nonviolent action. This gives experience in using nonviolent action, refines understanding of nonviolence as a goal, and helps overcome reliance on violent methods.
For a nonviolence strategy against capitalism, turning goals into methods means working out a nonviolent economic alternative to capitalism and then turning the alternative--or a component of it--into a method for change. This can be a highly effective approach.
One economic alternative is promoting cooperatives, which are collective enterprises in agriculture, manufacturing, retail, services or any of a number of areas. In cooperatives, workers and users are in control, without bosses. Decisions are made participatively, typically by consensus or voting. Cooperatives are enterprises run by workers’ control, a strategy that was analysed in chapter 7. As a strategy, cooperatives are more commonly built from scratch by a group of people committed to a collective, self-managing approach, whereas workers’ control can occur by workers taking over an existing enterprise.
Here three other economic alternatives[1] are considered: community exchange schemes, local money systems and voluntary simplicity.
Community exchange schemes
A well-known community exchange scheme is LETS (Local Employment and Trading System), a not-for- profit, cooperative information service to coordinate local exchange of goods and services.[2] Individuals who produce goods or undertake services receive “credits” that can be used to obtain goods and services from others who are participating. Unlike the anonymous market, formal barter systems such as LETS promote direct connections between people, fostering a more cooperative approach. LETS supplements the money economy but also challenges it, causing difficulty for the state to exercise its power through taxation.
LETS has been introduced in hundreds of communities in various countries. Usually the schemes are small, but some are quite extensive. Some governments tolerate LETS operations, while others obstruct or harass them. Government regulations and harassment limit the expansion of LETS, but at least as important is the attraction of the regular money economy for most people.
Setting up and running LETS schemes can be interpreted as a strategy against capitalism. In the questions in the check list, the word “campaign” should be interpreted as “building a LETS scheme.”
1. Does the campaign help to
• undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or
• undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or
• build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?
LETS challenges the legitimacy of capitalism because it is based on barter rather than currency, because it is non-profit and because it is mostly exchange between individuals, without large corporations. It also helps build a nonviolent alternative because it is based on cooperation rather than exploitation. LETS in its present forms is not a full-scale alternative to capitalism. For example, LETS participants gain many of their skills and tools of work through the conventional economy; LETS-based communities seldom run entire education systems and computer chip manufacturing. But LETS certainly can be a component of a wider nonviolent alternative.
2. Is the campaign participatory?
Definitely. In as much as people engage in LETS, they are participating in the alternative. However, it is typical for just a few people to be responsible for setting up and administering LETS schemes, so there can be inequalities at the level of design and operation.
3. Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods?
Yes.
4. Is the campaign resistant to cooption?
Cooption occurs mainly through the attraction of the money economy. Since LETS normally operates as a partial alternative, with many participants also being involved in the money economy, which is far larger and offers much greater choice, there is a constant pull away from LETS as a full alternative.
Local money systems
Related to community exchange scheme are local money systems.[3] Both LETS and local money systems are challenges to the construction of markets by states.[4] Local money is planned, issued and controlled locally, rather than being imposed by a central government. Local money is directly connected to people in a community, greatly restricting the power of national governments and large corporations, especially major banks. It helps to make people aware of the social role of money, challenging the idea that it is a neutral exchange medium.[5]
In a number of cases, local money systems were introduced in desperation by communities during economic depressions, as an attempt to get the local economy moving. Sometimes the currency automatically depreciates with time--for example losing one percent of its value each day--so that people have a strong incentive to spend it quickly. Local money is a direct challenge to central government monopolies over currency, and central governments typically shut down local money systems as soon as possible.
1. Does the campaign help to
• undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or
• undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or
• build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?
Local money systems challenge the legitimacy of capitalism, but here distinctions between types of capitalism become important. What can be called “actually existing capitalism” is based on central government
