UJAMAA – COOPERATVE ECONOMICS

The basic ingredient in UJAMAA is its emphasis on transmitting economics from individualist “get rich” schemes and motivations to a collective venture. Business is based on profit, employment and expansion and on a commodity or trade of a commodity. It is centered on the market or the pricing and availability of goods and services. The laws of supply and demand are laws of the market, as well as under-consumption and overproduction.

In order to be successful, African American businesses must be collective ventures. The past 100 years has shown that by the inability of African American businesses to secure financing from white institutions or to get development funds. In order for the African American people to achieve economic parity, they must move from mere survival to self-development, and from economic and political survival to economic and political self-development.

This means that they must re-educate themselves to adequately deal with the racist political system and they must do the same in order to deal with the economic system. Profit in UJAMAA goes to the collective, with the objective of building a self-sustaining economy for the movement. Knowing the laws of political economy, capitalism, socialism, and being a socialist is not enough. The African American community is suffering from economic underdevelopment. Its leadership must build an economic safety net in order to prepare for economic socialist advancement in the 21st century. They must begin to form “economic collectives,” and to pool their resources together to develop economic, political, and cultural community development.

Corporations that can market, network and distribute our merchandise and secure profit for starting other collective endeavors must be instituted. Cooperative economics (UJAMAA) is the African American form of market socialism internal to the dynamics of Black America, until the means of production are controlled by the public sector through the socialist revolution. UJAMAA means that individual business enterprise is consciously countered with political “movement” economic cooperatives.

We are not saying that economic cooperatives are the economic solution, but they are a viable economic alternative or transitional program prior to a socialist revolution in America. Economic cooperatives provide African Americans with a material base to sustain political and cultural activist behaviors as well as to free a few people to work fulltime for “movement operations.”

Living in a highly materialistic class country where people base success and intelligence on material accumulation; the success of African American “movement” collective economic ventures will help raise the revolutionary consciousness of the African American people and will encourage them to participate in the national liberation and class struggles!

Revolutionary consciousness of African American people comes from their involvement in the national liberation and class struggle. “Revolutionary consciousness does not stem from formal education, but from understanding how society works, who wins, who loses, and why and how to change the rules of the game.”[1]

Political empowerment without achieving economic self-determination will equal computer neo-colonization. The African American movement for national liberation must encourage and propel the process of political, cultural, social and economic self-organization by the masses and independent self-development. They must learn to take the scientific and technological revolution and use it to serve the interests of the people. We must prepare a generation to master the computer sciences. Youth must be trained in economic and social self-development and management and learn how to develop community economic self-reliance by using community development credit unions. In this way capital will be secured to invest in community self-development, “movement” corporations, construction firms and housing developments and other businesses that can sustain an autonomous community.

Because African Americans suffer from the poison of racism emanating from the monopoly capitalist ruling class, they often come to the forefront in the political struggle that concerns the democratic interests of the vast majority of the population. Because of the special role that racism has played in perpetuating the role of monopoly, and most African Americans are workers, their community’s interest in advancing its democratic rights to equality and those of the working class as a whole are in concert. Demanding economic parity, collective self-determination and reparations for war crimes[2] committed against African Americans is a working class demand. Thus the entire multiracial, multinational working class should support the UJAMAA policy and demand for reparations.

To bring the working class into action in America, one must first bring African Americans into action, to battle for democracy and socialism. This should be the number one priority of a revolutionary organization. The building of the UJAMAA (cooperative economics) is a collective practical, protracted form of revolutionary action in the present period.

Muhammad Ahmad

Updated: 2008

Note: Following is an example of a project “In Our Own Backyard” to illustrate UJAMAA.

“In Our Own Backyard” is a new program to provide unemployed and underemployed Detroiters with 21st century job market survival skills, prepare them to start their own businesses, and also make a difference in their communities. Linda Campbell, Building Movement; Lisa Oliver-King, Our Kitchen Table; Gwen Winston, The Wisdom Institute; and Lottie Spady, Free-D Media, created it.

Over the last three years, the four African American community activists have been collaborating on a variety of successful community projects, which include fundraising, joint planning and project design, leadership development and advocacy. They have spent time talking about how Detroit citizens can no longer depend on corporate or factory jobs and how it is time to create enterprises that will sustain families and the community.

These activists assessed their skills, which were in four areas: Web and Graphic Design, Healthy Home Renovation and Renovation, Designer Arts and Crafts Production and Retail/Resale Management. They then developed a process to share their skills with others in a way that would increase the participants’ sense of civic engagement and commitment to neighborhood revitalization, and called them “Urban Fellows.”

Their goal is to produce a transparent transitional leadership development model that would be easy to duplicate. For example: the Urban Fellows on the Web and Graphic Design Team learn the skills that enable communities to make their own media, creating websites and community newsletters that help increase public awareness, tell social justice stories and help young people tackle different issues.

To participate or for more information about “In Our Own Backyard,” contact the Wisdom Institute, 4605 Cass Avenue, Suite 207, Detroit, MI 48201, (313) 832-2928.

Originally printed:

LIVING FOR CHANGE “A WAY OUT OF NO WAY,” By Grace Lee Boggs, Michigan Citizen, November 18-24, 2007.

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[1]Michael Bayer, “Reviewing Concepts of Communist Party Organizations,” Political Affairs, September/October 1990, p. 13

[2]Ibid. p. 4