song for theme #48: Co-operative, Decentralized Society Advocate

“Take Me to the Food Co-op” by Stephen P. Cook

to be sung to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by Jack Norworth, Albert Von Tilzer 

At Big Business Miss Liz was mad:

“Greedy absent owners—too bad!”

Big on community¹, Liz spent

Every cent

She would vent.

To local owners she gravitated

With corporate chains got frustrated

“I’m telling you I want to see

Social responsibility²!”

So…

 “Take me to the food co-op³

Down to the credit union⁴

Owned by good folks like you and me

Go economic democracy⁵!

Let us root root root for the home team

When profits depart it’s a shame

Let workers keep more more more moola⁶

In a brand new game

Sign me up with the farm team

Give me my share of the crop

Small farmers are good guys, that’s for sure

Go community agriculture⁷

Let us root root root for the home team

When profits depart it’s a shame

Let farmers keep more more more moola

In a brand new game”

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS

1—Community, according to Ferdinand Tönnies in his 1887 book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, is built around the personal,   

      family, and neighborhood relationships and feelings of togetherness that one expects in a place where people have direct, face

      to face contact.  It is to be distinguished from “society” — where self interest motivated individuals are held together by

      formal regulation and legal framework, relationships between people are more impersonal, and there is less cohesion and less

      dependence on each other.

2—Social responsibility is an ethical theory according to which organizations, businesses, and individuals are obligated to act in a

      way that benefits society at large.  According to Lord Holme and Richard Watts, in their article “Making Good Business

      Sense,” businesses should “behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the

      workforce and their families as well as the local community and society at large."

3—A food distribution consumer co-operative outlet typically offering natural foods to its members

4— A member-owned co-operative association that accepts deposits from and loans money to its members

5—Economic democracy generally refers to a socioeconomic system doing some or all of the following: 1) transferring economic

      decision-making from the few to the many through worker management/ownership of productive enterprises, 2) promoting

      democratic local/regional control over corporate state central planning, 3) entrusting the central government with levying taxes

      that allow social control of investment carried out locally/regionally, and 4) retaining the market system but abolishing private

     or absentee ownership of productive resources, and wage labor. In worker run enterprises workers are paid by sharing in profits.

6—A slang term for money

7—Community supported agriculture provides an alternative model for growing and distributing food.

Comment: This theme, taken together with Left Anarchism (theme #50B), represents a much different way of organizing society/economic activity—an alternative to themes #19A/ #19B. Some argue it would give “little guys” a greater sense of empowerment than beings cogs in the corporate state machine does.