The Institute for Policy Studies' publication Too Much focuses on inequality and excess. In this interview, Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati speaks with Democracy Collaborative co-founder and Next System Project co-chair, Gar Alperovitz about his "long-haul perspective on how we can go about shearing inequality down to democratic size."
Alperovitz: I’ve been very interested in building up alternate ownership structures — worker co-ops, community land trusts, municipal ownership — that can help us slowly displace and weaken capital.
If you set up a worker co-op, you don’t have a capitalist firm. You have a worker firm. And if you have 10,000 worker co-ops, you may have the beginnings of a new economic order. And if you can begin to develop the idea politically that, yes, ownership can be public or worker or community rather than private and capitalist, then you can move to other forms of common wealth and democratic ownership like city and state banks.