Can the Earth Survive Capitalism? Exploring sustainable economic models

7 – 18 January, 2008

Marjorie Kelly, Peter Barnes, John Whitmore

A choice of weeks is available – see details of the timetable below. Can be taken as a one or two week course.

This course will give participants the opportunity to explore in depth the structures needed to create a sustainable economy. These are issues pertinent to business and society, which will engage the group in discussion of what a reformed economic system might look like and how the follow-on impact of any radical change might begin to be managed.

Course Overview

It has become increasingly apparent that capitalism is environmentally and socially unsustainable. However, the world has yet to find a convincing large-scale alternative economic system.

Participants on this course will engage with a variety of practical challenges to the current situation. They will explore how change can occur both within business structures and external to them, to enable resources to be distributed more equitably and efficiently.

This course is intended for all those who wish to understand the range of realistic alternatives to our existing economic system: corporate and social responsibility officers, local government and economic regeneration officers, activists, innovators in business, students, academics, and researchers and other interested individuals.

Teachers

Marjorie Kelly is a Senior Associate at the Tellus Institute in Boston and co-founder of Corporation 20/20, a project to create a new vision for corporations. She also co-founded Business Ethics, a national magazine on corporate social responsibility, and is author of The Divine Right of Capital.

Peter Barnes is an entrepreneur who has founded and led several socially responsible businesses, including a worker-owned solar energy company and a socially screened unit trust. He is author of Who Owns The Sky? and Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, and is a Senior Fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in California.

Sir John Whitmore is a former businessman who now works as a coach and management consultant. He is author of Need, Greed or Freedom.

Timetable & Course content

Capitalism as we know it is driven by an operating system that says: ‘Maximise short-term return to capital that is owned by a small minority’. As a result, profit-maximising corporations are devouring the planet and widening inequality among humans. This is neither a just nor a sustainable model. In this course, the two lead teachers dissect the current operating system of capitalism and show how it can be changed, in ways both internal and external to the corporation. Participants will also have the opportunity to discuss the proposition that capitalism is of its very nature unreformable

Week 1: January 7-11, 2008 – Alternative Business Models

Monday
Arrival by 1pm. Introduction to each other and College: Gaia theory and Schumacher philosophy.

Tuesday-Friday
Marjorie Kelly will examine alternative models for businesses that put human well-being at their core, discussing the relative merits of employee-owned, cooperative, trust-owned and government chartered companies.

The earth can indeed survive capitalism. We must first understand the core problems with the current system design, which is that the system is designed to maximize gains to finance capital while minimizing gains to employees and externalizing costs onto the environment and community. We’ll then explore together: can we imagine transformative change in this system? Is transformation plausible? Finally, we’ll move to visioning a key piece in the next evolution of the system – examining “for-benefit” company designs. These are profitable (or at least self-sustaining) companies that are designed to further human well-being. They include employee-owned, trust-owned, government-chartered, cooperative, family-controlled mission-driven, and new hybrids. These companies together represent an emerging “Fourth Sector” of firms, beyond the traditional three sectors of business, nonprofits, and government. They operate in the space in between, representing a blend of the best elements of the other sectors: self-sustaining like businesses, focused on human well-being like nonprofits.

Participants will be invited to gather into small groups for intensive, hands-on study of existing for-benefit designs. What are the elements that make these designs work? What are circumstances in which these alternative designs might give rise to different outcomes? What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing designs – and what new designs might be possible? In a closing session, we’ll explore how to further the potential of for-benefit designs, and talk about how this work relates to our own circumstances.

Week 2: January 14-18, 2008 – Managing the ‘Commons’

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
Peter Barnes discusses alternative models for managing the commons — those gifts of nature and society that precede and surround corporations. Among the alternatives he will explore are ecosystem trusts, shared risk pools and open access commons.

Wednesday
John Whitmore will visit the course for a day to discuss his belief that capitalism and sustainability are fundamentally incompatible. He argues that economic growth, a principal goal of capitalism, is incompatible with environmental sustainability, and decisions in future may have to be based on carbon emissions criteria, ahead of financial criteria. He will outline the importance of shifting our thinking from growth to qualitative improvement, and will look closely at what this would involve for both business and society.

Friday Departure after lunch.

Can be taken as a one or two week course.
Masters credits available subject to University approval.

Course Fees

For businesses: One week £1,100. Two weeks £1,700
For individuals, NGOs & Educators: One week £900. Two weeks £1,400
These include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.

How to make an application – click here

For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College

New feature – reserve your place now

To provisionally reserve a place for 5 days, email us your contact details and the name of the course admin@schumachercollege.org.uk

We will hold the place for five working days for reservations – three weeks before a course or earlier. After five days we will automatically offer your place to someone else if we have not received your application.

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity (company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, UK.