Making Alternatives to Capitalism: Cooperatives & the Working-Class Sacred

What kind of alternative political economy can liberate us from the contemporary violent, dehumanizing, and totalizing capitalistic world? I argue that Mohammad Hatta's vision for humanizing cooperatives might be one of the most efficacious models. Like Franz Fanon, Hatta was a postcolonial thinker in the post-World War 2. Being a key political economist in the Indonesian independence movement, he served as the Indonesian first vice president. Like Fanon, Hatta sees the sociogenic psychological contortion that colonized subjects endured in their humanity. However, unlike Fanon, Hatta sees socio-economic relationships in cooperatives as the most effective humanizing agent in postcolonial nation-building projects. Addressing both communal and individual dignity, active membership in cooperatives heals dehumanized victims of the violent extractive colonial world. This presentation will argue for the importance of Hatta's vision in the contemporary global political economy.