From the 19th Century we still have cooperatives and mutual benefit societies, some of which are thriving. The expression ‘solidarity economy’ emerged from South America and has spread to Europe, and it describes that subset of institutions which value things other than profit. In Spain the integral cooperatives are growing.
Also Europe has an Degrowth movement with an annual conference. In USA the Italian slow food initiative has been augmented with a slow money initiative. In Austria there is the Economy for the Common Good movement in which businesses audit themselves using a tool similar to triple bottom line accounting.
Fortunately the Great Recession seems to have fueled a range of other discourses which are rarely presented in the mainstream media.
There has been a renewed interest in simpler more transparent, more direct financial services. The Move Your Money campaign saw an encouraging movement out of banks and into credit unions but seemingly not enough to have systemic impact. Many social startups and government sponsored experiments are vying to revolutionise finance, investment, and payments with new models such as crowdfunding things banks won’t fund, and peer-to-peer lending which cuts out the bank as an intermediary.
Such new financial services could point the way towards a new economy with less speculation and rent-collecting intermediaries, but they do nothing for the present crisis in which money issued as interest bearing debt is draining out of circulation as new loans are less than repayments.
Bitcoin seemed to offer a democratisation of money with a ledger which could not be hacked, new coins being issued to those who invested in securing the network, the possibility of privacy in transactions, and low transaction charges. But the many benefits have not offset other concerns: price instability, the punitive legal judgements, fear-mongering in the financial press, and latterly serious governance issues. Having been designed as a sort of digital gold, Bitcoin suffers from many of the same flaws as gold-money. Any money-as-commodity is vulnerable to hoarding, speculation and throttling by the wealthiest players in the market.
Rachel O’Dwyer puts it more forcefully "It would seem that Bitcoin, far from representing a monetary commons, is instead an ideal financial asset for rent-seeking capitalism. Because of its design there is also no possibility for cheap credit in the Bitcoin system and if the unit matures, a banking system will be necessary to provide credit based on deposits." Bitcoin’s market capitalisation represents nearly $5bn (November 2015) of a new highly liquid commodity. This is a drop in the ocean of quantitative easing, and its lack of circulation means Bitcoin as money is not really mitigating the crisis.
Transition towns and ecovillages across Europe are increasingly aware of the importance of economic development to their wider goals. This movement wide awakening only translates into a small number of dedicated individuals, and the legal, & software tools they need barely yet exist.
Many local organisations, especially in France, have created their own local currencies. Most of these are 'backed' by legal tender, which means they may serve to nudge shoppers into local procurement, but they neither increase liquidity nor transfer legitimacy from criminal institutions to trusted sources of credit/money.
If all this gives grounds for hope I would like to temper it by observing two things which have held true since the roman empire: technological unemployment means that there is less and less human effort needed to sustain life. This would be a good thing if opportunities to work (or at least to benefit from the work machines do) were properly distributed.
the wealthiest people have access to unlimited money and credit with which to buy, out-invest or undercut any competition
However productive the workers are, rent always increases commensurately confiscating much of the wealth created. Despite many rags-to-riches tales of social mobility, most productive people will never control the wealth they produce unless they first own the means of production, and ultimately the land which brings food sovereignty.
Few solutions then, are recognising the power and role of banks or addressing the (economic) root causes of poverty. We may seek political solutions, but we also need to find ways to withdraw our patronage en masse.
In section two we will look in more detail at bank-money and how banks control the main function of money, payments.