Free The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff Page A

goals of the people who fight in them.
    All these projects and ideas are different, to be sure. But the really transformative ones have core features in common that set them apart from projects and ideas that don’t go beyond merely refining the system.
    The first feature setting them apart is their emphasis on democracy, both as a means and as an end. Moving from a profit-driven to a human needs–driven society requires that the institutions we participate in and the places we spend our time (schools, workplaces, communities) be transformed into places where participants have a real voice in how they’re run and what their purpose is. The United States is formally a democracy, and most citizens enjoy rights that people in many other countries do not enjoy, but both political parties preach a nearly identical program that channels benefits to elites while demanding that poor and working class people in the United States and abroad shoulder the costs of neoliberal capitalism.
    Real democracy is possible only if we apply it to other spheres of life, including the workplaces and institutions we depend on. Workplaces should be owned and managed as cooperatives—places where workers control the business, distribute its surplus equally among themselves, and make decisions about their work-lives democratically. Banks, financial institutions, and the internet (institutions that are now essential to all people and businesses) should be transformed into public utilities. Educational policies should reflect the collective decisions of parents, teachers, and administrators. These types of projects will require us to radically rethink, and broaden, our definition of democracy. This may be a daunting task, but it’s worth remembering that the democratic rights that we do enjoy were not handed down from the state or given to us by business, but are rather the product of centuries of struggle from below. This struggle must be expanded beyond the formal trappings of the electoral system, because a collective vision is simply not possible without everyone’s voice.
    The second principle that the radical, anticapitalist projects share is de-commodification. The history of capitalism has been characterized by both the transformation of more and more aspects of people’s lives into commodities and the reshaping of our expectations, values, and norms to align with the needs of business. A fundamental component of any transformative vision is the fight to take back our lives from capitalist markets—to say that things like our health, our desire to learn, and have a roof over our heads should not be subject to our ability to pay. These things should be a right, not a commodity. Every time something is transformed from a right into a commodity the power of the profit motive to dictate our lives is increased. Conversely, whenever our collective projects remove things from the sphere of capitalist markets, we weaken the grip that capital has over our lives. If people aren’t worried about losing their home or having no health insurance for their kids, they will be much more willing to stand up to their bosses and fight for projects to increase democracy. Social movements have long fought to de-commodify aspects of our lives and have, for short periods of time, succeeded. But our biggest mistake has been to settle for means-tested benefits—social gains that benefit only certain sectors of the population based on factors like income or occupational status. These benefits foment ill will among those who don’t qualify for them and are easy political targets. The contrast between the dismantling of the US welfare system in the 1990s and the resistance, despite repeated attacks, to the elimination of Social Security is illustrative: Historically, welfare programs were available only to the poorest (and most stigmatized) members of society, excluding working-class and lower-middle-class households struggling to