Half Past Capitalism

Mansib Rahman, CEO of Montreal-based food delivery and logistics startup Radish.coop, joins Dru to discuss cooperative governance, member allegiances, equity and IPOs in cooperatives, and how we can transform the food system.

Union organizer and activist Aminah Sheikh (@simplyaminah) join Dru Oja Jay to discuss the elements of organizing a workplace, the transformative process that results, and how that could open onto international solidarity and an anti-capitalist imagination. Sheikh currently works as an organizer with PSAC, and is Vice President of the Canadian Freelancers Union. Follow HPC Blue Sky ( https://bsky....

There's a lot to learn from Sweden's Meidner Plan, which would have phased in worker ownership over 30 years. As a followup to our episode with Joe Guinan, Dru Oja Jay spoke to Shannon Ikebe about some of the new archival materials about the Meidner plan, and insights it contains for current efforts to plan beyond capitalism. Read Shannon's dissertation on Sweden's wage earner fund...

Yuill Herbert, a co-founder and long-time worker member at Sustainability Solutions Group, joins us to talk about life in an expanding co-op, and the 100-acre land trust he also helped start. Sustainability Solutions Group: https://www.ssg.coop/ Podcast links: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/halfpastcapitalism Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism Twitter: https://www.twitter...

Esteban Kelly, Executive Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, joins Dru Oja Jay to discuss the state of the worker cooperative movement, the ecological approach to organizing, the evolution of equity discourse and its neglected revolutionary origins, and more. The USFCW: https://www.usworker.coop/en/ Unlikely Advocates: Worker Co-ops, Grassroots Organizing, and Public Policy: http...

The Meidner Plan was a transformative plan proposed by Swedish trade unions in the mid-1970s to gradually transfer ownership of mid-sized and large businesses to their workers, and subsequently to workers at large. Dru Jay is joined by Joe Guinan, the President at The Democracy Collaborative and co-author of The Case for Community Wealth Building and of People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn Gov...

-- Recorded July 2023 -- Amrita Wassan is the Senior Director Programs at Center for Economic Democracy (CED), and they are an educator, organizer and solidarity economy practitioner. Francisco Perez is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and he’s director of the Center for Popular Economics. They are both part of the team that teaches Economics for Emancipation, which is...

Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House, the Cush Vlog, and Hell on Earth joins Dru Jay to discuss the tyranny of the self, fear of death and horizons of post-capitalism. Check out Matt's vlogs here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5ddgvszig&list=PLhxUDrMFUqyMQSozC1ES-Q4BkT8MJbY_1

Moving a city, moving an economy w/ Cheyenna Weber A bit over a decade ago, it was just a handful of people speaking the phrase "solidarity economy" in New York City in an intentional way. Today, the concept has gained considerable traction, but obstacles loom as successes accumulate. Cheyenna Layne Weber has been at close to the heart of that trajectory. Here, she shares insights, lesso...

The global food crisis is—according to most available indicators—just getting warmed up. Shylah Wolfe has participated in many cooperatives in the food sector, and with the Concordia Food Coalition, is involved in the establishment of a non-profit food institution at Concordia University. She spoke to Dru Oja Jay about what kinds of cooperative systems for food production, distribution and process...

Venezuelan communes—where productive activities are controlled by a range of community assemblies—are fascinating examples of socialist forces experimenting with the creation of new social forms. Venezuela's communes are an attempt to address some of the shortcomings of cooperatives and state-owned socialist factories by addressing not just economic production but other social relationships li...

Cuba’s thousands of agricultural cooperatives are responsible for about 56% of Cuba’s growing land, and employ an estimated 300,000 cooperative worker members. Some observers say the cooperatives more efficient than the state-owned parts of Cuba's agricultural production. Federica Bono is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography at Christopher Newport University joins Dru Oja Jay to discuss h...

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Kevin Harding, one of the organizers of a spirited, hail-mary attempt to save Mountain Equipment Co-op from being sold off to a US private equity firm.  Before its assets were sold (and the member list apparently destroyed), the outdoor supplies cooperative had reached an estimated 6 million members and $700 million in annual revenues. Kevin is a public policy profess...

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Mo Manklang of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives to discuss recent changes to federal legislation championed by various cooperative organizations, and how laws can be changed further. Mo is the Communications Director and Policy lead at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, a board members of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance and the Sustainable Busin...

Dru is joined by Carmen Marcuello and Anjel Errasti, authors of some interesting publications about Mondragon's expansion abroad. We talk about why the cooperative model hasn't taken root in Mondragon's overseas operations, and what makes Mondragon different from multinational conglomerates of similar size that are not owned and democratically managed by their workers.   Carmen Marcuello is a...

I've been working on a Ukraine episode for a while. After an interview with Yulia Yurchenko (whose book Elliot recommends at the end) was unusable due to wartime internet, I turned to Elliot Dolan-Evans in Melbourne.  In addition to being the author of the timely article "Why Ukraine needs foreign debt cancellation now,"[1] Elliot has spent time in Ukraine's Donbas region during the civil war...

Organizer, teacher, co-founder of Movement Generation and co-organizer of Seed Commons and Peoples' Solar Energy Fund, Gopal is a key facilitator, convener and thinker in the climate justice movement. He has been involved in Climate Justice Alliance, ETC Group, Ruckus Society, Cooperation Richmond, and the Center for Economic Democracy, and he teaches Ecological Systems Thinking at Antioch Univers...

Dancer, bodyworker, somatic educator and Art.coop co-organizer Marina Lopez joins us for episode 8 of Half Past Capitalism. Marina has been involved in solidarity economy organizing through Cooperation Humboldt in Northern California, and more recently in organizing an educational series following the release of the Art.coop report, "Solidarity Not Charity - Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy"....

Justin Podur has been poring over the details of world history with his comrade and former teacher, and sharing the results on the Anti-Empire Project podcast's "Civilizations" series (https://podur.org/). I asked Justin about the insights and shifts in perspective from this fascinating in-depth study, which covers the era of colonialism and imperialism, and the various responses to it.  &nbs...

Evan Henshaw-Plath was one of the key organizers of the Indymedia network, employee #1 at Twitter, and started two worker co-ops and a bunch of other companies. He has worked at Fortune 500 monoliths and in anarchist collectives. In this episode, we discuss how software is a commons, what the cooperative movement can learn from Silicon Valley, and how cooperative tech projects can scale up. Evan i...

Historian-activists Kassandra Luciuk and Saku Pinta join us to discuss the "hall socialism" that flourished in communities of Finnish and Ukrainian migrant workers in the early 20th century. Though much of this incredibly vital social, political and cultural activity was successfully suppressed by anti-communist purges in the post-war period, the legacy and lessons of these networks lives on. Abou...

Nav Kaur (@north_kaur) joins HPC to talk about child care, how capitalism and colonialism are taught from an early age, and the conditions under which the people who care for children for a living might be less alienated. We talk worker cooperatives, landlords, boards and languages. * * *   Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:   • Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastc...

Sam Gindin shares his critique of cooperatives and his ideas about the broader challenges of building socialism.  Sam Gindin served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and later as chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. At both unions, he participated in major collective bargaining,  policy d...

Half Past Capitalism Episode 002 – NYC's Solidarity Economy Movement  Dru talks to Lauren Hudson, an organizer with SolidarityNYC, feminist geographer, PhD grad and lecturer at John Jay College (full bio below). She discusses her direct experience of capitalism, the differences in pandemic response among solidarity economy institutions she's involved in, effects of cooperation on family and k...

Half Past Capitalism Episode 001 – How can we transform the forestry industry? Spoiler alert: organizing worker power is part of the mix. Dru talks to Marcus Peters, a friend, collaborator, cooperative developer and labour organizer about mosquitoes, clearcuts, transparency and workplace culture in the corner of Canada's forestry industry devoted to treeplanting.   Watch on Youtube: https://w...