From: "Kevin Carson" <kevin_carson-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Revolution by decentralization
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:45:30 +0000


>From: Ben Weller <bweller-AT-uvm.edu>

>I propose that the entire governmental structure of the United States could 
>be changed by a peoples movement to decentralize and become 
>self-sufficient. Let me explain.
>
>It could start at any level, neighborhood, town/city, county, state, 
>region, etc. All that would be needed would be the common goal to live 
>independently of the state and national governments. A city neighborhood 
>could start a food coop to buy healthy food from non-corporate sources and 
>food would be given to all the neighbors in exchange for their cooperation 
>and services in supporting the community. A group of farmers could pull 
>together and share all of their crops in order to have a sufficient variety 
>of food to live on indefinitely, crop rotation could be expanded to a 
>multi-farm level to maintain the best possible soil conditions, and surplus 
>crops could be sold to the outside world in order to make a little income 
>for future expansion, or they could (more preferably) be given to those who 
>might not be able to afford to eat.
>
>On the state level, a state could secede from the US (see the Second 
>Vermont Republic, http://www.vermontrepublic.org) and become self 
>sufficient.

This is a very appealing vision.

You might consider Benjamin Tucker a kindred spirit.  About 120 years ago, 
he wrote this:

"But in some large city fairly representative of the varied interests and 
characteristics of our heterogenous civilization let a sufficiently large 
number of earnest and intelligent Anarchists, engaged in nearly all the 
different trades and professions, combine to  carry on their own production 
and distribution on the cost principle and to start a bank through which 
they can obtain a non-interest bearing currency for the conduct of their 
commerce and dispose their steadily accumulating capital in new enterprises, 
the advantages of this system of affairs being open to all who should choose 
to offer their patronage,--what would be the result?  Why, soon the whole 
composite population, wise and unwise, good, bad, and indifferent, would 
become interested in what was going on under their very eyes, more and more 
of them would actually take part in it, and in a few years, each man reaping 
the fruit of his labor and no man able to live in idleness on an income from 
capital, the whole city would become a great hive of Anarchistic workers, 
propsperous and free individuals."

It sounds an awful lot like a modern LETS system, except it goes beyond 
LETS, in actually challenging the state's banking monopoly by advancing 
interest-free credit against personal property.

To see another advantage of such local exchange systems, do this mental 
experiment:

Imagine a truck farmer living next door to a shoemaker.  The farmer and 
shoemaker agree to exchange shoes for produce.  Now, obviously, the 
shoemaker and his family can't eat enough to provide a market for the 
farmer's entire output--and vice versa.  But the farmer has a steady, 
predictable and fairly secure outlet for the portion of his output consumed 
by the shoemaker's family, and the shoemaker has a similarly reliable market 
for the portion of his shoes consumed by the farmer's family.  And they both 
have a near certainty of having all their shoe and produce needs met.  The 
more trades the exchange system takes in, the more of each member's labor 
output will have a reliable and predictable outlet, and the more of his own 
needs can be reliably met by exchanging his labor within the system.  Such a 
system is largely insulated from the capitalist boom-bust cycle that results 
from large, anonymous commodity markets, because production is geared to a 
known and relatively stable base of customers.