The Greensboro Currency Project has recently gained backing from a local bank. So much the merrier for advocates of local economic development. Local businesses will enjoy the benefits of people duped into trading real money for a novelty currency of intentionally limited utility while the spenders of said currency get a nice fuzzy feeling about their money going into the pocket of an owner of a local business instead of a business somewhere far away.
Presumably our local capitalists will also need to hire local workers, thus increasing the living standard of the local proletariat. This is nothing more than a naked attempt at undermining working class solidarity by putting workers in different locales into conflict with each other and portraying workers and investors of the same city as being in the same boat economically. That we have the same interests could not be further from the truth. Every waiter at a local restaurant receiving a wage of $2.50 per hour while forced to do unpaid preparatory work can tell you readily that the owner of the business is about as useful to him as Sam Walton to a Wal-Mart employee.
All of this is part of a larger, fundamentally bourgeois concept of political action: local issues above all else. It is the mindset that we here in our place are somehow distinct from they over in their place, nevermind the fact that our lives and relationships have the same structure and patterns, the same general injustices and the same necessity for overthrowing the system of injustice. Perhaps an investor in Charlotte is the enemy or competitor of an investor in Greensboro, but that worker in Charlotte is no different from me. In the best case, imagine that we are able to restore full employment and end poverty in Greensboro. What significance does this hold? That we here are able to fix our own problems in cooperation with the bourgeoisie and to the exclusion of outsiders. The local currency project, like all local exclusivity, is just the same viewpoint as nationalism reduced to a narrower scope.
So suppose we take working-class actions here instead of the typical Nazi opportunism handed down from above, meanwhile paying no mind to national and international issues. We raid the banks, seize the factories, and establish the dictatorship of the local proletariat. What happens when the National Guard hears that we formed our own government? They crush us. Socialism in one city: the greatest failure created on the tiniest scale. Our opponents operate not only locally, but globally, and we must do the same if we are to succeed. Fortunately, our brothers and sisters around the world face the same struggles we do, and we can wage an identical struggle with them.
Hey Royall, Of course, I assume you goo intent. And, I agree that the workers of the world must unite. We, the vast underclass will share a common fate. That being said, It is more important to be critical than simply suspicious. Issues like local currency deserve to be carefully understood. There is no one involved in this project who could, by any stretch of the imagination be considered a capitalist. It is the pet project of a life long activist. It is being tested out in our community to see if it will be helpful to strengthen our local economy and if it is then it will serve as a model other areas. I can think of quite a few programs and organizations that put forward new ways of co existing that try out there ideas in one area and then spread and grow as a movement based upon successes. Slow Food, Slow Money, Occupy, to name a few. The history of local currency and it’s suppression reveals so much about its power to strengthen communities. The Federal Reserve was behind the suppression of local currency and at the center of the creation trap in which we are insnared. Ultimately, strong communities do equate with social justice on the small and larger scale. We need to get away from depending on products shipped from sweat shops on the other side of the planet and food produced in the most harmful ways for the workers, the land and the people who eat it. Really, we need to be more self-reliant. Self-reliance is not a move away from solidarity with other communities and the struggling people of the world. If anything, it will allow us to take more control over all aspects of economic, political and social affairs, as we will be less and less the ideal prey for the vultures that seek to feed us to each other, for a glorious profit. (I didn’t proof, it’s late, I hope I made sense without offending. Solidarity)