Technology, Power and Social Change: Comparing Three Marx-Inspired Views

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Notes

1 I have also placed David Harvey in this group, although he breaks with these thinkers in some key areas.

2 By “contingency” I mean they see social change beyond structural barriers of capitalism as coming primarily from what social movements do as “independent variables.” This choice mirrors Marx's preoccupation with revolutions and social movements as primary actors in changing the system. To a certain extent this view is derivative of Marx’s agenda. In contrast, other thinkers focus not just on social movements per se as change agents, but also on how social movements can be more or less effective, or how to develop institutions which facilitate social movement change or make change without a mass movement. Here “contingency” can be based on different tactics or organizations, e.g. cooperatives. Harvey has the broadest conception of contingency within this group, although he differs from the reconstructionists as we will see. As I will show, the contingent elements are somewhat diluted by the choice of language. For a related discussion of contingency, see John Gerassi, Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

3 Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature. London: Zed Books, 2007.

4 For an overview of these issues, see Victor Wallis, “Socialism and Technology: A Sectoral Overview.” Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2006: 81–97.

5 Ibid. See also Ricard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology. New York: Guilford Press, 1995; Seymour Melman, After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

6 One Economic Reconstructionist, Barry Commoner, discusses the analogous distinction between “prevention versus control” of pollution. See Making Peace with the Planet. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990, 41–55.

7 Fredrik Sjögren, “Technology and Sustainability in the Light of Questions of Determinism,” in Kajsa Borgnäs, Teppo Eskelinen, Johanna Perkiö, and Rikard Warlenius, eds., The Politics of Ecosocialism: Transforming Welfare. London: Routledge, 2015, 69–82. On social steering, see Seymour Melman, “The Impact of Economics on Technology.” Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1975: 59–72. Melman argues that technological forms partially reflect political choices: as trade unions, workers and other groups pressure management or form new organizational forms like cooperatives, they can change the design or uses of technology.

8 By “meso level change” I mean a level above individuals but below the workings of the (global or national) capitalist system as a whole. I also mean a level beyond short-term political strategies and a rhetorical deconstruction of the capitalist system. The idea is that systemic social change can come by developing alternative institutions which become building blocks for systemic change. Meso level change is neither insurrectionary in the first instance, nor gradualist. This concept builds on Seymour Melman's critique of “short-termism” in The Demilitarized Society: Disarmament and Conversion. Montreal: Harvest House, 1988; on Paul Goodman's analysis of institutional change in People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the Mixed System. New York: Vintage Books, 1968; and on Ralph Miliband's ideas about radical or revolutionary reform in Marxism and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. See also Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013.

9 Herbert Marcuse, “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology.” In Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds., The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Urizen Books, 1978, 138–162. See also Sjögren, “Technology and Sustainability” (note 7), and Alf Hornborg, “Technology as Fetish: Marx, Latour, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism.” Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2014: 119–140.

10 Marcuse, “Some Social Implications of Modern Technology,” 138–139.

11 Ibid., 139.

12 Ibid., 140–141.

13 Ibid., 141.

14 Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy, 1815–1848. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 as cited and quoted in David Noble, “Present Tense Technology.” Democracy, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1983, 16.

15 Noble, 18.

16 Ellen Meiksins Wood, “The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism.” New Left Review I, No. 127, May–June, 1981, 68.

17 Noble, “Present Tense Technology” (note 14), 18.

18 Ibid., 19.

19 Karl Marx, 1871 letter to F. Bolte, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978: 520.

20 Noble, “Present Tense Technology” (note 14), 20.

21 Ibid., 21.

22 John Bellamy Foster, “Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 105, No. 2, 1999: 366–405.

23 Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 35–36.

24 Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. In Marx-Engels Reader, 475.

25 Marx believed “that the real transformative power of cooperative enterprise lay in the production of goods rather than in their distribution (via cooperative stores).” See Michael Joseph Roberto, “Capitalist Crisis, Cooperative Labor, and the Conquest of Political Power: Marx's ‘Inaugural Address' (1864) and its Relevance in the Current Moment.” Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 2, July 2014, 97–98.

26 Quoted in Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. 1, State and Bureaucracy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977, 178 (the quote is from Marx’s 1844 article, “Critical Notes on ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform',” Marx's emphasis).

27 Marx-Engels Reader, 490.

28 Ibid., 228–229.

29 See Bertell Ollman, Social and Sexual Revolution: Essays on Marx and Reich. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1978, 90–91.

30 Marx, The Paris Commune. New York: New York Labor News Company, 1934, 73, 74, 85. Under the decree of 16 April 1871, “abandoned factories were to be handed over to ‘the cooperative association of the workers who were employed in them’.” Robert Tombs, “Harbingers or Entrepreneurs? A Workers' Cooperative during the Paris Commune,” Historical Journal, Vol. 27, No. 4, 1984, 969.

31 Tombs, 970–971.

32 Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, “How 19th-Century Parisians Under Siege Improvised a System of Airmail by Balloon.” Slate, December 15, 2015. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/12/09/history_of_balloon_airmail_19th_century_parisian_letters_sent_by_balloon.html.

33 Karl Marx, “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association, ‘The First International’,” October 21–27, 1864 as published in Marx & Engels Internet Archive, 2000. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/10/27.htm. See also Bruno Jossa, “Marx, Lenin and the Cooperative Movement.” Review of Political Economy, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2014: 282–302.

34 Karl Marx, Capital Vol. III, Chapter 27, “The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production.” Jossa, “Marx, Lenin and the Cooperative Movement” (note 33), emphasizes cooperatives as a new mode of production.

35 Roberto, “Capitalist Crisis, Cooperative Labor, and the Conquest of Political Power” (note 25), 97–98, 100.

36 Jossa, “Marx, Lenin and the Cooperative Movement” (note 33), 286.

37 Kovel links the Paris Commune to the idea of an ensemble or “commons” (The Enemy of Nature, 246–249), but his use of the term, although somewhat related, differs from mine.

38 Karl Marx as quoted in Ollman, Social and Sexual Revolution, 52.

39 Ibid., 55.

40 Marx as quoted in ibid., 57.

41 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, 127.

42 Ibid., 135.

43 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City. Baltimore. MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973, 199.

44 John Bellamy Foster, “Marxism and Ecology: Common Fronts of a Great Transition.” Monthly Review, Vol. 67, No. 7, 2015, 5–6.

45 John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009, 205–206.

46 David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 188.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 221.

49 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000, 203, 237, 91.

50 John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism's Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?” Monthly Review, Vol. 52, No. 7, 2000: 1–13.

51 Kovel, The Enemy of Nature.

52 John Bellamy Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002, 100.

53 Barbara Harriss-White and Elinor Harriss, 2006, “Unsustainable Capitalism: The Politics of Renewable Energy in the UK.” Socialist Register 2007. London: Merlin Press: 72–101; Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, “A Climate for Business: Global Warming, the State and Capital.” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1998: 679–703.

54 Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism, 92–93.

55 Ibid., 94–95.

56 James O'Connor, Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York: The Guilford Press, 1998, 200–201.

57 Ibid., 201.

58 Ibid., 203–204.

59 This historical layering of past struggles creating later possibilities can be seen theoretically and concretely. First, the concept of “the circulation of struggles,” traceable to autonomous Marxists in Italy, explains how social movements in one region and time can spill into and affect social movements in another region and time. See for example, Guido Baldi, “Theses on Mass Worker and Social Capital.” Radical America, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1972: 3–21. Concretely, research in progress by the author explores how the urban environmentalist, farmer and reformer movements in Portland, Oregon, which established a foundation for mass transportation use in the city, were later leveraged to promote a company's effort (now stalled if not abandoned) to mass-produce light rail vehicles. See “Public Transit: A History of Public Transit in Portland.” Portland: Trimet, 2013, https://trimet.org/pdfs/publications/Public-Transit-in-Portland.pdf and Jonathan Michael Feldman, “From Mass Transit to New Manufacturing.” The American Prospect, April 2009: A12-A16.

60 Ibid., 204–205.

61 Ibid., 206.

62 Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, 170.

63 Ibid., 260.

64 I discuss below how such coupling can take place.

65 John Bellamy Foster, “The Great Capitalist Climacteric.” Monthly Review, Vol. 67, No. 6, 2015.

66 John Bellamy Foster, “Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism.” Monthly Review, Vol. 60, No. 6, 2008, 8–10.

67 Foster, “The Great Capitalist Climacteric” (note 65).

68 Foster, The Ecological Revolution, 209.

69 David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996, 197–204; O'Connor, Natural Causes, 267–339; Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, 242–275.

70 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, 254.

71 Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.

72 Foster recognizes the limits to (or imposed upon) social movements. See Ecology Against Capitalism, 118–127. Monthly Review published this article: Efe Can Gürcan, “The Nonprofit-Corporate Complex: An Integral Component and Driving Force of Imperialism in the Phase of Monopoly-Finance Capitalism.” Monthly Review, Vol. 66, No. 11, 2015: 37–54, where the author states that non-profits diffuse social movements. The problem is that because social movements are often steered by networks tied to non-profits, one has to more strongly highlight how organizing economically can provide an alternative patronage or support system for movements. This could take the form of cooperatives, crowd sourcing or even collaboration with green capitalists and parts of the state opposing oil companies, fracking and auto-centered development.

73 Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, 179–180.

74 Ibid., 265.

75 Ibid., 252, 259.

76 David Harvey, “Marxism, Metaphors and Ecological Politics.” Monthly Review, Vol. 49, Issue 11, 1998.

77 One could also argue that even during the peaks social movements encounter obstacles because of a lack of historical memory of past movements, i.e. they have not “banked” a political cultural capital of the past. See Alexander Cockburn, “Biggest Financial Scandal in Britain's History, Yet Not a Single Occupy Sign; What Happened?” Counterpunch, July 6, 2012. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/06/biggest-financial-scandal-in-britains-history-not-a-single-occupy-sign-what-happened/.

78 David Harvey, “‘Listen Anarchist!,' A Personal Response to Simon Springer's ‘Why a Radical Geography Must be Anarchist'.” Blog post, June 10, 2015. http://davidharvey.org/2015/06/listen-anarchist-by-david-harvey/. Here Harvey explains that his very choice of language in past writings was mediated by constraints of the academic system. See also Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy. London: Verso, 2014.

79 Sarah van Gelder, “Three Years Ago, These Chicago Workers Took Over a Window Factory. Today, They're Thriving.” Yes! Magazine, October 9, 2015. http://www.yesmagazine.org/edge-of-change/three-years-ago-these-chicago-workers-took-over-a-window-factory-today-theyre-thriving-20151009.

80 Harvey correctly embraces this sort of thinking against certain varieties of anarchist thinking. For a concrete example of the mix of power from above and below that affects urban outcomes related to local communities' control over economic and other resources, see Juan Velásquez Atehortúa, “Barrio Women's Invited and Invented Spaces Against Urban Elitisation in Chacao, Venezuela.” Antipode, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2014: 835–856.

81 Jonathan Michael Feldman, “The foundations for extending green jobs: The case of the rail-based mass transit sector in North America.” International Journal of Labour Research, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2010: 269–291; Jon Rynn, Manufacturing Green Prosperity: The Power to Rebuild the American Middle Class. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010.

82 John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009, 139–140.

83 Robert W. McChesney, “Sharp Left Turn for the Media Reform Movement: Toward a Post-Capitalist Democracy.” Monthly Review, Vol. 65, No. 9, 2014: 1–14.

84 Henry A. Giroux, “Beyond Pedagogies of Repression.” Monthly Review, Vol. 67, No. 10, 2016: 57–71.

85 Seymour Melman, “Decision Making and Productivity as Economic Variables: The Present Depression as a Failure of Productivity.” Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1976, 218–219.

86 Melman, After Capitalism, 9–10, 40–42. Melman, like Paul Goodman, was also inspired by various anarchist or decentralist ideas. For a contemporary reconstructionist in this tradition, see Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?

87 Barry Commoner, “Oil, Energy and Capitalism.” Speech at the Community Church of Boston, February 22, 1976, in Climate & Capitalism, July 30, 2013. http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/07/30/exclusive-an-unpublished-talk-by-barry-commoner/ . In a book co-authored with the Italian urban ecologist Virginio Bettini, Commoner “explicitly connected environmental struggles to a class perspective, theorizing the need for a ‘class ecology’ as opposed to the ‘ecology of power' advocated by mainstream organizations and reflected in the existing legislation on nature conservation” in Italy. See: Stefania Barca, “On Working Class Environmentalism: A Historical and Transnational Overview.” Interface, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2012: 71.

88 Thorstein Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation. New York: Viking Press, 1919, 3–4.

89 Lewis Mumford, In the Name of Sanity. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954, 39.

90 Melman, “The Impact of Economics on Technology” (note 7), 59, 72.

91 Paul Goodman, Decentralizing Power: Paul Goodman's Social Criticism. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1994, 71.

92 Ibid., 88.

93 Ibid., 91.

94 Melman, “The Impact of Economics on Technology” (note 7), 60.

95 Mumford, In the Name of Sanity, 41.

96 Lewis Mumford, “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.” Technology and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1964, 2.

97 Ibid., 2–3.

98 Ibid., 4.

99 Ibid., 6–8.

100 Mumford, In the Name of Sanity, 39–40, 43.

101 Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet, 90.

102 Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Man, Nature and Technology. New York: Bantam Books, 1974, 139.

103 Ibid., 153–154.

104 Ibid., 258.

105 Ibid., 264–265.

106 Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet, 94.

107 See also Melman, “The Impact of Economics on Technology” (note 7).

108 Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet, 100.

109 Commoner, The Closing Circle, 156.

110 Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet, 88–89.

111 Ibid., 93–94.

112 Commoner, The Closing Circle, 275, 280.

113 Ibid., 284–287.

114 Jonathan Michael Feldman, “From Warfare State to ‘Shadow State': Militarism, Economic Depletion and Reconstruction.” Social Text, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2007: 143–168. Students of alternative technology link its extension to both waves of technological and market opportunities and a resulting “chain reaction of positive feedback loops … which involve all the constituent components and the functions of the technological system.” Utopia in this case becomes grounded because “the linkages between functions may turn out to be circular, setting in motion a process of cumulative causation.” Steffan Jacobsson and Anna Bergek, “Transforming the energy sector: the evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology,” Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 13, No. 5, 2004, 823.

115 Commoner, The Closing Circle, 290–291.

116 Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet, 205.

117 See, for example, Melman, The Demilitarized Society.

118 Barry Commoner, “Beyond the Teach-In,” Saturday Review, April 4, 1970, 52.

119 Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism, 98.

120 Paul Goodman, Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals. New York: Random House, 1962.

121 Melman, The Demilitarized Society, 37.

122 Ibid., 60.

123 Ibid., 64.

124 I was one of the principal organizers of this meeting while working as Program Director at the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament, chaired by Seymour Melman.

125 Commoner, “Beyond the Teach-In” (note 118), 50.

126 Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopia. New York: Viking Press, 1962, 15, 21–22.

127 Ibid., 124–127.

128 Paul and Percival Goodman, Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1960, 125–131, 148.

129 Melman, After Capitalism, 351, 173.

130 Melman made this observation many years ago in communication with the author. In addition, “strong local economies reduce the negative ecological impacts of global trade, in particular fossil fuel emissions from long-distance transport.” Likewise, such businesses are more likely to be concerned with local labor and environmental conditions. See Mark Roseland and Lena Soots, “Strengthening Local Economies.” In Linda Starke, ed., State of the World 2007. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007: 152–169.

131 Melman, “The Impact of Economics on Technology” (note 7), 64.

132 Melman, After Capitalism, 352–358.

133 Bertolt Brecht, “Radio as a Means of Communication: A Talk on the Function of Radio.” Screen, Vol. 20, No. 3–4, 1979: 24–28.

134 Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity, 2012.

135 John Dewey, “Can Education Share in Social Reconstruction?” (1934). In Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro, eds., The Political Writings of John Dewey. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1992, 127.

136 Melman, After Capitalism.

137 Melman, After Capitalism; cf. Carl Ratner, “Neoliberal Co-Optation of Leading Co-Op Organizations, and a Socialist Counter-Politics of Cooperation.” Monthly Review, Vol. 66, No. 9, 2015: 18–30; and Peter Marcuse, “Cooperatives on the Path to Socialism.” Monthly Review, Vol. 66, No. 9, 2015: 31–38; Roberto, “Capitalist Crisis, Cooperative Labor, and the Conquest of Political Power” (note 25); Jossa, “Marx, Lenin and the Cooperative Movement” (note 33).

138 One bridge between Marxist and Economic Reconstructionist approaches can be seen in Victor Wallis, “Technology, Ecology, and Socialist Renewal.” Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2004: 35–46.

139 For an extensive treatment of the exchange of diverse forms of capital, see Jonathan Michael Feldman, “Social Inclusion, Capacities Development and the Principle of Extension.” In Jonathan Michael Feldman and Jessica Gordon Nembhard, eds., From Community Economic Development and Ethnic Entrepreneurship to Economic Democracy: The Cooperative Alternative. Norrköping, Sweden: Partnership for Multiethnic Inclusion, 57–98.

140 On capital transformation, see Feldman, ibid., and Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.” In John G. Richardson, ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986: 241–258. On the left's limits in capital accumulation and exchange as opposed to the warfare state, see Feldman, “From Warfare State to ‘Shadow State’” (note 114).

141 G.D.H. Cole, Guild Socialism Restated. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980, 89.

142 Jonathan Michael Feldman, “Turn On, Tune In, Drop In: The New Economy Virtuous Cycle.” The Global Teach-In, September 3, 2013. http://www.globalteachin.com/turn-on-tune-in-drop-in-the-new-economy-virtuous-cycle.

143 Majorie Kelly, “Living Enterprise as the Foundation of a Generative Economy.” World Watch, December 5, 2012. http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainableprosperity/generative-economy/.

144 Velásquez, “Barrio Women's Invited and Invented Spaces … ” (note 80).

145 Cf. Spencer Paul Thompson, Bringing Society Back into the Theory of the Firm, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2015, 127. Networks of cooperative firms come to resemble a “mini-economy.” See William Foote and Kathleen King Whyte, Making Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1988, 5. The notion of a “mini-economy” is essential for demonstrating how meso-level changes are not oblivious to the need to “scale up” even if Mondragon-type interventions could be bolstered by the political capital of global social movements.

146 For a Marxist approach that embraces cooperatives, see Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2012. Recent surveys of left treatments include: Stanley Aronowitz, Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006, 208–219; and the articles cited in note 137. Among the pitfalls of many left deconstructions of cooperatives are: (1) they focus on single cooperatives, fixating on the idea of “socialism in one firm,” rather than networks joining multiple cooperative enterprises; (2) they look at coops in isolation, ignoring the supporting technical universities and banking system which are part of the Mondragon network; or (3) they look at past trajectories of cooperatives, but can’t envision future solutions linked to complementary institutional changes, e.g. supportive political campaigns such as that of Bernie Sanders, as a way to avoid or limit constraints on cooperatives. The importance and ubiquity of alternative spaces in trade unions, cooperatives and citizen groups (even those that dialectically both oppose and service the system) is addressed in Staughton Lynd's discussion of E.P. Thompson's idea of “warrens.” Staughton Lynd, Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2014. See also E.P. Thompson, Out of Apathy. London: Stevens, 1960: 301–302. A reasonable hypothesis is that the turn to Latin American exemplars might reflect a frustration with these servicing aspects and limits to trade unions and non-networked cooperatives, and also a limited sense of where contingency is possible in advanced capitalist states of the North.

147 Deborah B. Warren and Steve Dubb, Growing a Green Economy for All: From Green Jobs to Green Ownership, College Park, MD: The Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland, July, 2010.

148 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014, 131.

149 Debt Resistance UK has about 15 voluntary members, six of whom work on the local government debt audit project. Move Your Money (UK) currently has one full time Director, Fionn Travers-Smith, and one part-time staff member (Dan Goss) as well as half a dozen part-time volunteers. Email communication to author from Joel Benjamin (Move Your Money campaigner), London, April 17, 2016.

150 Damian Carrington, “RBS pulls back fossil fuel investments as green deals grow.” The Guardian, April 17, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/17/rbs-pulls-fossil-fuel-investments-green-energy. These changes are driven partially by oil price declines.

151 Miriam Pemberton, “Bernie's Big Budget Cuts.” US News and World Report, March 1, 2016. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/articles/2016-03-01/bernie-sanders-would-find-plenty-to-cut-in-the-defense-budget.

152 Dave Johnson, “Bernie Sanders Proposes to Boost Worker-Ownership of Companies.” Campaign for America's Future blog, August 17, 2015. https://ourfuture.org/20150817/bernie-sanders-proposes-to-boost-worker-ownership-of-companies.

153 Feldman, “The Foundations for Extending Green Jobs” (note 81).