Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.

Bill Drayton, CEO, chair and founder of Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization devoted to developing the profession of social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurs combine street pragmatism with professional skill, visionary insights with pragmatism, and ethical fiber with tactical thrust. They see opportunities where other only see empty buildings, unemployable people and unvalued resources. Radical thinking is what makes social entrepreneurs different from simply “good people.” They make markets work for people, not the other way around, and gain strength from a wide network of alliances…

John Catford, Tactics of Hope: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing Our World, xv

Size, ownership, and accountability are the main issues. Smaller enterprises, with local roots and equitable ownership of productive assets, combined with democratic regulation are essential for socially just, efficient, and sustainable enterprises.

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 296

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Neoliberal markets and the dominant global business model have failed huge numbers of people worldwide, particularly the 900 million desperately poor who can’t afford to pay market rates for life-sustaining goods and services. The truly indigent lack decent housing. Adequate food and clean water are a luxury. Affordable health care services are all-too-often nowhere to be found, especially in remote rural areas in many parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The deregulated, profit-driven corporate economy and federal governments have also failed to address the breakdown of bridges, levees, and essential public infrastructures while bearing considerable responsibility for rapidly deteriorating ecosystems, accelerating climate-related disasters, and growing social and economic inequalities in highly developed nations, such as the United States, the richest and most powerful nation in human history.

The good news is that social entrepreneurs are giving desperately needy people throughout the world hopeful alternatives to these interlocking crises by boldly developing new and sustainable business models for the 21st century. Social entrepreneurs are creating lasting social and environmental value with their central goal of long-term investment in innovative solutions to pressing social problems for the many rather than the corporate “quick fix” of short-term financial wealth for the few.

With their limited resources social entrepreneurs are skilled at attracting partners and collaborating with others. They are also highly attuned to the needs and values of those being served and the communities in which they operate. Leading social entrepreneurs are changemakers, role models, and mass recruiters who empower local activists to channel their dreams, talents, and passions into concrete and transformative actions.

Social entrepreneurs see the possibilities rather than the problems created by rapid change. They are both visionaries and tough-minded realists committed to practical solutions to serious social problems. They are notable for their unflagging passion and persistence despite great obstacles. They are flexible and unafraid of failure.

Social entrepreneurs are the driving force of civil society which counterbalances the excesses of business and the failures of government to serve the disenfranchised and protect our threatened planet.

As Ashoka founder and CEO Bill Drayton writes: the fundamental challenge for successful social entrepreneurs is to convince potential funders that their basic vision is both important and viable. A critical part of the Ashoka strategy is to encourage for-profit finance firms to enter the social financial services business. The single most important source of these new investment opportunities flows from the business/social “hybrid value-added chain” (HVAC) work.

A good many social entrepreneurs working toward this goal have found powerful leverage in reconnecting business with the newly entrepreneurial/ competitive citizen sector through new value added chains involved in design, production, distribution, servicing, and parallel supports including finance. This competitive dynamic is key to the jujitsu that allows Ashoka, a small force, to set in motion so large and irreversible an historical change.

One area where the HVAC principle is working is with small farmers who don’t have access to drip irrigation equipment (to promote water conservation). The piping and irrigation firms’ costs are too high for the poor rural economy, and the companies don’t understand or trust the small farmers or their environment.

Over the past decade in Mexico, a partnership between Amanco (the leading piping company in Latin America), Ashoka, and local citizen groups who have mastered the relevant skills to help poor rural farmers earn much more, more securely (Drayton, 21-23).

In their important book – The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan see leading social enterprises being built from three innovative business models – the “leveraged nonprofit” (model 1), the “hybrid nonprofit” (model 2), and the “social business” (model 3).

All pursue social or environmental ends that the markets have largely or totally failed to address, and they use different means to do so. They sometimes adopt unique leadership, management, and fund-raising styles, each with its own meaning and lessons for people working in mainstream organizations in the public, private, or civil society sectors.

Leveraged nonprofit enterprises (model 1) deliver public goods to the most economically vulnerable who do not have access to, or are unable to afford, the service provided – such as health, education, safe drinking water, housing, and the like.

An example is Barefoot College, an Indian organization that has had a huge impact on defining and driving what founder Bunker Roy calls the “barefoot” approach to development. Barefoot College was created in 1972 by a group of students from top Indian universities under Roy’s leadership. Based in Tilonia, Rajasthan, it was built around the Ghandian concept of the village as a self-reliant unit.

By applying traditional but informal educational processes to manage, control, and own technologies designed to meet basic needs, the college helps illiterate or semiliterate poor people in rural areas learn to use these technologies without relying on outside paper-qualified experts. All staff at the college take a living wage, not a market wage – and the maximum living wage is $100 a month.

Barefoot College provides abundant evidence of the capacity of ordinary people to identify, analyze, and solve their own problems. It has trained barefoot doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, designers, metal workers, IT specialists, and communicators. Barefoot engineers have solar-electrified the college: indeed, it is still the only fully solar-electrified college in India. Barefoot solar engineers, many of them illiterate women, have solar-electrified thousands of houses in eight Indian states (Elkington & Hartigan, 31-35).

Hybrid nonprofit ventures (model 2) are the most experimental such as a homeless shelter starting businesses to train and employ their residents. Hybrids have the potential to reach new levels of social or environmental value creation. They are able to recover a portion of their costs through the sale of goods and services, in the process often discovering new markets.

Rubicon Programs, founded in 1973, was the first multi-service agency in the United States to link a real job with decent housing and a support system to sustain homeless or otherwise disadvantaged people who are trying to make positive changes in their lives.

Under Rick Aubry’s leadership, Rubicon has incorporated mainstream business principles into its practice and built two highly successful social enterprises: Rubicon Landscape Services, which generates annual revenues of more than $4 million, and Rubicon Bakery, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading bakeries, with annual sales of $2 million. Employees are primarily people with little or no work history who are trying to overcome the challenges of poverty, homelessness, and/or mental health disabilities (ibid., 37-39).

Social business ventures (model 3), particularly in the United States, is the model of choice for most environmental entrepreneurs largely due to the more obvious market opportunities for ecofriendly products and services (see Co-op America’s National Green Pages; www.coopamerica.org).

The entrepreneur sets up the venture as a business with the specific mission to drive transformational social and/or environmental change. Profits are generated, but the principal aim is not to maximize financial returns for shareholders but instead to financially benefit low-income groups and to grow the social venture by reinvestment, enabling it to reach and serve more people.

Currently, the most prominent social businesses tend to be found in the area of microfinance, including Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh (see profiles below), SKS Microfinance and Basix in India, and Accion and Finca in the United States (Drayton, 42-44).

Profiles of Changemakers

Wilford Welch, in his inspiring book – The Tactics of Hope: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing Our World – identifies successful visionaries who are initiating large-scale improvements in the critical areas described below as well as in “Human Rights and Social Justice” and “The Environment and the Restoration of a Sustainable Planet.”

Health. The Children’s Health Association, which began In Brazil in 1991, has so far reached 20,000 people, breaking a vicious cycle of poor health, poverty, and social exclusion. Founder Dr. Vera Cordeiro, who in 2005 was recognized as “The Most Influential Woman of Brazil in the Health Area,” believes that the greatest systemic treatment is not a particular medicine for a particular illness, but rather a holistic approach to patients’ overall health concerns, employment status and family needs.

Vera has recruited an enormous network of volunteers, physicians, psychologists, teachers and community leaders to offer their expertise in one aspect of the 5-point program of health, housing, income, education and citizenship (Welch, 34).

Education. John Wood, former Microsoft executive, founded Room to Read in 1998 to publish local books, fill libraries, and construct new schools in the Himalayan Mountains. Rooms to Read’s accomplishments include building over 400 schools, self-publishing 250 local language children’s titles, representing over 2 million books, and funding for over 4,000 long-term girls’ scholarships.

Woods is committed to implementing an innovative and expansive growth model that will provide 10 million children in Asia and Africa the enduring opportunity of reading and learning by the year 2020 (ibid., 64-70).

Fair Trade. Priya Haji is the cofounder and CEO of World of Good, a for-profit company that distributes in over 1000 retail stores throughout the United States handcrafted products made by artisans in developing countries. Of World of Good profits, 10 % goes to its nonprofit foundation, which seeks to improve the standard of living of the artisans.

World of Good, which supports 5,680 artisans, with nearly 23,000 dependents and 142 artist groups in 34 countries, has sold over 1 million handicrafts since 2004 (ibid., 107-110).

Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation. Tim Williamson, a former Wall Street stockbroker, in 2002 created The Idea Village, the prominent nonprofit engine for entrepreneurship in the city of New Orleans, developing a database of over 600 local entrepreneurial businesses that collectively employed more than 3,000 people and generated $150 million in revenue.

Now, in the aftermath of Katrina, the Idea Village is helping to rebuild New Orleans, introducing an innovative approach to disaster relief that actively identifies and empowers entrepreneurs as the most fundamental pioneers of reconstruction.

The revitalization plan features the IV Business Relief Fund, the IDEAcorps, which brings together MBA students from Tulane University, community volunteers and professional consultants to assist local entrepreneurs, and the “IV 100” Entrepreneurs, a group of 100 companies, each with less than 50 jobs and $5 million in revenue, that the Idea Village identifies as the most promising entities for growth and expansion. Roughly 95% of the companies it has worked with since Katrina are still in business (ibid.,156-166).

Microcredit and the Grameen Bank

The Grameen Bank, which, along with its founder Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, has been the model that has been copied by hundreds of other organizations around the world. The goal of microcredit institutions is to provide small loans, anywhere from $25 to $400 per loan, to poor individuals who do not qualify for loans from conventional banks requiring collateral.

Microcredit lending to the poor has achieved repayment rates that are nearly perfect all over the world, due to the strong core principles of incentive-based community trust. Women are often the recipients because they repay loans at nearly 100 % and have proven to be more committed to helping their children and general community.

In many rural communities, a borrower will buy a goat or a cow with the start-up loan and then sell the dairy from the animal at market prices, slowly making a profit over time to repay the loan, receive new funds and expand the business.

By 2005, the Grameen Bank had reached 60,000 villages in Bangladesh through microcredit loans while providing financial services to more than 6 millions poor farmers. In total, Grameen Bank had supplied over $5 billion in loans.

Most impressively, within 5 years of their first microloan, over half of the individuals receiving microloans from the Grameen Bank had crossed the poverty line. Today there are over 158 institutions in more than 40 countries utilizing the Grameen Bank microfinance model, which has become a major tool in the struggle to alleviate global poverty.

The World Bank estimates that there are over 7,000 microfinance institutions reducing poverty through microcredit financing worldwide (Welch, 87-88).

BRAC in Bangladesh

Fazle Abed founded BRAC – the former Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee – to fight poverty, illiteracy, and child mortality and to support women’s health and development on a massive scale. His organization mobilizes the latent capacity of the poor to improve their own lives through self-organization.

The full-time staff of BRAC is over 45,000 and has helped 3.8 million poor women establish 100,000 village organizations. BRAC now has over 5 million members in more than 180,000 village organizations across Bangladesh.

BRAC’s health programs are reported to reach some 10 million people. The organization has pioneered oral rehydration therapy (for diarrheal disease), which played a major role in halving the country’s infant mortality rate. Another example of BRAC’s success was when it found that poor women were not profiting from rearing dairy cows, it improved the breed of cow and set up a modern dairy.

BRAC has helped change the global development paradigm from that of helping “needy beneficiaries” to encouraging villagers’, particularly women’s, self-development. This proves that profitable enterprises can be initiated that expand the opportunities for the poor (Elkington & Hartigan, 93-94, 105).

Ashoka – “Everyone a Changemaker”

Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs – men and women with system-changing solutions that address the world’s most urgent social challenges.

Since its founding in 1980, Ashoka, the world’s first and largest social entrepreneurship recruitment and sponsoring organization, has launched and provided key long-term support for more than 1750 leading social entrepreneurs in over 60 countries. It provides these “Ashoka Fellows” start-up stipends, professional services and a powerful global network of top social and business entrepreneurs. It also helps them spread their innovations globally.

Ashoka’s modest investments consistently yield extraordinary returns in every area of human need – from human rights to the environment, from economic development to youth empowerment. Five years after start-up launch, over 90 % of Ashoka Fellows have seen independent institutions replicate their innovations and over 50 % have already changed national policy

(Drayton, 2).

Each of Ashoka 400 leading social entrepreneurs has a powerful, proven, society-wide approach to getting society to do a far better job of helping all children and young people to learn and grow up successfully. Ashoka’s Youth Venture identifies and nurtures school or community youth leaders who recruit and develop Venturer teams and connect with allies and local Partners. Venturers’ initiatives include founding a newspaper, a program to help new immigrant youth, a peer-to-peer counseling service, or building a municipal skateboard park (ibid., 12-17).

Ashoka is also pursuing a new Social Investing Venture (SIV) program. The SIV program seeks out leading entrepreneurs anywhere in the world who are championing major structural change in social finance. It helps them get started and succeed and will work to enable them to share and collaborate with one another, with leading operating social entrepreneurs, and with thought leaders in the social investment field (ibid., 29).

Ashoka’s best estimate is that the citizen sector is halving the gap between its productivity level and that of business every 10 to 12 years… and it is generating jobs two and a half to three times as fast as business.

In 2008 with the global corporate-driven economy failing to meet the challenge of poverty and other worsening social and environmental crises, Ashoka and other social entrepreneurial organizations are successfully responding to the world’s most critical opportunity – multiplying society’s capacity to adapt and change intelligently and constructively and building the necessary underlying collaborative architecture (ibid., 7-9).

Philanthropreneurs

Philanthropreneurs are individuals with great wealth who seek to use their resources in highly entrepreneurial ways. In 1998 Jeff Skoll, the former president of Ebay, established the Skoll Foundation, the largest foundation for social entrepreneurship in the world, and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Oxford University Business School.

Skoll also established Participant Productions, which funds feature films and documentaries that promote social values while being commercially viable.

These films include Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth about global warming; Syriana about petroleum politics; The Kite Runner about life in war-torn Afghanistan; Angels in the Dust, a hopeful film about an AIDS orphanage in South Africa; and Jimmy Carter Man From Plains. Each film is connected to a social action campaign encouraging increased awareness and concrete actions by individuals to address the issues (Welch, 195-196).

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As we’ve been seeing in the past year with the collapse of the fossil fuel-based energy system and the industrial food system, our most powerful societal sectors – business and government – are unable to effectively resolve these and other worsening crises. As history amply demonstrates, every crisis presents new opportunities. With the new millennium a new “superpower” – civil society led by visionary and innovative social entrepreneurs – has begun restoring and transforming society in a more just and sustainable direction.

Only by building strong, self-sustaining civil society with thriving local communities will people in every country be able to withstand the forces of technological displacement and market globalization that are threatening the livelihoods and survival of much of the human family (Rifkin, 250).

Civil society is a powerful global force and the most important social innovation of the 20th century. It ranks in importance with the invention of the nation state beginning in the 17th century and the creation of the modern market starting in the 18th century (Perlas, 27).

The millennia when only a tiny elite could cause change has come to an end. A generation hence, probably 20 to 30 % of the world’s people, and later 50 to 70 %, will be changemakers and entrepreneurs. That world will be fundamentally different and a far safer, happier, more equal, and more successful place (Drayton, 27).

Namaskar is a traditional yogic greeting that means, “I greet the divinity within you with all the charms of my mind and the cordiality of my heart.”
We are divine beings, each one of us. We have, in addition to physical and mental qualities, spiritual qualities. Our journey, as individuals and as members of a global community struggling against economic globalization and injustice, is two-fold. It is personal, and it is collective.

Capitalism teaches the superiority of the individual: “I win, you lose.” Or, “I win and it really doesn’t matter what happens to the rest of the world.” What are the lessons we teach our children in school? “Get a good education, then get a good job and make some money.” Western education offers no clear message of social responsibility. We have responsibilities to others as well as individual rights.

Compassion is the most important quality for a spiritualist to have. We need to feel compassion for others and to serve those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

So our journey is both external and internal. Just as we learn from all our personal experiences, so we also learn from the collective struggle for social justice.

I teach prisoners, as Father Jim Consedine does [another speaker at the conference]. I teach them meditation and yoga every week, and personally I find it very gratifying, because they are in a process of transformation. I am inspired by the example that my spiritual master, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar <../../sarkar/default.htm>, gave when the first person he chose to teach meditation to was an infamous criminal in Calcutta who later became a great saint and spiritual visionary. So I think, “If that was the person who he felt was most worthy of spiritual transformation, then who am I to judge the spiritual potential of others?”

We are all brothers and sisters. When I was a child, I often used to fight with my brother and sister, but of course we remained family. In the same way, human beings have lots of differences, and I’m going to fight and struggle against injustice. But I always want to remember that I’m fighting and struggling against the bad actions that people do and not against who they are. Because they are, forever, my brothers and sisters, too.

I accept a universal definition of God: that which is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. For some, this may seem a rather standard dictionary definition of the Supreme Being. But I think the definition is very revolutionary. If He is everywhere, then that means He is right inside me and He is right inside you and He is right inside our planet earth.

God is both He and She. I use the male pronoun unnecessarily, because I have trouble calling the One I feel so close to an “It”. Both the masculine and the feminine are equally present in that Supreme Being — it is we who are limited by our concepts of male and female.
If that Being is here in me and here in you, then that means I have to act accordingly, I have to work accordingly. I cannot be a spiritual capitalist, one who says, “I’m going to go to a nice monastery, to a beautiful forest retreat, to the mountains, I’m only going to do my spiritual journey.” That’s capitalism. That’s selfishness.

In my opinion, spirituality is everywhere. In some places, of course, you will feel more spiritual energy. But you don’t have to go on a pilgrimage to any place, because if you close your eyes, wherever you are, you can find all that you seek. So that inner journey is more important than any pilgrimage. Yes, I like to go to the mountains sometimes, to the forests, I love nature, and clearly there is more spiritual energy in some places, such as this beautiful Maori center. But that’s relative. We shouldn’t stop our progress because we’re not in a spiritual place. I’ll meditate four times a day wherever I am.

Consumerism and materialism is what our current society teaches us. It goes like this: “Buy a new pair of Nike tennis shoes and you’ll be happy. Buy a new car and you’ll be happy.” (You’ll probably get a woman with the car, because most advertisements have a beautiful woman next to the car, so obviously you’re going to get that, too!)

That’s a lie. These capitalist lies are what we have to stop, because they are destroying human minds, convincing people that money is the secret to happiness. Television, film, radio, magazines all get money from advertisers to spread these lies. When our minds become clear and strong in meditation, in spiritual practices, then we can begin to see through the veil of lies and legitimacy. Happiness doesn’t come from any material thing; it comes from your own heart. That’s a fundamental truth.

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar <../../sarkar/default.htm>, the founder of Prout <../5fpp/5fpp.htm>, was both a great spiritual master and also a revolutionary. I first met him in January 1978 in a prison cell in India where he was a political prisoner for seven years. After his release, the US, UK, Australia and some other rich countries refused to give him a visa because they said he was a dangerous revolutionary.

In August 1979, he came to Bangkok, Thailand where I was working. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend seven days with him. One very dark night, what I would call a very “Tantric” night, three of us went with him on a walk in a park. At one point he stopped and explained why the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos had just deported him from the Philippines:

“ They say I am a dangerous man. But I am not a dangerous man; I am not a strong man. Imagine, they are scared of me, and I am only five feet two inches tall!
“ You know how a fish store smells? Ugh! Yet some people like that ‘fishy’ smell. Only those who like the ‘fishy’ smell of selfishness are afraid of me. Selfishness is a mental disease and they know that Prout gives no scope for selfishness.”

We are trying to create a world that limits the expression of that particular mental disease. I used to work in a psychiatric hospital, and I have friends with all kinds of mental diseases. They need a certain kind of care. But we must not allow people with the mental disease of selfishness to run our economies and our countries, to dictate the world that our children can have.

As spiritualists, we have to unite. We have to unite with other spiritualists, like these great people beside me. We have to unite with people of all expressions and beliefs and faiths. I believe the only “ism” that we can support is universalism, the idea that we are one human family. You have your beliefs, and I have mine, but we are all moving in the same direction. If we climb a mountain, it doesn’t matter from which side of the mountain you start your climb; we’re all going to reach the summit together.

I believe that spiritual practices are fundamental to the spiritual path. They are what you actually do to get there, whether they take the form of some kind of meditation or some kind of deep personal inner reflection. It is gratifying to work for an organization that teaches meditation free of charge. Whatever type of meditation we do, our goal is to become better people. An ideal human being, a saint-like person, a God-like person – who cares what their faith is, who cares whether they are Muslim or Jew or Catholic or Protestant or a yogi? When we become ideal human beings, then we’ll all be one.

To unite the moralists, to unite those people who are fighting against injustice, against exploitation, is our goal. Our spiritual practices, our spiritual vision, our spiritual love and compassion are fundamental to get there. They are our strength, our inner sustenance.

Logically, if we look at the world, global ecological destruction is a very real possibility. Spiritually, though, I know we’re going to make it. P. R. Sarkar said, “Your future is bright. It is brighter than gold, it is brighter than platinum, it is brighter than anything you can ever imagine. And you’ll see it with your own eyes.”

How will it happen? I don’t know. And whether it happens this year, or next year, or later, I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing now: fighting for social justice, working against capitalist exploitation, doing my spiritual practices and encouraging everyone else in this human family to learn and try them, too. Because we need inner peace and we need global peace. Without one, we have an angry world. Without the other, we have people dying completely unnecessarily. That’s a crime. That’s totally unacceptable. Humanity is bleeding. We must awaken. We must work together. We must make a better world. We don’t have another option.

The current global political and economic climate is imbalanced and unstable. Western democracies, while philosophically guided by the principles of modernism (equality, fraternity, and liberty) are often not emphasizing the same principles when global economic policies are drafted.

More precisely, the globalization forces promote political democracy while often using undemocratic means when dictating economic policies. Driven by the profit-hungry forces of neo-liberalism, or economic globalization, policies set in the West–through institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)–have often bypassed local democratic institutions and proven to be economically counterproductive and devastating to the so-called developing nations. “Theirs is not an ideology of freedom and democracy,” writes William Finnegan in Harper’s magazine. “It is a system of control. It is an economics of empire.”

Even in countries with a tradition of political democracy, such as in South East Asia, and in South America, the neo-liberal policies have often been economically disastrous. Argentina, for example–for a long time the poster-child of economic globalization–is today suffering the worst economic crisis in its history. In short, economic democracy is still a far cry for most developing nations. Indeed, economic democracy is also only a dream for millions of poor in the rich Western nations.

As PROUT founder P. R. Sarkar writes, economic democracy is the “birthright of every individual.” To achieve economic democracy–or what author and PROUT activist Dada Maheshvarananda calls “a dynamic economy of the people, by the people and for the people”– economic power must be vested in the hands of local people, not foreign corporate interests.

The Fist of Free Trade

Economic liberalization has now reached all corners of the world, but has yet to take hold in the Middle East. In the days leading up to the Iraq war, President George Bush drew several rather surprising links between the need for free trade liberalizations and a “free Iraq.” Here is a quote from a National Press Conference:

” I appreciate societies in which people can express their opinion. That society — free speech stands in stark contrast to Iraq. Secondly, I’ve seen all kinds of protests since I’ve been the President. I remember the protests against trade. A lot of people didn’t feel like free trade was good for the world. I completely disagree. I think free trade is good for both wealthy and impoverished nations. But that didn’t change my opinion about trade. As a matter of fact, I went to the Congress to get trade promotion authority out. ”

No surprise then that free trade and the messianic vision of market fundamentalism was an important part of The National Security Strategy of the United States, issued by the White House in September 2002. “We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world,” the Strategy claims. “The possibility that the Marines and high altitude bombers might need to be involved in spreading the good news about free trade does not, in context, seem far-fetched,” writes Finnegan.

No, it does not seem far-fetched. As New York Times columnist and economic globalization advocate Tom Friedman wrote in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas… And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”

In other words, the war against Iraq was more about fostering the freedom to make a profit on hamburgers than about finding WMD’s. It was more about McWorld vs. Jihad than it was about Bush vs. Saddam.

Free trade and corporate globalization–whichever way it is implemented–has not, however, been a boon for the world’s developing countries. While the US and Europe has increased its wealth, most people in developing nations have become poorer. Indeed, even the IMF recently reported that their policies have failed in lifting these countries out of poverty. Even in the US, globalization has had negative effects on peoples income. Real wages have fallen 4 percent since 1973, while economic growth has averaged 3 percent. In contrast, during the decades prior to globalization–between 1947 and 1973–economic growth averaged 4 percent and wages increased by 63 percent. So, why should Iraq celebrate a future designed by the warriors and free traders in Washington?

Now that the high altitude bombers have finished their work in Iraq, and the US promises the “liberated” Iraqi people that they will soon bask in the glory of democracy, this promise does of course not include the promise of economic democracy. For free market fundamentalism and real-life economic democracy are not mutually inclusive. Just ask the people of Bolivia. Although rich in natural resources, it is the poorest country in South America. Why? Most of the resources are utilized by foreign corporations. “The World Bank is the government of Bolivia,” a Bolivian newspaper editor claims. So, how can the US promise Iraq what the Washington strategists cannot even provide millions of its own citizens, not to speak of the impoverished people in the third world?

A “free Iraq” must therefore not only mean the political freedom to vote, but also freedom from poverty, and the freedom to choose the path of economic self-sufficiency. A truly liberated people should be able to exercise both political and economic democracy. Most of all they should feel secure that no foreign economic power can dictate their economic future–that they are not victims of the “dictatorship” of foreign economic powers.

There are many stated and unstated reasons behind the US-led coalition’s war against Iraq. Most of those reasons–to protect US national self-interest, to prevent future attacks by Iraq and other terrorists, to stop the proliferation of the not-yet-proven Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to ensure US geopolitical control of the Middle East, and to ensure trade liberalization in the region–do not meet the high moral aim of simply liberating the Iraqi people from an unjust tyranny.

The economic sanctions will soon be lifted so that Iraq, and thus the whole Middle East, can open up for the commercial and cultural hegemony of Western corporations. Aid will also be flowing in. And with this aid, for the hungry and painful bodies of Iraq, will also come aid for their souls. The Messianic message of Billy Graham, his son, and many other Christian evangelical preachers will soon be heard all over the dusty towns of this ancient, Muslim country. For, as there is a holy alliance between McDonald’s and McDonnel Douglas, there is also a holy alliance between US-born capitalism and Born Again Christians, between fundamentalist Christendom and fundamentalist economics.

World Government and Economic Democracy

Unfortunately, we have a UN without a spine and a global economic system without a soul. What we need instead is a World Government with a militia, and a global economic system that fosters economic democracy, or people’s democracy.

As the civilizational and economic conflict between the North and the South, between the rich and the poor, increases, there will be a growing need for both a World Government and for economic democracy. The people of the world will soon be tired of the US operating as the World’s Cop. There will thus be demands for a world authority governing from a higher moral ground than both the UN and, especially, the US is currently operating on. In the words of philosopher Ken Wilber:

” My own belief is that, in the coming century, we will see the present United Nations peacefully replaced by the first move toward a genuine World Federation, driven particularly by threats to the global commons that cannot be handled on a national level (such as terrorism, global monetary and economic policy, and environmental threats to the global commons).”
” This would mean, for example,” writes Wilber, “that America is allowed to despise Iraq (in the privacy of its own…national, cultural space). America is not, however, allowed to attack Iraq.”

What are some of the benefits of a World Federation or World Government? Sarkar suggests four main benefits:

1. The huge expenses of maintaining a militia in each country will be reduced, and these savings can be used to benefit people’s needs.

2. There will be a great reduction in psychological tension.

3. There will be less bloodshed.

4. There will be free movement of people from one corner of the globe to the other.

While Wilber has been primarily preoccupied with blueprinting the cultural and political landscape fostering a more benign world, Sarkar has also mapped its economic aspects. Sarkar believed that political democracy cannot fulfill all “the hopes and aspirations of people or provide the basis for constructing a strong and healthy human society. For this the only solution is to establish economic democracy.”

According to Sarkar, the following guidelines are needed to establish economic democracy:

–The minimum requirements of life must be guaranteed to all. The minimum requirements of a particular age — including food, clothing, housing, education and medical care — should be guaranteed to all.

–Increasing purchasing power must be guaranteed to each and every individual.

–Local people will control economic power, consequently local raw materials will be used to promote the economic prosperity of the local people. This will create industries based on locally available raw materials and ensure full employment for all local people.

–Outsiders must be strictly prevented from interfering in the local economy. The outflow of local capital must be stopped by strictly preventing outsiders or a floating population from participating in any type of economic activity in the local area.”

Paul Hawken, an author whose writings and talks envisions a world of economic democracy, cultural vitality and ecological sustainability, was recently asked by a journalist: “Aren’t you just dreaming?” He replied: “Absolutely I’m dreaming; somebody’s got to dream in America.” Indeed, somebody’s got to dream of a better future, and not just in America, in all countries of the world.

So, in the spirit of Paul Hawken, Ken Wilber and P. R. Sarkar, let us all dream. Let us all dream of a better future for Iraq, and a better future for the world.