(excerpt from) Organizing for Economic Democracy: Vision, Strategy, Action, by Bill Bradley

This is originally from Bill's book in progress, by the same title. It was condesed by Johannes Sabat for NPWS and further condensed by Andrew McLeod for NBN)

We live immersed in an economy, and it powerfully shapes our everyday lives, bu t we cannot see or touch it. Mainly, we know it by its effects: our jobs, our homes, health care, food, poison, pollution, or traffic jams, for instance.

Economic decisions can deny some people work and the means to support themselves, or they can guarantee work and sustenance for everyone. Some economic arrangements force the most dangerous , boring or unpleasant work--coal mining, data entry or cleaning toilets, for instance--upon those least able to evade it. Meanwhile, those with the most advantages, in training, inheritance, or whatever, are encouraged to compete for the healthiest, most interesting, most challenging opportunities leading to yet more privileges.

In some economies, extraordinarily wealthy people and corporations are granted disproportionate power to dictate who will do what--forcing other people to work for them. Command economies, on the other hand, put a coordinator class in charge of who will do what, ostensibly on the basis of "what is best for the people." Of course, those coordinators who give orders that increase and entrench their own power tend to displace those who don't. Capitalist and Communist economies both result in decisions that serve those who make the decisions, often at the expense of everyone else.

So, most people's interests will not be served unless they, themselves, participate in economic decisions and organize the economy.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to this at the moment is the belief, so little challenged that it is rarely even stated, that our economy is not a system of decision-making at all. Rather, the assumption goes, "free market forces," beyond anyone's control, are what makes the economy do what it does. Never mind that every one of America's Fortune 500 companies is utterly dependent on the government for subsidies, infrastructure, armed forces to guard its wealth, and massive bailouts at the public expense. Never mind that wages are kept artificially low by maintaining an unemployment rate that ensures a steady supply of those desperate enough to work for less. Never mind that tax policies favor a constant redistribution of wealth to wealthy businesses....