Inspiration for Otherworlds from the unexamined community economies of the past
Abstract
In this session, we would like to kickstart a debate within the CERN network about the role of past inspiring community economies, with emphasis on the post-Communist world.
The diverse/community economies approach acknowledges that we need new solutions to current problems. Any old/already existing/traditional/non-majority world solutions are not out of place and "backward" but can be a source of inspiration. Diverse economies scholarship has even embraced some iconic historical community economies (Mondragon). But as far as the post-communist countries are concerned authentic community economies pasts (socialist and pre-socialist) seem muffled under a thick blanket.
This brings a number of issues to the fore that could inform the diverse economies program. For most people working outside post-communist countries, the CEE past consists mainly of 'really existing socialism' - often conflated with Stalinism. This picture erases intriguing experiments and their dis/continuities reaching possibly back to a 'pre-communist' past. For example Poland's experiments of workers' self-management in the 1980s, Georgia's experiment to build a democratic socialist polity (1918-1921), Czechoslovakia's interwar cooperative movement, etc.
Inputs will come from Nadia Johanisova, Peter North, Marianna Pavlovskaya and Markus Sattler.
