The Reconstruction of Community Meaning
by Gar Alperovitz
Copyright 1996 Institute for Labor and Mental Health
Tikkun (May/June 1996) Vol. 11, No. 3: 13-16, 19.

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Similarly, David Korten, an economist, has emphasized the importance of "place" and the build-up of local community self-help efforts. In his book, When Corporations Rule the World, Korten offers a powerful challenge to corporate-dominated global "free trade" as inimical to the reconstructive process: "There is little room for ethical, spiritual, and ecological sensitivity in a global economy that defines success purely in terms of the financial bottom line...."

Ecological economist Herman E. Daly and process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. stress the rebuilding of local community economic institutions from an ecological perspective. In their book, For the Common Good, they urge that a new economics must call "not only for provision of goods and services to individuals, but also for an economic order that supports the pattern of personal relationships that make up the community." Earlier in the century, W. E. B. Du Bois argued that the only hope for the African-American minority in a continental, largely white power-system also required building new collective community economic institutions. Recalling Du Bois, the African-American historian Harold Cruse, in his impressive book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, stresses that this "involves much more than sheer economics; ... It takes a certain community point of view ... in order to exert impact (political, economic and cultural) ... It means the studied creation of new economic forms - a new institutionalism - one that can intelligently blend privately-owned, collectively-owned, cooperatively-owned, as well as state-sponsored, economic organizations ..."

What are we to make of the concept of "reconstruction"? Most Americans respond positively to local cooperatives and grass-roots economic experiments The obvious questions involve the extent, developing trend, and, above all, the potential evolutionary trajectory of "reconstructive" possibilities.

In fact, there is a far greater amount of community-based experimentation going on around the United States than most people are aware of. Recent surveys by Dawn Nakano and Thad Williamson, research associates at the National Center For Economic and Security Alternatives, indicate that reconstruction is hardly "marginal": For instance, there are now nearly 10,000 worker-owned firms operating around the nation - up from only 1,600 in 1974. More Americans are currently involved in such firms than in private-sector labor unions. There are also more than 47,000 co-ops - including 4,000 consumer co-ops (of which 350 are food-related), nearly 6,500 housing co-ops, 12,600 credit unions, nearly 100 cooperative banks and more than 100 cooperative insurance companies; 1,200 rural utilities; and 115 telecommunications and cable co-ops.

There are between 2,000 and 3,000 neighborhood-based community development corporations (CDCs). The number of "fledgling" CDCs doubled in the brief period between 1991 and 1994 alone. By 1994, they had produced 9.7 million square feet of industrial space, 13.5 million square feet of commercial space, and more than 400,000 units of affordable housing. There are also some 300 "Community Financial Development Institutions" making community-oriented "micro-loans."

At another level, community-supported agriculture (CSA) provides a structural link between small-scale, organic food producers and consumers in many areas of the nation. (Through CSA an organic farm's operating costs are paid for in advance of the growing season by urban shareholders.) In 1986, there were two such agriculture operations in North America; today there are more than 450. In 1985 there were only 17 community land trusts; today there are more than 84 operating trusts and another 23 in the developmental stages. Together, they operate more than 4,000 housing units.

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