ABSTRACT
The conventional wisdom is that the 1970s were a bad time politically for progressive forces in the United States. Mystical eastern religions from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to various gurus gained a multitude of followers. In the 1970s, thousands of activists realized that business need not mean just corporate capitalism and that any society needs business enterprises to produce goods and services for people. In the 1970s, unions also began to give more attention to the problem of women workers. The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was established, and George Meany announced that he, too, was a feminist. Students and young adults formed the core of the anti-nuclear movement that spread rapidly across the country in 1978 and 1979. This chapter discusses that public ownership has a role to play, particularly in key industries such as transportation, energy, or steel; but it can be public ownership that includes joint worker-community ownership and substantial work place democracy.
