Economic Democracy: The Challenge of the 1980s, by Martin Carnoy and Derek Shearer, 1980, 436 pp., $7.95 from: Pantheon Books 201 E. 50th St. New York, NY 10022 Economic democracy-the transfer of economic decision making from the few to the many. You want specifics? Examples? Facts, figures, statistics, models, and theory? Well, these are your guys. Carnoy is an economist at Stanford and Shearer is, among other things, a lecturer in architectural and urban planning at UCLA, a contributing editor to Working Papers, and a member of the board of directors of the National Consumer Cooperative Bank. Carefully they analyze problems and potential reforms in areas such as public ownership, greater public control of investment, worker ownership, alternative technologies, and democratic economic planning. For them "the government-at all levels-is the key arena in the struggle for economic democracy." In their penultimate chapter Carnoy and Shearer offer an alternative and optimistic view of the "me decade" seventies, suggesting that more happened and that the country is more open to change than the mainstream press would like to admit. For progressive political change to occur in the 1980s, they write, two conditions must be met: 1) Regular, working people with families and jobs must participate directly, in varying degrees, in bringing about better lives for themselves as well as a more decent society; and 2) "The vision of economic democracy must begin to emerge as a majority viewpoint. " Building a national movement for economic democracy in the 1980s is possible, they conclude, but only if the task is clearly understood within the context of structural ecor.omic reforms. -MR Good Works: A Guide to Social Change Careers, 1980, 289 pp., $22.50, from: Center for the Study of Responsive Law Dept. R P.O. Box 19367 Washington, DC 20036 Looking for "good work" ? You're not likely to find any of these public interest, self-help, social change oriented groups recruiting on your campus this semester. You'd be lucky to have a job counselor who could suggest even one such project, and here's a guide to 275 of them! Moreover, the alphabetically accessed groups are cross-referenced by state and by topic. As if that's not enough there's a basic social change reading list of the classics: Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Malcom X's Autobiography , etc., and lists of networks that can refer you to the right people/programs and training schools to prepare you. Get your reference/career libraries and school counseling offices to stock it. It's invaluable! -CC October 1980 RAIN Page 11 Working Papers for a New Society, bimonthly, $18/yr ($24/yr for institutions; $13.50/yr for students and low-income), from: 186 Hampshire Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617 / 547-4474 RAIN is glad to welcome Working Papers back into print, after nearly a year's dormancy. Working Papers is one of the best policy journals in the country as well as one of the best free-thinking magazines on the left. Its impressive staff and contributors have published excellent pieces on all aspects of economic and social democracy-not only analyses of existing programs and problems, but provocative ideas about what is working or might work. The feature article of the July/August 1980 issue ($3. 00) is " Soft Energy and Hard Times" by Phil Primack: "The soft path could command wide public support if it were seen as a genuine solution to energy shortage· rather than only an ethical imperative.... The failure to date of the soft path to attract the hard hats is not an inevitable cultural or class divide, but a failure of public policy." He cautions that "rather than leading to locally owned, innovative workplaces, the wrong kind of solar development could produce a sort of McDonalds: high technology, centralized management, decentralized production, and low pay." Some alternative that would be! -MR
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz