Abstract
Suddenly, everyone is taking an interest in the ‘third sector,’ the social economy, the not-for-profit sector. The IMF looks to it for shock absorption as the tremors of its structural adjustment programmes rip through the social fabrics of North and South; neo-liberal governments use it to provide the services in which the ‘for profit’ sector has little interest and for which the state itself claims to have insufficient resources; Conservatives and Christian Democrats give an astringent sort of support to workers co-operatives on the grounds that through them workers will learn the real costs of running a company and moderate their wage demands as a consequence. Social democratic governments seeking to protect their citizens - and their own political position - against deregulated international markets see it as an ally in achieving social cohesion; and greens and libertarian socialists see it as a space for at best, feasible Utopias and at the minimum, a dignified strategy for collective survival.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Wainwright, H., Gosling, P. (1998). Social Labour and Democratic Capital: The Margins or The Mainstream?. In: Wheelock, J., Vail, J. (eds) Work and Idleness. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4397-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4397-4_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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