new vision and fundamental transformation of the social order must be implemented immediately. This paper offers an alternative vision for the consideration of authentic leaders and all those willing to work together to restore order out of the present disorder. Only with an inspired vision can new leaders emerge. Only with a bold and practical plan for fundamental change can the barbarism of the past be transcended and today's opposing forces unite. Only then can they work together to build a truly sustainable and just society. Only then will peace come to Sierra Leone. That peace will flow naturally from a new social order designed to promote genuine social and economic justice for the most deprived and exploited members of society, particularly the children. Sierra Leones crisis is a microcosm of what every country in the world is now facing. It is a "worse case" example for economies attempting to divest themselves of a colonialist or socialist past. If a new Sierra Leone is to emerge from its violent present, it must avoid the errors made by other developing and socialist countries confronted with the forces of economic globalization. As best-selling author William Greider reminds us in his new book, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, economic globalization is a reality and will not go away. A new vision and a new model for development for Sierra Leone must take that new reality into account. (We are pleased that Greider supports the logic and principles of our "Third Way" approach to global economic development in Chapter 18 of his book.) Socialism has failed. Many traditionally state dominated economies cannot meet their massive foreign debt obligations or compete effectively in the emerging global marketplace. Academicians and investment bankers have rushed into advanced, transforming and developing economies to promote traditional capitalist solutions. All these solutions, however, sound dismally the same: "shock therapy," more foreign investment, a Wall Street-style stock exchange, top-down money and credit markets, and numerous tax breaks and special privileges to mirror the labyrinthine U.S. tax system. Surely these "privatization experts" can do better than to sell an already-failed and incomplete model. Why saddle the rest of the world with a tendency to recession and more class division? Why should experts promote grossly concentrated ownership of corporate equity, over-dependence on foreign investment to fuel the economy, increasing marginalization of the labor force, and institutionalized gambling on a national stock exchange? Before their future is decided for them on a permanent basis, people should ask whether the prescriptions being touted will really build a better society for every citizen or will the capitalist model, once again, merely empower a small elite? Is capitalism the only logical alternative for rebuilding, transforming, or revitalizing an economy? Is it possible to conceive of a globalized free enterprise alternative to the wage/welfare systems of capitalism and socialism, one consistent with the vision of America's founding fathersa truly revolutionary and "Third Way"?
The connection between widespread distribution of property and political democracy was evident to America's founders. This understanding was reflected in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the forerunner of America's Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Following John Locke's triad of fundamental and inalienable rights, the Virginia Declaration of Rights declared that securing "Life, Liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing Property" is the highest purpose for which any just government is formed. Power exists in society whether or not particular individuals own property. If we accept Lord Action's insight that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," our best safeguard against the corruptibility of concentrated power is decentralized power. If Daniel Webster is also correct that "power naturally and necessarily follows property," then democratizing ownership is essential for democratizing power. In the economic world, property performs the same power-diffusion function that the ballot does in politics. It does more. It makes the ballot-holder economically independent of those who wield political power. With the abolition of slavery and feudalism, the United States insured that no person would ever again become the property of another. Through this and other limitations on the rights of private property, a just government transcends the weaknesses of a pure laissez faire approach to ownership rights. However, by fulfilling its duty to all its citizens to lift barriers to private property in the means of production, government builds a permanent political constituency for a free market economy.
Both socialism and capitalism concentrate economic power at the top. It makes little difference that under capitalism the concentration is in private hands and under socialism the concentration is in the hands of the state. Both systems are excessively materialistic in their basic principles and overall vision. Both, in their own ways, degrade the individual worker. Both bring forth economic systems which ignore and hinder intellectual and spiritual development. Amalgams of the two systems, as in America's so-called "mixed economy" or the Scandinavian welfare state model, differ only in their degree of social injustice, corruption, economic inefficiency, human insecurity and alienation which permeate each level of class-divided societies. What then would be the true "Third Way" for moving toward a freer, more just and economically classless society?
Most schemes being promoted by experts keep repeating the mistakes of the past. From the academic right come proposals that assume that free markets alone will bring prosperity and justice to workers. However, the right never explains how the unrestrained forces of the market can ever match consumer production (i.e., aggregate supply) with consumption incomes (i.e., aggregate demand), where ownership of advanced labor-displacing technology is owned by a tiny fraction of the world's consumers, and old capital "breeds" (i.e., finances) new capital in ways that create few if any new owners. A systemic mismatch is inevitable, together with social conflicts, disorder and a growing gap between the rich and the rest of society. Bill Gates of Microsoft, who in a year more than doubled his accumulated capital from $16 billion to $37 billion today, cannot possibly spend all the consumption income earned by his productive assets. From one side of the muddled middle come ideas to fight economic globalization by retreating behind defensive proposals to restore mercantilism, protectionism and economic balkanization. Others in the middle react to the dangers of globalization with "Marshall Plan" proposals to pump billions in new foreign money each year into transforming economies, promoting welfare state systems that would ensure every worker displaced by privatization a wage packet in return for his labor, also ignoring a worker's right to own and share profits from new and privatized enterprises. And from the academic left, clinging to the cobwebs of socialism, come proposals to rectify imbalances from maldistribution of capital ownership, generally by fighting the immutable laws of supply and demand in favor of new forms of collectivism and confiscatory progressive income taxes aimed at "robbing the rich and giving to the poor." This would ensure a handout for all citizens on the dole, regardless of their efforts or the demands of justice.
Each of these approaches commits a fatal error. The right remain blind to institutional barriers to broadened ownership, thus implicitly limiting the ownership of productive assets to a tiny elite. This ensures that most workers will receive income only from selling their labor, in direct competition with advancing technology and an expanding global work force. This view ultimately reduces the worker to an input of production. He can then be purchased cheaply and forced into unemployment if owners decide to relocate where labor rates are lower, or to replace people with machines. Exclusionary approaches to finance also make the recipient country dependent upon regular infusions of foreign capital to keep the economy going. Those in the middle and the left turn to government, not the market system, to solve the problems ignored by the right. Historically, capitalism and socialism violate the rights that owners of productive property have in the fruits of production. Any excess is taken from owners and productive workers and redistributed among nonproductive non-owners. This leaves more economic power in the hands of the state than is healthy for achieving genuine social and economic justice for all.
Other schemes also have severe flaws. One seemingly attractive approach, the Scandinavian Plan (erroneously billed as the "Third Way"), relies on forcing companies to issue shares to a collective ownership trust set up in the name of the workers. Workers are insulated from direct shareholder rights, and are paid retirement or disability wages out of the earnings of the trust. No worker has any access to the power or profits associated with property rights in any of the company shares held by the trust. Payments are determined by labor leaders and company managers who control the shares as trustees for the workers. This perpetuates the dependency of workers on their leaders, and invites new forms of elitism and corruption. The Yugoslavian self-management model also falls short of embodying the Third Way. Self-management gives workers more say over their workplaces and jobs and some input into decisions. However, this is joint management, not joint ownership. All ownership remains collectivized in the hands of the state or in some other form of politicized ownership. The self-management model sometimes deteriorates into "management by committee," a lack of checks and balances in corporate governance, and an inability to make long term investment and operational decisions for meeting global competition.
What all of these approaches have in common is a reliance on the wage system, a Space Age form of feudalism. Whether the economy is capitalist, socialist, a variety of the welfare state, or some combination thereof, they all depend on the worker receiving his sole income and support in the form of wages for the only thing he has to sell: his labor. No plan or proposal based on a wage system can truly call itself the Third Way. Whether the bosses are politicians or paid hirelings of a small ownership elite, the worker ends up being a wage-slave. Even a labor union, when it confines itself to obtaining higher wages and greater fixed "entitlements," does nothing to empower the worker or gain him real liberty and justice. The worker may be well paid, but in the end he is simply a wage-slave who gets more than the other wage-slaves. The owners of capital still have the power to shift their capital assets to areas of the world where market wage rates are cheapest.
Higher wages are not the focus of the real Third Way. The Third Way is a systematic approach, balancing the demands of participative and distributive justice by lifting institutional barriers which have historically separated owners from non-own-ers. This involves removing the roadblocks preventing people from participating fully in the economic process as both workers and owners. Then more people can then begin earning higher incomes from their own capital, as well as from their labor. The emphasis of the Third Way is not on redistribution of income, but on providing people with social means and a legal system which will encourage them to create their own new wealth and share in profits broadly and equitably. A major flaw in most wage systems is that higher wages are obtained through government intervention or collective bargaining pressures rather than by the free choice of people within a system of equal ownership opportunities. If owners are better bargainers, wages are low. If workers can out argue owners or force them to implement minimum wages supported by the state, wages are high. Neither side considers, except indirectly, how to link workers to labor-saving technology. Since capital is more mobile than labor in the global marketplacebeing able to relocate to take advantage of lower wages in other areaswage system workers remain at a permanent disadvantage.
All wage systems ignore one or more of what can be called the "Four Pillars," the essential principles for building a more just economy. During the perilous transition periods of economic reform, leaving out any one of these pillars weakens the entire fabric of the economy and leads to eventual collapse. The four pillars of the Third Way are:
Limiting the economic power of the state ultimately involves the goal of shifting ownership and control over production and income distribution from the state to the people. To do this, the economic power of the state should be specifically limited to:
Within these limits the state would promote economic justice for all citizens. Coincident with this objective would be the goal of reducing human conflict and waste and erecting an institutional environment that will encourage people to increase economic efficiency and create new wealth for themselves and the global marketplace. Increased production would increase total revenues for legitimate public sector purposes, reducing the need for income redistribution through confiscatory income taxes and social welfare payments.
Artificial determinations of prices, wages and profits lead to inefficiencies in the uses of resources and scarcity for all but those who control the system. Those in power either have too little information or wisdom to know what is right, or will set wages and prices to suit their own advantage. Just prices, wages, and profits are best set in a free, open and democratic marketplace, where consumer sovereignty reigns. Assuming economic democratization in the future ownership of the means of production, everyone's economic choices or "votes" on prices and wages influence the setting of economic values in the marketplace. Establishing a free and open market would be accomplished by gradually eliminating all special privileges and monopolies created by the state, reducing all subsidies except for the most needy members of society, lifting barriers to free trade and free labor, ending all non-voluntary, artificial methods of determining prices, wages and profits. This would result in decentralizing economic choice and empowering each person as a consumer, a worker and an owner. Wealth distribution assumes wealth creation, and technological and systems advances, according to recent studies, account for almost 90% of productivity growth in the modern world. Thus, balanced growth in a market economy depends on incomes distributed through widespread individual ownership of the means of production. The technological sources of production growth would then be automatically linked with the ownership-based consumption incomes needed to purchase new wealth from the market, making Say's Law of Markets a practical reality for the first time since the Industrial Revolution began.
Owners' rights in private property are fundamental to any just economic order. Property secures personal choice, and is the key safeguard of all other human rights. By destroying private property, justice is denied. Private property is the individual's link to the economic process in the same way that the secret ballot is his link to the political process. When either is absent, the individual is disconnected or "alienated" from the process. Restoring the idea as well as the fact of private property would involve the reform of laws which prohibit or inhibit acquisition and possession of private property. This would include ensuring that all owners, including shareholders, are vested with their full rights to participate in control of their productive property, to hold management accountable through shareholder representatives on the corporate board of directors, and to receive profits commensurate with their ownership stakes. Private property links income distribution to economic participationnot only by owners of existing assets, but also by new owners of future wealth.
One of the most crucial problems that Marx addressed in his economic theories was that ownership of productive assets"capital"was limited to the very few. Unfortunately, Marx's solution was to concentrate wealth and power even more by mandating state ownership of all productive assets. This resulted in enormous concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a new elite. The real problem, however, is not ownership of productive property, but concentration of ownership.
Control over money and credit largely determines who will own and control productive capital in the future. When the subject of money and money creation comes up, we sometimes forget that money is a man-made thing, and it is morally neutral. Its goodness or badness depends solely on how it is created and how it is used. Like the secret ballot in politics, money is a uniquely "social good." And that is the crux of the matter. Money is created and credit extended these days in ways that keep the rich wealthy, and the poor in their place. Consumer credit, for example, is available virtually to everyone, while access to capital (or "productive") credit is restricted to use by those who meet the universal requirement for collateral, i.e., the rich. It is more than an outworn truism that you need money to make money, or that lenders will only extend capital credit to people who don't need to borrow. Let us focus on the $1 trillion of growth assets added each year in the U.S. public and private sectors, consisting of new technology, plant and equipment, physical infrastructure and rentable space. Amounting to a growth increment of $4,000 for every man, woman and child, these productive assets will be financed in ways that add no new owners. If capital credit were to become as universally accessible as the political ballot, capital assets could become a growing source of independent capital incomes for all persons and their families. What makes capital credit special is that by nature it is procreative or "self-liquidating." That is, capital credit is restricted to the purchase of assets that are expected to pay for themselves out of the revenues generated from the capital project which it financed, and thereafter these assets are expected to earn a continuing flow of profit for whoever owns the assets. Capital credit is inherently counter-inflationary. Consumer credit, on the other hand, does not generate its own repayment, and any repayment must come out of the user's other resources. When used to any significant extent, consumer credit greatly reduces the purchasing power of the user.
The primary social means to bring about expanded ownership of productive assets involves the democratization of productive, self-liquidating credit. Anyone familiar with the overly consumption-oriented economies of the developed world knows that it is far easier for the average citizen to obtain credit for non-productive purposes than to acquire productive property. Many Third World debtor nations have fallen into the same trap, incurring huge burdens of debt and spending the loan proceeds on projects that do not generate revenue to repay the loans. Consumer credit and other non-productive forms of credit entrap workers and nations into dependency on those who own and control capital. One way to unshackle workers from the slavery of the worker-for-hire system and from dependency on the redistributive Welfare State is to redirect society's uses of credit from non-productive and consumer purchases to faster rates of wealth production and more universal participation in the ownership and profits from enterprises which produce that new wealth. Productive capital assets, under professional management, are expected to pay for themselves out of future profits, and thus are inherently better credit risks. By making productive credit available on a truly democratic basis, society moves people toward economic self-sufficiency and independence. A broad dispersion of wealth and power serves as the ultimate check against abuse of power by the state or by the majority against minorities or individual citizens.
In judging the efficacy of any plan of economic reconstruction or reform, certain criteria are clear. First, it must be practical, avoiding the concentrations of wealth and power embodied in capitalist and socialist systems. Second, it must be efficient, providing the greatest benefit for the lowest cost. Finally, the plan must be just for all the people, not only the few at the top, to ensure that the efforts of ordinary citizens accrue to their benefit. As the United States has one of the more successful economies in the world, the temptation is simply to copy the present American model. From the standpoint of democratizing economic power, this would be a mistake. As things stand now, most of the directly held corporate equity in the United States is concentrated in a few hands. Going from a mega-concentration of wealth and power under socialism to a super-concentration of wealth and power under capitalism would result in only a minor lessening of injustice.
However, there are experiences in the history of the United States which account for its current relative success in the world. One historical analogy would provide an effective approach for broadening the base of capital ownership in order to avoid the evils of capitalism, and would place ownership and power directly into the hands of the people. In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act turned thousands of people into owners of land, the single most valuable productive asset at the time, by giving them the opportunity to earn ownership of one hundred and sixty acres. The land itself wasn't given away. Each homesteader had to develop the land and work it for five years. He was then granted title. Today's vast corporate wealth in the United States was largely created after the Homestead Act had turned many Americans into owners of productive property, and consisted of a kind of productive property not addressed by the Act. That most of the corporate wealth in the United States is appallingly concentrated in the hands of a few is due to the monopolistic tendencies of capitalism itself. But a land-based Homestead Act is not the only method that can be used by the average worker to accumulate income-producing wealth. Since ever-improving technology accounts for most of the newly produced wealth in the today's world, limiting everyone to ownership opportunities in the land would merely result in a growing population dividing up a static amount of wealth into ever smaller pieces, ensuring poverty for themselves and their descendants. There are, however, social technologies that can be used to democratize individual ownership of a type of wealthnew tools of production being added to the world's expanding technological frontierthat has no limits save human creativity and ingenuity.
One modern financial technology to enable the acquisition of companies by their employees is known as the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). The ESOP has been enacted into over twenty U.S. laws and being increasingly used in the United States, the United Kingdom and a growing number of other countries. What makes it different from other ways for workers to purchase ownership shares is that the ESOP is a credit democratization vehicle designed specifically to attract capital credit to enable many workers with little or no assets to gain significant as opposed to token ownership opportunities, and to pay for their shares from corporate profits, not reduced take-home income. The ESOP is a social technology which is totally different from collective ownership or the "Bolshevization of Capital," because it is based on the full restoration of private property in the means of production. The ESOP diffuses economic power by enabling workers who have no savings to purchase shares in the companies in which they are employed. As Marx observed, conflict between owners and workers is built into the capitalist system. However, by turning workers into owners of the companies in which they labor, class conflict between labor and capital largely disappears. Professional managers are still needed to make day-to-day decisions, but are subject to a democratic accountability. Conflict is reduced because labor and capital now share a common interest in the success of an enterprisemeasured by profits. With workers as owners, companies would be able to maximize their competitive edge. It would be to the advantage of the workers to keep costs down by keeping their own fixed wages at the lowest possible subsistence level, and then receive most of their money by dividing upas ownersthe greater profits that would result. The role of the union would change under this scenario. Instead of continually confronting management and owners with higher wage and benefit demands, the union would work with owners and management while serving as a check on the power of capital concentrated in the hands of management. The union would protect the ownership rights of non-management workers.
The rest of the world now have the same opportunity with state-owned accumulations of industrial wealth that the United States had with its vast holdings of land. The question is how best to take advantage of this historic, but quickly disappearing opportunity. The United States used the Homestead Act to attain widespread capital ownership. It is now up to the people of the world to choose what method they will use. What is needed today is an "Capital Homestead Program" for the transforming economies. This would give ordinary citizens access to the means to earn ownership of the current and future wealth of their nation, rather than having the ownership handed to them or sold out from under them. Many governments throughout the world hold tremendous capital resources which their own citizens need to transform their country into a more just economy and political order. Essentially, the question is how to make a free enterprise economy work while building a broader political constituency for free enterprise growth. How can we avoid the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few that inevitably accompanies capitalism, and the predictable and even more destructive backlash of socialism? A Capital Homestead Program would approach the problem on both the macro- and micro-economic scale. Components of a Capital Homesteading strategy are interdependent, supporting the total program like the legs of a tripod:
The simplest income tax system for the modern industrial state is one where income from all sources, whether from labor or capital, is taxed at a single rate, while exempting incomes of the very poor and deferring incomes used to enable workers, the poor and citizens generally to accumulate assets needed to supplement their wages and retirement incomes. This would eliminate the unfairness of tax systems that exempt income derived from capital or act punitively against income that exceeds a certain amount. A simplified, flat-rate tax on all consumption incomes above the poverty level would provide the most direct means for balancing the national budget and restraining excessive government spending, including spending on unworkable social welfare programs. It would also eliminate the traditional double taxation of profits in ways that would maximize greater savings and investments in new plant and equipment, plus removing other features that discourage ownership. This would also force politicians to compete on who can provide the best government at the lowest cost.
New policies would free economic growth from the slavery of past savings, while creating a domestic source of new money and expanded bank credit to finance new capital repayable out of "future savings." A two-tiered interest policy would draw a sharp line between productive and non-productive uses of credit. The upper-tier would allow substantially higher interest rates for non-productive purposes, for which "past savings" would remain available. The central bank would be restrained from future monetization of national deficits or encouraging other forms of non-productive uses of credit, causing upper-tier credit to seek out already accumulated savings at market rates. Any future increase in the money supply would be linked to actual growth of the economy, creating new owners of new capital through credit repayable with future profits. The lower-tier would be achieved by requiring the central bank to discount at a low "service charge" (but subject to a 100% reserve requirement) "eligible" industrial, agricultural and commercial paper financed through the banking system. Thus, the central bank would create (i.e., "monetize") lower-tier credit. Lenders would add their normal markup above their cost of money, establishing an unsubsidized minimal rates for financing rapid technological growth. This would provide the public with an asset-backed currency reflected in more efficient instruments of production.
It is important to encourage all citizens to accumulate a direct private property ownership stake in the country's growing technological frontier, and to ensure the broadest possible base of direct beneficiaries (and thus political supporters) of future market-oriented reforms and policies. Past accumulations can become more widely diffused through reforms of inheritance and gift tax laws. Greater emphasis should be placed on more enlightened tax and credit policies to spread ownership of future accumulations resulting from technological advances. Eliminating existing ownership barriers would eventually create for every citizen a personal estate or "Capital Homestead" large enough to provide an income from dividends. This individualized accumulator of capital would be exempt from all taxes, and would be the modern equivalent of the quarter-section of land provided by the original Homestead Act in the United States. The Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) and its variations such as the Consumer Share Ownership Plan (CSOP), the Individual Share Ownership Plan (ISOP) and the Community Investment Corporation (CIC), would serve as the basic capital credit vehicles for linking new monetized credit and a tax system friendly to productivity growth with the expanding base of owners under a Capital Homestead Program. Each of these vehicles would help accelerate rates of growth of private sector enterprises by providing their new shareholders easy access to low-cost bank credit for buying growth shares repayable out of future growth profits.
As productivity of technology increases, fewer workers will be needed to produce the necessities and even the luxuries of life. In the future offered by both capitalism and socialism, however, the worker will change from being a wage slave dependent for his subsistence on a wage system to a welfare slave dependent on the politicians and bureaucrats of a redistributive Welfare State. The crucial element for avoiding this bleak future is expanded capital ownership. In transforming state-owned enterprises and farms into effective competitors in the global marketplace, in encouraging advanced technologies, and in launching the new enterprises for growing the economy, today's unemployed and underemployed would become absorbed and trained on-the-job within a vigorously dynamic and more just private sector. Connecting each worker through ownership to an expanding pool of wealth created by more and more efficient technology will ensure that each citizen can participate directly in how that wealth is produced. In its initial stages, a program of expanded capital ownership will primarily affect the workersthe people who must become motivated to work together to turn failing or unproductive companies and industries into successes. The ultimate goal of a Capital Homestead Program, however, is for every citizen to have access to sufficient credit to become an owner of productive assets. Each citizen's "Capital Homestead" would ensure that he could attain a living income without having to rely on wages from his labor alone. Such a system would greatly reduce society's burden of supporting the unemployed and permanently incapacitated. By producing a living income, ownership of productive assets could liberate human beings to enrich their lives materially, intellectually and spiritually.
A Capital Homestead Program represents one concrete proposal for moving toward the long-range vision of the Third Way. The Third Way itself embodies a moral philosophy and evolutionary process for transforming the institutional environmentlegal, financial, cultural and moral systemsto democratize economic power and improve the quality of life for everyone. In striving to "make every worker an owner," the Third Way recognizes that by nature every person is a worker. Under the wage system framework, the concept of "work" has been stripped of much of its dignity, consigned only to that portion of human endeavor dealing with "making a living." In its larger context, however, work involves physical, mental and spiritual forms of human activity, from manual labor to meditation. Within the paradigm of the Third Way, the highest form of work is not economic labor, but unpaid "leisure work"the work of building a civilization, work which no machine can perform. Throughout history, creative work has mainly been engaged in by individuals with independent incomes, those who were supported by a patron or by someone else's labor. The Third Way provides a means whereby more people can engage in "leisure work" and be supported by an independent capital income produced by their own "technology slaves."
Mankind will probably never achieve the "perfect" economic system where all drudgery is eliminated and everyone is free to do the work they prefer. However, before the opportunity passes, it becomes imperative for all economies of the world to implement effective programs of expanded ownership of productive assets. The alternative is a pendulum swing between capitalism and socialism, where any period of stability merely serves as preparation for the next violent overthrow. Many aspects of the Third Way will be determined by reforming tax and banking laws that affect the process of democratizing productive credit. How this democratization is brought aboutthe timing, priorities and proceduresare social issues best discussed in an open and democratic fashion by people aspiring to build a free and just future for themselves. For years the capitalist world has guarded against socialism. In this rare moment in history and to protect their citizens against the loss of economic sovereignty under the Wall Street capitalist model for economic globalization, all nations of the world have a chance to implement for their citizens a new and bloodless economic revolution, one consistent with the unrealized ownership vision and ideals of America's founding fathers. As they search for a better life, the citizens of developing and transforming economiesas well as those living in the developed countries themselvesneed something better than the outmoded and dehumanizing systems of traditional socialism and capitalism. Nations now have the power to create new property for the poor, without taking existing property from the rich. There is another model for economic globalization, a true third way forward. |
|||||||
|
A Quick Comparison of Capitalism, Socialism and the "Just Third Way" |
||||||||
| About the authors: Norman G. Kurland, a lawyer-economist, is president of the Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ), a non-profit, ecumenical research and educational organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He served in 1985 as deputy chairman of President Reagan's Task Force on Project Economic Justice, which recommended policy reforms to encourage economic democratization in Central America and the Caribbean. An ESOP pioneer, he designed the landmark ESOP at the Alexandria Tire Company of Egypt. Michael D. Greaney is a Certified Public Accountant. He is CESJ's Director of Research and admin-isters ESOPs for several employee-owned U.S. companies. He was responsible for developing the Accounting and Administration Manual for the Alexandria Tire Company in Egypt, the first ESOP outside of the USA and UK. Dawn K. Brohawn is Director of Communications of the Center for Economic and Social Justice and Director of Value-Based Management Services for Equity Expansion International based in Arlington, Virginia. She edited the orientation book, Every Worker an Owner, of the 1985 Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice. |
||||||||
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
The Center for Economic and Social Justice - www.cesj.org P.O. Box 40711, Washington, D.C. 20016 - Phone: 703-243-5155, Fax: 703-243-5935 thirdway@cesj.org (e-mail) |
|||||
![]() |