Responding to Poverty: Communitarian Solutions through Cooperative Facilitation of Primary Associations
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The core idea presented in this paper is a model of the economic system that
seeks a larger role for the domestic economy vis-a-vis the money economy. It
is argued that labor applied in the domestic economy can add value in ways
that can have a significant impact on the standards and quality of life for
the poor. Cooperative self-help principles applied to families and friendship
groups are the mechanism for mobilizing the domestic economy's forces of
production with the mainstream cooperatives directing their existing member
relations and member education facilities to act as promoters and facilitators of
the idea. The strategy is presented as an alternative to the employment creation-oriented
anti-poverty policies favored in the West. The author claims that
the re-establishing of well-being and autonomy within the domestic economy
will reduce pressure for jobs in the labor market particularly for marginal
employment. This reduction in pressure for jobs will feed through to improve
the relative balance of market power towards labor and at the same time take
pressure off the national exchequers struggling with subsidizing the low wage-benefit
supported labor market of the 1990s. The whole paper is presented as
a speculation that is worth further consideration and research in the absence of
viable alternatives to the present failed anti-poverty programs.