Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Week 4 Class Excercise: Toronto's "Women Against Poverty Collective", 3 June 2007 Women's Housing Action

Excercise instructions:
As I spoke to you all in class last week, at one point during the seminar on Sept. 27 (this Thursday) we're going to conduct a class debate. We're going to look at the lead up to and the consequences of the June 3, 2007 WAPC squat of an abandoned apartment building in downtown Toronto from the perspective of "reformers" and "social changers," as defined in the Fontan & Shragge reading from last week.

I will randomly divide the class into two groups, one group will be made up of "reformers" and the other, "social changers." You will then convene as a group for about 10 minutes and prepare a "reformist" or "social change" case for the social economy issues that the WAPC action brought to light: poverty, housing, women's rights, the plight of the marginalized, the role of the state in provisioning for our housing and safety needs, and perhaps other related issues that permeate urban Toronto and that were touched on by the WAPC action.

Each group will get 5 minutes to present their case and then each group will take turns rebutting or commenting on the other group's position. We will then have a respectful discussion interchanging ideas and try to arrive collectively at how the June 3 case study helps us understand a bit better the "tensions" with the social economy that Fontan & Shragge mention in their essay.

Here are some questions you might want to ponder from both sides of the social economy debate:

1) What specific issues did the WAPC's June 3 action bring to the surface?
2) How might "reformers" and "social changers" critique or support these issues? In other words, how would each side respond to the social issues that were brought to the surface as a consequence of the direct action tactics taken by the WAPC?
3) How, if at all, might each side support or be opposed to the tactics used by WAPC? (For eg: Would reformers agree with taking over private property in order to secure housing for homeless and battered women? If not, what might their solution be to the social issue? How would social changers respond to the tactics used?)
3) What institutions were affected and/or implicated in the June 3 action? How would each side react to the actions taken by the state (i.e., city hall, the courts, the police) during and after the June 3 squat?
4) How would each side address or seek to change these social institutions in light of the issues brought up by the June 3 action?
5) How might each side suggest we deal with homelessness, poverty, and the plight of the marginalized?

Brief background reading and viewing:

Monday, September 24, 2007

A Potential Toronto | Launch: Thurs. 27 Sept.

A POTENTIAL TORONTO
INITIATED BY TORONTO SCHOOL OF CREATIVITY & INQUIRY (TSCI)
More info: www.tsci.ca

LAUNCH: THURS. 27 SEPT. 2007

27 SEPT. - 10 NOV. 2007
TORONTO FREE GALLERY
660 QUEEN ST. EAST (W. of BROADVIEW)

Fear disciplines. Capital divides. States order. Creativity sells. Cynicism saturates. Against the persisting ethos of the 'Common Sense Revolution' are dots that puncture the city's territory. Where are they? A Potential Toronto is an event series and exhibition spotlighting alternative economies, minor spaces, and organizing strategies. What experiments and proposals are out there for democratizing space, cracking constraints, and co-operating differently? What works, and why? What blocks an alternative from flourishing? What concepts help us think through it? Exploring these questions, A Potential Toronto is a preliminary step in a longer-term counter-cartography project which would render currents of radical energy visible, audible, and tactile.


LAUNCH: THURS. 27 SEPT. 2007
6:30pm: OPENING FOR 'COMMON SENSE REVOLUTION' / 'TORONTO'S URBAN UNCONSCIOUS'
7:30pm: 'A POTENTIAL COMMONISM' - A TALK BY NICK DYER-WITHEFORD PARTY TO FOLLOW


'A POTENTIAL COMMONISM' - A TALK BY NICK DYER-WITHEFORD [AUTHOR OF 'CYBER-MARX']
It has been said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Does the widespread interest in 'commons' by environmental, labour, and open-source activists draw a new line of fight and flight pointing beyond capital? Nick Dyer-Witheford presents a talk on the concept of commonism.

'COMMON SENSE REVOLUTION' - SCOTT SORLI
This information graphic tracks Ontario welfare income for a single person against the number of homeless who have died on the streets of Toronto over the past two decades. The year 1995 is particularly striking, the year that welfare income begins to plummet, the year that homeless deaths begin to jump, the year that the Harris Conservatives were first elected.

'TORONTO'S URBAN UNCONSCIOUS' - ADRIAN BLACKWELL, TINA CHUNG, ANDREA GAUS, DAVIDE GIANFORCARO, KIM LIGERS, ANDREA MACECEK, GRAEME STEWART, and GEOFFREY THUN. Projects from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

This design research project focuses on Toronto's Western Rail triangle, an area of urban fabric that suffers from both social and physical isolation from the rest of the city. We argue that this territory acts as Toronto's urban unconscious, divided from other spaces by ravines, railways, highways, and industrial fabric. These seven architecture and urban design projects make use of the area's existing potential to imagine useful and pleasurable spaces for daily life.

** EVENT SERIES DETAILS TO FOLLOW:
COMMONS READING GROUP [begins 1 oct.]
WOMEN AGAINST POVERTY COLLECTIVE [11 oct.]
YOUTH [18 oct.]
BORDERS + MIGRATION [23 oct.]
ABANDONED HOUSING: USE IT OR LOSE IT [29 oct.]
ORGANIZING [1 nov.]
QUEER PUBLICS [9 nov.]
WORKER CO-OPS [10 nov.]

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Capital quote...

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, 8c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence." Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things.


~Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Lecture 1: Marx, Alienation, and Capital 101

Marx’s essay, “Estranged Labour,” a chapter from Marx’s early work written in Paris and known as the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (and only published in the 1930s), is at core about how humans feel as they work within the capitalist system. In a nutshell, Marx claims that capitalism, through its construction and use of private property and the capitalist’s ownership of the means of production, alienates the real producers (i.e., the workers) not only from the very products they produce and the processes of production they work with, but also from themselves and each other.

What does it mean to feel alienated? To be alienated means to be separated from something. Marx uses this to describe how workers feel within the capitalist mode of production. He used the term to “denote the division and separation between the upper class (bourgeosie) and the lower class (proletariat). In recent years, the term has been used to suggest estrangement, powerlessness, and the depersonalization of the individual” within our contemporary society. So why does Marx claim we are alienated within the capitalist system? What is inherent to capitalism that alienates most of those who work within it? Trying to answer these two questions is the focus of this essay. Attempting to answer them also necessarily means we have to understand some of the key structures of the capitalist system, as well. Let’s start by looking briefly at the essay “Estranged Labour.”

Read the rest of the essay/lecture.

Working on the Edge

"Ontario's poorest workers have been denied tens of millions of dollars in wages over the past five years because of the province's outdated and unenforced labour laws. That's the shocking finding of a report released this week by the Workers' Action Centre titled Working on the Edge, which chronicles seven years of employer abuses in the Greater Toronto Area. The violations include wages below minimum pay rates, failing to pay overtime or statutory holiday, vacation and termination pay and denying workers sick leave, unemployment insurance, health, injury and pension benefits."

This is a quote from a June 2, 2007 editorial in the Toronto Star entitled "Protect Ontario's Poorest Workers." The editorial goes on to comment about a recent report entitled Working on the Edge, written by a group of academics and activists and sponsored and released by Toronto's the Workers Action Center.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Social Economy as an Alternative to Globalization in Guatemala

CERLAC and the Guatemala Community Network are proud to present:

---Social Economy as an Alternative to Globalization---

With:
Rosa Garcia Corado
Alianza por la Vida y la Paz, Guatemala

Rosa Garcia Corado is a member of the Alianza por la Vida y la Paz, a
coalition of social and popular organizations, indigenous and ladino
women and men from Petén, Guatemala. The Alianza strives for respect for
life and peace, and fights against economic, social, cultural, political
exploitation and exclusion. During the past years, the Alianza has
centered its efforts on building a People's economy network, as a
counterproposal to the destructive neo-liberal policies being
implemented in the region. This is a real challenge and a process which
has led them to constantly analyze the local, national and international
market economy, and to define their own alternatives at the community
and organizational level.

Rosa will speak on how women participate in alternative economic
projects such as cooperatives and community based initiatives as a means
of building empowerment for women in the social economy.

September 17, 2007
2:30 p.m.
305 York Lanes, York University, Toronto

For more information: cerlac@yorku.ca, 416.736.5237,
http://www.yorku.ca/cerlac/news_events.htm#rosa

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Course Outline

Course Description
The purpose of this fourth year seminar course is to investigate in detail alternative economic formations which are characterized by some degree of “mutuality”, such as non-profits, co-operatives, worker-owned firms and local economy organizations. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to this topic by wedding the history and theory of these formations with a critical, empirical, and practice based investigation of the contemporary forms, successes, and failures of these institutions.

While this course is primarily designed for fourth year Business and Society (Honours) majors, and is particularly relevant for those interested in pursuing a career path in the non-profit sector, it is relevant for anyone interested in the history, theory and practice of alternative economics. Therefore, its focus is on developing a keen understanding of the successes and failures of past and current “social economy” formations, and the possibility that the social economy might be integrated into an alternative economic development strategy. We will look at what this strategy might be, why we might need an “alternative” strategy if the current status quo economic system is said to be efficient for delivering us goods and services (is it?), and what the role of the state is in an alternative economic model (do we even need the state?)

The course will be broken into these five broad sections: (I) Outlining the Issue of Alternative Economics, (II) History, Theory and Debates, (III) The Social Economy Today, (IV) Co-operatives, and (V) The Social Economy and Local Development.

With an eye toward the students’ pending entry into the work-world or post-graduate academic study, the course will develop the following competencies:

1) A clear understanding of the history, theories and debates which inspire and mark various forms of alternative economic association
2) A critical understanding of the practical issues which challenge the successful development of alternative economic forms
3) An understanding of the relationship between alternative economic forms and the social, political, and cultural world which surrounds them
4) Critical writing, oral presentation and practical economic analysis

Because of the practical and empirical focus of this course, emphasis will be placed on developing an interface with actual practitioners in the broad field of social economy. There will be speakers brought in from the field to address the class on contemporary issues, concerns and solutions. There will also be at least one field trip to a local co-operative institution in the second term. Finally, students will be asked to develop a concrete strategic analysis of a local alternative economic firm or organization as part of the practical component of the course.

[GO HERE FOR MARK BREAKDOWN AND ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS FOR ENTIRE COURSE]