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Jose Luis Coraggio: Another Economy is Happening |
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Page 5 of 27
Coraggio does not just disagree with the free market fundamentalist. He challenges the mindset, the framework of ideas, the paradigm, within which it seems to some people to make sense to say that the market should decide whether worker-owned enterprises should survive. For Coraggio, the people should decide what to do with markets, not the other way around. If a market functioning as it does serves ethical human purposes, then it should continue to function as it does. If not, it should be modified. The resignifying of the market is thus part and parcel of the empowerment of the people. It is a part of the meaning of “structural change” that is both about a fundamental institution and about who decides what the contours of that fundamental institution will be.
Another factor that carries weight in making a decision whether to speak of “structural change” is whether the relationship of capital to labor is changing. The relationship of capital to labor, classically named by Marx as the “relations of production,” is perhaps the quintessential social structure.)
The phrase “social structure” can be interpreted here by drawing an analogy with the structural frame of a building. Imagine a large building going up. First, a framework of steel girders, vertical and horizontal, is erected. That is the structure. Once the structure is up, the necessary elements can be attached to it to make the building habitable. The builders add floors and walls, pipes and wires; they add heat ducts and perhaps air conditioning ducts; they add stairs and perhaps an elevator. Then people can live in the building.
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