In this talk, Thomas and Marjorie walk us through the history, basic principles and theory of change behind Community Wealth Building (CWB) institutions and strategies. Further down the line, we discuss several related topics, including the generative economy, platform cooperatives and the UBI versus Universal Basic Services debate. Excerpt from the paper: "A key strategy of building [the] next economy is Community Wealth Building (CWB), a term coined by The Democracy Collaborative in the mid-2000s to describe a new approach to community economic development. Community Wealth Building, which is now proliferating in the UK, the US, and elsewhere around the world, works to produce broadly shared economic prosperity, racial equity, and ecological sustainability through the reconfiguration of local institutions and economic strategies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and control. CWB includes institutions such as cooperative and public enterprises and banks, community land trusts and social housing, and community-based non-profit corporations, among many others – all of which have service to the public good at their core, rather than profit maximization. It also includes supportive strategies such as linking these new institutions to the procurement power of large public and non-profit “anchor” institutions (such as hospitals, universities, and governments); redirecting public subsidies, incentives, and tax breaks away from large capitalist corporations that can block or hinder their proliferation; and experimenting with hybrid forms and approaches." Biographies Thomas M. Hanna is Research Director at The Democracy Collaborative and Co-Director of the organization’s Theory, Policy, and Research Division. He joined TDC in 2010 as a research assistant to Gar Alperovitz. Thomas’ areas of expertise include democratic models of ownership and governance, particularly public and cooperative ownership. He has as published dozens of articles in popular and academic journals, and his recent publications include Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States (Manchester University Press, 2018), The Crisis Next Time: Planning for Public Ownership as an Alternative to Corporate Bank Bailouts (Next System Project, 2018) and, with Andrew Cumbers, Constructing the Democratic Public Enterprise (Democracy Collaborative, 2019). Marjorie Kelly is a Senior Fellow and Executive Vice President at the Democracy Collaborative and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute. She oversees a variety of research and consulting projects in inclusive economic development, employee ownership, and place-based impact investing, working with groups that include city economic development, foundations, and anchor institutions. She was co-founder and for twenty years president of Business Ethics magazine. Kelly is coauthor of The Making of a Democratic Economy: Building Prosperity for the Many, Not Just the Few (2019, Berrett-Koehler Publishers), among other books. Links Democracy Collaborative https://democracycollaborative.org/ New Economy Coalition https://neweconomy.net/ California Public Banking Alliance https://californiapublicbankingalliance.org/ Centre for Local Economic Strategies (UK) https://cles.org.uk/ Transnational Institute https://www.tni.org/en About the SPIDERS Platform This series of talks is organized on behalf of SPIDERS, the Seoul Platform for Initiating Discourses on Equitable and Resilient Society, and funded by the Seoul Institute. The talks complement a series of original papers published on the SPIDERS platform, dedicated to outlining the building blocks of post-capitalist political economies and societies, not oriented around growth and profit, but rather good lives and a flourishing web of life in times of profound planetary change. Hosting these talks are founder of the P2P Foundation, Michel Bauwens, and Rok Kranjc, researcher, designer and translator in the...
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